Chapter 8: Si Vis Pacem

26 March 2014 – Devens Regional High School, Shirley, Massachusetts

The whispers were the worst.

Sabrina could ignore the looks from the other students and some of the staff, but many of the whispered comments – which weren’t really whispered – were hurtful. Her friends rallied around her and tried to insulate her from the worst of it, but they weren’t all in the same classes as she was. Those in her classes were outnumbered and couldn’t stop all the talk.

She tried to keep her spirits up by remembering when the first reporter got brave enough to knock on her grandparents’ front door. Her father answered, and the reporter immediately asked him for an interview.

“You’re trespassing on private property,” he told the woman who shoved a microphone under his nose as soon as the door opened. “I know for a fact there’s a ‘NO TRESPASSING’ sign at the end of this driveway. Four men ignored the signs around the property next door the other night, too. I’m sure your sources have told you how that worked out for them.”

Her father then suggested the woman look up the full text and translation of Voltaire’s phrase ’pour encourager les autres.’ The woman stared at her father, not understanding.

”’Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres,’” her father recited in French.

Another blank stare. He translated for the woman.

”’In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time so to encourage the others.’”

A pointed glare preceded the door rattling in its frame when he slammed it shut. Sabrina had to admit that her father’s implied punishment for trespassing had been funny.

Alex and Ryan returned to Lancaster not long after their father chased the reporter away. Both sat wide-eyed as they heard Sabrina and their parents discuss Saturday night’s events. They recognized their house in the news coverage the night before, but hearing their sister recount those events was something else.

Before Ryan walked out of the living room, he gave Sabrina a look like he didn’t know who or what she was. Her eyes filled with tears as the brother she’d once been close to walked away. Alex stepped up to her and wrapped his little sister in a crushing hug.

“He’s a butthead, ignore him,” he whispered. “You’re my little sister, and I love you no matter what. Though I’m going to be extra careful not to ever piss you off from now on.”

Sabrina squeezed him back. Mr. Lanier checked in with her mid-week to make sure she was doing okay. That was another high point on her emotional rollercoaster, but of course, as soon as he walked away, Cassie Provencher started up her shit again.

“She needs to be expelled!” Sabrina heard the girl sermonize to a group of her hangers-on. “There isn’t a place at this school for someone capable of doing that!”

Sabrina was fed up. Before Ruby and Naomi could stop her, Sabrina shoved her way past her friends and strode across the hall. She stood right behind Cassie, glaring at the back of her neck.

“Got something to say to me, Provencher?” she asked, shaking off her friends’ hands when they tried to pull her away.

Cassie had to retreat a step when she turned around, or she would have been nose-to-nose with her angry classmate. She gulped but said nothing.

“I notice you’re not so brave when someone calls you on your bullshit. That only confirms what I thought about you, and that is you’re nothing but a common bully. So, what is it exactly I need to be expelled for?” The other girl just blinked at her. “While you’re busy soiling your panties because I’m in your face, Cassie, allow me to boil Saturday’s excitement down for you and your pack of hyenas: it happened because I said ‘no.’

“Do you understand what I just said? I said ‘no,’ and those assholes were going to do it anyway. We tell the meatheads around here that ‘no’ means ‘no,’ but apparently, you feel that’s only true if the person saying it is someone you like. Here’s a news flash for you: I don’t give a shit if you don’t like me. I don’t give a shit if your friends don’t like me. What I do give a shit about is being taken against my will like some peasant girl from the Middle Ages!”

“Y-y-you...” Cassie stammered, “y-you killed those men!”

“With extreme prejudice, Cassie! And that’s a choice I’d make again!”

Sabrina saw Cassie’s bunch turn pale. Sabrina gave the group her best version of a killer’s stare before someone whispered in her ear.

“Come on, Badass! They’re not worth it.”

