The Forever Year

As Gavin is preparing for a long day at the store, Cadence is spending her ninth hour at the hospital, perched atop a foam cushion on one of the chairs by her brother’s bed. Jeanette sits across from her, hands tangled with her fiancé’s and beside them, the last Shetterly child sits, donned in his university hoodie and lips curled into a frown. Their parents are outside the room, bickering as they always are and Cadence is about ready to take a chair to both of their heads. Their argument had begun when the doctors suggested putting Tenor into a medically induced coma—they assured both parents that it would only be for the duration of a few days, but never gave the reasoning behind their suggestion. Dawn demanded to know and Benedict insisted that they trust the doctors, the professionals, with their son’s health. Cadence, Jeanie, and Zack shared a collective sigh of annoyance and glanced between mother, father and the child their altercation had encircled.

Despite agreeing with his mother, Tenor still doesn’t voice his opinion. In his current state, he’s too pained and fatigued to want to bother with joining in and instead he asks for Jeanie to tell him a story. His request is one that is petty and childish, but Jeanette still scoots her chair closer to lean against the guardrail of his bed to murmur the tale to him. Over the shoulders of Jeanie, Cadence explains to Rick that her sister had always told these stories to them when their parents fought.

“It’s been a tradition since the time we stayed at the lake house… the first time that Mom and Dad ever fought like they do now.” Cadence whispers, pulling aimlessly at a loose thread on her sweater. “Ten’s always liked her stories the best, more than me or Zack ever have.”

Rick nods in understanding and can’t help but glance in the direction of the still-arguing couple just outside the room. He’s known about the disagreement between his soon-to-be mother- and father-in-law since he was first introduced to them by Jeanie, because the night that she’d brought him home, they’d been in the middle of a screaming match and the first glimpse he’d gotten of Tenor and Cadence was two matching heads of blonde with identical frowns and crossed arms.

“You’d think that by now they’d just have given up on trying to stay together,” Zack comments as he watches his father storm away from his mother. “It’s been nearly ten years of this bullshit, all because Mom wanted to quit her job and become an artist.”

“Let’s not even start on why they fight,” Cadence mutters when Dawn returns to the room, her face red and eyes wet.

Dawn Shetterly looks fondly at her children; the twins who look more like her but have their father’s eyes and the older children who look like their father, Zack especially. She’s impossibly thankful that her children are so close, that her children don’t share the same divide that she and her husband now have. Her gaze lingers on Rick, the young man who’s captured her eldest’s heart and she nearly falls to her knees to pray that they never become like she and Benedict have.

“Sweetheart,” she begins, coming closer to her younger son. “Your father and I… agreed that we shouldn’t let the doctors do something before we know what it’ll do or why they’re going to do it.” She smiles at him, drawing even closer to comb her fingers through his hair. “So we’re going to talk to your doctors and then move on from there. Does that sound good, honey?”

“Yeah, Mom, that sounds great.” With a smile to compensate for the tired rasp in his voice, Tenor allows himself to relax with the knowledge of the possibility of the coma being postponed. He’d spent his first two and a half days in and out of surgery and kept in a medically induced coma, giving him the incentive to not want to return to that state. Waking up had been horrible and he’d been alone when it’d first happened; the nurses rushed to him, over stimulating his disoriented mind.

“I’m eighteen, though… can’t I just say no?” he asks after a few minutes and after kneading the idea through his hands. “I mean… legally, I am an adult, right? So I can make my own choices even if you and Dad want something different for me.”

Dawn sighs and shrugs. “You know how your father is, sweetheart. It’s always his way or the highway, regardless of whether you’re a legal adult or if you’re seven years old.”

“But it’s different with the doctors.”

“It’s still your father, honey. I wish you could do the decision making but with him it just doesn’t work that way. I don’t think talking about it will change it or will help you… Why don’t we find something else to talk about?”

Sighing, Tenor nods. “Okay, Mom.”

