Shatter Read online

  Mr. White taps Jeremy’s shoulder, nodding at the iPad in his hands. “Put that away.”

  “… reports are being circulated about a major announcement from the growers, scheduled to take place soon,” a newscaster announces from the speaker in Jeremy’s hand.

  “I’m not putting anything away,” Jeremy answers.

  “Yeah, there’s supposed to be a bomb at the capitol,” McCoy says. He and Katelyn are also watching the news clip.

  “Look, it’s Benicio,” Katelyn says in excitement, pointing past McCoy’s shoulder to the screen. “And there’s Senator Lethco!”

  AddyDay, Cordero, and I look at each other and lean to steal a glance at the iPad.

  Benicio is shown hugging a white column inside the rotunda of the courthouse. A rope tied around his waist connects him to the blond senator. Behind them, dozens of people, among them many Students for Strike club members, have tied themselves to each other and the pillars. Tito and a few other gang members are even there.

  “I call on the justice system to protect the worker!” Senator Lethco announces via the iPad. “Just like California’s legislators do!”

  “Sit-in strike!” supporters chant.

  “This is Benicio’s secret plan?” I ask.

  Kimi turns to me, all animosity from the mock trial gone. She’s just Carrie’s best friend now and proud of the club they built together. “President Benicio’s been planning it for a week. Contacted us in memory of Carrie. Her picture’s down there on one of the pillars.”

  Benicio’s secret plan had nothing to do with murder or bombs.

  Cordero and AddyDay glance at me.

  “Only the growers are left,” I whisper.

  On the iPad, the announcer’s voice plays over the union’s chants. “Meanwhile, police might be narrowing in on a suspect in the Juan Herrera murder case.”

  The pillars disappear. Dad is shown coming up the outside steps of the very courthouse I’m in. Reporters shove microphones at his face. Elena flanks him, face worried and emotional—just the way a proper girlfriend should be.

  The reporter continues. “In what may prove to be related news, the house explosion that recently killed suspect Brian Jefferson’s daughter Carrie has been found to be caused by sabotage. Carrie had worked closely with the union as a supporter.”

  Blood drains from my face. It seems every individual in the room reacts, gasping, crying out. Even Jeremy leans to hear better, frowning.

  I knew Carrie was murdered. It still hurts. It’s still crushing. But … but now everyone knows. Like a burden I could never shoulder alone is now being shared.

  Cordero steps to protect me from the eyes of our mock trial partners, glancing at me in concern.

  “Oh, Salem,” AddyDay says.

  My phone’s screen turns off. Wanting to call Dad, I touch it back on. The screen lights with the email timeline leading to Carrie’s death. Before I can do anything, someone calls Cordero’s name.

  We look over.

  “Cordero.” Rick Thornton urgently motions for him to come to the aisle. He pulls on his laptop case over his head so the strap crosses his chest. “Mr. White wants me to read through your witness questions with you.”

  I give Cordero a panicked look. His return gaze is intense. The mock trial’s importance fades in comparison to what the news is broadcasting. He nods at me, as if willing me to stay calm.

  “Cordero,” Rick urges.

  “I’ll be right back,” he tells me. He lets Rick steer him between bystanders and out the side exit near the prosecution table. I feel so vulnerable without him.

  As soon as they leave, men hoping to talk to the mayor fill their spot.

  “Today’s the big day, huh?” one says to Bill.

  I stare at the men. Conspirators crafting a bomb plot don’t joke about their plans and gather in one body close to the scene of the crime.

  Slate comes to me, a hand at my elbow. One look at his face, and I know he read my note. “You found something out about Carrie? I—I’ll help.”

  “Break is over!” the judge announces.

  I can’t answer Slate. I’m overwhelmed. Benicio’s secret plans were innocent. The growers probably aren’t orchestrating today’s threatened explosion. I could be wrong about everything. And if I am wrong about who’s involved …

  Slate frowns, waiting for my answer. The judge raises the gavel with a flick of his wrist. It reaches its zenith and descends in a freefall.

  … if I’m not surrounded by the fanatics willing to blow people up, how do I know I’m far enough from the bomb to be safe?

