Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [32]
And so many children were missing that it bordered on an epidemic. About a dozen boys had disappeared since I arrived in July—only boys. Their photos were flashed on the Internet and updates were posted on special Web sites devoted to them, their solemn faces staring out at you, their shadows following you everywhere. I read about another missing Boy Scout—the third in the last year. This boy, too, was Robby’s age, and his witless, angelic face now graced the front page of the newspaper. But none of these children had been found. No bodies discovered in the ravine or in the concrete drainpipe; no remains in the dry creek bed or in the suspicious duffel bag tossed off the turnpike; nothing lying naked and defiled in the woods. These boys had vanished without a trace, and there were no hints that any of them was ever coming back. Investigators were on “frantic searches.” Parents of the missing boys were urged to appear on CNN and humanize their child in case the abductors were watching. Except for increasing ratings, these news conferences accomplished nothing beyond serving as a reminder of “the incidental malice of the universe” (courtesy of Time). This publicity was supposed to mobilize volunteers but people were giving up hope—so many boys were missing, people had simply become alienated and longed for a lesser horror to take this one’s place. There were candlelight vigils where families linked hands and lowered their heads, grief-stricken and praying, though to me they more often resembled participants in a séance. Various organizations proposed plaques to memorialize the lost. Students at Buckley (the private school Robby and Sarah attended) were encouraged to e-mail condolences to the bereaved parents. We were supposed to rehearse our children on the usual tired litany: don’t talk to strangers, ignore the well-dressed soft-spoken man looking for help to find his puppy; “Yell and Tell” and “Rehearse a Route” and “Avoid the Clown.” Distrust everybody was the message. Everywhere people heard the sound of children weeping. Silly Putty was used in school classes for squeezing out tension. We were advised to always keep recent photographs of our children on hand.
And now the missing Boy Scout inevitably provoked the flicker of worry I experienced every morning before Robby and Sarah went off to school, especially if the hangover was bad or I’d had too much coffee. This wide-awake nightmare lasted no more than thirty seconds, a rapid montage that nonetheless required a Klonopin: a rampage at the school, “I’m so scared” being whispered over the cell phone, what sounds like firecrackers popping off in the background, the ricocheting bullet that hurls the second-grader to the floor, the random firing in the library, the blood sprayed over an unfinished exam, the red pools of it forming on the linoleum, the desk spattered with viscera, a wounded teacher ushering dazed children out of the cafeteria, the custodian shot in the back, the girl murmuring “I think I’ve been hit” before she faints, the CNN vans arriving, the stuttering sheriff at the emergency press conference, the bulletins flashing on TV screens, the “concerned” anchorman offering updates, the helicopters hovering, the final moments when the gunman places the Magnum in his mouth, the overcrowded hospital emergency rooms and the gymnasiums transformed into makeshift morgues, the yellow crime tape ribboned around an entire playground—and then, in the aftermath: the .22 rifle missing from the stepfather’s cabinet, the journal recounting the boy’s rejection and despair, a boy who took the teasing hard, the boy who had nothing to lose, the Elavil that didn’t take hold or the bipolar disorder not detected, the book on witchcraft found beneath the bed, the X carved into his chest and the attempted suicide the month before, the broken hand from punching a wall, the nights lying in bed counting to a thousand, the pet rabbit found later that afternoon hanged from a hook in a small closet—and, finally,