Collateral Damage by Taylor Simonds

Author:Taylor Simonds [Simonds, Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953539236
Publisher: The Parliament House

Chapter Twenty

The number of people outside handling the damage is minimal, which is the best indicator of how much time I was trapped under that staircase. A few police officers are still milling around, keeping people off the sidewalk, and a cluster of school janitors stands to the side, glaring at the citywide cleanup crew like they’re encroaching on their territory.

I make it to the edge of the staircase leading up to the school entrance and look down at it, then at my incompetent leg. Yeah, that’s not happening.

“Help,” I demand sullenly, hoping someone at the bottom will hear me. Fortunately, the emergence of a girl with ripped clothes, bloody limbs, and a general coating of dirt is apparently enough to grab some attention. At least ten heads swivel my direction.

“Someone was still in there!” somebody shouts, and then a bunch of people come stampeding at me all at once. I flinch away reflexively, but they all stop short inches away from me.

“How did you survive in there for so long?”

“Are you all right?”

“Stay calm, miss, everything is going to be okay.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine! Ow!” I cringe as one of the policemen picks me up to carry me down to the sidewalk, unintentionally jostling everything that hurts.

A microphone gets shoved in my face the second I’m set back down. A brunette reporter shadowed by a man whose entire top half is covered with camera equipment peppers me with, “Do you blame Saint Charles’s for their negligence in failing to ensure your safety? Will you be pressing charges against the school?”

“What? Uh, no, I—”

“As the records will state,” an older man whose voice I recognize from the morning school announcements cuts in angrily, “All students were in fact accounted for. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for this student’s absence that you will find has nothing to do with the school.”

“In that case, could the blame be placed with the LCPD, for not conducting a thorough enough sweep of the school after the tragedy?” the reporter pushes on eagerly, leaning across me to stick the microphone in a police officer’s face.

“Can we maybe do this later?” I ask as a cop snaps back at the reporter with something generic and defensive that doesn’t really answer her question. “Hello? Person probably dying of blood loss over here.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” says a forceful female voice, and I turn as I feel a light hand on my shoulder. A thin, dark-haired woman in scrubs flashes the kind of glare I would never want to be on the wrong side of toward the other people surrounding me. “This girl needs a hospital immediately. Your questioning will have to wait.”

“But we—”

“I said no,” the woman commands, and the reporter shuts up.

I let out a breath of relief so huge, it makes my ribs feel pinched. The woman in scrubs quickly puts a protective hand around my shoulder without touching my injured bone and steers me down the sidewalk toward the one ambulance still parked out front.

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