Next book on the YA shelf:
Next book on the shelf is After the First Death
It’s about three guys, three self-proclaimed freedom fighters – who hijack a schoolbus full of kids – Their plan is to hold it and make all of these political demands, get the United States to blah blah blah – I can’t remember. It is not said WHERE the guys are from. They reminisce about their “homeland” – but their names are indistinct, the homeland is never named, and besides – it’s not the point. The book is about senseless violence – senseless political violence. You wake up one morning, you go off to go to work, and the subway car you’re in explodes. End of your life. Done. You’re on the front lines of some invisible war – there’s war everywhere – even if it hasn’t been declared. Cormier’s book was quite prophetic, in many ways. Anyway – even though this is a book for kids, it’s UPSETTING, man. I mean, the first sentence is: “I keep thinking I have a tunnel in my chest.” (I have to just interject – hahaha I’m interrupting myself: Cormier is also a spectacular writer. Just top-notch.) Like – it’s truly terrifying. Also – there isn’t one narrator. The book switches back and forth. We are in the head of Miro, one of the hijackers (and his sections are third-person) … we are in the head of Kate, I think her name is – she’s driving the bus that morning – she’s young and beautiful – an amazing character – there’s another narrator, too – a first-person narrator, whose sections obviously take place AFTER all of the events of the book. So there’s an eerie retrospective feeling to the book, even as the events unfold. It’s truly horrible.
I mean – there are guns. They board the bus and hand out candy – candy laced with tranquilizers, so all the little kids pass out – no trouble for the moment. Then – very quickly – one of the kids dies. Bad reaction to the drug. He dies. Horrifying. They sit on the bus on a bridge and wait for their demands to be met. It’s stiflingly hot in the bus. The police scramble around outside, trying to come up with a plan. It’s like Beslan.
Meanwhile – if I recall correctly – Miro, who is the least secure of the hijackers – he seems kind of sensitive, actually, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing – he’s just following the lead of Artkin, who is much more ruthless and has more experience. But anyway: Miro, who has been living the life of a revolutionary, a totally male life – gets this weird helpless pathetic crush on Kate, the bus driver – he is completely distracted by her, he tries to make her more comfortable – all while pointing his gun at her, of course, he tells her not to worry, he opens up to her slightly … Then when we switch to Kate’s narration, we see that she senses that she has an “in” with Miro – that she can USE his crush on her to get her and the kids out of this predicament. So she does. Miro, a naive follower, is helpless in front of this pretty bus driver, who flirts with him, and tries to get him to let the kids go outside for a minute, pee in the bushes, stretch their legs, whatever. You love Kate- she’s smart, she’s suddenly put in the position that no bus driver ever wants to be in … but she steps up to the plate heroically. She’s a great character. She’s someone who lingers in the memory long after you finish the book.
The whole thing is just awful. The ending is even more awful. I couldn’t believe how it ended. But of course – if you look back at the first sentence, you can tell which way the wind will blow in this wrenching book. Also, the title!! Which, of course, is half of a quote from Dylan Thomas: “After the first death there is no other.”
But a truly great book. I highly recommend it. Cormier’s books are always really dark – but this one, to my taste, is his darkest.
It’s kind of like a Sweet Hereafter for teenagers. Not that there are terrorists in Sweet Hereafter – but how the tragedy of the schoolbus completely rips a town apart. No way to recover.
Here’s an excerpt. Proceed at your own risk. I found this book unbearable as a 13 year old – even as I couldn’t put it down, even as I LIVED that book – I found it unbearable – and it’s still unbearable now.
From After the First Death
Okay. She wasn’t panicky. She listened to the boy, telling herself to be sharp, alert, on her toes, cheerleading herself onward. She knew the boy’s name was Miro and the man was Artkin. She’d heard them exchanging names a few moments ago, and somehow the realization that they had names restored a sense of normality to the situation, reduced the degree of terror that had engulfed her during the bus ride to the bridge. Miro, Artkin was much better than the boy, the man, rendering them human. And yet what this boy named Miro was telling her now was inhuman, a horror story. The child was dead.
“Murdered,” she said, the word leaping to her lips, an alien word she had never uttered before in its real meaning.
“Not murdered, miss,” the boy said. “It was an accident. We were told the drugs were safe, but this boy died.”
“Does this mean the other kids are in danger, too?”
“No. We have checked them all – you can see for yourself – and they are normal. Perhaps this boy had a weak heart. Or he was allergic to the drugs.” He pronouced “allergic” as three separate words.
Kate turned to look at the children. They were still subdued, although some yawned and stirred restlessly in their seats.
“We want you to help us with the children,” the boy said. “Take care of them. See to their needs. This will convince you that we mean them no harm.”