  The gavel hits just as a deep rumble sounds. It’s low but immense, swallowing the noise of the gavel.

  The floor jumps. It just rises for no reason. One inch, two. A deafening roar sounds from above us. It gives way to a yawning rush of air.

  The room’s collective gasp becomes a squall of terror.

  “The exits!”

  “Run!”

  Slate and I shoot for the back exit, my hands on AddyDay’s shoulders in front of me. We’re blocked by McCoy, blocked by growers. Marissa crawls over the table, shrieking.

  “Go, go!” I shout. The lights flicker.

  The bomb was never meant for the capitol building. It’s here. It’s inside the courthouse.

  Water sprays from overhead sprinklers. My view of the judge’s desk refracts, swimming into a set of wavy images. I’m hit suddenly with the whispered memory of happiness. The day I’m reminded of—it was so long ago.

  It was before Carrie died.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THREE MONTHS PRIOR

  Aspray of sprinklers arced into a rainbow against the sunlight. I was on my way home from the May track meet. I had just got my period and was embarrassed. Dad was on the lawn, getting doused by sprinklers. Trying to avoid them, he tripped and his ice cream cone smashed into his face.

  “Guess that’s what I get for walking on the grass.” He wiped soft serve from his mouth. “Ugh. It’s like getting kissed by a snowman.”

  His phone rang. He wiped his hand on the outside of his pants and looked at the screen.

  “It’s Carrie,” he said.

  I found myself smiling, just a little. I got out my phone.

  “Carrie always says I should kiss someone,” I said. “Maybe a snowman would do. Say cheese.”

  The thought of Carrie pushing me to kiss a boy made me happy. Carrie wanted me to go after life, not wish it would leave me alone. She thought I was ready for all kinds of experiences.

  Just like that, the spring breeze felt warmer and fresher.

  Dad’s phone rang just as I raised my own phone. “Say cheese.”

  Despite his protests, I took a picture of Dad as he started talking to Carrie. Laughing, I texted it to her and then emailed it to her and sent it over Snapchat, just to be annoying.

  “Three, nine, five, four,” Dad said into the phone, rattling off the code for the barn padlock. “Carrie, are you still there? Carrie?” He paused to listen. “No, I went home early from the peach meeting, but then Salem needed me to pick her up from practice. Put the shovel back in the barn when you’re done.”

  PRESENT DAY

  The memory of Dad’s words sends me crashing back into real time: I went home early from the peach meeting.

  Overhead sprinklers pour onto the courtroom, which smells of smoke. All around me, people shield their eyes from the spray as they scream and scramble toward the back exit. The happiness of my memory is gone. Carrie is gone. Carrie, who couldn’t talk to me on the phone because she was busy discussing union issues. Carrie, who was getting a shovel from the barn, almost certainly to bury a body.

  The night I got my period, the night of the peach meeting—

  But that’s impossible.

  Slate and AddyDay surge toward the exit. I stumble ahead with them, fumbling with my phone, blocking it from the sprinklers. I got my period on May 23. The peach meeting was May 24. Those two events can’t have happened on the
same day. My email app is already open. I search for the picture I sent Carrie—the one of Dad with the ice cream spilled on his dress shirt.

  7:54 p.m., May 24.

  I cover my mouth.

  The recording of Carrie opening a birthday present from Slate must have been time-stamped incorrectly. It wasn’t May 22, it was May 23. Which means the next day when Dad picked me up from the track meet wasn’t May 23 but May 24.

  “I’m Dad’s alibi,” I say.

  “What?” AddyDay shouts over the alarms and spraying water.

  Smoke burns my eyes and pricks my nostrils with fear. All my dates are off. Carrie didn’t discuss union issues with Rick Thornton the day before Juan died, but the day Juan died. It means Rick was the other person who left the peach meeting early—the only other person besides Dad who wasn’t counted in the second tally. Carrie had discovered Dad that had set up a meeting with the man taking his bribes and knew when it would be—the night Dad was hurrying home for an appointment after picking me up from track practice. Carrie must have called Rick to have someone with her when she found out who the bribe-taker was.

  Katelyn cuts between me and a prosecution desk chair, knocking me into AddyDay. She ends up on the floor. My phone tumbles to the carpet, brushing her fingers. She grabs it.

