The Forever Year

K.C. and her mother leave the Jensen household for their house with the cigarette-smoke smell and the old records stacked on the shelves and the leaky faucet in the kitchen and the four cats in the shed that’s painted the color of an eggshell and that sits in the corner of their small yard. It’s not perfect, not at all, not like Gavin and his family’s home, but it’s their home. And K.C. can curl up on her dead father’s reclining chair and cry and watch a stupid movie as her mother makes popcorn with the perfect amount of salt and pepper. K.C. has had yet to cry, but as she curls into herself on that old chair, she lets go and lets go all of what she’s kept pent in. No longer does she worry about Gavin or Jack in the next room or what the others would think. There’s no one but her and her mother; there’s no wheelchair-bound Tenor who would hold her hand or Graham who would stand there awkwardly or Gavin who would tell a stupid joke or Cadence who would help her reapply her makeup after the waterworks or Alec—her thoughts crash down at the thought of her deceased friend. They were supposed to have a party for his birthday. Cadence and a few others had planned to get a cake from the bakery down the street after lunch and bring it to him during his last class. K.C. cries harder at the reminder and curls her hands into fists around the fabric of the chair.

Melanie Morgan hasn’t seen her daughter cry like this since she and her friends had nearly gotten in a car accident and ended up causing a three-car accident behind them. Then, no one had been hurt. This time around, people had died; people that K.C. knew and cares for are now dead. Melanie sighs, watching the bag of microwavable popcorn expand as each kernel pops. The soundtrack to the evening is K.C.’s gasps and sobs and cries with the backdrop of whatever stupid comedy Melanie had put on and, at that instant, the shake of salt and pepper as she seasons the popcorn.

“How are your friends?” Melanie asks when K.C.’s sobs quell and the movie’s over, popcorn’s untouched.

“Graham’s stupid. Tenor’s in the hospital. Cadence is… hell if I know how Cadence is. Gavin’s fine.” K.C. nearly makes a bitter comment of Alec’s fate, but even the thought of the boy nearly sends her back into hysterics and waterworks, so she refrains.

“Why is Graham stupid?” Melanie reaches over wipes away her daughter’s tears with one work-roughened thumb, thinking that she’s chosen the easiest topic to converse over.

“He just is, okay?”

“Okay. Do you want to watch another movie? I think I rented a new one the other day…” Without waiting for K.C.’s response, Melanie is already on her feet, wandering over to the cabinet underneath the television and riffling through it, looking for the envelope that holds the movie that she had rented.

“I don’t want to watch another movie, Mom.”

“Why not? It’ll distract you, and I made popcorn. Come on, you love cheesy horror flicks, don’t you, babe?”

Sighing, K.C. nods and sits up a bit straighter, settling in her seat and tugging a blanket around her legs. Instead of thinking about the shooting, she tries to think about all of the fond memories she has of poorly made scary movies. She remembers a Halloween filled with too many sweets, crappy, store-bought costumes, and movies with the same budget (or a lesser one) as the movie that her mother has hit play for.

The movie is stupid and predictable, but it makes K.C. smile and Melanie feels like she’s finally done something right for her daughter after this whole mess. It’s a bit morbid that K.C. would be so amused by so much killing (regardless of how bad the special effects are) after taking into consideration what she had witnessed at the school, but Melanie disregards the needless thought and smiles over at her daughter.

“I told you that you’d like it,” she says.

“Oh, shut up, Mom.”

Melanie manages to coax K.C. into watching yet another movie and by the time it’s over, the younger woman has dozed off and all that’s left of the popcorn is the half-popped, cold pieces and a cluster of kernels that failed to pop. She’ll let K.C. sleep in the recliner for the night and cleans up the living room, turning off the television and washing the bowl that had held the popcorn. As most do, her daughter looks peaceful in the embrace of sleep and Melanie smiles in a motherly way as she drapes a second blanket over the sleeping adolescent and walks down the hall, flicking off the lights as she goes, until she’s in her own bedroom and curled in her bed to sleep.

