Karen Reynolds
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 6
The next morning, I woke early and spent time reading schoolbooks and trying hard to exercise, even a little. Around ten, Elizabeth Begay called. “Morning, Karen.”
I was nonplussed, not sure at all what I should say in return. “Morning, Officer Begay.”
She laughed. “Elizabeth, Karen, call me Elizabeth. Forget and call me that at school, and I’ve blown the case.”
Forget and call her that at school, and she could end up dead. I bit my lip and decided that there were a lot of things a 14-year-old girl needed to learn to get by. “Morning, Beth.” I said, contrite.
There was a chuckle. “I’ve hated being called Beth since I was a little girl. Considering one thing and another, you can call me that any time.” She paused. “I was wondering, Karen, if you still intend to go to school Monday.”
“Yes, I am, Beth.” I said it firmly, as if I wasn’t really scared out of my mind.
“I’m not in your homeroom; we couldn’t arrange that. The rest of the time, I’ll be close. Sergeant Katzenbach will pick you up Monday morning and bring you to school. She has a little gizmo for you; a panic button. Push it, and the cavalry will be on the way.”
“Okay.” I was, if anything, more nervous than before.
“Relax, Karen. This is a piece of cake.”
Monday, my parents were both standing with me when Sergeant Katzenbach arrived to pick me up. I’d told them already, both of them, together and separately, that I was going to do this. Privately, my father had told me that I was really hurting my mother. Privately, I’d told him back that this was something I was going to do, and I hoped Mom could understand. Monday morning, at least, Mom had put on her nicest face and looked more like her old self.
On the way to school, though, the detective had been brutally frank. “We have intelligence assets, besides an undercover officer in your school. They report that the gang hasn’t made up their mind yet whether or not they want to kill you or just put you back in the hospital for, as they quaintly put it, ‘longer this time.’”
She gave me the panic button and explained its use. “If you use it, we will try to make it look like we just arrived by coincidence. There might be someone stupid enough to believe that once. The second time, they will know. While there is nothing wrong with putting the fear of God into them, what will actually happen if there are too many false alarms is that the team will get stale; not rush to your aid. Use it too many times, and you will be in the same situation as Peter, having called wolf too many times.”
“And of course, the bad guys may decide to use preemptory means; shoot you from some distance away. You’d never even know you were dead.”
The first day was rather anticlimactic. My teachers were polite, even solicitous. None of the kids approached me, which was more or less normal. In PE, which I had looked forward to the least, there were only hostile faces. A new woman’s PE Coach was there, an older woman, grey-haired and competent-appearing. She took my note, shrugged, and I spent the period following her around, taking notes.
Several times I saw Elizabeth, but I ignored her. Which turned out not to be difficult; she was always the center of half a dozen people, usually more. A lot of boys, but even some of the girls; she seemed quite popular.
Tuesday and Wednesday were carbon copies of Monday; things seemed to be settling down. I was feeling better too, and was making some headway on some of the assignments I’d missed.
Thursday morning I was close to having forgotten about everything. My father was driving me to school, and he’d been a little late this morning, but I still had several minutes before the first bell when I was at my locker. I never saw a thing; one second I was putting books away for later, then someone slammed into my back, ramming me hard against the metal.
A harsh voice said into my ear, “This time tomorrow, bitch, you’re gonna’ be dead!” There was another blow to the back of my head, and for a second I was dizzy. When I looked around, I couldn’t see anyone who might have done it; the kids nearby were looking fixatedly at their lockers, seeming not at all interested in me.
A girl at the locker nearest me closed the door on hers and I caught her eye. And lost lock a millisecond later, as she looked away. I walked down the hallway to the principal’s office and picked up one of the phones and called Sergeant Katzenbach. She listened for a moment, and sighed. “Do you want a ride home?”
“Sergeant, no I don’t. I just wanted you to know what happened.”
“Karen, they are serious. We’re sure of it.”
“I understand,” I told her, but I didn’t, really. “But if I run now, when would I stop? Why would I stop?”
She snorted. “Karen, when you are being chased by a herd of stampeding elephants, you are allowed to be afraid and allowed to get out of the way. You won’t prove anything by getting trampled.”
I was wary and cautious all day; nothing happened. I saw Elizabeth across the room in several of my classes, quieter than usual, her eyes frequently looking in my direction; not at all unusual, because everyone was looking at me. Nothing happened in school, and they had additional guards on the house, and nothing happened that night either.
The next morning, I made sure I went to the lockers about the same time. I stood back a bit and looked around. Several of the kids around me appeared nervous, hurrying. “Lousy weather forecast, too.” I said loudly. Elizabeth was across the hall, talking to two other girls. All three of them looked at me as if I was crazy, as was everyone else within earshot.
Just before lunch, I had to go to the bathroom, and I left the classroom, walking down the hall. I did what I had to do, and Elizabeth was there when I came out of the stall. “You like to push the envelope, don’t you?” Her voice was quiet but furiously angry.
I shook my head, unsure what she meant. Then I knew, and I blushed. Here I was, alone except for her. And if not for her, alone. Elizabeth shook her head. “If something happens and you have an urge to look at what’s happening, think! Look around instead! Don’t look at what you think is going on! Be careful, Karen! For once, listen!”
When I returned to class, Elizabeth returned a few seconds later. She leaned close to another girl in the class and whispered something, and the other girl looked at me and giggled. For a second, I felt considerable bitterness; Katie had been wrong about Elizabeth; she was just like all the rest of them.
