Status: tentatively rated r.

The Forever Year

black cherry red paints our home and we won't sleep there tonight

Ritchie Gaston, recent graduate from Riverside High, had returned to his hometown hospital in order to complete more hands-on training as part of his nursing school degree. The fifteenth of March had been slow. Suddenly, groups of EMTs rush in with gurneys, blood dripping across fingertips and leaving trails across the sterile tiles like the bread Hansel and Gretel had deposited behind them through the forests. In horror, Ritchie stares as stretcher after stretcher moves in. Some with the most minor of injuries and some with devastatingly gory and bloody wounds, gaping and clearly visible to the staff.

“Don’t just stand there, Gaston, get your ass in gear!”

The other nurses, his fellow students included, have already begun to chase after the gurneys, taking over for the EMTs and joining the doctors at either side of the moving cots. After a moment’s hesitation, Ritchie latches on to one of the last to come into the hospital; bile rises in his throat from the thick stench of blood and the sight of open, bleeding wounds. He’s being briefed on the situation but Ritchie isn’t paying attention, too caught up in staring at the gaping holes in the side of the young woman on the stretcher.

The young woman doesn’t survive. Despite the transfusions, emergency surgery and all the efforts put in by the staff, Megan Ambrose dies holding her mother’s hand at five that evening.

Over the course of the night and the following days, sixteen of her peers join her alongside four teachers from the high school.

Megan Ambrose’s father had been expected to return home from an overseas military-related job in a matter of weeks; Megan and her mother had been eagerly awaiting his return. Miles upon miles away, he learns of his daughter’s death but cannot be there to hold his wife and grieve over the loss of their only child.

Across the hall, still in the ICU ward of the hospital, Li and Juniper Huang join the multitude of parents with a child lost. Their eldest, their boy, their Alec; shot down on the anniversary of his birth. Outside the room, their daughters console each other quietly, sharing tears and tissues and earbuds.

“In this very hospital… my baby, Alexander, you were born,” Juniper whispers to her cold son as she strokes his hair. Li observes, his expression taking on the stereotypical stoic, emotionless mask that men are supposed to take on. Inwardly, he remembers the very same day, eighteen years before, as Juniper whispers it to their corpse.

The hospital smells just like it had on that day. With each room reeking of antiseptic and bleach, all of the sheets starched and spotlessly white, just the same and just the same as it is within Juniper’s memory of the day she’d given birth to her firstborn. Alec had been born at half-past noon, she remembers, and he’d died at two this afternoon. At eighteen years, one hour and thirty minutes old, her son is dead. He’s been dead for a long while, lying, cold as ice and completely still. The funeral home needs to be contacted, the relatives, the friends, the families of friends; a church to hold the ceremony, a grave to dig, a tombstone to cut and inscribe. A parent should never bury their child but upwards of twenty-five are currently making arrangements just as Juniper and Li are.

Down the hall, there is life. Unaware of the Alec's passing, Cadence sits by in an empty room. In front of her, there is an empty bed and in front of that, her parents sit. They don’t touch each other; her mother cries and her father makes no movement to comfort her. In Cadence’s lap, her mother’s phone shines up at her, Jeanette’s name and number illuminating her elfish features and waiting to be pressed and called.

“Tenor’s sick,” she whispers when she finally strikes up the nerve to call Jeanette. “Jeanie, he’s so sick.”

“Cade? What was that?”

“Callum made him sick. Callum got him so sick… Jeanie, I’m scared. What if he doesn’t make it? I-I-I… I fucking hope—fucking hate—fuck! Jeanie, Jeanie, what if he dies…? What am I supposed to do, Jeanie, what do I do?”

To her sister, Cadence sounds as if she’s close to a breakdown; her voice is strained and shaky, to the point where her words are nearly incoherent. As a worried crease takes its place on Jeanette’s forehead, she reaches for her fiancé’s hand and frowns.

“Cadence, what happened? I can’t understand you, baby, speak up.”

