Streaks of Blue: How the Angels of Newtown Inspired One Girl to Save Her School Read online

  "Are you Adam's younger brother?" Nicole asked, putting a hand on his shoulder and instantly brightening the freshman's rough first day of high school.

  "Yeah ... unfortunately," he said before deciding to pick himself up in an attempt to regain some measure of pride in the company of the two older girls.

  "What's your name?" Nicole asked.

  "Brody," he said shyly.

  "I'm Nicole and this is Melanie," she introduced them. "Why would Adam punch you?"

  "Because I wanted to go home, and he wanted to stay and talk to Lee."

  Nicole shook her head and dropped her pack on the pavement, the name "Lee" sending chills up her spine.

  "I'll take you home then," she offered.

  "What?" Melanie gasped.

  "The buses already left," Nicole pointed out.

  "But he's a freshman, right?" Melanie said, turning toward the boy.

  "Yes," he replied with a look of shame. "Are you ...?"

  "Seniors, yes," Nicole confirmed, pointing toward her light green Nissan Altima. "My car is over there. Let's get you home, Brody."

  Brody's face lit up, while Melanie's flashed disbelief.

  "Do you really think that's a good idea, Nikki?" she asked. "I mean, you don't want anyone to get the wrong idea."

  "Actually, I think it's a great idea and maybe I'll tell you why sometime," Nicole replied, grabbing her pack and leading Brody away from Melanie.

  "Ohhhh-K?" Melanie responded, her expression stuck in the stunned position as she watched them get into the same car.

  When Brody took his seat beside Nicole, he smiled and couldn't believe his sudden change of fortune. Perhaps high school wasn't such a horrible place after all.

  "Where do you live, Brody?" Nicole asked, putting her keys into the ignition and starting the engine.

  Brody seemed a little embarrassed to answer, and Nicole had a feeling she knew why.

  "It's OK, Brody, just tell me so I can take you home. I try not to judge people like most people do," she said, auto-lowering her window in the warm, mid-afternoon sun.

  Without looking at her, he said, "Whispering Pines trailer park. It's a right off Stony Brook Lane."

  "Thank you for telling me," she said, driving out of the school parking lot and taking a right.

  "Thanks for the ride and for ...," Brody said, struggling to complete his sentence while sneaking a glance at the blue streaks in Nicole's hair as they danced around in the breeze.

  "No problem," she replied.

  "I like your car," he said.

  "Thanks, but it's not really mine. It's my mom's."

  After a few moments of awkward silence, Nicole turned on the stereo but kept the volume fairly low. She wondered what to ask this freshman stranger — the younger brother and spitting image of the kid who was probably plotting with Lee Harvey at that very moment how to kill as many Lakeview students as possible. When would they do it? Tomorrow? Friday? Next week? December 14th — the second anniversary of Newtown? Or was Nicole totally overreacting to that chilling dream she had beside the Lakes of the Clouds?

  "Do you know Adam and I went to Park Ridge Elementary together?" she finally asked the boy, who seemed delighted to resume some sort of conversation with her. "We both had Mrs. Whitney in second grade."

  "Really? Wow," he said, slightly less shy now and stealing more frequent glances at Nicole. "That's pretty randomly cool. I had Miss Cleary is second grade. ... I like your hair."

  Nicole smiled at the equally random change of subject.

  "Thanks. I try to mix it up once in a while. Lately, I've been in a blue phase," she said, fiddling with her hair and turning the car left.

  As Nicole drove through a poorer section of town with dilapidated duplexes and claustrophobic yards, she longed for the panoramic vistas she and Candace had savored just days ago. They seemed a world away now. As grand as it was, even the memory of the glittering and dusty Milky Way — tantalizingly close from her perfectly clear perch on Mount Washington's shoulder — tasted bittersweet. Some of the names of the 26 innocent victims who died at Newtown had been scrolling through her mind since Monday, when she looked back at online stories about the massacre. Try as she might to explain the dream away, she could not. She had slept under the stars and those stars spoke to her — one Star in particular.

  When Nicole drove past a street sign that said Benson Trail, she longed for the sign that read "Stardust." Where in God's name is "14th & Stardust?" she asked herself.

