Chapter 3: New Kids On The Block

Solomon sat with Felicity and Peppi in the lunchroom. His stomach ached, but the stiff bread of the cold-cut sub in front of him didn't seem appetizing anymore. This had happened almost every day this week. The mixture of anxiety and lack of answers filled his stomach with bile. To make it worse, Felicity stole his ranch chips when she thought he wasn't looking.

"Did you all want to sign Tracy's get well card?" Someone asked from behind. Mandy's expression concealed just the slightest bit of disdain for the people she was talking to. With her dark hair, fierce eyes, and perfect makeup, she was the prototypical homecoming queen. She also happened to be Junior Cotillion Director at the Country Club, the Captain of the Cheerleading squad, and the most popular person in history.

"I already did, Mandy," Felicity said with her best smile. Why she played Mandy's games was anybody's guess. Then again, most of the school seemed to.

"What about you, Poopy. Sorry, Peppi," she said with a flit of her long eyelashes. Peppi, for her part, pretended not to hear by adjusting her earbud. "Whatever, nobody's forcing you to care about your fellow classmates," she chided as she marched off to another table.

Solomon was amazed that these efforts had filled the oversize 'card' (which was actually the size of a poster), with well meaning sentiments and signatures of most of the student body. Tracy was actually nice, though, even if she was friends with Pat and the rest of the meat-heads on the football team.

The football team wandered into the lunchroom following Patrick like ducklings. Things had been quiet the last few days since the attack. Patrick hadn't messed with Solomon at all. In fact in a few cases Solomon could have sworn there was a fleeting air of comradery between the two of them.

Despite everything else going on in the town, it was nice to worry about that slightly less.

The police so far didn't have any answers. The story in the papers was that the explosions had been the work of a new gang in town. They were a mixture of robberies and some retaliation against the police department for cracking down on their operations. Nobody had any specifics on the gang, its size, or what cities it had spread from, but it was the only answer the community had at the moment.

None of the police would talk about the strange note that he had found on his mother's computer screen. Apparently she had left work early the day of the blast and wasn't even at the building at the time of the attack. The police hadn't told him that immediately of course. Perhaps their way of punishing him for going behind the police tape, they let him worry about it for six hours while they pretended like they were going to arrest him.

He had tried to snag a photo of the writing off her monitor when the police weren't looking, but the camera hadn't focused correctly or something. There was no indication why his mother, a Judge, would have been targeted in a crime spree like this. Her court saw mostly family and divorce cases. Crime was basically another department. Sure a few bitter husbands might come after a judge or make threats, but retaliation on this scale didn't make any sense.

Solomon zoomed in to the photo he had of the note again. It was almost readable. He could just barely remember the symbol - some series of triangles in a zigzag pattern. His thinking was interrupted by the entrance of a new group in the cafeteria. Lunch 'hour' only lasted 45 min so you didn't want to just show up late. There was only fifteen minutes left when six new students (at least six he didn't recognize), entered the cafeteria. All wearing black tracksuits.

Immediately Solomon made eye contact with Conlan, two tables over, who elbowed Patrick in the ribs. Only the football team and he seemed to recognize the outfits.

"Fucking hell, It's them!" Solomon said in astonishment, under his breath.

He had told his two best friends all the gory details of the attack, as he had remembered it. Peppi had told him it was just the shock from the blast and that they had all hallucinated it.

"Mass hallucinations are more likely to occur following traumatic events, it's a way of rationalizing chaotic circumstances," Peppi sounded like she was lecturing when she said it just two days before. "Just relax. Your fear about your mother being involved and the explosion mixed with random things you saw at the florist shop. Your mind probably embellished this sequence of events to make sense of it all. It's part of the whole PTSD thing."

Peppi's words echoed in his head as the "hallucinations" made their way to the front of the cafeteria.

"May we have your attention please?" the tallest of the gang said, with his arm around a shorter student, a freshman perhaps. They all wore the same outfits and had shaved heads. Black tracksuits. Black boots. It had to be the same ones they chased before. He looked for the one with glowing red eyes, but didn't see him. Could drugs make your eyes glow red? They certainly looked unhealthy.

"Yo what's up! My man here, Aaron, is new to school, and we wanted to show him that we can have some fun in this town." The leader, that Sol thought looked familiar, set down a duffel bag and everyone started to panic. Solomon could feel his heart begin to pound as they started looking for the doors. Where was the school resource officer? A hush descended on the room as everyone decided what to do.