We Still Live Read online

  He glanced around his office. “About me?”

  “No.” She tilted her head, and her red curls tumbled to one side. “You seem cool. And you’re older, so you obviously have plenty of teaching experience—not to say you’re old. I’m sorry. See? I’m a mess.” She threw her hands in the air and almost dropped his paperwork.

  Isaac tried very hard not to laugh. “Cleo. Sit down, please.”

  She sat in the leather chair across from his desk.

  “Why are you nervous?”

  “You can’t feel it?”

  He shook his head.

  “The whole campus feels heavier. Quieter. Like it’s just waiting for something else to go wrong.” She glanced up at him, forehead creased in the middle. “I know you weren’t here last year when it happened, but students get here in four days. They haven’t been here since…” She tugged on her earlobe. “I just want this year to be okay.”

  “It will be.” It was what she needed to hear. As a man who’d spent the last decade lying, Isaac knew how to read other people. He sat up straight in his chair because his advice mixed with his overall bearing usually made people listen. “I’m serious, Cleo.”

  “I know.” She smiled. “Thanks, Dr. Twain.”

  He stood when she stood. “Hey, I meant to ask you a favor.”

  “Anything!”

  “You update the English Department website, right?”

  Her blue eyes went to the sky. “I know it’s super basic and boring, but that’s really all I have time to design.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He put his hands in his pockets and tried not to look as suspicious as he felt. “I was wondering if you could not add me to the website as a new faculty member? Could you leave my name off?”

  She squinted. “Are you in witness protection?”

  “I just don’t like having an online presence.”

  “Oh. Sure, no biggie.” She winked. “I understand the Man is watching.”

  “Right. Thanks, Cleo. I really appreciate it.” His shoulders ached. He dropped them when he realized they hovered up near his ears.

  Behind them, the hallway erupted in voices. Isaac followed Cleo to the door and saw a bunch of faculty—some from the English Department party and others Isaac had yet to meet. In the center was John with Tommy at his side, standing close like a secret service agent.

  Cleo shrieked. “John!”

  She rushed into his arms, almost knocking him over, and John laughed into her hair. They shared a few quiet words, but Isaac had more important things to do: namely, plan a semester. He backed into his office but not before his new boss—and new head of the English Department—Sonya Meeks appeared, all her long, brown hair pulled back in a severe bun that tugged on the sides of her eyes. She put her hand on John’s shoulder and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Let’s have a chat in my office.”

  Isaac closed his door and continued to ignore the phone in his desk that now vibrated with ominous frequency. It was too late to look back. If only he knew which way to move forward.

  HE SKIMMED THE reading list for his slathering of composition courses when someone knocked on the door. Prepping for a new semester at a new school was going to be more work than Isaac remembered. Then again, he hadn’t been the new guy in years.

  “Come in.”

  Isaac looked up, and John leaned against the doorframe. “You look like you swallowed a frog,” he said.

  Isaac rubbed his forehead. “I think I forgot how to teach.”

  John pursed his lips together. “I relate.”

  “Doubtful.”

  He walked into the room, practically bouncing on his toes, and glanced at Isaac’s as yet unhung stack of diplomas. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m a way better writer than professor.”

  “So why do you teach?”

  “Oh, you know, shaping young minds.” He rested his hands on Isaac’s desk. “Let’s get a drink—you, me, and Tommy. Joe’s Pub. It’s where all the cool teachers go.”

  Isaac considered his own tucked-in polo shirt, khaki pants, and boat shoes—throwbacks from living in Charleston. “I’m not cool.”

  “Come on.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “John, I—”

  Tommy shoved his head in the door. He wore glasses that day: thick, black rims that detracted from his frat-boy appearance but not enough to make him look “academic.” He grinned. “So are we doing shots?”

  When John smiled, his face looked even younger. Isaac bet he never needed to shave.

  “Guys, I really need to work.”

  “You need to drink,” Tommy said. “We’ll celebrate you joining this sinking ship.”

  Isaac looked up. “Is it sinking?”

