Page 16 of I Will Ruin You

Billy, trying not to sound nervous, offered an alternate theory. “Could be someone’s dipping into your product before the bag goes on the plane.”

Andrea acted as though she hadn’t heard, instead focused on a small box with thick red and black wires leading from it. At the end of each wire was a set of metal alligator clips with rubber-coated handles.

“This some kind of sex thing?” she asked. “Biggest fucking nipple clamps I ever saw.”

“That’s... that’s a portable car battery charger. Like jumper cables, but you don’t need the other car.”

Andrea gazed upon the gadget thoughtfully, picking up the handles and squeezing them so that the clips opened and closed like tiny raptor jaws with jagged teeth. “So I clip these things to a battery and hit this button and it sends a charge?”

Billy nodded.

Andrea looked at Gerhard and gave him a knowing nod. Gerhard came up behind Billy and pinned his arms.

“The fuck, man!”

Andrea moved close to Billy, set the charger and the cables on the trunk of the Camaro, then started to roll up the front of his Whalers sweatshirt until it cleared his nipples. She bunched it at the top so it wouldn’t come back down.

“Cut it out!” Billy said. “Fuckin’ cut it out!”

Next she picked up the two cables and rubbed the clips over each of his nipples. “So if I hooked these up and hit the switch, what would happen, Billy?”

“It could fuckin’ kill me,” he said, starting to whimper. “I swear, honest, I didn’t take your shit. I didn’t.”

Andrea opened the clip in her left hand that was attached to the black cable and hooked it onto Billy’s right nipple.

Billy screamed as blood trickled down his chest.

She continued to brush his left nipple with the other clip while Gerhard spoke.

“Here’s how it is, Billy. You’re going to have to compensate us for our loss. Which works out to about what we’ve paid you so far.”

“Please please please,” he whispered, looking at the clip in Andrea’s hand. “I... I don’t have that money anymore. I’ve spent it. On stuff for the shop.”

“Is that our problem?” Gerhard asked Andrea.

“That is not our problem,” she replied.

“There you have it,” Gerhard said. “You pick up the next shipment on Monday. When we come for it, we can settle up.”

With that, Andrea dropped the second cable to the floor, leaving the first one still attached, and she and Gerhard exited the garage.

Billy, struggling to catch his breath, tears running down his cheeks, freed himself from the clamp and slowly dropped to the floor.

Seven

Richard

My second class back was the same group of kids I’d been with when I saw Mark LeDrew crossing the school parking lot. I knew it was unlikely we’d pick up where we left off, talking about The Road.

When I walked in, they were all standing beside their desks and saluting, big grins on their faces. Not all were in attendance, however. Some parents had not sent their kids back yet. I was guessing some never would, that they’d send their kids to different schools, maybe private ones. But you had to wonder whether any school—or mall or church or nightclub or grocery store—was immune when there were so many nutcases out there.

I’d spent so much time telling the police what had happened when I confronted LeDrew that I’d heard very little about what transpired in my classroom after I had run down the hall in a bid to block his entry. I should point out there’d been some whispering that I’d abandoned my kids at the worst possible time, and maybe there was something to that, but in the moment I did what I’d hoped would be in the interests of everyone. We’d never know how things might have played out if I’d stayed put.

Emma Katzenback, the girl with a phone welded to her palm, had done as I’d instructed and immediately called 911. Told the dispatcher a shooter was coming into the school, even though that had been an assumption on her part. An easy one to make, given that I had said “armed intruder.” The dispatcher kept her on the line, asking for more details, but not only did Emma not have any, she could barely hear because the other kids had started shoving desks toward the door to barricade it.

The shades had been drawn by Eldon and another student, and then everyone huddled below the window in case there was a shooter and bullets started coming through the glass.

Then they waited. Waited to hear shots. Waited to hear people screaming in the halls. Waited to hear sirens. Most of them started texting or phoning their parents at work or home. Emma hung up on the 911 dispatcher so that she could call her mother.