"We want to warn the boys that R2D2's coming. It shouldn't be a surprise," one of the cops says.
"Did your kids like Star Wars?" the operator asks.
No one answers.
The robot pushes open the door to the classroom. "Hello. Anybody home?" The camera scans. The picture is dim. The robot moves toward the cloakroom.
"Can we get a little light?" the cop asks.
The operator flicks a switch that turns on a light on the robot's head-like a coal miner's helmet or an old-fashioned super-8 movie light. The picture zooms in on Sammy and Nate in the cloakroom, Nate with the gun.
"Hi, Nate, my name is Bob. That was a great fireworks show. I love fireworks." The robot speaks in a synthesized voice. "Do you mind if I come in?" The robot rolls forward. "I brought some medicine for Sammy."
"Does your son have unusually developed arm muscles?" the cop asks, watching Nate on the video feed.
"No."
"See those bulges under his shirt?" the cop asks.
"Canisters," a Bomb Squad guy says. "And there seems to be some wiring. Would your son know how to make a bomb?"
"I have no idea."
"Would you like to talk to him?" The cop hands her the microphone.
"Nate, it's Mom. Can you hear me?"
"You sound weird," Nate says. "Like the robot."
"That's our anonymous voice of authority," the cop explains. "We use it in situations where we have multiple negotiators. It gives us universal sound, a united front, and we don't reveal anyone's identity."
"Can you make it normal?"
The operator flicks a switch.
"Nate, it's Mom. Is that better? It's enough already. It's getting late. They have to lock up the school for the night. Everyone wants to go home and watch TV. Don't you want to go home?"
"I'm not going home," Nate says. "No one is going home."
Sammy leans forward. "I want to go home." He looks into the robot. "Fix it," he says.
"He's wheezing," Elaine says. "You can hear it?"
"Nathan, Sammy is sick. He needs to take his medicine now," Susan says.
The robot's claw extends, handing Sammy the inhaler. They watch while Sammy exhales and then inhales; they can hear the dull fart of the puffer expelling its stuff.
"Thank you," the robot says. "Is there anything that you need?" The robot pauses. "It's a beautiful afternoon, why not pull the shades up?" The robot moves toward the windows.
"Get out," Nate yells. "Get out of my house."
"What's on your mind, Nate?"
Nate grabs Sammy.
He raises the gun.
He pulls the trigger. Slow motion. Video feed. Black-and-white fragments.
Sammy.
His knees go out from under, his head snaps back, like he's dodging, but it's the bullet hitting his head, pushing through skin, scalp, skull, taking out bone, hair, brain-Sammy.
The bullet-the crooked, shattering, caplet-exits, landing on the floor with a small plinking sound that no one hears.
Sammy falling.
Nate, knocked back, bangs against the wall. He waves the gun wildly.
Outside, they hear the sound of the shot in stereo, real and recorded, muffled through the walls and windows of the school and oddly amplified by the robot's microphone, a big metallic bang exploding over the speakers.
They watch it on TV.
Close-up.
Sammy.
Daniel charges the building. He goes for the side entrance. No one is moving fast enough to stop him.
The air is thick and still; there is the suspension of time, long beats of waiting. Seconds stretch.
Elaine moans, low, animal, deep.
The newscaster whispers, "One has the sense that something awful has just occurred. Shots have been fired. A little boy may have been hit. This is quickly turning into an afternoon tragedy."
Susan blows into the microphone, her voice tentative, floating over the parking lot. "Nate? Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?"
Daniel is in the room. He appears on the monitor, screaming at Nate. "You little fucking jerk. You pathetic putz. Such a fucking asshole." He lifts Sammy up. "Get the fuck out of my way."
More shots. The monitor goes black.
"Nate?"
Elaine turns. Her arms are raised up-near her ears, terrified, protecting. She moves to run-the opposite way. A fireman catches her and points her in the right direction.
"We've lost audio and visual"-an official report.
And then Daniel is coming out of the building, holding Sammy in his arms. The front of his shirt is bright with blood. He's staggering. "Help me," he bleats. "Help me."
There is a stampede. Paramedics race across the parking lot. The SWAT team descends from the roof, breaking glass, crashing through windows; heavy hooves pound down the hall, moving on all fronts simultaneously. It is as though they could do nothing until something happened, and now they do everything-all at once.
Paul is rushing toward Daniel.
"I can't carry him," Daniel says, collapsing into Paul, knocking him down, like a football tackle.
The medics sort out the heap. They lay Sammy and Daniel out in the parking lot, between the yellow lines. They are cutting away Daniel's shirt, they are looking at Sammy's head.
Radios crackle. "We're gonna need a medevac chopper to shock trauma. We have a white male, nine years old, with a gunshot wound to the head."
"His head," Elaine says, stunned. "He shot him in the head." "He has a hard head," Paul says, pulling himself up. It's the stupidest thing he's ever said.
Paul and Elaine are at the edge of a human circle. They can't get closer; no one will let them in.
There are ten men bent over Sammy, men on their hands and knees, crawling.
"Pulse?"
"Rapid, one sixty-two."
"Blood pressure?"
"Trying to get it."
"Respiration?"
"Fast."
"Can we get something to pack it with?"
"There's bone missing."
"Where's the chopper?"
"ETA six minutes, landing on the lower school playground." "Oxygen."
"Can I get a line in?"
Fragments, bits and pieces.
"Did they find the eye?" someone asks.
There is no response.
It is beyond their control. Out of their hands.
"Why aren't they asking us any questions?" Elaine says to Paul. Paul has no answers.
"This one's fine," one of the paramedics says. Daniel sits up. "It was his brother's blood." His shirt is off. They're giving him oxygen. They're checking the other parts of him. "He's fine, just a little shocky."
"He's fine," Elaine says. "I heard them say he's fine."
Paul shakes his head.
Not Sammy.
"Should we bag him? Intubate?"
"Can we get an EKG?"
"He has asthma," Elaine tells a paramedic. "He uses a puffer. And he can't take penicillin, it gives him a terrible rash."
"What was the ammo? Hollow-point?"
"We don't know."
They stand helpless.
"Is he breathing?" Elaine asks, pleading, as she watches the paramedics squeezing the plastic ball.
"He's getting air."
"Could someone call my mother?" Elaine asks softly.
"Nate?"
The Bomb Squad has Nate. They're moving him to the playground at the top of the hill carefully-afraid he might explode.
They set him down in the outfield near second base.
Someone from the Bomb Squad approaches, takes out a pair of scissors, and cuts off Nate's shirt.
Nate, the boy bomb, has cans taped to his torso, cans taped up and down his arms: Raid, Magic Sizing, Reddi Wip, Easy-Off, Cheez Whiz. Cans and wires.
The trained dogs sniff him.
"Don't move."
People run up the side of the hill to see what's happening.
His mother is held back behind a line.
The area is sealed off.
"Arms and legs spread wide."
The man from the Bomb Squad cuts up one leg of Nate's pants and down the other. Nate's pants fall away; smoke bombs roll out of the pockets. Nate is on the playground in his underwear, a steak knife taped to his leg.