  "What does that even mean?" Candace's skeptical voice echoed through her thoughts.

  Nicole realized she needed to start asking questions before she, Candace and many of their classmates potentially joined the legion of silent stars up above. I'm not ready to die. I've barely begun to live.

  "What's wrong with Adam?" she forced herself to ask the young boy in her passenger seat. "Why does he hit you, Brody?"

  Brody hung his head and Nicole suddenly regretted bringing it up. She pulled the car over to the side of the road about a half mile before the entrance to the trailer park. She flipped on her hazard lights and turned to face Brody.

  "I know I don't know you and it's really none of my business, but I'm worried about Adam and what he's doing with Thomas ... Lee ... whatever his name is," she explained. "That kid is really bad news and I just don't want to see your brother go down a very, very bad path. Again, I don't mean to pry, but why does Adam hit you? Why is he so angry?"

  "My Dad, well, he hits us sometimes and I think that's part of it," Brody said softly.

  Nicole was surprised by the boy's honest and revealing answer. Perhaps no one else ever cared enough to ask him, she thought.

  "Do you have a mom?" she continued, with an even more empathetic tone.

  "No, she died when I was a baby," Brody replied, his voice a little thicker with emotion.

  "I'm so sorry," Nicole said.

  "She was a drug addict," Brody quickly volunteered. "That's what Adam told me."

  "What did your dad tell you about your mom?" she asked.

  Brody shook his head.

  "He doesn't like to talk about that," he said with a lump in his throat.

  "It's OK, Brody, don't go there," she said, her eyes meeting his and her hand on his shoulder. "I appreciate you telling me what you have already — it explains a lot. I would like to be your friend and Adam's friend. That's the bottom line. So now I will take you home."

  ...

  Adam couldn't believe his eyes as he wheeled his pickup truck around the bend and toward the trailer home he shared with his father Gary and brother Brody. Nicole whatever-her-name-was, Brody and his father were congregated around an unfamiliar light green car as he drove up and pulled into the dirt driveway to the right of the trailer.

  Adam felt three sets of eyeballs burning a hole right through his windshield and into his conscience — the voice in his jumbled head that he loved to say "fuck off" to and then laugh about it. People always gave him strange looks when he seemed to laugh for no reason, but he didn't mind. He really didn't care what people thought, except for his father. For one thing, Gary could still make him feel small just by the way he looked at him and talked to him. Second, Gary could still kick his ass. And third, Gary was addicted to alcohol and painkillers, making him unpredictable depending on dosage, hour of the day, day of the week and cash on hand. Adam's father had been collecting disability checks since injuring his back on a construction site three years ago, but he continued to do occasional home improvement jobs around town for customers who were willing to pay under the table for his lower-than-market rates.

  "What's going on?" Adam asked, playing dumb as he emerged from the truck.

  "You punched your brother in the gut on his first day of high school and left him to rot in the parking lot — that's what's going on, son," Gary said, his burly arms crossed in front of his chest and his angry brown eyes boring into Adam. Nicole stood to Gary's left and Brody to his right near the driver-side door of what must be
Nicole's car, Adam surmised.

  When Adam slowly drew closer to them, he detected the smell of booze on his father, but he could tell Gary was acting as sober and restrained as possible in the girl's presence.

  "Yeah, sorry about that, but I told him to wait a few seconds so I could talk to Lee and he whined like a baby," Adam said, looking mostly at his younger brother and avoiding the eyes of his father and Nicole. "Babies should stay in middle school where they belong."

  Nicole gasped and Gary erupted.

  "Oh shut the hell up," the 6-foot-3, 230-pound man shouted, pointing at Adam. "You're lucky there's a young lady here right now. I'll knock some sense into you later, son, you can be sure of that!"

  Adam kept his mouth shut and glanced at Nicole, who twirled her blue hair with increasing vigor, looking visibly uncomfortable with the situation she had driven herself into. "Still want to be friends with me now?" Adam quipped to his own brain while marveling over the fact that she had chauffeured his freshman brother to Whispering Pines trailer park.