Dawn chooses a completely off-topic idea to talk about: Jeanie and Rick’s upcoming wedding. They seem happy to discuss the planning with Dawn but the others are less enthusiastic. Cadence takes Tenor’s hand and traces the lines on it, focusing on her painted nails as they graze his skin and dip into the thin marks on his palm. He asks quietly about Graham and K.C. and Gavin and Cadence has no answers; she hasn’t seen their friends either, not since the funeral. The last funeral, she remembers, is tomorrow. This is without counting the funeral for Marcus Allen in three days and Callum Brooks in four; the shooters, she thinks, don’t deserve the same respect as their victims.

“Do you think they’ll visit before I get released?”

“I don’t know, Songbird. I’ve tried calling K.C. but all I got was her voicemail or she was crying over the phone. Gavin… I think he’s working today. I can call Graham for you, if you want.”

“As much as I like your company, I’d really like to see someone who isn’t family…”

Cadence laughs—a real laugh, one that sends a small tremor through her rib cage and comes out as an earthy giggle. “Sure, sure. I’ll go give him a call now.”

As she walks out of the room, she bumps right into the person whose number was half-dialed on her phone.

“Well, speak of the devil. Ten wants to see you, Graham.”

Graham walks in all dreary-eyed, disheveled and sniffling, passing off the runny nose and bloodshot eyes as the after effects of a springtime cold and sits in the chair that Cadence had occupied moments before. Tenor perks up immediately when Graham enters the room, smiling and beginning to sit up—quickly, though, he winces, grabbing at his side and slowly slumping back against the bed. Dawn reaches instinctively to coddle or mother Tenor and is stopped only by Cadence, who is decidedly ushering out her mother and older sister and sister’s fiancé, telling them that it’s “teenager time” and that she and Tenor need to hang out with Graham. Zack leaves easily, mumbling something about going to get some coffee from the café to cure the jetlag that’s kept him quiet and lackadaisical.

“I’ve missed you.”

“I know, Ten…”

“You look tired.”

“I was drinking last night…”

An expression of disapproval encompasses Tenor’s features and he glances towards Cadence, his eyes coated with a sheen of worry and a set frown on his lips.

“Tenor, please don’t look at me like that.” Graham pleads, holding his head in one hand. “I didn’t… well, yeah, I did want to, but Gavin came over and was the one to suggest we get drunk.”

“At least you weren’t alone.” Despite being glad to see Graham, the knowledge that he’d been drinking has put a damper on Tenor’s spirits and he looks over at the other boy again, taking in the fatigue on his face and the mess of tawny hair, sticking up like windswept waves of dark grain.

“How are you feeling?”

He almost scoffs, and if he was of a more bitter or spiteful nature, perhaps he would have, but instead Tenor shrugs. “I’ve been better. Definitely been better…”

Cadence takes a seat on Tenor’s opposite side and leans her elbow on the arm of her chair, and her chin in her hand. She watches Graham’s expression as it turns downward, going from strung-out to what appears to be sorrow or general sadness but is actually the downcast glance of remorse and guilt.

“I’m really sorry. Really, really sorry.”

Both Tenor and Cadence take on a near identical look of confusion and look at each other before taking their gazes back to Graham: “Why are you sorry?” they question in unison.

“You mean you don’t hate me?” taken aback, Graham speaks as he looks up, the penitence fading from his features to make room for the astonishment that sets in.

“Why would I ever hate you, Graham? I don’t think I’d ever have a reason to hate you… especially now, after what you did when… well, you know…”

Cadence watches the boys carefully, observing first Tenor’s body language and then Graham’s as their exchange of words fills the silence that she would otherwise hear.

“But… it was my fault that… that even happened.”

Cadence scoffs loudly; she nearly break into a fit of laughter at what she feels is so ridiculous to have come out of Graham’s mouth, let alone have ever passed his mind as a legitimate thought or fear. The notion that Graham, sweet, sort of druggie, sort of drunk Graham to be of blame for her brother getting shot is simply too much for her to keep from giggling.

“Cadence…” Tenor’s frowning again, watching his sister as she struggles to contain her amusement and as Graham looks down at his feet.

“I-I-I’m sorry! I just… Graham, honey, it’s not your fault.”

The brunet doesn’t seem convinced and keeps his eyes glued to his scuffed sneakers. He’s spent so much time telling himself that it was his fault and his responsibility that he can’t see otherwise, even when someone shoves it right in his face of how stupid his thought process has been over the past two weeks.