K.C. wakes up shaking in the early hours of the morning, tears stinging her eyes as she leaves the red, red world that sparks shivers up her spine and paints her psyche with that same cherry red, cutting away at the threads of her sanity as the paint soaks in and dries across her consciousness, taking away any possibility of sleep returning. K.C.’s only company in the dawn is the cats who’ve come in from the shed and sleep scattered across the house. K.C. makes tea with Ruby and drinks it with the Siamese cat on her lap. Another of the cats is expecting kittens and K.C. wonders if it’d be weird for her to name one in honor of one of the dead. As she strokes Ruby’s fur and sips at her tea and watches infomercials, K.C. debates the possibility of insensitivity. Perhaps she’d combine the initials of the deceased to create names for the kittens.

“What do you think, Ruby? Would you want to name one of the kittens Alec?”

In response, Ruby simply purrs and nuzzles her snout against K.C.’s fingertips, demanding that the petting continue.

“Hm? Is that a yes, girl?”

K.C. quiets after this and returns to sipping her tea and scratching behind Ruby’s ears. Her mind wells with the thought of Alec, then of his family and Cadence and their loss. Although she and Cadence tend to butt heads (as most girls do), K.C. is genuinely worried for the other girl. With a dead boyfriend and a hospitalized brother, it can’t be easy and she makes a mental note to check up on Cadence like she’s been trying to check up on Graham and Gavin.

Gavin is easy, stoic. Thus far, he’s been seemingly unaffected and doesn’t seem to suffer from the same emotional turmoil that the majority of their peers and friends are burdened with. K.C. supposes that he’s trying to be stereotypically strong and masculine, having no emotion and being strong for everyone else. She’ll talk to him about it at some point, maybe when her own emotions aren’t gnawing at her mind and sanity.

It’s nearly five in the morning when the news comes on and the first broadcasting of any coverage that K.C. has seen of the shooting is suddenly thrust before her. Her half-asleep mind is shocked into abrupt reality and she nearly flings Ruby from her lap. The newscaster calls it the Riverside High Massacre. One to rival Columbine. Sixteen students dead (Alec one of them) along with four teachers and two of the three shooters (Callum and Marc). She nearly gets sick; the feeling of rising bile creeps up her esophagus but never does she vomit. She can’t change the channel and she can’t look away and, in consequence, she can’t sleep for the rest of the day.

In another place but at the same time, another is learning of the events that had unfolded on that faithful Thursday afternoon. James Brooks has just learned that his brother and best friend are dead. Marc’s suicide doesn’t come as a surprise (he’d always been rather suicidal and hateful of himself and others; he’d even told James on more than one occasion that he’d wanted to take his own life) but Callum’s suicide is what breaks the teen. His brother, his big brother, dead at his own hands. Callum had never been the type to want to die. Remorse never crossed his features or his thoughts and there was widespread skepticism and doubt that he possessed a consciousness.

And that is precisely why James is so broken by Callum’s death. The brother who put him up to this task, who embraced him and told him that they’d have fun and that everything would be okay when it was over. But nothing is okay and James knows this; he’s in jail and his family refuses to see or speak to him. His brother is dead and so is his best friend. He’s a killer, a murderer; twenty lives are on his head and everyone wants to take a piece of him for compensation. It hurts; everything hurts like a raging pain that surges through his veins, becoming more painful and more prominent with every heartbeat and breath. He can’t escape the feeling of thorns beneath his skin or the growing ache that resides in the depths of his mind.

He doesn’t ask the guard for any sort of medical treatment. Maybe part of him realizes that this awful aching is partly punishment from his subconscious and he deserves it. He does not deserve comfort or love or hope or virtue; he deserves pain and hate and pessimism and sin. This means that, yes, he does not deserve his brother and he doesn’t deserve Marc, either, or his family or even life. He hopes that they’ll give him the death sentence, not for an easy escape from life in prison but to receive the proper punishment for his crimes. Twenty dead. Twenty lives on his shoulders. What would Callum do? What could Callum do?

He’d laugh.
He’d cheer.
He’d sneer.

James can’t do any of those things, for he feels too awfully about what he’s done. He cries, he cringes, and he aches. He aches as if he’s been shot, as if he were one of his victims, torn up by bullets and shrapnel and stuck in the hospital with a fading dose of morphine. A fading dose of morphine and a lumpy mattress on a cold cot without sheets and nothing but a screwed-down toilet and sink to keep him company. Orange jumpsuit (he’d always hated the color orange) for his clothes and a number for his name. This, James supposes, is what he deserves. Pain, suffering, loneliness. Maybe the other inmates will kill him once they find out that he’s the only living shooter of a high school massacre. Maybe they’ll kill him if the government won’t.