  To his shock, Nicole then tossed him a temporary get-out-of-beating free card.

  "Mr. Upton, is it OK if I talk to Adam for a few minutes out here alone — maybe I can talk some sense into him first ... that is, if you don't mind," Nicole asked politely.

  Gary raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise and quickly smiled at her request.

  "Sure Nicole, give it a try," he said, waving a hand toward Adam. "Good luck. He's a real piece of work."

  Brody chuckled softly, making sure not to look at his brother, but Adam was busy checking out Nicole and wondering what planet she was from. No girl had ever voluntarily requested to talk with Adam alone in all of his 17 years.

  "Thanks for driving Brody home, Nicole. You're a real good Samaritan," Gary said, using words Adam had never heard his father utter before. "Come on, son, let's go inside and you can tell me about your fancy new teachers."

  "You're welcome, Mr. Upton," Nicole replied, watching Gary put a hand on Brody's shoulder.

  "Bye Nicole. Thanks again for the ride," Brody said, grinning and turning to head inside the trailer.

  "You're welcome, Brody," Nicole said before focusing her blue eyes on Adam. "Let's walk."

  "Here?" he asked.

  "Why not?"

  "OK," he said, joining her as she began strolling up the trailer park's paved, horseshoe-shaped paved drive. Trailers were packed tightly together on both sides of the road, but Adam pointed to a path leading between two trailers and off into some of the whispering pines hinted at in the name of the park. "Let's walk through there."

  Two young boys exited the path and ran past them, turning their heads in shock at the sight of Adam walking with a pretty girl. Their reaction was not lost on Nicole, who allowed herself a small grin.

  "I can't believe you're here — where we live. And you drove my brother home," Adam said as they ambled along the 5-foot-wide path, stepping over small rocks and tree roots. Glints of sunshine filtered through the pines and highlighted Nicole's fair skin and clean, striped hair. She smelled nice, too, Adam noticed.

  "How would you feel if your older brother punched you and left you with no ride home on your first day at a scary new school — wouldn't you want someone to help you?" she asked as they walked side-by-side but didn't look at each other.

  "I guess I never really looked at it like that," Adam conceded, rolling up his right sleeve to reveal part of a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his bicep.

  They came to a clearing and Nicole strolled ahead a few paces to pick a cluster of bright blue, bottle-shaped wildflowers from amid the tall grasses rustling in the breeze. The sun was still warm even though fall was approaching.

  Nicole walked back to face Adam and handed him the flowers. Adam smirked uncomfortably for a few seconds, but he finally grasped the blue bottle gentians with his fingers and twirled them around. He had to; he could see she would've waited for as long as it took until he accepted the flowers.

  "Why did you sit with me at lunch today? Why are you here with me now? Do you want to be my girlfriend or something?" Adam asked seriously.

  Nicole just gazed at him for a couple of seconds and gave no hint either way. Then she said, "I'm here because I want us to be friends."

  "Really? Even after what I did to my brother today ... and seeing where we live ... and smelling the booze on my father?" he asked, one eye squinting in the sun, the other fully on her.

  "Yes," Nicole replied firmly.

  "You must be crazier than me, then," he said, snorting. "We're nothing alike. Friends usually have something in common."

  "What do you like to do? Maybe we have more in common than you think, Adam," Nicole said as they left the clearing and resumed their stroll down the wooded path.

  "I like watching UFC and hockey, going hunting, and shooting guns mostly," he replied, making Nicole's heart skip a beat. "What do you like to do?"

  "I like reading, writing poetry, singing, camping and climbing mountains," she said.

  "That's kind of cool," he said. "At least we both like the outdoors."

  "Yeah, it's kind of hard not to like the outdoors when you live in a state as beautiful as New Hampshire," Nicole said. "We're so lucky to live in a free country and a great place like this, don't you think? I mean we could've been born into a place where people are blowing each other up or a place with nothing to eat or a place with no mountain views."

  Adam pondered her observations for a moment and stopped walking.

  "Yeah, I guess we are," he said as Nicole stopped and turned to face him. "You seem to notice stuff that most people don't."