  “AddyDay.” I pull her by the arm, trembling.

  Rick, with his temper, already angry from the argument at the peach meeting. Rick, who led Juan Herrera to “salvation” through the union, only to see him betray the union. Rick, who heard Dad ask if Cordero was the one in his house on the night the mirror fell.

  Rick, who sent El Payaso and Tito after Cordero and now—supposedly to practice mock trial questions—has Cordero. Alone.

  AddyDay tugs the sash of her silk belt, resisting my efforts to right her.

  “I’m stuck!” Her sash is pinned between the chair and the table. She kicks the chair trying to free herself.

  “Salem?” Slate yells with a hand on my back.

  “You’ll help AddyDay?” I yell.

  He nods and I change directions, racing toward the side exit Cordero and Rick took. I ricochet from one obstruction to the next.

  Rick has Cordero.

  Bursting through the courtroom’s side exit, I find myself in a hallway with no overhead sprinklers and crammed with dozens of escaping students going right. No one goes left. Which way? Which way did Rick take him?

  “Move!” Jeremy slams into me. My ankle gives. The double straps of my shoes cut into my skin.

  A furious shout ricochets from around the corner of the hallway to the left.

  “… wasn’t trying to kill anyone. The bomb—it went off early!”

  I recognize the speaker.

  Rick Thornton.

  I disrupt the flow, taking an elbow in the ribs. A shout warns that there’s no exit the way I’m going. I ignore it, driving my legs forward against the vice of my pencil skirt. My ears strain for any hint of Cordero’s voice. Separating from the crowd, I follow a sharp left in the hallway into a wave of heat.

  I see Rick, with his back to me forty feet away. His laptop case bobs awkwardly at his side. He’s shadowed by a slight haze of smoke. Cordero is on the ground in front of him, kneeling. Rick waves something around—a six-inch knife with a spear point.

  “But no!” Rick is screaming. The ceiling above him sags, black and fissured with a treacherous glow. He doesn’t seem to notice. “Some girl was trying to get ahold of Benicio saying she had information about Juan—it was Carrie. She forced me to kill her for nothing. We were better off without Juan.”

  Juan. Carrie.

  I race forward.

  Rick drives the knife forward with a grunt. I expect the blade to dig into Cordero’s scalp, but instead Rick carves into an object he’s holding in his other hand. Cordero covers his head and leans away from me, as if cringing. I realize the object in Rick’s hand is the plaque inscribed with World’s Best Union Club Advisor that he’s been keeping in his laptop case. He marks something on it, finishing with a diagonal up and then down motion that I recognize even though I can’t see the face of the plaque. It’s an upside down V. He’s probably carved the XII too.

  Rick tucks the plaque under his arm when he finishes. “My signature, since Carrie forced it on me. For when a job needs doing.”

  He aims his knife at Cordero and lunges forward.

  Cordero shifts his weight as if to avoid Rick, but then springs backward, slamming into the man’s knees. Rick cries in pain. He falls on his side. Cordero snatches the knife from him so quickly there’s no struggle. He gets on his feet and turns toward me to lean over Rick.

  Cordero points the knife at Rick’s chest. “You will never give another order to the gang.”

  Rick holds absolutely still on his back, palms open at his side. “Please.”

  “No!” I yell, still ten feet out. The sound of my voice is drowned out by a crack from above us and the screaming of mock trial spectators down the hall.

  Cordero registers nothing at my shout. He doesn’t see me. Hand clutching the grip of the knife two feet above Rick’s face, Cordero’s eyes flash the way they do when he’s about to act.

  The knife shakes.

  Cordero’s expression steels. This is justice for Carrie’s death—a chance to make himself. A real killer. What other choice does he have? It’s the path he’s been on since he joined the gang.

  Only he does have a choice.

  Cordero takes a step back, sweat at his temples, the knife still aimed.

  I’ve come to a stop behind Rick. Maybe I say something, maybe I’m just gasping for air. Whatever it is, Cordero’s gaze darts to me. Astonishment touches his features. The lights flicker.

  Rick scrambles to his knees, turning toward me. He knows someone is behind him, even if he can’t see me. From under his shirt he produces a second knife—a switchblade. He hits the release and it springs open.

