The Forever Year

Alexander Huang’s funeral is on a Wednesday, the day after Megan Ambrose’s funeral. Right up by the casket, Juniper, Li, Beth and Patricia sit, each wearing the mourner’s black and looking anywhere but at the coffin before them. Behind them, Cadence and Tenor and their mother sit. He’s not supposed to be outside (or even out of the hospital, for that matter, but Dawn worked with the staff to allow him to attend the funeral, even if he’s in a wheelchair to keep him off of his feet) but he’s still there, holding his sister’s hand and wiping her tears. The lacrosse team (or what’s left of it) is also there, some with their parents and siblings, some without. In the way back of the crowd, Gavin and K.C. stand, their eyes glued to the coffin. Relatives and relatives of relatives to the Huangs are scattered among the group, building a sizable crowd to audience the burial of Alec's corpse. Graham shows up just in time for the burial and keeps back, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dress pants and his gaze downcast.

Graham has missed the ceremony in the church, where most of the tears had been shed and the thoughtful, heartfelt words had been spilled about Alec and his life. Juniper had made a teary speech about the day that Alec had been born, eighteen years exactly before he’d been killed. She was sorrowful and drew shaky breaths and had to excuse herself afterwards to sob in the women’s restroom. Cadence stood to speak, but no words came. She sat down again a few minutes later. The other words resonated across the stone of the church and the stained glass windows and Graham had no idea of what he’s missed. Nor does he care, as he’s too wrapped up in the ground below him as the final words are being whispered to Alec through the thick metal of the coffin. The sky is overcast, giving a stereotypically dreary setting for the funeral and Graham wishes it’d rain, that it’d pour so he could cry without anyone realizing that he is.

He’s got a pack of cigarettes in his pocket that he’s already smoked half of and he’d bought it was seven this morning. Usually he shares his cigs with Tenor but he isn’t sure of whether or not the other boy can smoke or if he could even bring himself to approach his wheelchair-bound friend. Family and friends rise to say their goodbyes to Alec and all Graham whispers is an apology from the back of the crowd.

“Graham…”

He’s been spotted. K.C. approaches him, her eyes broadcasting hesitance (it’s weird for her and throws Graham off-guard, so he can’t reply or escape) and she touches his uninjured arm.

“I’m glad that you’re alright,” she nods, licking her chapped lips. “I… I knew you were with Tenor,” she throws a glance over her shoulder at the blond, the gaze fleeting and she soon returns her attention to Graham. “…and I thought that maybe you were in worse condition than him. But… I’m glad that you’re okay. And I… yeah. That’s all I should say…”

Her doe eyes are brimmed with tears and Graham knows that she’s probably thinking about their friend who is six feet under or their classmates who have or will be buried in the coming weeks. The high school students surrounded by dirt and worms and flowers and marked by a stone with their name and date, signed like a worksheet they’d never completed. Teachers, too, but not as many as the number of students who are finding their new homes in the embrace of soil and roots. A better man would have thought of them as being in a better place, but Graham is too pessimistic and too cynical to think of anything other than death and the dead that need to be buried.

“Have you talked to him?” Graham’s voice is a raspy whisper, his gaze geared toward Tenor.

K.C. shakes her head. “I haven’t. You haven’t, either? He probably wants to see you…”

Pausing, Graham studies the back of Tenor’s head and then looks to Cadence. He thinks that they hate him and why wouldn’t they? He came out of the shooting with just a scratch, but Tenor is meant to be in the hospital for at least a week more before his doctor could see him fit to be without an emergency team onsite. Cadence not only nearly lost her twin (and still faces the possibility of losing him) but she lost her boyfriend. Although he knows both blondes to be generally easy going and forgiving, Graham doesn’t see how this could be forgiven, how his lack of injury and how his failed attempt to protect Tenor could ever be forgiven.

“I know that look…” K.C.’s lips turn down in a concerned angle as she speaks. “That’s your self-loathing look… hun, please, don’t be hard on yourself. You tried. Ten’s fine, or he will be soon. Just go talk to him. And don’t even think about drinking tonight, alright? You can’t drink yourself into a stupor right now. It’s too risky. Besides, your liver will thank you in a couple of decades.”