  "All you have to do is use your brain, your senses and pay attention, I guess," she said, realizing this man-boy who could be feared and who could kill also was not a seemingly hopeless case like Thomas Lee Harvey. Adam Upton was still reachable, still moldable, she sensed. If she could get through to him at least, then maybe the whole terrifying plot would come unraveled.

  "What other smart stuff is in that brain of yours?" Adam asked, his look a little creepier than before — like he might actually enjoy probing the brain inside her skull.

  Nicole tried not to think about that and answered his question.

  "I just think we're all very lucky to be alive," she said, her blue eyes riveted on his, trying to make him understand the depth of her words. "Life is an incredible gift — not one that should be wasted, not one that should be used to destroy everyone else's gifts. Do you know what I mean, Adam?"

  They stared at each other for several awkward seconds. Adam then lifted his head to gaze at the peaks of the pines and the blue sky overhead. Nicole had no idea whether he knew what she was trying to talk about — what she was so desperate to ask him, but simply could not bring herself to say because they barely knew each other. This was not the moment to accuse him of planning a mass murder, even though she feared she was running out of time. She had to trust that he would say something, volunteer a clue, feel an ounce of guilt — something.

  Unless, of course, her dream had it all wrong. There was no plot. Adam Upton and Thomas Lee Harvey were just poor, angry, obnoxious teen boys. "Trailer trash train wreck," Valerie Moore had said. Her words clanged through Nicole's brain right now as she looked at Adam and wondered what he'd say.

  "Life is bullshit," he finally concluded, "but you're not, Nicole. I'll be your friend."

  Nicole smiled as Adam handed her back the blue flowers she had given him. That's when she saw Adam smile for real for the first time. She couldn't remember exactly what his smile was like back when they played together during recess in second grade at Park Ridge Elementary School, but she had a feeling it was something like this.

  "Call me Nikki then," she said.

  CHAPTER 5: THE POLICE

  On the second day of school, Nicole felt slightly better now that Adam had accepted her offer of friendship, but there was no way to know for sure whether her influence would make any difference. Sitting in Mr. Richardson's English lit/p
oetry class, she thought of Candace hiding in the girls’ bathroom as the clock above the blackboard read 12:12 p.m.

  Then Nicole caught Derek Schobell sneaking a glance at her from two desks to her right and she smiled back, delighted to be distracted by something positive.

  "I want to try a little different approach this year before we get into some hardcore poetry," Mr. Richardson said with a playful smirk, partially concealed by his bushy, brown mustache. The 40-something teacher with the brown hair, blue eyes, friendly face and folksy voice had a certain charm about him, Nicole observed. "I want us to look at song lyrics — musical poems, if you will — and examine how words are used to evoke certain emotions and reveal deeper meanings. I've emailed you PDFs of the lyrics to an entire album of songs from one of my favorite bands growing up, so check your iPads and call up the PDF on your screens now."

  The 27 students eagerly clicked away on their gadgets, and a few kids immediately recognized some of the song titles, blurting them out loud.

  "These are the lyrics to all of the songs on The Police's 'Synchronicity' album from 1983 — a time before CDs, MP3s and iTunes, but well after eight-track tapes," Mr. Richardson explained with a goofy grin. "I know they were popular way before you were born, but I take it some of you have heard of Sting and his band The Police, right?"

  "Yes," most students replied, including Nicole.

  "No," a few others chimed in, drawing a playful nod from their teacher.

  "Your homework will be to come up with at least one song from your generation, analyze the lyrics and tell me why the lyricist's words moved you personally," Mr. Richardson said as Nicole was relieved to have noticed the clock on the wall had passed safely to 12:15. "But right now let's look at these musical poems by The Police and see what strikes you."

  Nicole glanced at the various titles and recognized the song "Every Breath You Take" right away as a song she knew; most of the other titles weren't familiar to her. She was born in 1997, after all.

  As Mr. Richardson rambled on about the song "King of Pain" and the lyrics, "There's a little black spot on the sun today/That's my soul up there," Nicole scrolled down with her index finger and became deeply troubled by the title of the last song on the album, "Murder by Numbers." She read the lyrics and instantly felt haunted by them: