Katie awoke that morning with a stiff back. Sleep the previous night had not come easily. She had slept on the floor of the Hanson's living room. Even there, safely hiding in another house full of people, Katie couldn't hlep but feel jumpy. Katie, Judy, and the rest of her siblings spent the night at the Hanson's. Judy, Kristen, and Ben all slept in the guestroom, while everyone else slept in the living room in sleeping bags.
She lay in her sleeping bag for a few minutes after she awoke, just listening to someone preparing breakfast in the next room. She was the last one asleep; she could also hear her sisters in the kitchen, talking to Judy.
"Wakey wakey...." She suddenly saw Zac's face, upside down, standing over her.
Katie moaned and held out her hands. Zac pulled her into a sitting position, then kneeled beside her.
"Sleep good?" He asked.
"Not at all." She grumbled. "The floor is hard."
"Sorry." He said. The two moved up onto the couch. "You coulda slept with me, but I don't think Judy and my parents would have allowed that."
Katie laughed. "Yeah, I don't think they would either." She said. "That would be weird."
"Nuh uh." He said. "That one night we slept your bed."
"Oh yeah, the snow storm. I had forgotten about that." She said.
"So technically you have slept with me." Zac said. Both of them laughed, and Katie playfully slugged him in the arm. "You're stupid." She joked.
"Yeah, I know." He said. "Let's go get some breakfast. My mom made like, fifty pieces of french toast."
"She'd have to, in this house." katie laughed.
"Yeah." Zac said. After getting a few pieces of frech toast, Katie took a quick shower and then changed in Zac's room. She emerged and did her hair and makeup, then went back down to the living room where her siblings were getting ready for school.
"Ready?" Taylor asked, grabbing his keys.
"Yup." Zac said. He and Katie were walking to the front door with Morgan and Taylor when Judy came from the kitchen.
"Wait a sec, guys." She said. "I wanna take you to school today. I'm gonna go to the front office and talk to the dean, and I don't want to take any chances." She said.
Katie gave Taylor and zac a wierd look. "Okay." She said.
"I'll go with you." Zac volunteered.
Once they arrived at school, Judy went into the school office, while Zac and Katie walked to their lockers.
"Why am I nervous?" She asked him, walking down the hall.
"I don't know. You tell me." He said, casually bumping against her as they walked.
"I wish I knew." She said. She thought of Jeramy, and then of the burglar. "I'm not going to my locker." She said suddenly.
"Why not?"
Katie frowned. "I dunno. I just have this weird feeling...I'm not going to my locker. I'll stay with you. Do you think I could put my stuff in your locker...just for today?"
Zac shrugged. "Sure, long as you want." He said. They made it to his locker, and he opened it, first throwing his books in, and then Katie's.
"Doesn't something feel weird?" Katie asked as they walked to first hour.
"Like what?" He asked.
"I dunno." She replied, shrugging. "Just...something doesn't feel right."
It was the middle of second hour. The note came to Katie's teacher, and she opened it. Her hand covered her mouth, and a look of shock came over her face. She looked at the messenger and nodded.
"Katie?" She asked.
"Yes?" Katie looked up from her work.
"You're to report to the dean's office immediately." She said.
"Okay." Katie said slowly. She gathered up her books and quickly walked out of the classroom. She could almost feel the eyes of her classmates' on her back. Once she was out in the hall, she slowed her walk and took a few deep breaths. She had been called to the dean's office. That couldn't be good.
Did something happen to one of my sisters or Ben? Is Judy okay? What if something happened? Is Carol back? Did the house burn down?
Memories came flooding back to her. Memories of the day that she was called out of class, and then met Carol in the office, where she was told that her father was dead, and that she had nothing.
She walked the rest of the way to the dean's office slowly, almost petrified of what wait for her. She opened the door and walked in.
Mrs. Gunn, the secretary, looked up at her. "You can go on in." She said.
"Okay." Katie said. She went into the office to see the dean sitting at his desk.
"Sit down, please, Katie." he said, smiling apoligetically. She sat down slowly in the hard chair in front of his desk.
"Katie, we wanted to tell you this first, before anyone else, so that we could possibly stop any rumors that might get started. We didn't want you to be too shocked...Well..." He shifted around in his chair, then looked at her and sighed.
"Early this morning...someone replorted hearing...gunshots near the house of Jeramy and Nick Thomas. Police went to the scene, and it's thought that Jeramy first shot his father and his brother, and then himself. They were all dead when the police arrived."
Katie sucked her breath sharply. She sat, in shock.
"We wanted to know....if you'd heard anything about this." He said.
Katie blankly shook her head.
"I know that...well....it's been rumored that he had a connection with you, and the police are trying to collect any information possible."
"Yes." Katie said. Her own voice startled her in the quiet little room.
"Well, those rumors were true."
Katie numbly walked back to class, holding the folded piece of paper. It was a letter. Jeramy's letter. She opened the door to her classroom, and walked in, her face still blank and expressionless. Zac looked up from his work to see her sit down. He gave her a look of question, but she wasn't looking at him. She was starting straight ahead, but not seeing anything. To her, time had stopped, and was no longer relevent to anything that was going on in her head.
The speaker in the classroom buzzed, signaling that there was an announcement about to come on over the loud speaker.
"Students, this is your dean. I have some very sad news for you this morning." The loud voice didn't phase Katie as she stared on blanky.
He hardly ever spoke, and katie sensed he had a story behind him. He was the kind of person that everyone wondered about but were too scared to ask him about it.
"Early this morning, Jeramy and Nicolas Park were found dead in their home. Also found was their father. We don't know...at this point, what exactly happened. It was thought that Jeramy first killed his father and his brother, then himself."
Katie kept staring. The words seemed to echo in her head.
"What's wrong?" He asked again.
Katie looked around the nearly empty hallway and leaned in a bit. "I got another call." She whispered.
Zac couldn't believe it. Dead? All of them. It didn't seem real. That name...Nicolas Park....Suddenly it came to him.
"...he started getting really strange, and then the next thing I know, he swung at me..."
The phone calls...the strange happenings. Everything had fallen into place.
"I don't even know who would be doing it. That's what makes it freaky. I mean, it literally could be anyone."