Red Heart Tattoo
YOU’LL WANT TO READ THESE INSPIRING TITLES BY
Lurlene McDaniel
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NGELS IN
P
INK
Kathleen’s Story • Raina’s Story • Holly’s Story
O
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L
AST
W
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OVELS
Mourning Song • A Time to Die • Mother, Help Me Live
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Someone Dies, Someone Lives • Sixteen and Dying • Let Him Live
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The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True
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Please Don’t Die • She Died Too Young • All the Days of Her Life
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A Season for Goodbye • Reach for Tomorrow
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Keep Me in Your Heart: Three Novels
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True Love: Three Novels
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The End of Forever • Always and Forever • The Angels Trilogy
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As Long As We Both Shall Live • Journey of Hope
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One Last Wish: Three Novels
O
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ICTION
Reaching Through Time • Breathless
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Hit and Run • Prey • Briana’s Gift • Letting Go of Lisa • The Time Capsule
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Garden of Angels • A Rose for Melinda • Telling Christina Goodbye
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How Do I Love Thee: Three Stories • To Live Again
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Angel of Mercy • Angel of Hope
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Starry, Starry Night: Three Holiday Stories • The Girl Death Left Behind
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Angels Watching Over Me • Lifted Up by Angels
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For Better, for Worse, Forever • Until Angels Close My Eyes
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Till Death Do Us Part • I’ll Be Seeing You
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Saving Jessica • Don’t Die, My Love • Too Young to Die
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Goodbye Doesn’t Mean Forever
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Somewhere Between Life and Death • Time to Let Go
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Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep • When Happily Ever After Ends
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Baby Alicia Is Dying
From every ending comes a new beginning….
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by Lurlene McDaniel
Jacket art © by Plush Studios/Getty Images
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDaniel, Lurlene.
The red heart tattoo / Lurlene McDaniel. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Tells the story of a school bombing, portraying the relationships and events leading up to the incident as well as its repercussions.
eISBN: 978-0-307-97411-2
[1. School violence—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M4784172 Red 2012 [Fic]—dc22 2011016584
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Peg and Mary Lou
A
T
7:35
A.M.
, the day before Thanksgiving break was to begin, when Edison middle and high school students were congregating in the commons area before the day’s classes commenced, the bomb detonated.
The explosion sent most of a cantilevered staircase crashing to the floor and smashed the short decorative wall surrounding the staircase where students sat, segregated by class status. The best and most visible places along the wall belonged to the seniors. Farther down sat the juniors, then the sophomores, until the wall was packed with the school’s pecking order royalty.
The explosion happened in a nanosecond, bursting first with a brilliant flash of white, followed by a deafening roar that shook the atrium commons. Clouds of gray debris that blocked out the morning colors from the shattered skylight were flung into the air.
When the blast was over, nothing that existed before would ever be the same again for those who attended Edison.
On that morning nine people died instantly.
Fifteen were critically injured.
Twenty-two suffered less severe injuries.
And one was blinded.
M
organ Frierson looked across the football field, at stands filled with Edison students, all stomping and cheering for the start of the pep rally. A frenzied exhibition of school spirit would guarantee that Edison’s principal and staff would authorize another such rally. And who didn’t want to cut out of last period thirty minutes early? Morgan knew some kids were already melting away into the Michigan afternoon, ditching school and the rally, but most were hanging around in the stands.
She stood at the mouth of the short tunnel leading from the locker room, the football team stamping behind her, waiting for Principal Simmons to finish his comments on the makeshift stage in the middle of the field. The marching band had already played and gone through a few formations, and now its members were standing at the foot of the stage, sweating in the hot sun. Morgan
fidgeted impatiently, and when she felt the brush of lips on the back of her neck, she jumped a foot.
“Whoa, babe! It’s a kiss, not a knife,” she heard her boyfriend, Trent Caparella, say.
Behind them, a few of the players made smacking sounds and off-color remarks.
Trent turned, saying good-naturedly, “Knock it off, dirtbags.”
Morgan spun to face Trent. “You startled me.”
Trent was a soccer player, but during football season Coach used Trent’s kicking leg to add necessary extra points and field goals to the scoreboard. “Nervous, Madam President?”
They were seniors and Morgan had been elected student council president. Today was her first public speech to the student body. “Nervous? How could I be? I just love talking to a thousand kids who are going to ignore me.”
“Never happen. When they see you coming, they’ll bow.”
“Very funny.” Morgan chewed her bottom lip, heard her name from the principal’s mike. She took a deep breath. “Here I go.” She jogged onto the field, looking at the ground so she wouldn’t trip. Catcalls and cheers erupted from the stands. She glanced up to see her best friend, Kelli, and a whole squad of cheerleaders waving at her. The front rows of the stands were packed with her fellow seniors, benches of honor at every pep rally, off-limits to the other kids.
Morgan trotted up the platform stairs, her hair
bobbing on her shoulders, and went to the mike. “Seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshmen!” The bleachers yipped with whistles and stomping. Each class attempted to outscreech the others. Morgan quickly decided to dump her prepared remarks about school spirit. “Here they are!” she shouted. “Your Fighting Eagles!”
The football team, dressed in bright blue-and-white uniforms, jogged out onto the field, and the students did their cheering duty, led by the cheerleading squad. Morgan kept her eyes on Trent. He was gorgeous: tall, blond, broad-shouldered, with bulging leg muscles from years of playing soccer. She felt so lucky to be his girl. Ever since their freshman year, when they’d first set eyes on each other, they’d been a couple—“the Jock and the Princess, a Disney movie in living color.” That was what Kelli had always said about them. Morgan couldn’t deny she agreed with her friend’s analysis. She and Trent
were
a perfect couple; everyone said so. He was one of the reasons she’d been elected student council president, and they the Most Popular Twosome for the yearbook. But she’d earned Most Likely to Succeed and become a Merit Scholar on her own. No denying she was driven to earn high grades and college scholarships. Trent had already been offered athletic scholarships from top universities. They would be going their separate ways after graduation. That was hard for Morgan—knowing that this was their last year together before their lives changed forever.