Lockdown Read Online Free Page B

“Nice. He can kill six people without reloading.”
    Baker shrugs. “It’s a small gun. It’s not exactly an assault weapon.”
    Zoe turns to me. “How long has Josh been planning this?”
    â€œYou’re talking as if I knew something about this. I didn’t know he was going to shoot up the school.”
    But I remember how Josh looked at us in science, how he seemed to record our faces. My mouth goes dry.
    Maybe Natalie is thinking the same thing. She says, “Chase is an ass. He went too far with the hamster.”
    Chase is an ass, but I’m surprised to hear Natalie say so. Natalie and Chase are in the alliance of Science 10 idiots. Natalie seems to have forgotten her role in the hamster-eating drama. I say, “It’s not like anyone stepped in to stop Chase.”
    Natalie detects the barb in my statement. “So this is my fault? No way,” she says. “Josh is crazy, everyone knows that. He was crazy before the hamster thing.”
    I say, “I didn’t mean it’s your fault. I mean, no one stepped in. So maybe it’s everyone’s fault. And anyway, Josh isn’t crazy. He’s just different.”
    Baker nods. “Totally. Normal to the extreme.”
    Zoe looks at him in disbelief. “You’re saying Josh is normal?”
    Baker says, “It’s not like I’d ever do it, but you’ve never thought about offing someone?”
    Zoe says, “No!”
    Natalie shrugs. “Whatever.”
    I say, “We could try to stop him.”
    Zoe snorts. “How?”
    Zoe’s right, I know she is. What are we going to do against a guy with a gun? All the time you hear about shooters and you think, How could he shoot so many people? Why didn’t someone just take him down?
    Zoe says, “We can’t go out there, Adam. We’ll get shot. We were lucky once but we won’t be lucky again. We’ll get caught and we’ll get killed.”
    I look at her. She looks different, but I guess no one looks normal when they’re scared. I say to her, “If we don’t stop Josh, he’ll either get shot by the police or he’ll shoot himself.”
    â€œSo?” Zoe retorts. “Let’s hope he blows his brains out before he finds someone else to shoot.”
    Zoe’s mad, and who could blame her? Nothing makes it right, what Josh is doing. But I think about all those times I’ve seen people push him around. There must be a hundred more incidents I don’t know about.Maybe Josh has lived his whole life being pushed around.
    I say, “You don’t know Josh.”
    â€œI don’t need to know him.”
    â€œHe’s not like us.”
    â€œNo? Really? Like, we don’t take a gun to school to settle our differences?”
    Baker and Natalie watch the exchange as if they’re watching a tennis match.
    I say, “He didn’t shoot me. He didn’t shoot us. Maybe I can talk to him. Maybe I can stop this whole thing.”
    Zoe is quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “Whose side are you on?”
    I swallow. “It’s not about sides.”
    She says, “Of course it’s about sides. What else is this about? Either you’re on his side or you’re on our side.”
    Our side. Not her side. I reach out my hands but she bats them away. She says, “Think about this, Adam. The guy has a gun and he’s probably killed people. He’s out there now trying to kill more people.”
    As if to punctuate her statement, we hear distant shots.
    â€œThere.” Her mouth tightens. “Maybe he’s found someone else cowering in a can. Or maybe he’s pinned them against the chained exit door. Maybe he’s picking them off one by one.”
    The sound of the shots makes my stomach flip. “Zoe, I have to try.”
    Zoe jabs me in the chest. “I know he’s friggin’ crazy, and if you go out there after him, then