The next day everybody was a little bit less glued to their phone. They were discussing what The Blue Man had recently done. It was the first time a
social media
influencer
was able to
murder
somebody on camera and not go to prison for it. Well not yet. Who knew though. He might end up in prison yet. Although there was nothing but silence from the Department of Justice.
On the
Church of Twitter
the camps that had formed had become intensified. The dialogue had become even more toxic and now there were even open death threats.
Finally a judge from the Department of Justice released a
TikTok
saying they did not condone the acts of The Blue Man. "But you still fucking watched! What are you going to do about it! Words are empty!" the comments and replies said. When asked by another influencer known for interviewing serious people, "are you going to do something about this? Will The Blue Man answer for what he did?" The judge solemnly took a deep breath then shook their head. "No."
It was lunch time at the school. He was in the 2nd round of lunch, which made him always cranky. He wished he was in the 1st round. That was when he was truly hungry. But also he wished he was in the first round because all of his friends were in the 2nd round. He never thought he'd feel this way. Reach a stage in life where it was his friends that he wanted to get away from the most. Why did he now find comfort in strangers more? Like that girl who had been on the bus. Who had been strangled to death live on video.
His friends at the table were discussing it in satire, sharing
meme
s with each other. God damn had they already made memes about it for fuck's sake? What the hell was wrong with this world, he thought. He looked down at his sandwich. It was half eaten. Spicy Italian
panini
. It was now cold.
"Hey dumbass." it was his friend the jock Kyle Sardinsky. "Why aren't you talking about that bitch that the Blue Man killed? Are you one of those
social justice warriors
or something?"
"No man. Of course not. I jjust. I just have a stomach ache."
"Looks like it!" said the slim, nerdy friend to his right named Samuel Powers, but everybody called SP (es-pee). SP swooped his hand and grabbed the cold panini and shoved it into his mouth.
After lunch he went to the vending machine. He was still hungry. SP was the skinniest of them all, but ate the most. And what could he say when SP had taken the panini? It gave him the perfect excuse for Kyle Sardinsky's interrogation. "Are you a fucking social justice warrior or something?"
No... he wasn't. And if he was, what was it to that two faced asshole Kyle Sardinsky? At the vending machine he got a bag of
Gardetto's
. And then after he took it out of the slot, he decided to get also a bag of
Combos
. When he turned around there was a short, skinny girl who was kind of pretty staring at him. "You hungry? Didn't you just get off lunch?"
"Didn't they teach you manners? How do you know I'm not on
food stamps
?"
She shrugged. "Don't be so butthurt about it. What's your name again?"
"Your's is Sally right?" he turned the question back on her.
"People call me that."
"Well people don't call me anything."
"What about your parents. What do they call you?"
"Them?" he opened the bag of Gardetto's and leaned it over to her so that she could take one. She took a single rye chip. "They call me--"
That's when loud bangs sounded off, around the corner of the hallway where they stood. Then the sound of kids screaming and running. But he heard it in the opposite order. First the screaming and then the sounds of gun shots. It almost didn't sound like
gun shots
. Mostly it was the sounds of screaming and the image of his classmates running that made him accept that this was what was happening. A
school. shooting
. Fuck. He took the girl's hands, they held the bag of Gardetto's together. And they ran as fast as they could away from the sounds.
Later on the news came out that the shooting was done by a kid painted in blue. He was not the Blue Man, but was inspired by him. He had posted to TikTok that if The Blue Man was able to get away with murder, regular people should too.
But because he had only 32 followers, the shooting wasn't able to be prevented.