  Cordero’s emotion shifts to terror.

  “Move!” Cordero yells at me, dashing forward to protect me from Rick.

  The hall goes black as the electricity goes out just as Rick spins, lunging at me.

  “Cordero!” I can’t see Cordero with the lights out. I can only hear Rick’s scream of rage, like a wounded bull. I jump back. His shoulder rams into my gut. I fall to the carpet, the wind knocked out of me. I gasp for air. My cheek burns with pain, sliced by the switchblade.

  “The union needs people like me!” Rick shouts into the darkness. I see the gleam of the switchblade as he pats the ground like he’s searching for something. His voice is so full of shock, I wonder if he knows he cut me—if his brain has processed who I am at all. I can’t think what he would be searching for.

  I gulp air laced with smoke. The cut on my cheek feels blissfully shallow against my fingertips.

  The ceiling groans. Rick finds what he’s looking for. He grabs it. His footsteps drum away in the direction from which I came, leaving Cordero and I to fend for ourselves in the burning building.

  “Where are you?” Cordero’s fingers catch my hair.

  Still recovering from Rick’s hit, I can only grunt in answer. A wave of smoke drifts over us. I cough. I can’t see. I can only touch Cordero’s hands as he slides them to my shoulders, each of us going by feel. The cool metal of the long knife skims my skin. He drops it to help me up. It hits the carpet with a soft thud. Cordero didn’t kill Rick. He decided.

  He’s shaking as much as I am, tugging me toward a thin blush of light in the distance. I resist him.

  “No exit!” I choke on my words, coming to my feet too slow, too heavy.

  A crack sounds, a terrible noise—louder and louder. I look up to dots and dashes of glowing red on the ceiling ten feet ahead, down the hall that is our escape. They’re low. They’re much lower than the ceiling should be. And the ripping, the cracking. It’s immense. Cordero switches the direction of his urging.

  A wave of heat slams us to the carpet as a mammoth structure crashes through t
he ceiling.

  Red flame and chunks of construction material fall with a desk into the hallway, landing sideways on the carpet with a thunderclap of noise. It takes the air next to me and collapses forward into the wall ahead of it.

  Shielding my face from heat, I scramble up. I can barely feel Cordero’s hand. Flames pop and crackle behind us as we run, flying, away from the destruction. I’m driven mad by pockets of decent air that disappear when I try to swallow them.

  A curve in the hall ends at a nook. There’s a swirl-patterned rug and two straight-backed chairs on either side of a floor-to-ceiling window with no opening mechanism. Cordero hefts a chair and slams it into the glass. The glass is doubled-paned and thick with the importance of courthouse security, despite being on the second floor. Once, twice, he hits it. Filtered sunshine from outside mocks us.

  The smoke, the heat. We’ll burn. Like Carrie did. Just like Carrie. Even her picture is burning right now, roped to a pillar downstairs.

  The window breaks on his third try.

  My shoulder presses his as we cough, leaning into bits of cool, clear updraft. Oxygen hits my brain like a drug. I breathe and breathe, not getting enough, not able to believe the relief of it, the clarity that comes from it. Billows of smoke fight us for position, hissing outside around chinks of broken glass.

  “We jump!” Cordero stands and grabs the chair again, knocking glass free with violent shattering. Gray smoke is everywhere. I catch a glimpse of a willow tree outside. Thin limbs dangle to the ground far below.

  “Here!” I snatch the rug from off the ground and give it to him.

  He holds the fabric over jagged glass at the base of the window. I swing my feet outside as he guides me past sharp edges.

  “Go!”

  At his command, I jump. I grab for a limb and miss.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Ihit the grass with my knees, hands, and forehead in a staccato shock of pain. My skirt rips to mid-thigh. Cordero lands beside me, grunting and pulling me to a stand. We sprint away from heat and smoke, running underneath the willow trees, ever shaded by foliage that brushes the grass. The heel of my strapped shoe embeds in the earth. I trip and don’t get up. Dirt and white fertilizer pellets dot my palms and injured cheek. Dropping to the ground, he crawls to me, gasping in exhaustion.