Sure to Shine

Adam sighed as he looked around himself. He hadn’t really expected Eric to be in today, not after the accident, but he did miss him. It wasn’t the same without him goofing around here.

Then again, Eric hadn’t really been himself lately. He had been dark, distracted, and slightly strange. Adam had noticed a drastic personality change over the past few weeks, and he wondered what could have possibly caused it. Scarily, he associated the change in his best friend’s usually easy-going personality with the fact he had found out that he looked exactly like Ben Murdoch.

Adam looked around the homeroom, wondering if perhaps Eric had got in and he hadn’t noticed him. However, there was no sight of him. These days, Eric was very noticeable, due to the fact he was usually filthy. Adam didn’t know what he had been doing, but his best friend’s hands had been covered in unusual marks and cuts for a while, and there was a mad glint in his eyes most of the time. It was almost as though there was someone else living in Eric’s body, sharing it with him, and sometimes when Adam looked at Eric, he caught a flash of the other person. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help but think like that.

"All right," their teacher said. "All of you get down to assembly; we can’t be late this morning."

The class began to noisily file out into the corridor, and Adam sighed as he stood up from the desk he had been sitting at. The teacher glanced up at him.

"How’s Eric doing, Adam?" she asked.

"He seems all right physically," Adam shrugged. "I just think the knock to his head might have messed him up a bit. He seems dazed quite a lot."

Teachers were very concerned about Eric, and Adam was keeping them updated. Eric, for the most part, was a smart and polite kid, and even they had noticed the drastic change in him. Adam didn’t want to admit it, but he got the sneaking suspicion that they teachers thought that, perhaps, Eric was having problems and had crashed his car on purpose.

However, they were all genuinely relieved that he was all right. Adam imagined they had seen a lot of kids killed or seriously injured on the roads in their time working here.

"Well, send him best wishes," Adam’s teacher said. "I hope he gets back soon enough."

"Me too," Adam agreed. "It’s too quiet without him."

Adam wandered down to the school assembly hall, squeezing in near the back somewhere, where he and Eric could usually be found. They liked it back there, because no one would notice if you were taking the opportunity to talk. Adam never liked these assemblies. Although he accepted that fact that what had happened twelve years ago today was a tragedy, he didn’t think they would heal very well talking about it every year. They had a memorial; Adam personally thought that would do for private remembrance. The teachers who had witnessed the incident first hand were always upset for the rest of the day, as well, so not much really got done.

The room had only just settled down when Adam saw the door to the hall opening on his right. He glanced over to see Eric slipping in, and Adam did a double take. He had never seen Eric looking the way he did before. He looked so different that Adam barely recognised him. It looked like he was living up to his namesake.

He was wearing a dark baseball cap, just as dark as his hair, which was pulled on backwards. He had gone full-out, looking like he had stepped out of Columbine, and Adam couldn’t ever recall Eric even owning a trench coat. He was wearing combat boots and baggy trousers, and the pockets were filled with something that Adam couldn’t quite make out.

He glanced up, wondering why the room was deathly quiet. The teachers, standing up front on the stage, were also looking at Eric, who didn’t seem to look uncomfortable at all.

"What the fuck is he playing at, the sick bastard?" someone muttered from beside Adam, and Adam, confused, leaned forward to get a clue as to what might be going on. He guessed it was the fact that Eric had chosen today of all days to come in looking like Eric Harris, but he quickly saw what everyone was so outraged about.

In Eric’s left hand, he was holding what appeared to be a sawn off shotgun.

"What the –?" Adam began. It wasn’t like Eric to be so sick when it came to his pranks. However, Adam was cut off at that point, because his friend raised the gun into the air, and fired it.

Adam felt sick as he realised that the gun wasn’t a fake. Apart from the blind panic he felt, he felt total confusion. Why would Eric bring a gun into school?

Then, the reality of the situation kicked in, and Adam dived for the door.

He heard Eric open fire behind him, and he instinctively ducked down to avoid behind hit. He was nearly at the door when he heard some yell behind him, and he turned to see one of the guys who was in his class with him had been hit. Swallowing the bile rising in his throat, Adam grabbed him and, with the help of another senior who had seen what had just happened, dragged him out of the hall.

It looked as though he had only been hit in the leg, but it was certainly jeopardising his chances of escaping. Adam and the other guy continued to drag him down the corridor until they reached the student foyer, where they spotted one of their teachers, who was herding everyone out of the door.

"Everyone stay calm!" he was yelling. "Get out and turn left. Do not go right, there’s another exit there, he could come out that way. Turn left and run, just get as far away as you can. Come on, people, go!"

"Sir," Adam called, slightly out of breath from dragging his injured classmate over. "Get him out of here!"

"You need to get out of here too!" the teacher told him, as he got level with him. "Go on; get out of here, just run!"

"No, there are still people up there, we can’t just leave them!" Adam said loudly. The noise was making it impossible to talk in a normal voice.

"Don’t be a hero, boy," the teacher told him. "Get out of here."

He paused, and then sighed heavily.

"I can’t believe this is happening again," he muttered, as he took the injured young man off of Adam and the other boy. The foyer was mostly clear now.

"Come on," the other guy said, but Adam shook his head.

"People went upstairs," he said, and then he turned back to the foyer.

"Adam!" the teacher told him. "Go!"

At that precise moment, however, there was a gunshot, and something slammed into the wall close beside them.