It’s not until Cadence leaves her parents in her brother’s hospital room that she properly speaks again; walking to a small longue with a large couch and a gas fireplace, she repeats bits and pieces of her rambled, barely coherent statement.

“Cal-Callum got him sick, sissy… S-S-So sick…” a sob breaks her voice, stealing away Cadence’s ability to form words as she sinks against the arm of the large couch.

Across the state, Jeanette listens to her sister’s hysterics. A knot pulls at her insides, tying them all up like she’d tied her shoes that morning, and she feels as though she’s going to be sick. Her hand clamps around Rick’s and she tries to tell Cadence that she’s going to call their mother, but not a single utterance can sound from her throat. Fear has overcome her and stolen her voice, just as the sudden onslaught of sobs had taken Cadence’s. A long silence sits between Jeanie and Rick, whose thumb gently brushes the back of her hand and squeezes it gently.

Abruptly, calm washes over Cadence and she says, clear as a bell: “Tenor got shot.”

Graham, who had promised to stay with Cadence for as long as he could, is no longer at the hospital. Family only; he’s not family. Not to Tenor or Alec or any of the other students who sit in surgery or ICU or are on their way to the morgue. Instead, he has to sit in his warm home, wrapped up in a warm blanket in a dark room, his face illuminated only by the television. The local news station is covering the story: Riverside High Shoot Out. For once, his parents are home but they don’t stop him from watching hour after hour of coverage from the news station. They’re calling his brother and booking him a flight to get home as soon as possible. Graham’s arm aches, but he doesn’t want more of the pain killers that sit on the coffee table next to a bowl of cold soup. His eyes remain glued to the screen, waiting for the announcement of how many dead, of how many alive, of how many injured, of who had done this horrible, horrible thing.

He already knew who one of them is. Callum Brooks, the boy who he’d accidentally bumped the previous day after Algebra. Guilt pools in his stomach as he wonders if that minor event had been what set off this huge catastrophe; is the fault his for why so many people are wounded and killed? Graham almost turns away from the screen to ask his parents if it’s his fault. He almost gets up to walk over to them and he almost asks for a hug from his dad and he almost breaks down with his face buried in the fabric of his father’s sweater. But he doesn’t. Graham tarries his leaving from his warm couch and the swirl of blankets curled and clumped about his form.

Opal and Robert Reed watch on as their son, seemingly frozen in time, stares ahead at the television. He’s barely spoken all afternoon but he had cried in the car when they’d picked him up from the library upon hearing of what had occurred at the school. Their disbelief has faded; a shooting, a massive shooting, did happen. And their son is a part of it—the stitches across his bicep take away any and all doubt, along with the bloody clothes that sit in a basket by the washer and the blood washing down the drains after he’d showered.

“Rob, what are we going to do?” Opal is a soft-spoken woman, but her words are even quieter than their usual softness and her husband barely hears her.

His reply is delayed and also at a low volume, as if he’s afraid that Graham will hear them through his trance: “We’re going to do what we have to, that’s what we’ll do. Whatever he needs, we’ll do it.”

Not all parents are as Graham’s parents are; the father of the killers, for example, is not so understanding. One son dead, the other jailed. Edwin Brooks has always been an angry man and a drunk, but tonight he is livid and completely sober; he screams at his younger children for their brothers’ deed and shovels the blame onto them, making harsh claims that they should have revealed Callum and James’ plot, that they knew and that each of them are accomplices to the murders. The house is trashed, thrown and smashed in Edwin’s rage and the children cower below him, terrified of their father, just as they’d been so scared of Callum. But Callum is dead now; he’d shot himself in front of a police officer that afternoon and allowed James to take the blame. James, who’d only fallen victim to his brother’s manipulation, is now in custody for their deeds. He’ll need a lawyer that Edwin will have to pay for and he’ll most likely be tried as an adult. And who will be blamed? Edwin. But Edwin blames his children and their whores of mothers, whom he claims are the cause of all the awful things in his life and in the Brooks household.

