The Forever Year

Riverside High School is due back in session on the twenty-second of April. It’s a Monday and the sky drizzles and despite the rumors, Riverside High isn’t reopening until the next school year. It’s a Monday and the sky pours and five teenagers are sitting on a bright-yellow piss-yellow bus on their way to the makeshift school. It’s early; earlier than they’re used to waking for school and it’s obvious that they haven’t slept very well with bruise-like bags beneath their eyes and yawns forcing through their throats and mouths on occasion. They sit in silence, strange, strange silence without even the twins sharing small conversation as their hands cling together and they stare out the window. Across from them, Graham looks on worriedly, his hands shoved into the front pocket of his sweatshirt and one leg propped on the seat. Gavin and K.C. share the seat behind the twins and look onto the empty seat across from them, each imagining Alec sitting there, scrawling away and marking up a notebook with graphite or attempting to bring the spirits up and relieve the tension.

The school day only pulls the strings within each student more taunt. K.C. has to excuse herself from first period to cry in the bathroom. She’s not the only one; there’s at least one other girl in the bathroom, unable to focus in class, and there’s a teacher splashing cold water on her face. Classes are the least of their worries and as lunch draws ever nearer, the tension is brought to an effervescent boil. The cafeteria is mostly empty, barren with the exception a few lingering kids who are getting lunch before fleeing, the fear dense in their stomachs and their ears perked at attention, waiting for the broom crack ring of gunfire. A handful of lacrosse players tag along with Gavin as he walks to where Graham and K.C. have set up camp. The twins are being peculiar; Gavin eyes them, sitting to the side, whispering to each other and sitting too close to each other and he almost calls them over, but as he opens his mouth to shout to them, Graham gives a curt, yet minute, shake of his head and Gavin knows not to act. Graham knows them, knows how they operate, better than most; Gavin trusts his judgment.

“They’re weird.”

“No, they’re trying to comfort each other.” Graham’s voice drops to a murmur so the lacrosse players and K.C. can’t hear (they’re too busy unpacking food and sitting in the grass warmed by the freed sun, the thick rain clouds fading.) “They’re both scared, Gav. Let them be.”

“I’m just saying—” he sighs, nods, and sits, but continues to take glances in their direction.

K.C. approaches and comments on how he shaved his head. He makes a sarcastic rebuttal that causes tears to string her doe eyes and she leaves him for the lacrosse players, picking at her food and only half-listening to their conversation.

Graham sighs, his vestigial patience drawn thinner by Gavin’s brusque tone and general harshness towards others (K.C. and her fragility especially), before he abandons Gavin and makes a hesitant trod in the direction of Tenor and Cadence. He catches Cadence’s words, mid-whisper: “Songbird, I’m—”

They both quiet with Graham’s approach, looking up at him with their identical eyes and he almost sighs; times like these, he’s an intruder, not welcome into their world and conversation. Swallowing the frustration down like bile, he offers a small, careful, but pleasant smile.

“Are you two going to join us or should we listen to Ivan go on about his ‘rad cool moves’ without you?” Graham’s tone is light, playful, and attempts to draw them in with the joke.

The twins share a glance and Tenor shrugs. They are acting weird and Graham can’t remember a time that they have acted like this and it puts him off, taking away his smile and replacing it first with a line of indifference and then with a frown. He feels like an intruder again and he begins to back off, leaving them to their own company and returning to the group. K.C. is listening to Ivan prattle on about some skateboard tricks he’d been working on (with half of the story gaining commentary from his brother, Sheldon, and Josh, the third lacrosse player) but otherwise his words fall upon deaf ears. Gavin is too preoccupied with peeling an orange and Graham continues to gaze over towards the twins in vague concern.

By the time lunch is over, the build of anxiety has faded and the schedule feels rather normal. Though more crowded, the classes are basically the same as they’d been at Riverside and it’s easy to forget that they’re at a completely different school with different students surrounding them. That is, until the questions start. A lanky boy with bad acne asks Gavin if he knew the shooters and if the shooting had really been that scary. A girl in Graham’s art class notices the thick scar on his arm and asks if it was from the shooting. The twins are skipping their classes; somehow it’d spread like wildfire that Tenor had been shot and he wasted grabbed Cadence from her class, escaping from the wave of questions from the non-Riverside students. K.C. is relatively unbothered by any prying voices and eyes; she sits in the back of her classes, quietly and diligently working, never raising her hand or bringing attention to herself. Most don’t notice she’s there or don’t realize that she’s one of the students from Riverside High School.

Overall, the day sucks and the bus ride from the other school back to their neighborhood is tedious. Once they arrive, they collect in Graham’s house (his parents are back to working late hours, convinced that he’s on the road to recovery and doesn’t need supervision any longer) to avoid more questions. For a long while, it’s quiet.

Gavin’s the first to speak up. “Did your brother ever find out more about that van?”

His gaze is locked on Graham, eyebrows raise in question.

“I don’t know. He gave me the number of the guy who owns it. P… Paxton, I think. Paxton something. I saved it in my phone, so we can call him and see if he’s willing to loan us his van whenever we need it.”

Of the five, Tenor seems most excited; he bites back a grin at the thought of finally leaving Riverside and sits up, removing his head from his sister’s lap.

“So why don’t we call him up right now? We want to leave as soon as possible, don’t we?”

