The Forever Year

The morning of the fifteenth of March is as bland as any other Thursday morning; the sun is up too early and the students of each household are rising to drag themselves off to another day of increasingly tedious schoolwork. In most homes, there isn’t much to be done other than to perform a morning routine before the inhabitants leave for their respective workplaces. However, there are some in which the mornings are much more than simple routines and it’s all but an uncomplicated opening line.

Tenor and Cadence Shetterly are awakened not by alarm clocks, but by the shouts of an early-morning fight between their parents. Neither can understand the yelled words and neither care to eavesdrop on the argument. Despite this, both can feel the venom in their parents’ words seep upward through the floorboards and leak throughout the air around them. Ignoring the malevolent aura in the air surrounding her, Cadence begins her morning routine almost immediately and with a small smile, brightened by a good morning message from her boyfriend. Tenor, however, is lazier than she and rolls onto his stomach, burying into his blankets to coax a few minutes more of sleep out of his wakening body. His attempt at sleep is cut short by a sudden rise in volume from the lower level and a sharp knock at his bedroom door.

“Ten, Songbird, get up. We’re walking. I’m not waiting for you!”

Groaning, he, too, begins his morning routine. Shower; hot water pouring over his skin with music loud enough to drown out the argument and to be heard over the water. Unscented soap that smells faintly of lye and shampoo that has some flowery name like crisp waterfall or tropical jungle but that doesn’t really smell like either of those things. A few more minutes of sleep with his hair still wet and lower half covered with a towel. Clothes, teeth brushed, hat pulled over his hair. Move to sister’s room, where she’ll still be applying makeup and his music will still be blasting from the next room.

“Morning, Songbird,” she says as she squirts perfume over her collarbones.

“Morning, Birdsong,” he replies, stretching out on her bed and careful to keep his worn-out, grass-stained shoes off of the duvet.

“Jeanie and Zack are coming home soon, you know. Jeanie’s visiting and Zack gets out of school around the time that we’re graduating.” Cadence speaks slowly as she applies her cosmetics, her words as deliberate as the careful applying of the makeup.

“I can’t wait… it’ll be better with them around; it always is. Is Jeanie bringing Rick with her?”

Cadence’s reply is a simple, blank hum as she glosses her lips. The image contrasts with a memory in Tenor’s mind, one of a tomboyish sister whose upturned nose was always smudged and freckled, just as his, and whose skin was blemished and free of the application of concealing foundations and lipsticks and blushes and whatever other girly products Cadence now applied to her zit-less complexion.

“You know, if you don’t hurry up, we’re gonna be late and Mrs. S is gonna fail me, Cade.”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s go, Songbird.”

Fifteen minutes until eight on the fifteenth of March, Tenor and Cadence Shetterly exit their home, leaving their parents to caterwaul and bicker to their hearts’ desires. The peace of springtime meets them with chirping birds and the sweet scent of newly blossoming flowers. Though it’s early March, spring has graced the town with its presence, bursting the surrounding nature into an array of greens and the lightest of pinks and blues with the newborn flowers that litter the ground and trees. Along the sidewalk, rows of cherry blossoms have slowly begun to form, their once barren branches sprouting the tiniest of buds that will bloom into the most beautiful hues that illuminate the furthering of the season of life.

Down the street, a second cluster of teens litter the sidewalk. From the distance, Tenor and Cadence immediately recognize the figures. Before he can speak, Cadence is already rushing past her brother and towards one of the boys of the small group ahead of them. Tenor chuckles as he watches from afar, an amused smile tugging at his lips as the sun shoots a shadow behind Cadence and Alec as she throws her arms around his middle. One would think that it’d been months since she’d last seen him, all but throwing down her things to run to him, blonde locks glowing in the light of the morning sun. Lagging behind at his usual languid pace, Tenor continues to observe from the back of the group, his gaze flickering as the sun’s rays dot patterns across the concrete below his feet.

An embrace disrupts his train of thought; the warm arms around him are familiar and he doesn’t have to see the other person to know that it’s Graham who is hugging him as if they hadn’t seen each other the afternoon before. With the exception of Cadence, Graham is his best friend, his confidant, the being attached at his hip. Tenor holds the hug a bit longer before the boys separate.

“What was that for, hm?” he asks, a usual teasing tone to his voice as they resume walking.

“What, a guy can’t hug his best friend?”

In response, Tenor shrugs and returns to examining the world beneath their feet and at their fingertips, seemingly transfixed with the thin canopy of leaves and blue, blue sky. Graham watches him watch the clouds.

“I feel like something big is going to happen today. Maybe not good. But something.”

With a smirk, Tenor offers his rebuttal: “Are you scared of getting too wasted at Alec’s party tonight? He’ll only turn eighteen once, you know.”

