Tolliver was standing in the center of the window, his arms extended to bring the curtains together. I was standing a little to the side and behind him, just about to sit on the bed to unlace my shoes. And then a hundred things happened in tiny layers of seconds. There was a huge noise; my face and chest stung; I was sprinkled with wetness. A gust of cold air blew across my face as Tolliver staggered backward, knocking me down on the bed. He landed on top of me and then slithered to the floor in a boneless way.

I catapulted back to my feet so fast I wobbled, aware that cold air was pouring in the window, inexplicably. I looked down at my cold chest. It was wet—not with rain, but with red spots. My T-shirt was ruined. I don’t know why I cared. But I think I screamed, because I already understood on a subterranean level that Tolliver had been shot, that I was cut with glass and covered with blood, and that our world had completely changed in the space of a second.

Six

Six

I must have unlocked the door in answer to the pounding, because Matthew was in the room, and I was not being any help to Tolliver because I was standing there looking down at him, my hands held out in front of me because I’d touched my face and my hands were covered with blood. Since my hands were dirty I didn’t want to touch Tolliver.

Matthew was on his knees beside his son. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit 911, though it required more concentration than anything I’d ever done. I gasped out the motel and its location, and I think I said we needed an ambulance immediately, and I said “sniper,” because I was thinking of the word.

In a thought that went by so quickly I couldn’t catch its trailing ends, I was sorry I’d mentioned a sniper because maybe the ambulance wouldn’t come because the driver was scared, and then I tossed that idea overboard and joined Matthew on the carpet, facing him over Tolliver’s body.

I’d been shot at through a window before, and it had been frightening. I’d had glass all over me then, too. But this was so much worse, terrible, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, because it had happened to Tolliver. That was all I could think of, the eeriness of such a thing happening twice, but I tried to yank myself out of the horror and I tried to help. Matthew was pulling off his shirt and folding it, and he pressed it to the bloodiest spot.

“Hold this, you idiot,” he said, and I put my hands on the pad formed by the shirt. It was soaking through with blood under my fingers.