When a Gun Squeaks
by Savanna Sherman
The gun was a rifle with the end sawed off, a SpongeBob sticker on the wooden handle. I knew it was a rifle because that’s what grandpa hunted with, what he kept beside his bed each night. His third eye, he called it.
I didn’t know how to hold a rifle, but I knew the boy holding it didn’t know how to either. His hands were shaking, his arms flappy, and his aim shit. Or at least, that’s what I imagine my dad would have said if he were there.
There were twenty-eight kids in my class before the gun with the SpongeBob sticker on it. There were twenty-eight lunch boxes, twenty-eight backpacks, and twenty-eight bladders that were always full. Now, there are thirteen.
Not all of them died. A few changed schools, and two are homeschooled now. But the rest of the cubbies are empty.
The first thing I remember is the sound. He was squeaking, his shoes, his voice. I wanted to ask if he was okay, but then I remembered the lockdown, the black construction paper over the window. What good that did.
As he paced the room, it seemed like the gun squeaked, too.
“You,” He pointed at a boy near the front. “Stand up.”
The boy was new, had joined the class mid-term. I couldn’t remember his name until after, when I found it scribbled across the tag of his sweatshirt, which was on the other side of the room, but it didn’t matter. In that moment, he was nameless, as faceless as the masked boy on the other side of the gun.
The ring of the bullet is what I remember next, and to this day, I still cup my hands over my ears when I think about it. My ears rang for months, that ringing, like the squeaking, never stopping.
He pointed to a handful of other kids: Mackenzie, Louise, Sam, and Micah. He let a few of them sit back down, but mostly there was just the ringing. And then he pointed at me.
“I said, get up!” He reached for my elbow, the handle of the gun crashing into the side of my desk and lifted another boy from the chair beside me.
Chase. He wore socks with the days of the week on them. That day he was wearing Wednesday.
When I am finally brave enough to look back at it, which is rare, I don’t remember the boy or the way his voice shook even as he screamed. I don’t remember the names of the kids or what the teacher did. I don’t even remember the blood or the smell of piss warming the air.
I think about the socks, the red spatters across the words Wednesday. I think about the SpongeBob sticker, how I can’t listen to the theme song anymore. I think about the squeaking, squeaking, squeaking.
And maybe the gun wasn’t real. Maybe it was a prop the whole time. After all, what gun squeaks if not a toy gun? Stage blood, stage socks, most likely. And I want to tell them I know it was a trick. They can come out now. I know they’ve been planning this, I know it’s a fake gun! What a great play, I’ll say, you really had me going for a minute. Phew, what! a! show! I’ll be back for the matinee.
What a show!
And then I will wear my red socks again and watch SpongeBob in the morning, and after lunch, I will go with my father to the mall, and we will look at the guns and marvel at how realistic they look. How none of them squeak.
Savanna Sherman is a poet, novelist, and essayist living in Virginia. Her work surrounds old wounds, healing, and the complicated work of forgiveness, often drawing inspiration from the uncomfortable and unsettling. Her poetry is featured in multiple publications from The American Library of Poetry and The Sky Island Journal.