White Space Season 1

shoot me? What did I ever do to him?
    Oh God, I don’t want to die.
    “Please, don’t kill me,” Milo cried, tears streaming down his face. “I’m friends with Alex. You know me!”
    Hearing his son’s name seemed to waken something in Mr. Heller’s eyes. He stared at Milo as tears dripped down his face. He looked back at the whiteboard and pointed at the word, “eleven” with the gun.
    What does that mean? What the hell is eleven?
    Mr. Heller then raised the pistol, but not at Milo.
    Instead, Mr. Heller parted his lips and shoved the gun into his open mouth.
    Oh God, no!
    Mr. Heller pulled the trigger and Milo screamed.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 2 — Alex Heller

    Wednesday…
    September 6
    noon

    Just like that. In a flash. Everything was gone.
    Before he killed himself, Alex’s father shot and killed five of his students, including Jessica. He shot Manny and put him in a coma. And seemingly by accident, shot and killed a teacher, Sarah Hughes, in the next classroom.
    And all Alex had were questions, and a bottomless well of grief.
    No matter how many different ways he tried to pull sense from the senseless, Alex could not make sense of the tragedy. This was the kind of thing you saw on TV, that happened to other people, not to his friends — not to his family.
    Everything felt like a bad dream where he hoped to wake up any minute and find things normal again. Except he wasn’t waking up. Nobody was. This nightmare was real and had shaken the entire island to its core.
    Neither Milo nor Katie would return his calls.
    He wasn’t sure if it was because they didn’t want to talk to him, or if their parents had forbidden them to talk to the son of the madman.
    Alex sat in his bedroom, staring blankly at the television as it broadcast collages of the funerals from earlier, photos of the victims, photos of his father, reporters standing outside the school, a flock outside the funeral home, and even the island’s most famous celeb, Jon Conway, though Alex wasn’t sure what the hell he had to do with this. The only thing Alex was grateful for was that the reporters were finally gone from the front of his house.
    The TV cut to a reporter in front of the island’s police station, where Alex’s mom was now, answering yet more questions she didn’t have answers to. Probably variations of the same questions they’d asked him.

    “Do you know why your father did this?”
    “How long has your dad owned a gun?”
    “Did he ever talk about any of his victims?”
    “Has he ever hit you?”
    “Has he ever hit your mother or sister?”

    Alex’s answer was the same for all the questions. “No.”
    Alex was as shocked as anyone else, if not more so.
    Since he didn’t have answers, the police ransacked their house, seizing every computer, flash drive, and journal his father had kept over the years. Alex wondered if they’d yet found some answer in the “evidence” they took, and maybe that was why his mom was down at the police station.
    He watched as the TV showed a blonde reporter talking. He didn’t bother turning the volume up. Not like they’d said anything new since Friday, just speculation heaped on top of sensationalism. After the reporter said her piece, the TV flashed to a familiar video that Alex had almost forgotten about, an interview with Alex’s dad after he’d won a Washington State Teacher of the Year award three years ago, a prestigious honor for the island and the school, in particular.
    Alex turned the volume up to hear his father discussing the importance of connecting with students and how he used stories to teach. As his father spoke through the TV, Alex felt a sudden hollow in his stomach, realizing that confiscated computers meant confiscated photos of his father. This video on the news might be the only chance he’d get to hear his father’s voice again. Alex grabbed his TV remote and hit record on the DVR to record the segment.
    His father looked so happy in the video.
    So normal.
    So unlike the man who opened fire in his classroom, who killed his own students. It made no sense. Alex’s father was a devoted man, who often spent his own time and money to help teach his students, above and beyond the job. He loved teaching and he loved his students. His dad was practically a genius. Surely, he could have struck it rich had he done anything other than teach.
    For his father to do something like this, there had to be something wrong.
    If that were the case, the next question was,