"Fuck!" Adam yelled, and they all had to split in different directions.

Eric was aiming for the door, so Adam darted across the foyer and joined a group of about a dozen of them who ran up the stairs. He heard gunshots behind him and felt things hit the floor around his feet, but luckily he wasn’t hit. As he turned the corner to run up the other flight of stairs, he saw two of the group had been hit. He paused, but saw Eric was already climbing the stairs, and so, with his heart in his throat, he sprinted up the stairs, taking them three at a time, and ran down the corridor towards the study room and library.

When he entered the library, he saw he wasn’t the only one up here. There was a group of kids there, gathered around one of them who was pale and bleeding from the arm.

"Let me see," Adam said. They were mostly freshmen, so, as the oldest, he felt like they were all looking to him for help. Gently, he took the young girl’s arm. She flinched, sobbing, and Adam looked at her.

"It’s OK," he told her. "It’s just hit your arm; it’s just a flesh wound. What you all need to do is get under the tables, all right? Keep pressure on the wound, that’ll stop the bleeding. Get yourselves under the tables. I’m going to call 911."

As the group hid themselves under desks, under the ones in between the shelves of books where possible, Adam darted to the desk, picking up the phone. His hand left bloody fingerprints on the desktop and phone as he quickly dialled the emergency services.

"Hey," he gasped, when someone picked up. "Look, this is real bad. I’m at Jefferson High School, there’s a kid come in with a gun, and he’s shooting people. There are people hurt and I think there are some people dead."

The calm voice on the other side of the phone was like a breath of fresh air to Adam, whose ears were adjusted to the hysterical screams and gunshots.

"All right, we’re sending someone over now," the soft-spoken female told him. "Where are you?"

"I’m upstairs, in the library," Adam told her. "There are other kids here, younger ones, one girl has been shot in the arm, she’s bleeding but I don’t really know how badly. I told them to all hide themselves."

"Do you know where the gunman is?" the operator asked.

"He was coming up the stairs after us when I last saw him," Adam said, and then his voice caught in his throat. "I know the gunman."

"You know him?"

"Yes."

"Is he a student at the school?"

"Yes," Adam said, barely believing the words he was hearing coming out of his own mouth. "He's a senior, he’s called Eric Jensen."

Adam paused as he heard a sound from next door.

"Oh shit," he muttered, his voice catching with his fear. "He’s in the next room."

"Are you hidden?" the operator asked, and then there were several gunshots which Adam knew she had heard.

"No," Adam whispered.

"Can you stay on the line?"

"I need to get under a desk," Adam said, and then he put the phone on the desk, not hanging up, and ran around it. The gunshots stopped, and, as he ducked below the desk, he glanced at the doors joining the library to the study room. They had opened, and Eric was staring right at him. He waved, and Adam, feeling as though he was about to cry with the fear, ducked down behind the desk.

As he hid under the desk, Adam felt all of his research coming back to haunt him. He heard Eric’s footsteps coming closer; every so often he fired, twice occasionally. He realised this is what all those people must have felt like when Ben Murdoch was in here, doing the same. This is what they would have felt like when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into school that morning. Adam understood it all terribly now.

There was suddenly a heavy knocking on the desk above him.

"Come on," Eric said. "Show yourself. Who’s under there?"

"It’s me," Adam croaked.

"Get up," Eric commanded. Adam took a deep breath, knowing he would be shot anyway if he didn’t, and crawled out from under the desk, standing up to face his best friend. Eric looked totally different, as though he didn’t recognise Adam.

"It’s just me," Adam said softly. "What’s wrong with you?"

"What’s wrong with me?" Eric asked, giving a mad grin quite unlike him. "Nothing’s the matter with me."

"How could you do this?" Adam asked, feeling anger as well as fear at his friend. "Today of all days!"

"Is there any better day?" Eric asked, giving that crazy grin again. His eyes were glinting madly, and Adam couldn’t get over how different his friend looked. It wasn’t just the fact that he was dressed totally differently, but everything about him was different. The way he spoke, the way he walked, the way he held himself ... absolutely everything.

Behind Eric, Adam saw one of the kids sneaking out from under the desk. Adam wanted to scream at him to stay where he was, but he knew that would do no good. Unfortunately, just as he was about to make it to safety, Eric heard him and whipped around. Adam closed his eyes as he heard the gunshot, opening them as he heard his friend walking away from him. He tried to say something, to try and stop Eric, but no words would come out, no matter how hard he forced them.

Eric stopped and nudged the boy with his foot. He must have seen movement, because he aimed the gun and fired it down into the boy’s head. Adam felt tears spring to his eyes and he moaned in horror. Eric was someone he didn’t recognise, a total monster.

As Eric strode back towards him, Adam suddenly noticed he had been firing the gun all the while with his left hand. Eric was right-handed.

Eric stopped in front of Adam, looking at him quite calmly. Tears glistening in his eyes, Adam managed to croak out a question.

"Why are you doing this, Eric?" he asked, barely able to make his voice form the words. "Why?"

Something strange happened then. At the sound of his name, Eric froze.

"What?" he asked. "What do you mean, what am I -?"

He broke off, looking down at himself. He turned and looked around at the room behind him. He turned back to Adam.

"What the fuck?" he asked softly. "What’s going on?"

Adam would never forget the look of terror on his friend’s face. It would haunt him for a long time.