White Space Season 1

then everyone else, screamed. Heller shot Tommy in the face and chaos erupted, Heller firing one shot after the other, with students scrambling in every direction. Jessica ran toward him, eyes and mouth hanging open. Heller’s blurred figure came into focus, aiming at Jessica.
    No!
    Milo swallowed, staring out the window as Beatrice made a left onto Beechmont instead of a right. They must be stopping at Jordy’s Foods for groceries. Would’ve been cool if she had asked if he minded.
    “We stopping for groceries?”
    Beatrice said nothing.
    Bitch.
    “Mind if we pick up some stuff to make nachos?,” he asked. “Fridge is a bit bare.”
    Beatrice kept staring at the road, ignoring Milo, so he decided to be an asshole. “Fridge went a little empty last night after you decided to start filling your purse with meat. Anything else you manage to get in there? I noticed the aged Romano went missing.”
    Still nothing.
    “That was pretty weird, Bea.”
    Silence.
    “I’m not spanking you in public. Hell, I’m not even spanking you. Just thought it was batshit to load up on cold cuts inside the Gucci. Dad probably wouldn’t like that, considering how much the handbag probably cost.”
    Milo figured that would piss her insides out, but Beatrice was still letting the cat run around with her tongue.
    Bitch and a half.
    Milo wished he could see her eyes, and wondered if they looked as crazy gone as they had the night before when she’d been staring at the TV, just before she decided to dump the deli in her handbag. But Milo couldn’t see anything. Her eyes were with the rest of her face, pointed straight ahead out the window.
    They were drawing closer to Jordy’s, and Milo was suddenly impatient. Why in the hell had she come to pick him up if she didn’t want to? It wasn’t like they were trimming minutes from the trip. By the time they left the grocery store, Milo could have already been home, and without the Chilly Willy from Beatrice.
    Without moving her eyes from the road, Beatrice reached over to the console and flipped on the stereo. Adam Levine started singing, but only for a moment. Other Mom flipped from iTunes to Sirius, then twisted the dial to the right, finally settling on a station broadcasting nothing but static.
    Milo could swear the corner of her mouth twitched in a smile, though her eyes never left the road. She pressed down on the gas, taking the car from 45 mph to more than 65 in seconds.
    What the hell?
    Milo shifted in his seat, his foot reaching out for an imaginary brake.
    He thought of Beatrice as a waxy plastic bitch to begin with, but she suddenly looked like she was made of plastic, like when she came home from Seattle after getting her Botox. Except when Beatrice got Botox, it looked like she was trying to smile but couldn’t. Now it looked like she wasn’t even trying.
    She swung a left, two blocks from Jordy’s, barely slowing enough to navigate the turn.
    “Beatrice,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady as his right hand gripped the strap above his window. “Are you going to say anything?”
    Blood pooled across the front of Jessica’s powder blue sweater. 11. Jessica stared up at him, scared and searching for any explanation. She said something, 11, but the screaming whistle in his ears swallowed her words.
    “Beatrice!”
    Nothing.
    “Beatrice!” Milo’s voice was laced with hysteria. “Say something. Anything. I just need to know you can hear me!”
    Still nothing. Thankfully, she slowed down to a normal pace as she pulled into the parking lot of Jordy’s.
    Two dozen cars were scattered across the rain spattered parking lot, as a few people shuffled in and out of the front of the store’s sliding glass double doors — a mom holding hands with her toddler girl; a fat man, Mr. Hollis, with one arm full of groceries and the other shoving a honeybun into his mouth on his way to his beat to shit Silverado, and a young couple in matching jeans and black leather jackets holding hands as they went through the doors.
    Beatrice should have been slowing even more, but wasn’t.
    She reached over and turned the static louder, then did the unthinkable by lowering her foot on the gas.
    Beatrice was silent. Milo screamed, the rest of his body paralyzed by fear as they rocketed forward.
    His screech, along with the radio’s static and the roar of the engine, was a symphony coalescing to a crescendo as Beatrice’s BMW crashed through the front of Jordy’s, parting glass and