At lunch, I was bitter and angry, sitting alone as usual. I picked up the sandwich; cheese again; this time lacking even the ‘mom made it’ virtue. The last time I’d grown up; this time I felt like crawling back into my shell. Was any of this worth it?
A few feet away was the window where you took your trays back to be washed. Someone inside must have dropped a million of them; it sounded like thunder, but was obviously dropped trays. What had I just been told? If you have an urge to look in some direction, look elsewhere! Instead of turning my head towards the window, I looked around. Perhaps twenty feet away, I saw a Hispanic boy, grinning from ear to ear, pulling a pistol from under his sweatshirt.
He saw my eyes on him, and his grin grew broader as he started to line it up; I spun and dove, scooting under the table that had been behind me. The first shot stilled the other sounds of the cafeteria; the hallway rendered the room quiet as a tomb for a few seconds, before everyone panicked and began screaming and running in all directions. I was scrabbling under the tables, found a door, and lunged outside.
I leaned against one of the concrete pillars, looking behind me. I saw the boy, a look of rage on his face, staring at me. Pointing the pistol at me and pulling the trigger. I froze; but nothing was coming out of the gun. Two very large young men tackled him; football players, I thought. Had to be football players.
The screams continued, and hundreds of people were streaming from the cafeteria. Elizabeth ended up a few feet away, staring at me. What?
I looked down and saw a splotch of red on the front of my blouse. Would I have noticed if I’d been shot? I hadn’t noticed being stabbed! But the blood spot was very close to the dressing. And I hadn’t been very careful when I’d been crawling under the tables and I’d been in a hurry.
I glanced back at the cafeteria. No one seemed to be hurt; I pulled my arm up in front of me as if I was carrying books and walked towards the school office, turning my back on Elizabeth. Everyone else was going in the opposite direction; the school nurse was standing in the doorway to her office, looking concerned.
“I’ve pulled my stitches,” I told her, sounding as if I was talking about a crochet mistake. I moved my arm, and she saw the blood.
Elizabeth showed up a second later. “I think I’m feeling sick.”
“You’ll have to wait,” the nurse told Elizabeth, and a second later I was in the nurse’s office, blouse unbuttoned. She took one look and called for an ambulance. In my own, inexpert opinion, it wasn’t that big of a deal; it hurt a little, but not as much as I’d have thought, looking at all of the blood.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with frantic people looking over me. I think only I, the doctor, and perhaps Elizabeth weren’t panicked. Doctor Richards met me at the hospital, checked it out, clucked, and told me not to look. I watched anyway; she rubbed the area of the stitches with a cotton swab, and a few seconds later, gave me an injection a fraction of an inch to one side, then another to the other side. I could barely feel either. A few snips, then I watched as she sewed my skin back together.
I looked at her when she finished, and she stared back at me. “Well, you can’t do that again. Once more, and I won’t be able to put it back without major, major scarring. That close to your breast ... you’ll want to be a lot more careful.”
Elizabeth had been standing a few feet away. “A Paco emptied a 9mm pistol trying to hit her at a range of 15 feet. It’s a tribute to his ineptitude that not only didn’t he hit Karen, he missed everyone else.” She looked at the doctor. “Bullets scar much worse than torn stitches.”
The doctor left the room, and I looked at Elizabeth coldly. “Sorry,” she said after a second. “I should have been closer.”
“What,” I asked, “did you tell the other girls after we came back from the bathroom?”
She blinked; that hadn’t been on the list of expected questions. “I told them you’d been puking your guts out in the bathroom; you were so afraid.” She sighed, her head was down. “It was meant to make you look small, and me look big.” She laughed bitterly. “I play the role of a high school bitch queen entirely too well.”
My parents arrived; the sergeant arrived. Everyone was arriving. I pulled myself into my shell and spent the time half-drowsing on the bed I’d been given.
“The school has asked,” my father told me on the way home, “that you not come back. It’s not so much a suspension as a request for homeschooling.” I stared at him, and he stared back, then shrugged.
“I’d like Officer Begay to stay with you for a few more days,” the detective sergeant added.
I shook my head. “Her kind of protection, I don’t need.”
There was a stiff silence, then the sergeant said, “Someone has to stay with you. I’ll stay myself until I can get someone else.”
“We want to take Karen to Hawaii,” my father said. “It was our original thought; it’s looking better now.”
I remembered the fear I’d felt under the tables; I’d not seen any of the bullets, but I could hear them, feel the effects they’d had on the others and me. “I will not run.” My voice was low and angry. “I will not run! You plan on whatever you want; I’m going back to school Monday. I am going to sleep in my own bed.” I looked at the sergeant. “If the school doesn’t like it, tell them I’ll sue. It’s a state law; I have to go.”
My mother waved a finger angrily in front of the sergeant. “And we want our daughter safe!”
“I can take care of myself,” I said angrily. “I’ve done much better than anyone else by myself.”
Monday morning the principal was having hysterics, but the sergeant and my father were there threatening police action or lawsuits. I walked up to my locker and opened it. No one was within ten feet.
By the third period, I was beside myself with rage. No one sat close, no one, in fact, sat on the same side of the room as I. Half the students were gone; those that remained stayed away. I saw Elizabeth across the room. Her expression was sad, but resigned. I turned my face away from her.
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