Graham’s gaze lingers on Alec, who walks before them with Cadence at his side and his sister, Beth, tagging along a few steps behind them. She’s always been like a sort of puppy, trailing after her older brother and wanting to be just like him. The sole braid of hair that traces her spine emphasizes the comparison, acting as a drooped tail of sorts, and her large, almond-shaped and –colored eyes broadcast the perfect look of “beaten puppy” to those who gaze upon her.

“Nah, something different. Bigger.”

“You and your omens,” Tenor laughs. For his sake, Graham attempts to chuckle but finds himself too stricken with the cloud of his so-called omens, soon discovering that the sensation hangs over him like a thick blanket or a layer of soot, distracting him from the simple task of walking across the street and to the school. The disconcerted Graham pays no heed to K.C.’s rant about her mother’s newest tirade or the rolling of Gavin’s eyes and his enthusiasm about the upcoming season of baseball. Even Tenor fails to break the trance, appearing as the rest of the world—a mirage to green irises, far off and made up, less important than the task at hand and the unbearable coldness developing and skirting down his brain stem.

Physics and lab.
English.
Algebra.
Despite the shroud, Graham’s day goes as planned—dreadfully boring and dreadfully dreary.

Music theory.
English.
Musical Composition.
Algebra.
With a flurry of scribbled melodies and blank math worksheets, Tenor’s day is unchanged from any other, with the exception of his newfound love for half notes rather than quarters.

Spanish.
Pre-Calculus.
Team Sports.
Medieval History.
Two tests and a mile run don’t hamper Alec’s excitement for the festivities that will partake following the final bell.

Spanish.
English.
Musical Composition.
Free Block.
Cadence naps through English and her free block (she refuses that she drooled on her notebook, thank you very much, Tenor-and-Graham) but is wide awake come lunch.

Physics and lab.
Math Help.
Team Sports.
Free Block.
Gavin spends half of the designated time with his tutor in the bathroom and attempting to catch a kiss from Anna Barbedos—and fails miserably, just like he did his Algebra test.

Ecology.
Studio Art.
Ceramics.
Medieval History.
Covered in paint and hands caked with clay, K.C. skips history to continue her projects and to wash up before lunch.

Nothing is different; these six adolescents have their normal routines with their normal days and their normal lives as they crowd in the senior courtyard before the lunch bell rings. It’s not much, a room smaller than the teacher’s lounge with a scratchy, plaid couch and a lumpy suede one on the adjacent wall. There’s no door, just an open wall with nothing but a change from tile to carpeting to display the boundaries of the courtyard.

Disaster strikes more quickly than one could fall from grace.

At first, they all think that fireworks have gone off inside the school; that some stupid freshman decided to impress his friends by shooting off firecrackers in the senior courtyard. The screams deter this assumption. Like ants, the students scatter, rushing away from the noises as more sound from the level above, within the cafeteria and the library. The clusters of teens scamper in all directions as the number of crackles and shots increase more quickly than they can keep track of.

Eons, eons pass before the firing ceases. Whimpers and outcries fill the silence, followed by the faint but exponentially loudening sirens in the distance.

There is a constant, a constant hue—red; red everywhere, pooling on the floor, spattered across the walls, soaking the side and back of his shirt and slipping across his skin and the skin of the human crutch dragging him out of what had been the danger zone. Red; red everywhere—he almost thinks that it’s paint and wishes it was but it’s too warm and sticky and certainly wouldn’t openly pour from the aching agony in his side. His ears still ring with the boom of the fire and he can’t hear the soothing hum of words from his companion’s voice. All he can see, all he can hear, all he can feel is red. The shake doesn’t bring him back from the sea of red, just as being propped against the stall door and the floor hadn’t registered in his scarlet world. His companion’s world is full and in Technicolor, taking in the array of hues in addition to the red, red everywhere. His movements are erratic as he collects the scratchy brown paper towels and toilet paper to press against the wounds. The pressure, however light, draws a cry from his throat and illustrates the rest of the world to his eyes.

“Sh, sh, shhh, Ten, sorry, sorry,” in a hiss of a voice, Graham forces away a contorted expression and presses his palm to Tenor’s lips, muffling whatever whine of pain that may escape and resonate in the bathroom and ricochet against the tile floor and walls. Beyond those walls, there is silence. “Sorry,” he repeats, keeping the pressure steady against the flow of red. “I-I should’ve—” a scream interrupts him. “—should’ve just gotten you out of there, Tenor… should’ve done more, should’ve run faster…”

Unable to form a response, Tenor fades back to the red and the ache of agony, leaving Graham to keep him conscious in the wake of the blood loss and pain.

Across the school, there is no red. There is blackness, broken only by the slivers of light that peek through the cracks in the blinds and around the door. Within this room, there is a good collection of students, crowded behind a barricade of desks and kept silent by the hawk eye of a middle aged teacher as she whispers frantically to the 911 operator.

The police are already on their way, says the operator.
We’ve gotten numerous calls already, says the operator.
The situation will be under control, says the operator.
Is anyone injured, asks the operator.
Do you need medical assistance, asks the operator.