“How long are we going to be here?” she asked. She nodded toward the man, who was going from seat to seat, touching the children, their foreheads, their cheeks, speaking to them gently and soothingly. “He said it would be all over when we reached the bridge.”
Miro thought fast. “We have had a chance of plans. Because of the death of the boy. We will be here a bit longer.”
“How long?” she asked, pressing on, sensing a sudden uncertainty in the boy.
He shrugged. “No one knows, really. A few hours.”
At that moment, a noise at the door claimed her attention. The big lumbering man who had forced open the door with a crowbar was back at the door again. He shattered the windows in the door with a rock.
“What’s he doing?” she asked.
The man groke the glass with a glowering intensity, looking neither at the girl nor at Miro.
“He is breaking the glass to put a lock on the door so that it cannot be opened with the handle there,” Miro said.
Her glance went automatically to the emergency door on the left halfway down the bus. The boy did not miss the direction her eyes had taken. He did not smile; he seemed incapable of smiling. But his eyes brightened. “The emergency door will be locked with a clamp,” he said. “And the windows – we will seal the windows shut. It is useless to think of escaping.”
She felt mildly claustrophobic and also transparent, as if the boy could see right into her mind. Turning away, she saw the man standing now at the seat where the dead boy lay. She wondered which child was dead and yet, in a way, she didn’t want to know. An anonymous death didn’t seem so terrible. She didn’t really know any of the children, anyway, although their faces were familiar from the few times she’d substituted for her uncle. She’d heard them call each other by name – Tommy, Karen, Monique. But she couldn’t place names with faces.
“May I see the child?” she asked. And realized she didn’t really want to see the child. Not a dead child. But she felt it was her responsibility to see him, to corroborate the fact of his death.
Miro paused.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Kate. Kate Forrester.”
“My name is Miro,” he said. He realized that this was perhaps the first time he had ever introduced himself to anyone. Usually, he was anonymous. Or Artkin would say, “The boy’s name is Miro” when they encountered strangers.
Kate pretended that she hadn’t learned his name earlier. “And your friend’s name?” she asked.
“Artkin,” he said.
The huge man outside the bus was now testing the lock. Kate didn’t care to know his name. His name would only establish his existence in her life, and he was so ugly and menacing that she didn’t want to acknowledge him at all. She glanced at the van and saw the black fellow at the wheel, staring into space, as if in a dream world of his own, not really here in the van, on the bridge.
“Please,” Kate said. “May I see the child?”
Miro shrugged. “We are going to be together for a while on this bus. You should call me Miro and I should call you Kate.” Miro found the words difficult to say, particularly to a girl and an American girl at that. But Artkin had told him to win her confidence.
The girl didn’t answer. Miro, flustered, turned away and then beckoned her to follow him. He led her to the center of the bus. “She wants to see him,” he told Artkin.
Kate drew a deep breath and looked down. The child lay still, as if asleep. His pallor had a bluish tint. Miro also looked, seeing the child from the girl’s viewpoint, wondering what she thought. Had she ever seen a dead person before? Probably not; not in her well-scrubbed American world. The girl shuddered slightly. “Come,” Miro said. She looked grateful as she turned away from the child. At least she had not fainted. Her flesh was pale, however, and this somehow made her blond hair more pronounced, more radiant. He realized that American boys would consider her beautiful.
Artkin accompanied them to the front of the bus.
“What happens now?” Kate asked. Would she ever forget that blue child on the bus seat?
“As far as your part is concerned, miss,” Artkin said, “it will consist mostly of waiting. For a few hours. We have sent messages and are waiting for a reply. Meanwhile, you will care for the children. They will be awakening soon. I want you to reassure them. Most of all, keep them in control, keep them quiet.”
Kate closed her eyes. The migraine reasserted itself, digging into her forehead. The blue face of the dead child floated in the darkness. She realized she didn’t even know his name. Escaping from that face, she opened her eyes to confront the two strangers before her. The full import of what was going on suddenly rushed into full and terrible comprehension.
“I know what you are,” she said. She did not recognize her voice: it was strident, off key, too loud in her ears, the voice of a stranger. “You’re holding us hostage and you’ve made demands. You’re going to hold us here until the demands are met. You’re –” she faltered, unable to say the word. Hijackers. Her mind was crowded with newspaper headlines and television newscasts of hijackings all over the world, gunfire and explosions, innocent persons killed, even children.
“This is no concern of yours,” Artkin said, his voice cold, the words snapping like whips. “The children are your concern. Nothing else. See to the children.”
She drew back as if he had struck her.
Turning to Miro, Artkin said: “It is time for the masks.”
She saw them take the masks out of their jackets. They pulled them over their heads. They had suddenly become grotesque, monstrous, figures escaped from her worst nightmares. And she saw her own doom in the masks.
She wet her pants so badly that the trickles down her thighs were like the caresses of moist and obscene fingers.
