Chapters (88)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dear Reader …
- Also by Robert Muchamore
- PART ONE
- Walter J Freeman Adolescent Mental Health Unit – East Grinstead, UK
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- PART TWO
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- PART THREE
- Walter J. Freeman Adolescent Mental Health Unit – East Grinstead, UK
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- PART FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- FIFTY-SIX
- FIFTY-SEVEN
- FIFTY-EIGHT
- FIFTY-NINE
- SIXTY
- SIXTY-ONE
- SIXTY-TWO
- SIXTY-THREE
- SIXTY-FOUR
- SIXTY-FIVE
- SIXTY-SIX
- SIXTY-SEVEN
- SIXTY-EIGHT
- SIXTY-NINE
- SEVENTY
- SEVENTY-ONE
- SEVENTY-TWO
- SEVENTY-THREE
- EPILOGUE
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- Have you read KILLER T?
- 1 SLASHED RUBBER
- 2 NOT HARRY POTTER
Deion’s locker had been decorated by the rally team. Powell 03, sprayed through a stencil. Rock Spring Rockets stickers and nylon rosettes fixed on with sticky pads. An invite to Aisha’s 18th – Foam Partaaay poked out of the door. He tried fitting a face to Aisha’s name as he turned the locker dial.
Eighteen, six, twenty-two.
There was a grunt of realisation as Deion let his backpack drop off his shoulder. He usually left football gear in his truck on the school lot. The locker was crammed. Books, baseball cleats, protein shake pouches and a Bluetooth boom box he’d tried selling to a teammate who’d never come through with the money.
Maybe it was easiest to keep hold of the stuff. Dump it in Terence’s VW at recess. But this made the walk to the locker another waste of time, on a day when everything was going bad.
Calm down. Think straight. Don’t let stuff get to you.
‘This sucks,’ Deion raged, smashing his palm on his locker, and kicking the one below with his size thirteen.
His thoughts had been balled too tight to hear the girl who’d turned into the hallway behind. Pink cotton pumps, a Rock Spring High gym shirt and milky, vein-pencilled legs. He’d startled her and was about to apologise when …
Noise ripped. So loud it hurt inside both ears. Blazing light. Heat. The girl screaming. The yellow locker door, unhinged and smashing Deion in the face. Stumbling. Blood. Tripping on something. A mouthful of dust, and ceiling tiles falling like oversized confetti.
2 NOT HARRY POTTER
The klaxon yowled as twenty-four hundred high-schoolers bustled out into sun-blasted gravel and hundred-degree heat. Out of fire doors and down clanking metal stair treads. A few straddled first-floor windows. Smoke plumed from the Zone C annexe as emergency sirens wailed.
The clueless school security guard kept a wary hand on his taser. Teens from the dance studio felt scorching sidewalk on bare soles and a math teacher rolled a kid in a wheelchair past the cholla cacti at Rock Spring High’s main entrance.
‘This is not a fire drill,’ a deputy principal yelled, pit stains showing as he waved students away. ‘Do not gather at the assembly points. Just get as far from the building as possible.’
‘Is there a shooter?’ someone asked, almost colliding with a kid who walked backwards, videoing the smoke.
‘Heard shots for sure,’ another body close to Harry Smirnov said. ‘Five or six.’
Harry followed the crowd away from school on a paved path, his jog slowing as bodies funnelled through mesh gates. He was a ninth grader. Fourteen, slender limbs, floppy black bangs, still more boy than man. He’d only been in Las Vegas eight months since moving from the UK with his aunt.