Silent Alarm by Jennifer Banash Page B

flowers, fingertips lingering against the cool, silky petals, and try to avoid looking directly at the notes, the anguish and desperation contained in them searing my eyes. There are pictures hanging from the gate, yearbook photos and casual snapshots, baby pictures—tiny, fat feet and chubby hands waving at the lens. I scan them, my eyes glazing over as I begin to recognize faces, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Mila Germain. Alexis Peterson. Randall Perry. Camille Montrose. Jared Liebowitz. My brother is responsible for these deaths—all of them. The knowledge hits me squarely in the chest, and I almost sink to my knees, the joints buckling, cold air whipping through my hair. Camille Montrose once let me borrow her calculator during an AP Bio exam. Randall Perry would have been homecoming king this year. Alexis Peterson wanted to go to Michigan State, but she worried, Delilah told me conspiratorially, that she wasn’t smart enough to get in.
    Katie Horton.
    Oh, Katie.
    I reach out and trace the contours of Katie’s cheeks, dark hair tumbling around her face, still plump with baby fat. She looks straight at me, so much like Ben, her smile clawing a new hole at my core.
It’s your fault,
she seems to be saying, her eyes wide, accusatory.
    The school is quiet and dark, and the candle flames flicker, but don’t go out. One of the candles has a picture of the Virgin Mary embossed on the glass jar. She stares at me benevolently from beneath her sky-blue hooded robe, her gaze full of sorrow and compassion, one hand stretched out in front of her, reaching endlessly. I lean my head against the fence, the metal pressing into my skin.
I’m sorry,
I think, though I don’t know whom I’m talking to anymore—Katie, Luke, Ben, or maybe just myself.
I’m so fucking sorry.
    â€œAre you okay?” A voice directly behind me makes me jump, spinning around so quickly that I almost lose my balance.
    It’s dark, and he is half in shadow, but when he moves forward, reaching one arm out to steady me, a sliver of light illuminates his face.
    â€œAlys?” His grip on my arm tightens. “Is that you?”
    â€œRiley.” The word leaving my lips is a sigh, relief coursing through me.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” He releases my arm and takes a step back, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his worn leather jacket, the one he got in the tenth grade and has been wearing religiously ever since. I can’t look at Riley without thinking of Luke. I can’t remember a time when they weren’t locking themselves away for hours to play video games, set off stink bombs, and do God only knows what else, though all Riley had to do was flash that wide smile of his and everything was usually forgiven. And later on, Riley just hung in there through Luke’s moods, patiently waiting for them to pass, never trying to force him out of them.
    Riley’s tall, like me—except he’s well over six feet—something I think he was kind of self-conscious about before he became the school’s basketball and cross-country star, which I can totally relate to given that I feel like a lumbering giant most of the time. Everything about him is long and lean—he’s what my mother calls a tall drink of water. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I always thought it sounded kind of gross. His dirty-blond hair hangs a bit past his ears, and his eyes are the color of the water in Fiji: blue, then green, then blue again, their depths bottomless and crystalline. People are always asking him if he’s a surfer, which amuses him to no end. “Does this look like California to you?” he’ll snap, pointing out the window. This is especially funny when there are two feet of snow on the ground.
    â€œWhat are
you
doing here?” I ask defensively, crossing my arms over my chest. My hair falls across my face, sandy and streaked as Luke’s,