Another one shot I wrote after hearing about another school shooting a few months ago. It was meant to be submitted for a short story contest of 3000 words or less and dealing with a serious issue in society. Mine was about school shootings. I thought I'd put it on here. Once again this is in the more serious vein of stories similar to Hotel Ceiling. Don't worry I'm not finished with A Thousand Years. I just like the idea of a one shot because it limits your word selection and what you can do with it.

Warning- This story deals with the idea of School Shootings which are becoming more common among society today. Never ever is it alright to let your feelings show by murdering the innocent. Never ever is it alright to make a statement like this. No statement is important enough to be made by killing the innocent. Murder is not alright.

Beautiful Words

Dying is a lot like breathing.

You forget you've been doing it your whole life until it's too late. And then suddenly it's the most important thing in the world. Like when you fall out of the boat when you're little and you don't have a life jacket on and you're drowning and your lungs seize up and even when you're out of the water you're still choking only this time it's on air. And you shouldn't. And you have to think about what you're doing.

In through your nose.

Out through your mouth.

78% Nitrogen. 21% Oxygen. 1% Other.

You forget that you've been breathing your whole life. Just like you forget you've been dying. Every second you're living, you're dying. Paradoxical I know. But you always knew that. Death was a real concept for you. You've witnessed it firsthand. I didn't know that. No one did.

And now everyone else has seen it too.

Wikipedia says death is the termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism.

I remember you once called in the end of your wink in existence. Now I think I understand what you meant. At least a little. You had come to terms with the idea of the imminent probability of the natural phenomenon when your lungs stop working and your heart stops.

My counselor, the one the hospital assigned to me after the last one quit, said I have to stop viewing everything as a science experiment or a math problem.

"Then what should I view it as?"

"A tragedy. Not everything can be explained using formulas and numbers."

I wish she wasn't but, she's right. I did my math, I've done it so many times the equation is seared in my memory. Six.

It has to add up to six.

SilenaBeauregard .

One.

Charles Beckendorf.

Two.

Ethan Nakamura.

Three.

Castor.

Four.

Luke Callestan.

Six.

There's no five. There should be but there isn't. Why? Because I am number five. And I'm alive.

But you. You're number seven. You're the one Luke never thought about. The variable in this equation which wasn't set. Like the imaginary root you always forget to calculate. Like the fact that you have to add 180˚ sometimes when you find the arctan.

I met your mum two days after I woke up. I was in a coma for three days after I hit my head on the desk when you pushed me down. You were the only one to do anything. I think everyone else was still frozen in a state of panic. Now when the policemen ask why no one did anything, I know.

You can't. You can't because you don't want to believe it's happening. You want to pinch yourself and wake up but you can't wake up and your mind is going so fast and you don't want to even blink because you're afraid you'll miss something and then he's looking at you and you hold your breath because there's nothing else you can do and it's like you're drowning all over again.

And you know.

One number's for you.

Five was for me.

She brought me flowers. I'm allergic but I didn't tell her that because she didn't know and I would look selfish and childish. And they were really beautiful. At first I couldn't imagine you helping in her floral shop but now that I know you a little more, I can.

You're sitting behind the counter, your feet propped up on the little shelf underneath, your artist fingers stained with paint and charcoal, not nicotine like a lot of people think, thumbing through a book. It's Plato's Republic and in your mind you're drawing the Cave. And there are flowers and no smoke. No alcohol like everyone says. No shady man wearing a trench coat and holding a brown lunch bag. No leather jacket.

It's just you.

This whole time it's only ever been you.

We talked, your mum and I, she told me I should go to Half-Blood when I felt better. There was the underlying sense of if I felt better but she was really nice about it. My therapist thought it was a good idea since I had been holed up in the hospital or my house watching the history channel. My parents weren't so sure. They're afraid if I leave I'm not coming back.

Like Luke.

But I went. I've never been to Half-Blood even though it's pretty popular but I just moved here last year from California—you probably knew that, you seem to know a lot about everything, you seem to see what most people don't. It didn't appeal to me. I like books sure but I'm a scientist not an artist. I don't understand how "emerald fields" is better than just calling it grass. It's less breath, fewer words.

More time.

And everyone wants more time.

And most of us don't know when our time is out until there are no more grains of sand left. And even if we try to shake it, it's not going to work. When your time is gone, it's gone. You can't cheat time.

But maybe you can teach me to love words. Teach me why words are more important than time.

The lady at the front counter gave me my tea in this big red mug. She called it the nectar of the gods. It tasted like honey and lemon.

