Page 37 of Lessons in Power

Henry had been talking about President Nolan.

CHAPTER 26

President Nolan has been shot. Someone shot the president.The words played on a loop in my head. They didn’t make any more sense sitting on the floor with my back to the wall than they had in the cafeteria.

We were in lockdown. Less than a minute after I’d heard the first siren, all of us were shuffled into classrooms. The lights were turned out. The doors were barred. Guards were posted in the halls.

The Secret Service had removed Anna Hayden from the premises.

I’d ended up in a science classroom. Henry was there. Vivvie, too. Two dozen of our classmates were crammed in with us. Some were crying. Some were frantically texting their families.

Some were looking at me.

The blood was dry on my hands now, but my clothes were still soaked with it.My pant legs. The cuffs of my shirt. The lapels, where John Thomas had grabbed me.

John Thomas had been shot, and someone had tried to assassinate the president, and there was blood on my hands.

“What did you see, Tess?”

The whispered question broke through the whir of my thoughts. In the dark, hushed room, I wasn’t even sure who’d asked it.

“What happened?”

“Whose blood is that?”

More voices, more questions. I didn’t realize I was shaking until Henry laid a hand on the back of my neck.

The questions were just going to keep coming. They would come and come and come, and the answers would always be the same.

Someone shot John Thomas. Someone shot him, and I found him, and—

The guard at the door received a call. “We’re clear,” he said a moment later. “There’s no evidence of a gunman on campus.”

The lights came on. The room exploded into conversation, a dull roar that pressed in against my ears. If there wasn’t a gunman, if this wasn’t the start of some kind of shooting spree—then John Thomas had been the only target.

Someone had wanted him dead.

I will bury you.I remembered saying those words to John Thomas. I remembered meaning them. John Thomas had been making threats—and my gut said that my friends hadn’t been the only targets.

Nauseous, I began scrubbing at the dried blood on my hands. The door to the room opened. On some level, I was aware of a police officer stepping into the room. I heard him say my name, but I barely recognized the sound of it. All I could think about was getting rid of the blood.

“Hey,” Vivvie said softly, reaching out to grab my wrists. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

I jerked back from her grasp. She turned to look at Henry, and he stepped forward.

“Tess, these gentlemen need to speak with you,” the teacher called from the front of the room.

I would talk to the police. I would tell them everything, just as soon as I got the blood off my hands.

Henry caught one of my wrists in each of his hands. His touch was gentle, but when I tried to break his hold, I couldn’t.

“Water,” Henry told me. He had an uncanny knack for sounding calm and reasonable no matter the circumstances. “You need water.” He guided me over to the emergency shower. He pulled the cord. Water rained down. Slowly, Henry guided my arms into the spray. He ran his hands over mine, gently scrubbing at the blood crusted to my palms, my fingernails.

For a moment, I watched as if from a great distance, his fingers working their way between mine, his skin brown and smooth, mine paler than usual beneath John Thomas’s blood.

“I’m okay.” If I said the words, I could believe them. I came back to myself, felt Henry’s touch on my skin, felt his body next to mine. He seemed to realize, the same second I did, that this was the closest the two of us had ever been.

We both froze. Henry stepped back. I stared down at the pools of red washing into the drain.