Seventy Nine by Harry Arthur Alston (books for students to read txt) 📕

Perhaps it was my own reluctance to accept what happened that day twenty years ago that lead to my delayed and hesitant response. I remember glancing over the following mornings paper and refusing to believe it ever happened, but part of me knows it did. I doubt I will ever understand it, and yet it brought to light something that I will never, ever forget: the naivety of youth always prevails and happy men die crying.

The sun rose on that warm Tuesday morning like it would any other day; colours of late summer spiralled down into my cereal bowl as early morning rays speckled through the window. My mum sang to songs on the radio, terribly. My mother had always been an embarrassment like that. I left the house with odd socks and a school bag full of responsibility, neither of which I was particularly keen on.

New shoes squeaked in open protest as I stepped on to the school bus. The fat bus driver, perhaps named Bob or Ernie – although the exact name eludes me – threw me a quick, gruff smile. My 14 year old brain sang: ‘Paedophile, Paedophile!’ and I hurried to my seat. In retrospect it is more than likely that Fat Ernie was just a nice guy. The world needs more nice guys.

Most days I sat alone on the bus, but it was never lonely, not really. Around me children screamed in the way that the frivolous youth tends to do to distract themselves from an inevitably bad ending. In front of me sat a boy called Jack and it wasn’t until the headlines in the following week that I ever knew his full name. Long dark greasy hair covered most of his bruised face but every morning he would smile at me as I walked down the aisle. Whether it was my own childish ignorance or my desire to retain the meagre position I had in the social hierarchy, I never returned the smile. Ever.

Leaving the bus, Jack skulked away, his hunched figure sinister in the throng of milling teenagers. Mathematics was first, with Mr Potts, who was a keen advocate of unsolvable equations first thing on a Tuesday morning. I spent my time in his lessons staring out of the window across the surrounding fields, awash with vivid colours at that time of year, and devising the most creative and elaborate plots of murdering Mr Potts that my teenage mind could muster.

It was the first bang that brought the class out of its slumber. Lazy heads rose from the desk in mild surprise; a door slammed in anger, a car backfiring or a brave senior student setting off a fire cracker in the canteen, the bang could’ve been any of these. Even as Mr Potts left us with the first flickers of panic across his face, an emotion of which I was ignorant of at the time, we all assumed the sound was innocent. With the teacher gone from the room the class soon descended into the all too similar chaos of children left unsupervised.

The second and third bang followed soon after. These sounds had depth. They were sinister. Joy was soon replaced by the sudden rising crescendo of tears as the faint hearted in the class began to whimper in open fear. Although we knew to be scared, what was most frightening was that none of us understood what it was we were afraid of. It is that uncertainty, that sudden feeling of rising urgency within your stomach that can only be described as pure terror.

Four bangs, five, six and seven bangs; then came the screaming and startled cries. The brave few left amongst us piled tables and chairs in front of the door with the valiant and futile courage that some souls manage to retain in times of austerity. Others huddled in corners, eyes tightly shut and their fingers in their ears. It was when the gunshots reached the neighbouring room and the screams became unbearable that the girl approached me; before this she had simply been an unnamed character in my daily narrative, but she took my hand so aggressively and with such desperation that it caused a swell of emotion that I could not understand.

‘Never let go’.

‘I promise’.

And in that moment, that moment which seemed to last a life time, I saw everything in her eyes that I wanted to see. I saw a frightened young woman who, in her last moments, wanted to feel secure, safe and even loved. She didn’t plead, she didn’t beg. She just dug her nails into the palm of my hand and started to cry.

The next minutes seemed like an eternity. The sudden rush of emotions that my prepubescent mind could not understand blocked out the world, even such a horrifying world. Some say that in your last moments you experience your life flashing before your eyes, but for me…it was quiet. All was quiet. As the desks that barred the door flew back I watched as the bravest, now brandishing chairs, fell gracefully to the floor as the greasy haired shooter entered the room. Bang. Bang. Bang. Click. Click. Click. As a bloody hand reached into the schoolbag to retrieve another ammo cartridge Jack caught my eyes.

There was a regret there that I had never seen before. He had travelled too far down this road now and it was too late to take the next exit. His eyes glistened with a physical sorrow and tears stained his blood freckled t-shirt. In that briefest of moments, the shortest of moments, I knew I only had to do one thing…

I smiled at Jack. Not a grin, nor a smirk, but a polite smile you might offer to an acquaintance you pass in the street. The girls hand gripped tighter than ever and that gave me a courage that to this day, I cannot explain. The class watched on in horror as I smiled in the face of death, but the handgun quivered. Jack’s whole body shook. As he stared into my eyes all of his ambitions and dreams and his entire life story seemed to crush me and I too shook from the emotion. Resting upon his lower jaw, now raised at the corners, Jack curled his finger around the trigger of the gun and as his eyes screamed ‘Thank you’ he blew his brains across the whiteboard.

Seventy-nine children died crying that day. One died smiling.

Publication Date: 09-15-2012

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