I sat down and stared. You probably know what I was staring at. It's all anyone stares at Half-Blood other than the coffee.

The mural.

I've never been the best art lover. Maybe it's because I'm too critical but when I look at paintings I see lines and shapes and colors. I don't see texture, value, rhythm, voice. I see a painting. It might be a nice painting but it's still a painting. Maybe I would love it more if I was taught to.

But apparently you can't be taught. You have to feel. Or at least that's what Grover told me. He sat down next to me and stared with me, bobbing his head to the folksy music, you know the type that they would never play on the radio?

"Beautiful isn't it?" He asked me.

I shrugged.

"You're his friend right?" And he didn't have to explain what he meant by that. He didn't call me Lukes girlfriend or the girl who should have died or even the girl who lived as the newspapers have found it humorous to dub me. That's why I haven't made it back to school. Why I'm still hiding like a coward in my house. I'm too afraid that's all I'm going to hear. And people are going to treat me like glass or like a chemical reaction you only carry out in a fumehood for fear that it will explode in your face. They're afraid I'll explode.

On myself or on others.

Maybe both.

Some senior year we're having.

Apparently senior year is supposed to be amazing.

You're supposed to be completely "free" but at the same time your parents take responsibility for all the "hard stuff" like taxes and insurance and all that. Senior year, you're supposed to be on top of the world.

I don't feel that way. I don't think any of us feel that way.

I don't think that the school will ever be the same. How can it be? I'm almost of the belief that we just close it down. I don't know how anyone can walk the halls without remembering what happened. I can't.

I see it everywhere.

I see him everywhere.

Luke is everywhere.

I shrugged.

"I'm Grover."

"Annabeth."

He grinned, his rasta cap flopping over his eyes. "I know. He talked about you all of the time." You talked about me? I wanted to ask him about what. After all we didn't necessarily talk in class.

You were always the person everyone stays away from. What did you say about me? I wish I could ask you.

"It's a beautiful painting," he commented.

"It's nice."

"Not an artist are you?"

"My lowest grade was a B+ in sixth grade art." He laughed.

"You the science type?"

"How could you tell?"

"You're drinking tea."

"I'm sure that's a fallacy."

"Okay so then you're British." He grinned again. "You're looking at it wrong."

"How many ways can you look at a painting?"

"Lots and you're looking at it wrong. You look at it like it's a bacteria under a microscope, like you're trying to determine if there's a flagella or cilia. You have to look at it all together, like one large cell." My face must have betrayed my shock because he laughed at me. "I'm majoring in Biology, hoping to go into forensics."

"But you like art." For me art and science didn't mix. They were two completely different things like fruits and vegetables. You don't put apples in your salad because they just… they just… no.

"People can like art and science. I don't think there's a scientific law about it. In fact some of the best artists were scientists, inventors, creators. Take da Vinci for example." Grover shrugged. "It doesn't matter what you are but who you are."

And maybe that was what made me view the mural differently, your mural. I didn't know that they had asked you to do it. I didn't even know you painted. You're amazing. All the greatest heroes of history and literature are on that wall. And they're all fallen, tragic, devastated, and yet beautiful and hopeful at the same time. Maybe that's what made me realize just who you are.

You're a hero.

That's all you wanted to be your whole life.

Your mum told me you were named after the Greek hero, the one who slayed the giant monster, the one with the happy ending. That your dad was a naval captain. I didn't know that.

I didn't know that he died.

I guess I don't know a lot of things.

It's not what you are but who you are.

Luke was captain of the basketball team, class president, the guy everyone wanted to date, the perfect boyfriend. You were the rebel, the outcast, the lonely, the drug addict, the drunkard. But it's amazing how those descriptions aren't who you are.

You are the broken, the beautiful, the caring, the boy who works in his mother's flower shop, who helps at the local kids' club, teaching them how to paint. You're a painter, a creator, a dreamer, a fighter.

I still want to view this all as a math problem, a science experiment. Because I don't get it. I don't get it at all. And I will never.

My boyfriend murdered four people.

He shot himself.

And no matter how much I try to deny it.

My boyfriend is dead.

And you're dying. Lying in a hospital bed.

In a freaking coma.

I'm such a coward.

What causes someone to save the life of another person? What causes someone to be brave? I guess it's not what they are, but who they are.

Everyone wants to talk to me about what happened. Everyone wants to know what I was feeling, what I am feeling.

To be honest, I'm not feeling anything. Does that make me heartless?

There's this button by your bed in the hospital. When you wake up you'll see it.

You press it when the pain gets too unbearable and it shoots morphine into you and you feel all high and numb. And even though my leg, which got smashed under a desk, was killing me, I didn't press it. Not until the third day.

