In Your Arms by Becky Andrews

Sam thought as the two made their way down to Mr. Sheppard’s office, a few rooms away from where Sam crouched. She began to put the pieces together, realizing that these were students she knew. Josh and Billy . She’d actually heard them planning this by their lockers that day, she just hadn’t known how far they were prepared to go.
    “Come on. Hurry up and help me look for them,” Josh told Billy. “And try not to disturb anything.”
    It didn’t take them long before they emerged with the pills. Josh took the pills along with the masks and put them up in his locker. Sam continued to hide by the water fountain, not sure what might happen if Josh or Billy found her.
    Just about that time, Chris Hendricks peered out of the teacher’s lounge. Chris had been the school nerd ever since elementary school. He always studied, always hung out at the library, and was the epitome of a social reject.
    Josh and Billy were putting the pills away, and Chris obviously thought he could make it out of the building while their backs were turned. However, as Chris slipped out of the lounge the door shut, creating an echoing noise throughout the corridor.
    Chris didn’t have enough time to get back in the lounge undetected. Billy spotted him just as he was trying to get back in the room.
    “Hold it, Hendricks,” Billy called. “Look, Josh! Look who’s here.”
    “Well, what do we have here?” Josh said as he advanced menacingly toward Chris. “Looks like Hendricks was trying to escape.”
    “What do we do?” Billy asked, panicked. “He knows. He’s seen us.”
    “What do you think, Chris? Should we let you go free, so you can tell the cops out there it was us, or should we just kill you now?” Josh asked casually, lifting his gun and pointing it at Chris’ head.
    “Jo—Josh,” Chris stammered. “I won’t tell, I promise. I—I won’t. Please don’t kill me.”
    “Well, I don’t know, you do make a tempting offer. You promise you wouldn’t tell anyone?” Josh asked mockingly.
    “Ye—ye—yeah.”
    “Billy, what do you think?”
    “We can’t seriously kill him, Josh. We’d go to jail.”
    “Billy, if we let him go, we’ll get sent to jail for sure, but if we don’t let him go, we have a scapegoat.”
    Sam didn’t want to know what Josh was planning. Never had she felt so helpless. Chris should have just stayed in the lounge. Why did he come out?
    Sirens sounded loudly outside the school, and Josh’s eyes grew dark with fear. He cast one wild look toward the front doors, then looked back at Chris and pulled the trigger.
    Chris fell to the floor, and Sam shut her eyes and clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Chris was a good kid, only seventeen. He was in some of Sam’s classes and well on his way to being the next Albert Einstein.
    She couldn’t believe Josh had shot him. If she made a single sound, she knew they’d see her, and then they’d kill her too.
    “Oh my god, Josh. What do we do? You killed him!” Billy was hysterical.
    “Calm down. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’ll plant the gun on him and pretend it was Chris who went all psycho, trying to kill us because of all the times we made fun of him. He was a loser. He knew it, and so did everyone else. We tell the cops that he was going to kill us but then realized that killing us wouldn’t change the problem so he shot himself.”
    “Josh, maybe we should just turn ourselves in. I mean we’ll be in more trouble if we cover this up.” Billy was obviously scared and Sam could tell that he’d never meant for things to go this far.
    “Billy, stop it! We are not going to turn ourselves in. And if you even think about doing it, then you’re going to end up just like Chris,” Josh threatened.
    Billy gulped and nodded, watching as Josh bent down and wrapped Chris’ lifeless hand around the gun. They were wearing gloves, and she wondered if they would get away with it.
    A moment later, they sprinted off