K.C. kisses his cheek, marking the skin below his faint stubble with her pale lipstick, and returns to Gavin and a collection of lacrosse players. Their expressions are solemn and Gavin curls one arm around K.C. when she fills the space at his side.

“I’m glad you guys made it out,” Gavin says to the players. They’re friends of his; being a part of the baseball team had brought him closer to the other sports players. He still prefers the others over them, but he’ll never breathe a word of that preference. “I heard that at least twenty are dead now…”

“Yeah… something like that,” one of the lacrosse players murmurs, his usual arrogance and the bubble of his ego gone in the melancholy. As he looks to one of the boys at his side, small spits of rain begin to drip down from the heavens. The drips are cold and send a shiver down his spine as one slips beneath the collar of his shirt.

Most make their way back to the church at the first sign of the rain. Juniper and Li remain seated, both parents staring down the hole in the ground where the coffin lies and where their son has been laid to rest. Elizabeth pulls her sister away from the chair, mumbling come on, Trish, as they walk. The lacrosse players leave K.C. and Gavin behind, heading back in without them when they realize that they aren’t moving.

“I guess this is it…” K.C. whispers, looking up at Gavin.

“I guess it is.”

“Let’s get inside, Gav. It’s getting cold.”

Though a few minutes behind, they follow the lacrosse players in. K.C. glances over her shoulder, giving Graham a distinct look when she sees that he has yet to approach Tenor and Cadence.

“Actually, I’ll be just a second. You go on in, alright?” Without waiting for the answer to her question, K.C. walks back over to Graham, a disappointed frown on her features. “What, cat got your tongue? Or maybe your balls?”

“K.C., don’t start.” Graham begins to walk, not wanting to deal with her urging and insults. He freezes when her hand wraps around his upper arm, pressing against the stitching and drawing a gasp from his lips. Hot pain runs up his shoulder and neck, the nerves crying out and Graham wishes he’d taken the fucking pain killers today. Stunned by his reaction, K.C. retracts her hand but doesn’t step down and instead stands on her tip-toes to get in Graham’s face.

“Just go and talk to him, for fuck’s sake. He’s your best friend! If she scares you that much, I can distract Cadence. Swallow your pride or your fear or whatever the fuck it is and go and talk to him. You’re not that afraid and I know you aren’t.” Finally stepping back, K.C. gives Graham a shove in the direction of the Shetterlys. “Now go.”

Graham doesn’t make any protest and, though his action is a bit grudging, he walks over to where Dawn and Cadence are attempting to help move Tenor’s wheelchair and get inside before the rain grows too heavy.

“Hi…” Graham speaks quietly, not knowing what else to say other than a meek greeting as he draws nearer to the trio. He’s wary; he remembers when Tenor had been covered in blood and crying out, pain overtaking his features, but today the other teen looks docile as ever, offering a small smile from his seat and returning a gentle greeting.

Today, he sees grey. It’s not like the afternoon in the boys’ bathroom, where red overpowered his vision and his hearing and his thoughts and his voice, but today there is an indescribable overlay of grey, fogging the features of his friends and his family and the sky and earth. It could be the result of the huge doses of pain killers he’s on or perhaps it’s just the overcast playing tricks with him, but today is grey and he’s okay with that. Today is a sad day, a sorrowful day, a day of a final goodbye to a lifelong friend and grey seems suiting for the occasion. The colors regain their vibrancy when Graham approaches, and said vibrancy increases when Cadence rests her hand on his shoulder.

“You look better…” Graham murmurs when neither twin speaks further. “Healthier, I guess.”

“You kids be sure to get in before it starts pouring, alright? I’m going to go inside.” Dawn smiles at Graham and kisses her kids’ foreheads, staring at each of the three teenagers for a moment longer, lingering with an unreadable but undoubtedly motherly expression before she wiggles her fingers and follows the crowd back to shelter.