  John plucked a book from the shelf, thumbed through it, and put it back.

  When they both just stood there silently, Isaac sighed. There was no avoiding it; these guys looked willing to linger the afternoon away in his office. “Fine. First round’s on me.”

  Tommy clapped.

  The late afternoon Ohio heat felt pleasant against Isaac’s throat and forearms, unlike the stifling humidity of the South. Tommy complained and wiped sweat from his brow, but John didn’t say anything. When they passed the altar on College Green, he paused.

  This was no altar built in June, back when the shooting had happened. It may have started then, pictures stacked, candles lit, but someone kept it in perfect order. Someone kept it free of scattered leaves, picked up candles that had fallen over, and replaced weatherworn photos of the dead with new ones.

  John lurched forward and grabbed a fuzzy picture from the pile. Isaac had just enough time to see the words “Hambden hero” before John tore the picture to shreds, black-and-white paper falling like leaves on the sidewalk. No one spoke. They just kept walking, John in front, although Tommy did throw Isaac a sympathetic shrug as if to say “What can you do?”

  Isaac felt like he’d missed the big twist in a horror movie, but since silence ruled, he didn’t dare break it. There was a jerky anger to the way John moved now, and Isaac was in no state to be on the receiving end of a tantrum.

  Lothos, Ohio, was a town of unchanging aesthetics. Tall, brick buildings covered Hambden’s campus, and sprawling, green trees stretched even higher. The downtown main drag—a long strip of bars and restaurants—was Union Street, and it mimicked the university. Red bricks paved the crooked road.

  They made their way past the door to Isaac’s small apartment and turned left onto a street Isaac had yet to traverse. A block up, Tommy held the door to a bar, and John spun and moonwalked inside.

  Isaac choked on what felt suspiciously like a giggle. “Did he just…?”

  “Yeah, he does that,” Tommy said. “Him and Cleo took dance lessons together a couple years back, and John realized his natural affinity for eighties breakdance.” He pushed Isaac inside the bar.

  Once through the door, a cloud of darkness and stale beer made Isaac’s skin feel sticky. Wooden booths lined the wall to the right with pool and dartboards in the back. There was no one inside but a bartender whose face lit when he saw who’d just walked in.

  “John!” he shouted—a hefty man with tattoos that crept and curled from the arms of his T-shirt.

  When John reached to shake his hand, the bartender pulled him into a hug and dragged him halfway across the bar. Isaac was beginning to notice people liked picking John up, maybe because he was skinny like a rag doll. Maybe because he looked like he needed protecting.

  “What’s your poison today, boys?” the bartender asked.

  John glanced at Isaac, already reaching for the wallet in the back of his pants. “Isaac?”

  “I told you I’d get the first round.”

  John lifted his hands. “Your pleasure’s my pleasure.”

  Isaac’s face warmed. Those strange words coming from John should not have made him blush. “Uh, Knob Creek. Guys?”

  “Nice choice, but it’s a little early
in the day for bourbon. IPAs for Tommy and me,” John said. “Whatever you have on tap.”

  When Isaac went to pay, the bartender turned him down and nodded toward his coworkers. “Everything’s free for our hero.”

  Isaac wanted to ask but didn’t for fear of shattering their bit of midafternoon revelry.

  They slid into a booth, Tommy and John sitting on one side and Isaac on the other. He was careful where he put his elbows since the tabletop doubled as a chalkboard, featuring pictures of penises, irate cuss words, and one phone number.

  “Let’s do the pissing contest,” Tommy said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  John smiled. “Where’d you go to school?”

  “Oh, uh.” Isaac rattled it off like the answer to a math equation: “Vanderbilt, Auburn, and Baylor for my doctorate.”

  “Where’s your Southern drawl?” Tommy took a gulp of beer that emptied half his glass.

  “They beat it out of us when I got my teaching degree.” He watched John laugh and looked away when he realized how much he liked watching John laugh. “What about you two?”

  John put his hand to his chest. “Wisconsin for the Halloween party and to be close to my needy parents.”