Sabrina watched the other girls run away. She waited until they were out of sight before turning back to her friends. The adrenaline wore off, leaving her feeling drained. She accepted a long hug from Tommy before the others hugged her, too. Sabrina gave Erica an apologetic smile as she bent down to hug her.

“He’s mine,” Erica whispered. Sabrina tried to pull back, startled. “Relax, girl, I’m joking! Man, you’re wound too tight.” Erica looked up at Sabrina. “Okay, everyone, kid gloves around Sabrina for a bit!”

“Sorry, Erica, I’m still a little keyed up from this weekend.”

“Ya think?”

“You want to be careful about saying stuff like that to people like Cassie, Sabrina,” Tommy warned. “She’ll twist your words around until people think those men were peaceful Jehovah’s Witnesses spreading the Good Word and you just snapped.”

“True dat,” Shawn chimed in. “Bitch be crazy, and she’s not afraid to destroy someone if she sets her mind to it.”

“Shawn?” Sabrina asked.

“She’s another one Ruby and I went to school with in Ayer. I watched Cassie tear one of her former friends apart because the girl had developed a conscience one day. That girl was an Army brat, so she transferred out before we started high school.”

“There isn’t enough of a hockey season left to distract us from this kind of drama, either,” Sabrina said.

“Nope.”

Sabrina looked at the gaping holes in the house after the contractors finished tearing out the damage from the home invasion. Sections of the wall were missing from the kitchen and along the staircases leading upstairs and down to the basement. At a maximum distance of about three yards – and about two in the kitchen – the buckshot hadn’t spread much, and it punched through the bad guys she shot. The sheetrock in both locations hadn’t fared well, either.

The rugs on both staircases had to be ripped out, as had sections of the floors where blood had pooled before the bodies were removed. Blood soaked through the seams of the hardwood and into the subfloor. Her parents opted to rip out the hall and office floors rather than replace the blood-soaked sections.

Blood splatter from her shots in the kitchen – the chest shot to one intruder and the neck shot to the other – had covered the wall next to the basement stairs and another wall inside the stairwell. The .33-caliber pellets had torn those up, too. The shots fired in the front hall required repair work up into the second-floor hall as well.

The next day, sheetrock patches, which were taped and mudded but unsanded and unpainted, covered those gaping holes. Keiko would choose new paint colors for the walls despite her initial request to restore the house to exactly how it had appeared before. Plywood patches filled the holes in the subfloors, making it safer to walk around.

Wandering down into the basement, Sabrina saw that the framing and sheetrock around the huge bank of windows in the family room had been removed. Thick, steel-framed polycarbonate sheets were screwed to the framing just behind the original glass panels. That would prevent someone from using the windows as an easy entry into the house. The door out to the backyard was replaced with a vinyl-clad, solid-steel door braced with two locking bars on the inside. No one could break through that entry without explosives.

Her father had also upgraded the security system. The equipment that once occupied a small corner of the mechanical room was gone, replaced by an upgraded system housed in a thick steel cabinet, with components labeled. The cabling entered the cabinet through a steel conduit.

The cabinet had even been spray-painted to match the color of the wall next to it, helping it blend in. Sabrina noticed one component’s label read ‘backup cellular communications link.’ A matching painted-steel cover for the cabinet sat off to the side, waiting to be screwed into place.

Back upstairs, her dad showed her the new security app on a tablet. A version would also be downloaded onto each of the family’s phones. The app requires the user to enter a PIN or provide facial verification to open it. It was light-years ahead of what they’d used before. All the cameras had been upgraded to enhance low-light and infrared imaging. The panic alarm button was much larger and more visible. A six-foot-tall faux wrought iron fence now ringed the property line and was the only outward change to the house.

“Sabrina, would you and your mother step in here after you close up?” Doug Daoust asked.

The Shockers were knocked out of the first round of the playoffs two weeks ago, so that night’s class had been Sabrina’s first back at the dojo since October.

“Hai, Sensei.”

The two women walked into his office five minutes later, and Doug waved them to seats. He sighed and addressed Keiko.