“I feel better.” Tenor nods, fidgeting in his seat as he leans back to look up at Graham in order to maintain eye contact. “I think part of that might be because of the morphine…”

Mindlessly, Graham almost mentions the time they’d gotten the opportunity to try heroin (one step up from morphine in the department of narcotics, right?) and almost took it. Instead, he forces back the memory of that idiotic party and simply nods. Words seem trivial but also seem important, as if he needs to rebuild the ability to converse with people, as if he needs to relearn how to speak to the best of his friends. A small crease forms between his brows as this thought rushes over him: had the shooting really changed him so drastically and debilitated him to this socially awkward, insecure shell of the person he’d been just weeks earlier?

“I thought you’d have visited me by now, Graham.” There’s a twinge of disappointment in Tenor’s voice and it’s evident to both Graham and Cadence; the tone gets Graham a free stink eye from the girl and it deepens the crease on his brow.

“I know, and I should’ve. I’ve just… time’s slipped away from me.”

Grey overtakes Tenor’s vision again and a frown replaces the smile that had adorned his lips; worry pools in his gut, irritating the stitched holes in his side. The stitches ache a bit, but not as harshly as they had without the shots of morphine.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

The whispered confession makes everything so much more real for Graham; his insecurities have become apparent, illuminated to Tenor and Cadence and he feels suddenly vulnerable. A chill climbs up the vertebrae of his spine, tensing the sinews of his being as it creeps up his backbone, and Graham looks down at his feet again, the tiniest bit ashamed of allowing his weakness to shine through so obviously when his friends are going through so much more than he.

“No one is. Not right now, at least… we’ve all been through a lot. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe it… not at all, not one bit. Look at me, please? I want you to know that it’s okay.” He’d always been so damn understanding and that’s what Graham always loved about Tenor. No matter what, he always understood or always tried to; he saw what the other person felt and he tried to understand it, to comprehend it. Cadence could be the same way but never at the same intensity and consistency.

“He’s right, Graham.” Cadence sounds less than convinced, but there is an honesty in her words and Graham simply nods, agreeing silently with their perspective. Though he’d prefer to keep his gaze downcast, Graham also looks to Tenor when he’s asked and allows his gaze to drift to Cadence momentarily.

“I never thought something like this would ever happen,” he murmurs.

“No one ever did. Who would?” Cadence points out the obvious, not aggressively but just to state what everyone knows; no one saw it coming, no one thought it would happen or even could happen. But it happened.

“Let’s get inside; it’s starting to rain harder and I’m sure Mom wants us in. Would you mind wheeling me over? It hurts to do it myself.”

The three walk in relative silence; Graham pushes Tenor’s chair and Cadence strides ahead of them both, content with the only noise being the turning of the chair’s wheels, the footsteps of her heels and Graham’s loafers and the pitter-patter of rain as it grows heavier as they come closer to the church. Inside, the silence is suddenly broken by the buzz of murmur and side conversation. K.C. and Gavin wave the trio over, forcing smiles to reciprocate for the smiles forced at them.

K.C. pats Graham on the back when he comes over and mumbles a small word of appreciation for taking her advice. After a few minutes, the teens relax and take seats, quiet for a moment as each attempts to think of easy conversation that won’t regard the funeral or the event that caused the funeral.

“It’s the first April shower,” Gavin offers. “That means the flowers in May will be brighter and fuller.”

“Who told you that?” K.C. looks at him as if he’s stupid (she always does it) and skepticism lines her short-syllable words.

“My grandmother—she’s a gardener, so she knows a lot about plants and shit. Green thumb, she says she’s got, but she’s always said that the earlier the rains come in the spring, the better the flowers will be in the summer.”

Cadence laughs quietly and says: “Who gives a shit about the flowers? I’m sure you don’t, Gav.”

He shrugs and crosses his arms. “Sorry for trying to start conversation,” he mutters, looking away from the girls and toward the crowd of adults across the aisle.

“Oh, lighten up. I’m just kidding.”

Graham rolls his eyes like he always does, never amused with their petty, feigned bickering and gently nudges Tenor, who looks over at him immediately. There’s a slight gleam in his eyes, one that shows that he, unlike Graham, is at least vaguely amused by the mockery before them, and he lets that easy smile spread on his lips again.

“What do you think is going to happen at the school?” he asks, and the words make the smile falter, but Tenor shrugs.