  “Mama’s boy.”

  John shrugged. “Then here for my master’s.”

  “And I went to the illustrious Ohio State University,” Tommy said.

  John made a gagging sound, while Tommy puffed out his chest.

  “Undergrad and master’s!”

  “God, you’re so twisted.” John finished his beer like he was trying to set a record.

  “Get over yourself, you rabid badger.”

  John’s lips curled up on one side. “Your mascot is a fucking seed.”

  Although Isaac had no idea what they talked about, the dynamic duo entertained through attitude alone.

  Tommy rolled his eyes and pointed at John’s beer. “Another round?”

  “Yeah, get out of here, you filthy Buckeye.” Once he was gone, John reached for a piece of chalk and drew the sun.

  “How long have you two known each other?”

  “Uhh…” John looked to be sifting through numbers in his head. “Five? Five years? That’s when Tommy started working here.”

  “And you’ve been here even longer.”

  “It’s my home.”

  “Not Wisconsin?”

  John looked away, fingers tap-tapping on the chalkboard table.

  Isaac knew pretty much nothing about John, so in a desperate attempt at small talk, he went for the obvious. “Tell me about your books.”

  John turned his head back toward Isaac, lips pressed together. A dark-brown curl hung between his eyes, but he didn’t move to brush it away. “I’m a raging homo, so growing up in small-town Wisconsin wasn’t the easiest.”

  John’s word choice almost made Isaac snort bourbon. “Um.”

  John winced but didn’t look guilty at all. “Oh, right, I’m a college professor, so I should be PC. I’m gay. Anyway, my family’s great, but there’s a lot of ‘Church Ladies’ up in Wisconsin. I write young adult stories that I hope help LGBTQ kids.”

  “I’m sure they do.” Isaac stopped talking when he realized he merely placated. It had been so long since he’d had an honest conversation with anyone, he barely remembered how.

  John leaned forward, one elbow in the middle of a note that read “Think.” With his nearness came the smell of something, maybe cologne—earthy, spicy. “Do you write?”

  “To be honest, not very well. I’d rather be reading than writing. I don’t have much to say lately. Or maybe too much to say.” Isaac now tapped nervously on the table. “I don’t know.”

  The clatter of beer mugs announced Tommy’s return. “Jesus, you two look like mournful gargoyles back here. Are we discussing the political climate or something?”

  John laughed into his beer. “God, no. Anything but that.”

  Chapter Three

  THE STEPS LEADING up to Isaac’s apartment smelled of stomach contents. After another long day of prep, Isaac unlocked the door. Inside were a single couch, a heavy coffee table, and a few unpacked boxes. Isaac’s bedroom had a twin bed and a closet with his clothes. There were no decorative items, and the only thing he’d bought so far for the kitchen had been a coffee machine. His empty apartment was a reminder of all he’d lost, so Isaac put on his running shoes and ran as soon as the sun went down.

  Since moving to Lothos, he’d followed that identical pattern: work all day, run all night, and pretend to sleep. Luckily, prepping for classes kept his mind busy—although his phone still vibrated, unanswered, in desk drawers and coat pockets. When he fled Charleston, Isaac could have changed his number, bought a new phone, but he hadn’t. Even if he never responded, he liked the familiarity of being called bad names—reminders of what he’d done to the people he once loved. Plus, it kept him abreast of Simon’s wrath and if he might possibly find Isaac someday.

  Into the warm night he went, a phantom hiding from light. He liked the ache of a good workout since it made him feel something, so he welcomed the steep hills of Southern Ohio and sprinted until muscles burned. It was coincidence that he ended up on College Green, but once there, it was hard to ignore the gold-glowing crowd.

  How had he missed this? Surely, there had been an email, a flyer, something about a candlelight vigil. Isaac crept closer but drew back when he recognized familiar faces. He hid behind a tree, fearing they might shun his ignorance—his otherness. He wasn’t one of them, and although he so far felt welcome, he would never be among those strangled by Hambden’s collective tragedy. Isaac hung back in the shadows, covered in sweat, like an unwelcome interloper.