The day when everything seemed to come crashing down.

Luke is dead.

Luke. Is. Dead.

That look he gave me before he pointed the gun at me. I can't get it out of my mind. It haunts me every time I close my eyes, every time I look at someone else. I keep seeing him. Seeing his blue eyes filled with pain. A pain I should have seen.

I pain I failed to notice.

He looked at me like I should have known.

I should have.

The hospital made the psychologist come and talk with me every day. They think that I'm emotionally unstable or something. Maybe I am. She's not a very good therapist though. She's too afraid to talk about what happened. We talked about what I wanted to do once I graduated this year (I told her I wanted to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a cashier at the local grocery store. She told me that was a good goal to have) and who my friends are. When I said Luke she tensed and changed the subject. But that's okay.

I only want to talk about what happened with two people.

One is dead.

The other is you.

I imagine that we have a lot to talk about, you and I.

But if you don't want to talk, I get it. I didn't want to talk either at first. Now all I want to do is talk. I guess it's because I'm trying to figure this all out. I want to be a chemist, my mind is hardwired for figuring out hard problems. I didn't think anything could get harder than Stoichiometry on the AP test but this is far harder. It's probably harder than finding a cure for cancer.

Why did a perfectly normal boy like Luke do it?

I don't know.

But I do know you a little better now.

I want to get to know you better Percy so please, please don't die. If you die I'll never be able to discuss why you put Achilles next to George Washington on the mural. I'll never be able to know how to plant the perfect rose. I'll never be able to have a lab partner as good as you were.

I now know where you get your bravery.

Everyone else thought that you were messed up, with your dark hair and leather jacket, your motorcycle which you drove a little too fast in a school zone. With your smoky breath and dying lungs. But now looking at it all, I guess there's a beauty to your brokenness.

It's like in Chemistry when you mix two compounds together and you get a chemical reaction. Except this is a chemical reaction that you have to do in a fume-hood because the air it gives out is toxic. But even though it's toxic, the reaction is still useful because you can discover something from it, like the activity series for a metal. There's beauty that comes out of something that appears bad.

Why?

Why did you do it? I don't know. I don't even know you. You don't even know me. We were lab partners once. You stopped me from torching the whole school when my hair got a little too close to the propane tank. Remember that? You said "It'd be a shame to ruin those pretty blonde curls." I remember. But other than that we never talked.

I wish we had.

You deserve more attention than you got. You're a hero and I don't think anyone recognized that.

Thank you.

Those words seem so empty, like there's nothing that I can say to ever express my gratitude. And in a way there's not. There's nothing I can say which will be equivalent to what you did.

You saved my life.

Thank you.

I realize I don't know much anymore. I've never been good at making pretty words. Words are so challenging. Numbers I can do but as you can tell from this letter, I have trouble with words.

Your mum said that you write poetry.

Maybe you can teach me how to make beautiful words.

Love,

Annabeth

Like all of my other stories, this was titled after a song. It's called Beautiful Words by The Afters. The lyrics are of course included below. So why did I write this story? Well… I guess it's because I'm shocked by how many school shootings there have been recently. For a while it seemed like there was one every other week. According to Wikipedia, the USA has the most school-related shootings in the world. The definition given by the Secret Service and Department of Education is "school shootings and other school-based attacks where the school was deliberately selected as the location for the attack and was not a random site of opportunity."

Lately I've been thinking about some pretty deep issues and this was one of them. What causes someone to shoot up a school? The answer: I have no idea. And I don't think anyone really does and if they claim to, they're lying because every incident is different. I've done some research and read why most people would shoot up a school and yet I can't help think: No, I don't think that's it. It's different for each person. And it's such a sad, awful, ugly truth about this world.

We are messed up people.

I didn't write this to say I'm thinking about doing this. I'm not. Not at all. I'm writing this to show the devastation it brings and this barely covers the surface. Depression is a VERY REAL thing but murder is never the answer. Ever.

Sincerely,

Luna-Incendia14

Lyrics to Beautiful Words by the Afters:

Slow down
This is such a blur
Tell me what's the hurry now
Have we been running round in circles
Missing all that we could be
You say it's not too late

[Chorus:]
We are words
On pages that we've left unturned
An ending no one's ever heard
We are a story slowly unfolding
Beautiful words

I could walk across the ocean
With you walking next to me
And you could melt away this winter
Now we're starting over
We will see it's not too late

[Chorus]

That last when everything else has passed
Even when the stars are gone
I know every single beautiful word that we were will live on

[Chorus]