James looks for a piece of wood to rap his knuckles against; he doesn’t want to jinx the possibility of allowing karma to do its work and to give him the fate he feels that he deserves. He can’t even find a splinter of wood in the cell; he’s surrounded by metal and painted brick; the floors are concrete and cold, unforgiving and unmoving beneath his feet. He’s sure that his skull would crack like an egg if it were smashed harshly enough against the cement. James would hope it would happen if he wasn’t all alone all the time.

But maybe he deserves to be alone.
The people whose lives lay on his neck are alone.
Their families are, too.
Those that are still alive are alone in their hospital beds and comas.
So he really shouldn’t complain about being alone in a jail cell.

It could be worse; he could be like Tenor, bedridden and not allowed to even sit up without a nurse on guard. Or he could be like Nancy Elridge, who’s lost the feeling in her legs and most likely won’t be able to walk again. Or he could be like August Foster, who may never awaken from a medically induced coma and who may never receive the opportunity to meet the accident child that his ex-girlfriend carries. Or he could be like Mr. Lackos, who’d taken two bullets to the ribcage in attempts to save a handful of students and whose lungs are now so fragile that he may never be able to run again. James could be in the same situation as any of the numerous wounded staff and students, but instead he’s perfectly healthy and in a safe jail cell. It’s more than many can say and it’s his fault that those many are suffering as they are. And without even the emotional baggage, he sits in his cell; he carries no burden, not like the witnesses, not like Graham, not like K.C., not like Gavin, not like Cadence. Remorse pools in his brain and his gut like a thick oil, lacing his blood with a dull ache but he doesn’t get a sensation other than this ache from the deed he’d done. The loss of Callum and the loss of Marcus is what has created the pain and emotion and painful sensation of hurt within James’ form.

This pain is widespread; the aching agonies take form in numerous states and places but all across Riverside. Physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain; each entity is equal, not evenly spread out but equally leveled and equally as destructive as the other.

However, the one person who might be feeling the most pain is Drew. He’s not been sober since the shooting, unable to live with the fact that he had been the one to teach the boys how to fire a gun. He’d been the one to hand them the firearms they needed to execute the executions. Had it not been for him, people would still be alive, children would still be alive. He nearly vomits at the thought, sickened with himself and downing another shot of vodka to forget that he’s been drinking to forget that he’s been drinking to forget that he’s done what he’s done. Mimi won’t return his calls and he doesn’t think that she’d even look at him if he looked around for her.

When Drew runs out of vodka he goes for the whiskey and when he runs out of that he goes for the beer and when he runs out of that it’s Tuesday morning and he doesn’t know if it’s been weeks or months since the shooting and he doesn’t know if he’s even alive anymore or if he can handle any more booze today. The answer, he doesn’t really care about; he’ll smoke and he’ll drink and if he dies, so be it. He’s better off dead, anyway. Better off dead like Cal and Marc, better off jailed like James. Better off dead. Worthless piece of shit, useless bag of lard, absolute garbage, no wonder your father doesn’t want to talk to you, Drew. No wonder he left you when you were small and no wonder your mother jumped in front of a train and dumped you on her drunk of a brother. Your family is burnt out and you were destined to follow the path.

Drew flips the coffee table when he runs out of beers and his uncle shouts from the kitchen that he’d better not break the goddamn lamp again and better stop drinkin’ all of his liquor. Drew doesn’t give a shit and he’s done with giving a shit and he wishes he’d just have realized what kind of person Callum really was. The kind of person who didn’t care about people and wanted to kill them. He should’ve seen it, shouldn’t he have?

Drew hates himself more than anyone could. He hates himself more than Graham hates himself and he feels more remorse and responsibility than any of the shooters. He doesn’t know what to do. He knows that he can never redeem himself and Drew wants to die.

Drew wants to die so he goes to the basement and takes the pistol that he hadn’t given to the boys the day before the shooting. He takes the pistol and puts it in his mouth like a child would a pacifier. He puts the pistol in his mouth and he pulls the trigger and he splatters his brains across the wall like Callum always fantasized of seeing. With a blood alcohol level above the legal limit and a hole through his head and a still heart, Drew dies in his basement and stains the carpet with his blood and his brains.