Although, luckily, none of the younger children had seen their brothers and Marcus Allen execute the shooting and execute other students. Nathan, the youngest boy, is still a middle school student and the girls are younger than he, either also in middle school or in elementary school. Their naivety is a both a blessing and a curse; the youngest girls still ask where Callum and Jamie are, and only Nathan truly understands what they’ve done. But even then, he doesn’t understand.

But, really, who does understand why three high school boys would ever want to take an arsenal of weapons to their school and aim to kill their peers? The thought almost makes Nathan wonder if Callum, James and Marcus truly understood what they were doing, either.

James doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why he’s in a cell and he doesn’t understand why the guard keeps looking at him as if he’s worth less than the dirt and dog shit on the soles of his shoes. His clothes, stained with blood and gun powder, have been taken from him and switched with a bright orange uniform, a number stamped above where a breast pocket would be sewn on. It’s been hours but he still doesn’t understand why he’s here; he’s asked for Callum, for his brother, but receives no reply. He’s asked for Marc, for his friend, but again receives nothing.

His fingers ache from holding the guns and pulling the triggers. They’d never shot as much as they had that afternoon. Target practice had paid off, just as Callum used to say that it would. James frowns as he remembers his brother’s words and looks back to the guard.

“When can I see my brother?” he asks.

The guard gives no reply.

With a furrowed brow and a deeper frown, James inquires a new question: “When do I get my phone call?”

With a grunt, the guard unlocks the cell’s door and takes James by the arm, leading him down the hall. If one were to juxtapose the cell, the hall and the room with the telephone, there would be very few details changed. Each area has the same, plain brick and the same, plain floor and the smell is exactly the same and the air is still and quiet.

James calls home. No one picks up. And his one phone call is gone. He asks again for Callum or for Marcus, but the usual answerless answer is given to him as he’s locked back into his cell. Although he is unaware, his name is being cursed in homes around not only the town, but the neighboring cities and across the state. Soon, the country will be completely aware of what he’s done alongside Callum and Marcus. And then he’ll just be fucked. Not that he isn’t already.

“Are you sure I can’t see Callum and Marc?”

Still no answer.
Still silence.
James gives up on trying to request to see anyone and curls up on the uncomfortable cot, sleeping without a second thought of his school or the bloody halls or the dead and dying in the hospitals. He sleeps like a baby because he doesn’t know any better.

No one else sleeps, though.

Elizabeth and Patricia Huang sit with Juniper and Li at the dinner table; they’d left the hospital in the early evening, long after Alec had been declared dead. The girls and their parents focus on the empty seat and try their hardest not to cry too much. A child dead, a son dead, an elder brother dead. It’s hard not to openly sob.

Dawn and Benedict Shetterly spend their night in their youngest son’s hospital room, waiting for his release from surgery and for the return of their devastated daughter. Cadence is still on the phone with Jeanette, their phone call having lasted hours already but she doesn’t want to go back to the room.

Graham spends his night sitting in front of that damned television, even after Robert changes the channel to some mindless animated movie. The three watch the cartoon, not laughing at what’s meant to be funny, and wait up for the fourth member of their family to call when his flight lands.

Despite Edwin’s passing out after drinking away his anger, the Brookses spend their night in the basement, quiet and avoiding conversation about their father and brothers and mothers, sometimes sitting in silence and sometimes weaving elaborate stories about make-believe realms.

Gavin Jensen rages and rants constantly; his brother is ushered out of the room after the first of the explosions and his parents attempt to soothe his anger. K.C. Morgan and her mother are going to stay the night; their home is too close to the school for either of them to breathe, let alone to eat or to sleep, and Gavin’s family graciously gave them a room to stay in. It doesn’t help much. Nothing will, and everyone realizes this but no one says it.

Only a time machine will do any good to erase the red, red blood that soaks Riverside High School and paints nightmares across the town. Nightmares and sleeplessness; the entire town experiences this insomnia. The schools will be closed down for up to a month, some say, though it’s uncertain as to when anyone will feel comfortable enough to go anywhere near the school, let alone return to their classes. For now, Riverside High and its students will focus on recovery and on learning how to sleep again.
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as always, any comments and feedback are always greatly appreciated