As soon as possible is harder than they thought. Gavin’s father isn’t keen on him quitting his job and going off on some road trip for God-knows-how-long and maybe taking a year off from college, maybe blowing off his baseball scholarship. His mother, though less adamant about her wishes, agrees. K.C.’s mother is a lonely woman already and she is scared to lose her daughter like she lost her husband; despite her hesitance, however, Melanie Morgan allows for the road trip, even encouraging the teens to take life by the reigns and figure themselves out. She seems to realize the destruction that the shooting must have brought to their lives and development, and is therefore supportive of their decision to leave. Graham’s parents are chilled by Liam, who uses his standing as the elder son to advocate for his brother and the road trip (while also leaving out the fact that he’d been the one to give them the contact for the van and given Graham three hundred dollars for gas and food.) It’s Robert and Opal that quell Benedict’s anger over his children going cross country, and it’s Opal that holds Dawn’s hand as Benedict screams his face red at the twins as they’re packing their suitcases and withdrawing money from their bank accounts.

Cadence and Tenor are the last ones in the car. Graham’s driving so Tenor gets shotgun; Gavin’s in the middle section of the van and the girls are in the back, perched atop two suitcases. Graham turns his attention to the back seat for a split second to tell Gavin to make sure a certain item is on the seat beside him; it only takes that split second for a figure to appear in front of the van.

“Graham!” Tenor sees the figure and grabs the wheel, jerking it to the side and causing the van to swerve; Graham’s immediate reflex is to slam on the breaks and turn the steering wheel more, his breath hitching as his stomach lurches with the sharp turn.

“What the fuck was that?” K.C. exclaims from the back seat, clinging to the suitcase beneath her and the seatbelt over her chest.

Muttering under his breath, Graham looks for the figure—she’s easy to spot; wide-eyed, like a deer in headlights, and a good few yards away from them is Beth Huang. Her knuckles are white, her hands gripped tight around the handle of a purse and she hesitates before approaching the van. Graham looks to Tenor, then to the trio in the seats behind them. With the same trepidation, Beth knocks on the driver’s seat window, stepping back and standing, staring, until Graham rolls it down.

“Yeah, Beth?”

“I heard you’re going on a road trip.”

“Yeah, we are.”

“I want to go with you.”

This is the first they’ve seen of Beth (or any of the Huangs) since Alec’s funeral. She had been, on numerous occasions, a tagalong on their adventures. She was close with her brother and wanted to be like him; she wanted his friends to like her, which is why she tagged along. They’d always allowed it because she was Alec’s kid sister and he’d give them hell if they didn’t. Today, however, is different.

“I don’t know, Beth…”

“Why not?” her voice quivers, lower lip trembles, and she looks as though Graham had just run over her puppy.

“Because… well… I mean, you’re like fourteen, and we… we’re probably not coming back to Riverside any time soon. And you need to stay for school. And… and…” Graham trails off, fresh out of more excuses as to why she can’t come along on the trip and the others fidget awkwardly, guilt-ridden for not offering her a spot on the trip.

“I need an escape, too.” Beth holds Graham’s gaze like a steely vice. For each second that she stares him down, dark eyes unwavering even as they begin to pool tears, the tension spikes, rising tenfold by the time a full minute has passed. K.C. shifts awkwardly atop the suitcase, pulling her attention away from Graham and Beth to urge Cadence to take action. Of the quintet, she’d always been close to Beth—it was sort of a given, considering how long she and Alec had been dating.

With a little effort and a questioning gaze from her brother, Cadence exits the van, walking around it to Beth’s side.

“Let’s get you home, sweetheart. Your mom and dad and Trish need you right now. You should stay.” Cadence takes Beth’s hands in her own as she speaks, slowly beginning to lead her out of the road and away from the van.

She hasn’t been to the Huang’s house since before the shooting. The familiar brick exterior stabs at her chest and her fingers clench involuntarily, squeezing Beth’s hands tightly as the draw ever closer to the home. It’s the same as Cadence remembers it; tall, brick, with a large front patio, and a connected garage. She can see Alec’s bedroom window and her heart jumps to her throat.

“Now do you see why I need an escape?” Beth asks her quietly, noting Cadence’s reactions to being so close to the home. “I can’t breathe here. It’s suffocating. My brother’s room is right next to mine and it’s always quiet. I have his bird now, though. The one that always squawked at visitors. Trish has the smaller ones.”

Cadence simply nods, struggling to find her voice. “A…And Trish needs you, Beth. She can’t lose both of her siblings, can she? I know you can make it through this.”

Once Beth is safely inside, Cadence makes her way back to the van. There, the tension has died down, returning to the casual, pre-road trip excitement that it had been. Graham and Tenor and fiddling with the radio, and Gavin’s turned around in his seat to talk to K.C.; he’s in the middle of talking about what they should do once they get out of Vermont when Cadence returns. He and K.C. share a wary glance, as do the boys up front, and Cadence offers them an overly enthusiastic smile.

“C’mon, guys, let’s get going,” she says as she climbs back to her seat beside K.C., “or else we’ll never get out of here.”

With a few deep clicks, the engine roars back to life and the drive begins again, purposefully avoiding the direction of the school, and the “Welcome to Riverside” sign was never such a sweet sight to see in the rearview mirror.