“Can we not talk about that?” Gavin frowns. “I don’t want to think about it and I don’t think that anyone else wants to either, Graham.”

“Well, it’s more interesting than talking about flowers, isn’t it?”

“It’s also stupid, so let’s not talk about it. Let’s talk about summer. It’ll be here soon, you know… we’ve got to think of something for us to do together, right? Senior year and all…” K.C. trails off, her tone becoming sadder as she realizes that her idea of conversation, too, is depressing and wouldn’t help at all with lifting any spirits.

The teens fall silent after K.C.’s topic suggestion sifts into the air, floating away and allowing quiet to fill the space it left behind. School will most likely run later than usual, once it’s back in business after the break from the shooting. Their spirits sink lower at the thought of returning to the school. Taking into consideration what they’d experienced there, it’s no surprise that none of the five would have any desire to return to the place where they’d seen death and narrowly escaped it. Will Tenor and Graham only see red if they returned to the bathroom they’d taken shelter in? Most likely. Will Cadence and Gavin feel a sense of panic upon passing Mrs. Annabelle Mathers’ classroom? Of course. Will K.C. ever feel comfortable and safe in the cafeteria after seeing Marc and James bust in with their guns? No, never. They can’t return, not now, not after what they’d experienced. They don’t want to.

“Well, what are we going to do?” Gavin is the first to speak up, drawing the others out of their thoughts. “I mean, we can’t stay here. Obviously. You guys don’t want to, I don’t want to, so what should we do?”

“We could leave,” Cadence says. She’s joking, partially; she wants to leave, but she doesn’t think that the fathom is very tangible or even reachable until after graduation, and that just feels impossible.

“Let’s do it.”

Here, behind the last row of pews in a church following the burial of their friend, the teens incubate their plan to abandon Riverside and the coarse memories it now holds, those which overpower the good, the happy, the fond memories that would make them smile but are now invisible compared to the fresh thoughts and recollections that fester in their minds on a constant basis. An escape sounds heavenly, like a god sent idea that will bring them to some sort of release from the thoughts that claw at their insides and that gnaw on their sanities. Questions do arise but they’re quickly dismissed, excused by the excitement of the chance to run away from their problems, to choose flight over fight and to relieve themselves from the ghosts of the recent past.

Where? Anywhere. Everywhere.
When? Now. Tomorrow. Next week. Anytime.
How? Gathering money from their jobs, getting it along the way, asking parents; anyway, anyhow.

Their planning isn’t the best but it isn’t the worst either and they decide that they have to do this, for their own sakes and not for the sakes of others. Although they’re each more than ready to simply abandon school and deal with the aftermath when they’ve fully come to their senses or maybe when the reality sets in or maybe not at all, they’ll realize that they do need to finish their education. Their parents will call for it, but maybe they’ll find a loophole—a GED for each of them, an early sitting of tests, a skipping of the graduation, online courses; anything to keep them out of that forsaken school and the memories that loom within it.

“And you’re sure that this will work?” Tenor seems hesitant, but everyone is rather hesitant about it, at least a little, even if they don’t show it and even if they don’t think that it’s there, it is.

“Yeah, ‘course it will.” Gavin is confident; he thinks that it’ll really work, that this will help them, that they’ll be able to do it.

“My brother knows a guy who has a van we could use. The gas might be a little costly but he’d probably be willing to pitch in for it.” Graham speaks up, remembering his brother’s friend who used to give him bottles of beer for a quarter each and was the one to introduce him to his nicotine addiction.

“Probably be willing or definitely willing?” K.C. raises an eyebrow, her skepticism poking through again and Graham shrugs.

“Hey, at least it’s a chance. Don’t be so pessimistic.” Cadence chimes in.

“Yeah, it’ll get us out of here. That’s all that matters. So long as this guy can give us the ride and help out if he wants, we’ve got some transportation to get outta here.” Gavin smiles a real, genuine smile, not the weak and fake ones that have been passed out since the fifteenth of March. It feels free to see the smile and it sparks tiny twitches of lips in the others.

And this is where their real adventure begins, or at least the start of the planning of their real adventure and the events leading up to it take place before it actually takes place.