Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

emember watching Mitchell and Duncan having a wicked scrap with hunting knives down by the
portables, all because Duncan brought a six-sided dice, not a twelve-sided dice, for one of those
role-playing games they were into. In social studies, Duncan brought in a solid-state panel from a TV set
and spent the class in the last row writing hex symbols all over it, but they were fake symbols he was
inventing, which looked a lot like the pictures of crop circles he'd photocopied for class the year before.
And they wondered why nobody paid them any attention? They were messes, and there was no way you
and they even breathed from the same atmosphere. So when they said you were connected to them? I
think not.
I was thinking about you and October 4. You've seen the TV stuff like everyone else, but you left the
scene and I don't think you ever came back, and maybe you don't know what it was like to have been
there.
I was in PE, and during the class jog up the mountain, my friend Mike and I cut out and went down
Queens Avenue to smoke. It was a beautiful day. Why waste it with a bunch of jocks? We got to talking
with these three girls from the grade below us who were headed to the Safeway deli down at Westview.
Then we heard some shots. Funny, I'd never heard a real gun fired in my life, but I knew exactly what it
was. So did Mike. We heard a siren, some more shots and - I bet you didn't know this, but that first
siren wasn't for massacre victims, it was for that guy you hammered down by the shop classes. Anyway,
the five of us decided to walk up the hill, and the shots continued and then theswat team, the Navyseals,
James Bond, and, I don't know, Charlie's Angels, all arrived at once. And all of the students pouring out
of the school? Their heads looked like Sugar Crisp being poured from a box. Everybody was running as
fast as they could, but they were all trying to look back, too, and so they were wiping out all over. By the
time we neared the front of the school, they were hauling out bodies and, well, no need to go into that.
We were moved up to the top of the hill, but we could tell exactly who had blood on them and who was
being treated. I saw you, and you were covered in blood, but you were walking, so I assumed you were
okay. And then I suddenly had a chill and I knew Cheryl was dead. I think ESP is BS, but that's what I
felt.
The rest of the day was a war zone. All of the parents began showing up from work and home, and
they'd leave their cars parked wherever with the engines still running and the doors open. Once family
members hooked up, the RCMP moved them up and onto the football field, and so the parking lot
became the place for an ever-shrinking number of parents without children. Mom and Dad showed up,
and around 3:30 we heard the news about Cheryl. Our brains were so fried by that point that it didn't
even make sense. Mrs. Wong from next door drove us to the hospital in Dad's car. There was no way he
could drive. Her two kids were in the caf but were unhurt. She'd have driven us to Antarctica if we'd
asked.
The hospital was another scene altogether - dead and mended bodies rolling around like shopping carts
in a supermarket. I don't even know why they or we stuck around. It was kind of pointless by then. I
mean, we knew Cheryl was lost even before we arrived. We were so messed up.
When it turned dark out, I was still in my gym clothes from PE class. Somebody, I don't remember who,
gave me a windbreaker, and it was as I was zipping it up that I heard the first rumor about YOU, there in
the hospital lobby. The rumors didn't even start small. Right from the outset YOU were the mastermind,
and when Mom and Dad found out, Mom went hysterical, and they had to give her a barbiturate, which
is like this elephant pill from the 1950s. Dad took something, too, and for the first week they were
floating on these things. Mom still is. I can always tell when it's time for her next dose, because her
breathing goes all choppy. They really were out of their minds that you were to blame. I tried sticking up
for you, and nearly got excommunicated from the family. And what did you ever do to those Alive!
oids? They were brutal about you.
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