My cheek throbs. I try to grab her around the ankles, but all I get is her pant leg, which she rips from my grasp, taking parts of my fingernails with it. She stumbles offbalance and kicks me again. Awkwardly I reel away from her kick, then try to catch her foot, but instead I trip over a chair and I’m back on the floor once again as she catches herself and stares at me like she hates me. I roll to my stomach and cover my face like a coward because I think this has to be the end for me.

I hear three gunshots and I don’t know if anybody’s hit. I freeze in place, cringing and crying, figuring she’d be shooting at me, but she isn’t. At least I don’t think so, anyway. When I dare to look, she’s grabbing Ben, who is stoically trying to drag a bloody person out of the room. The shooter girl shoves him, makes him turn around to face her, digs the gun into his forehead, and backs him up against the wall just as Sawyer and the blond guy bump into me, rolling on the floor. I can hear Sawyer cussing, trying to stand but slipping on a smear of blood, twisting crazily and falling hard. With the momentum, Sawyer manages to extend his arm, slamming it down across the shooter’s chest.

The blond guy’s gun goes flying. I get to my hands and knees and crawl after it, trying shakily to get to my feet, but the guy grabs me and yanks my legs out from under me, making me land hard next to him. I hoist myself up with my good hand, swing my cast around awkwardly to block his fist, and slam my knee into his groin before he can choke me. He gasps and shrivels up, his face telling me I nailed him just right, and I’m free. But my muscles are in shock and I can’t get them to obey me. I roll away, out of his reach, searching desperately for Sawyer.

Sawyer’s got blood on his face and he staggers to his knees, crawling around desks and chairs and broken equipment, trying to get to the guy’s gun, while I refocus on the girl with the gun to Ben’s forehead as she screams in his face, and for the first time I feel like we have failed. I am helpless to save him. I know he’s about to die, and there’s nothing I can do. “No,” I whisper, and I can’t even hear the word come out because of the screaming. But Ben is silent, stiff, gun jabbed between his eyes, facing the girl and barely flinching. Something about his bravery gives me the weirdest sense of courage. I grab the edge of a table and stagger to my feet once more.

Then the door bursts open. It hits the wall hard, the glass window shattering and sprinkling shards everywhere. The girl turns her head at the noise, and Ben—the new, desperate leader Ben—slams his fist into her gut and she doubles over. Her gun goes off. And just as Sawyer staggers over to grab the blond guy’s gun, I fling myself at the girl and start flailing my arms and legs, feeling like I’ve got no plan but nothing to lose. I kick the crap out of her arm that holds the gun, and I whack the shit out of her face with my cast, once, twice, three times, until she drops, and I kneel on her fucking head as she screams.

With a ragged breath, I look up at the door, suspecting it was the police who broke the door, but all I see is my brother’s startled face, his body leaning against the wall.

“Trey! Thank God!” I shout. And then I watch him sink to the floor, leaving a streak of red on the wall behind him.

Thirty-Seven

“Trey!” I scream again, but I can’t let up on the girl. I move my free leg around and step hard on her arm as she screams out in pain, screaming her hatred, calling me a sick fag, calling me an abomination, telling me I belong in hell. Telling me God hates me. Ben comes running to kick the gun away from the girl, and finally, finally, the police come.

It takes them a few minutes to sort out the good guys from the bad, especially with the girl screaming at us. As soon as they’ve got her, I crawl over a slippery floor to Trey, where another cop is trying to talk to him, telling him to stay awake, telling him help is on the way.

“Back off,” the cop says, holding his arm out to push me back. “Give him some room.” “He’s my brother,” I cry, my voice ragged, and the guy lets me near him again. “Is he breathing?” Blood spurts out from somewhere around his shoulder.

“Yes. What’s his name?”

“Trey. Trey Demarco.”

Within seconds the paramedics are there, assessing all

the injured, and I follow their gazes around the room, suddenly remembering Sawyer again in all of this. Two of the paramedics run to a girl who is lying against the back wall, eyes glazed, holding her side as blood spills from between her fingers, and I don’t want to see that, but I can’t look away.

On the other side of the room, the blond shooter gets shoved to the floor and handcuffed, and the girl shooter still hollers hate speech as she’s being held by two cops. And then there’s Ben Galang, glasses knocked off, face bleeding. Ben Galang, who almost surely should be dead, reaching out and helping Sawyer to his feet.

There’s one more guy near the door who cries out, trying to scrape himself along the floor, his foot bleeding profusely.

That’s it. That’s all. Everybody else made it out. I look at Sawyer as the paramedics take the girl with the stomach wound away first, and then they load Trey onto a stretcher. Sawyer stares back at me, his face as stricken as mine feels. I turn to the paramedics. “He’s my brother. Can I go with you?”

The paramedic looks at the cop, who nods. “Just her.” “What hospital?” I ask.

“Down the street—to the UC ER. Let’s go.” They hoist him up until the wheels click into place.