  Twenty feet away, John stood near the front of the crowd, his arm around a crying Cleo. They were easy to spot, with Cleo’s flaming red hair, John’s pale skin and angular face. A group of close to fifty people stood beside Ellis Hall with their candles. A few students told stories with shaky voices. A tiny girl with long, black hair talked about her friend, Demi, “lost forever.” The mention of Demi made Cleo hold John tighter. Alone, Isaac watched and waited until people started to vacate the area. Then, he ran home.

  Dripping sweat onto the cheap linoleum, he chugged a bottle of water before sitting in front of his computer. Now desperately curious, he searched “Hambden University shooting.” There were plenty of articles, some news stories. Most, though, were opinion articles about mental health and gun control, spouting the usual liberal versus conservative arguments he’d grown tired of after years of school shootings and no change.

  Then, the headline, “Hero Teacher Tried to Talk Gunman Down.” He clicked on the link, and there was a picture of John, Tommy right behind him, as always, both ducking away from what looked like a frenzy of media outside the tall white columns of Ellis Hall.

  According to the article, the morning of June 6, creative writing student Chris Frank brought a .22 pistol to campus and started shooting. A couple quotes claimed he’d been “the all-American boy.” No one could have expected him to shoot Dr. Abby Blake in the head and then keep shooting, shooting. Four more names of the dead: Dan Palmer, Russ Queensbrook, Demi Snyder, and Andrea Wilson. Then, there was John—John who, apparently, stood up in the midst of the shooting and stared Chris Frank in the face. John who, based on a grainy photo probably taken on a cell phone, had stood there, hands raised, when Chris pressed a gun to his neck.

  “Jesus.” Isaac wondered at the steel resolve it must have taken to just stand there and wait to catch a bullet. No way could Isaac have done that, no matter how dark his recent days. Isaac didn’t want to die; did John? Were heroes people with death wishes? Did they want glory? Or did heroes possess some instinct to save other people that the majority of humanity lacked?

  Whatever the reason, John Conlon hadn’t died that day in June. No, instead of shooting John, Chris Frank had taken his own life. The horror had ended in little more than two minutes: two minutes that echoed and replayed across College
Green over and over for everyone who’d been there.

  The media had called John a hero: “the Hambden hero.” In an interview, though, he’d crushed all their hopes of making him America’s darling. He’d said, “If I was really a hero, six people wouldn’t be fucking dead.” How disappointing for the journalists. Looking at John—the grown man with an angel face—they’d probably thought they’d struck gold. They finally had a handsome hero. They could plaster his face everywhere, take the focus off the gun control debate, have a real story, and even better: John was gay! Minorities rejoice! Instead, he’d ducked their inquiries and sneered at the word “hero.”

  John didn’t look like a hero. He looked like a college kid trying on adult clothes. He was too skinny and his hair too messy. His presence exuded an enigmatic mix of liveliness and quiet melancholy. Isaac couldn’t picture John’s delicate hands grabbing for a gun. He couldn’t picture John’s frail form tackling anybody. In fact, John Conlon seemed the more likely sort to end up shot. But he’d lived. He’d stood up to a shooter, talked to him, and the shooter had gone down.

  Isaac hesitated before clicking the video. He hated feeding into the horror, but…

  Warning: Graphic Content.

  He could tell, by the angle, this was from where all the still images of John and Chris had been pulled. This was the shaky cell phone video taken by some terrified coed. He heard the harried breath, the quiet whimpers. In front of the camera, Chris walked around, shouting, gun in his hand. Nothing about him said murderer.

  Then, John.

  John went from holding the bleeding, broken body of a young woman to standing, his hands red. He held those blood-soaked hands out to Chris Frank and spoke, quietly. Impossible to miss Tommy in the background, holding Cleo, watching as his best friend was about to be destroyed. Gun now pressed to the center of John’s neck, he kept talking until, suddenly, Chris put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. Everyone screamed, but John just stood there, staring at the corpse at his feet.