In her thirty-two years of teaching at Riverside High School, Mrs. Annabelle Mathers never imagined that one day she’d be crouched behind her desk calling for emergency services following a mass school shooting. Within her stumbling, scrambling thoughts, Annabelle decides that this must top Columbine; how could it not? She’d heard the amount of gunfire, the shrieks and screams of teachers and students—of her coworkers and of her students—and she’d most definitely heard her own shouts as she ushered as many kids as possible into her classroom before switching the room into lockdown.

Annabelle doesn’t know who perpetrated such an act, but she can’t imagine who could have done it. Since beginning her work at Riverside, she’d encountered many, many fine, polite young people and very few troublemakers. Although, as the children clumped behind desks and chairs whisper about a young man named Callum and the gun responsible, Annabelle can’t manage to color herself surprised. Though devastatingly polite and charming and witty, Callum had always been… off. (And Annabelle claims, as the afternoon drags on, that she should have seen this coming; that the signs had all been there.)

A quick headcount marks seventeen students plus Mrs. Annabelle Mathers as occupying the room. Of the students, they are mostly seniors, having rushed out of the courtyard and into the classroom upon hearing the first of the many gunshots. The six girls and eleven boys are shaking and crying, some hiding it away and other using their arms and hands to muffle their sobs, though the necessity of silence remains enforced by Annabelle. Within the group of sniffly, shaking students, there is Cadence Shetterly perched upon the lap of Gavin Jensen.

She cries for her brother, whose fate and current location she does not know, she cries for the red that dots her clothes and her skin, and she cries for the image of the boyfriend she’d held so dear, struck down by and onslaught of bullets propelled out of the barrel of James Brooks’ hunting rifle.

It feels like days before the students in the darkness are rushed out of the school by the police officers. Still crying, Cadence wraps her arms tightly around Gavin’s arm. They’re taken to the public library, a about half a mile down the road, to be examined by EMTs and to be reunited with their parents and caregivers.

“Gav… Gav, where’s Tenor? A-And K.C. and Gr-Graham?” Cadence’s voice is panicked and strained, resonating with the same desperation of her eyes.

“I don’t know, Cade… I don’t know.”

Clumps of students widen like a growing blood clot, gathering inside the library and avoiding the questions of reporters as the police hold them off. As the number of evacuated students grows, the amount of worried expressions increase exponentially. Frantically, boys and girls alike search for their siblings and friends and boyfriends and girlfriends, terror clear in their minds and fresh memories as they either embrace the found loved ones or they come up short.

K.C. is fine, save for cuts and nicks from shrapnel.
Gavin and Cadence are unharmed, as they’d taken shelter in the darkness alongside Mrs. Annabelle Mathers.
Alec’s fate is uncertain; last they saw, Cadence had just seen James Brooks shoot him multiple times across the back with his rifle.
Most other students are uninjured; however, there are a good number of the school that are injured, student and staff alike.

“I-Is that Graham?”

Cadence rushes out of the library upon spotting the brunet, abandoning the others before they can offer an answer or even get a good look at the boy approaching the entrance.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry…” over and over again, he whispers apologies like a mantra. Trembling like a windblown leaf, Graham shakes his head, unable to answer the questions that pour out of Cadence’s lips. He’s taken away by one of the EMTs to get stitches (his arm had been nicked by a rogue bullet, giving him a laceration across the upper bicep that he hadn’t noticed until now). His hands are covered in red, sticky and still warm but mostly dried. Graham wishes that it was the product of a day of finger painting rather than attempting to quell the bleeding from his best friend’s back.

Shock overwhelms the crowd as the worst of the injured pass by in ambulances. Fear passes over the area like a thick smoke, burning their lungs and passing through every artery, vein and capillary of their bodies. As ambulance after ambulance goes by, Cadence stares blankly at the flashing lights and the wail of their sirens fall upon deaf ears. Dotted with another’s blood, she stands and watches absolutely nothing, perpetually still even after the ambulances have left and parents have begun to collect their shaken children.

Graham returns to her, his injured arm wrapped in sterile gauze and her brother’s blood washed from his hands and forearms. He stands beside her still shaking and stares where she stares. Neither speak, neither listen, both gaze ahead. The silence between them is held for minutes that drone on like hours; Graham barks a dry laugh as he remembers the bad omen he’d felt that morning. How he would’ve felt as though he was psychic had it been any other event, how he wished that he’d never felt the sensation in a wayward hope of reversing this terrible, horrible, nauseating situation. The silence resumes when his cynical laughter ends and the only constant sounds are drowned out into a faint buzz of background noise.

Graham takes Cadence’s hand and squeezes it lightly.
Cadence returns the gesture and they’ll get through this day together.

It begins to rain as they stand on that curb, protected by caution tape and staring down the next road and past the Victorian-esque house and into the grove of trees beyond it.