“Yeah, Graham, really, it’s not your fault. You couldn’t have done anything to stop it—well, I guess you could have done one thing but I’m glad you didn’t do something stupid like taken a bullet for me. I’m gonna be fine, you know. Just have to get back on my feet and keep up with cleaning my wounds. I don’t think I have any other surgeries…”

The earlier mention of the possibility of the return of the medically induced coma lingers in the back of Tenor’s mind but he finds it easier to refrain from mentioning it to the already guilt-stricken Graham and Cadence sees it fit to fall in line with her brother’s confidentiality.

“But… the day before, I bumped into Callum… and…”

“And? That doesn’t mean that you set him off to suddenly shoot up the school. If he’d been doing it because of you… well, I think you’d be the one in the hospital bed right now, not me.”

Tenor wrings the hem of the sheet between his fingers, growing nervous at the depth of the shooting that they’re going into. Cadence looks down at her knees, her mind obviously caught in the reminder of her dead boyfriend and the other friends and peers that had been lost that day.

“If you say so, Ten…”

“I do say so. Now let’s talk about something else, okay? Like… how’s Gavin? I haven’t seen him since the funeral, and you said you were with him last night.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s fine. He seems… unaffected, just like normal. He made sure I got home last night, too, after we were drinking. I think he was more sober than I was, but that usually happens… regardless of who I’m with.” Graham thinks back to the night before, or at least what he could remember of it, being sure to mention that he had made it home before the night was through and had gotten there safe and sound.

“What about K.C.? Have you seen her or heard from her?”

Sadly, Graham shakes his head. “Gavin said that she cries a lot now.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too, when I’ve tried calling her and gotten an answer. She’s actually the last person I expected to react like that…” Cadence tugs her legs up, hugging her knees to her chest, frowning when she realizes that their conversation hasn’t really changed the memory of Alec still lingers in her mind.

Graham opens his mouth to speak, but falls short when the door opens and a nurse walks in, a small metal tray with antiseptic, gauze and other materials that Graham doesn’t get a full look at.

“Time to change your bandages, Tenor,” she says as she walks over to the bed. “I’m afraid that I’ll have to ask you two to leave for a—”

The nurse is cut off by Tenor, who insists that both Cadence and Graham stay with him while she changes his bandages. Although she seems annoyed by his request, she allows it. Graham helps Tenor sit up when the nurse tells him to and he winces when he sees the pinpricks of blood on the bandage as it’s unraveled from Tenor’s torso after the removal of top part of his hospital gown.

“Still bleeding…” the nurse tuts and sets the dirty bandages next to the tray on Tenor’s bed. She warns that there will be a sting just as she begins to dab at the wound with an antiseptic-doused ball of sterile cotton. Tenor gasps, his fingers curling into the sheet as the pain of the disinfectant suddenly hits him and both Graham and Cadence have to look away. The pain soon settles into a general sting, but even the smallest amount of pain brings Tenor back to the day that he’d acquired these wounds and the blood and the agony and the ringing in his ears. When the sting has subsided, the bandage has been replaced around his chest and the hospital gown is put on completely, Tenor looks over to Graham.

“Remember that none of this is your fault.”

“I know.”

“Promise me that you won’t keep thinking like that.”

“I promise.”

“Okay.”

Next, Tenor looks over to Cadence. “Getting better, right?”

She forces a smile and he knows that it’s forced but he doesn’t mention it and she doesn’t either. “You look great, Songbird.”

They don’t talk about anything related to the shooting after the nurse has left. It leads to some awkward silences, each thinking of the perfect topic that is about as far from the aforementioned event to bring up in conversation and by the time that they’re ready to begin it, they feel as though it’s inappropriate and refrain from doing so. After a few minutes of silence, Tenor is the first to speak up confidently.

“We should go see a movie once I’m released. And before we go back to school or move forward with the plan.”

“What movie do you want to see?” Cadence looks at him curiously, knowing that her brother isn’t the type to want to frequent the cinema and would rather be watching his movies on their television at home.

“I don’t know, whatever you guys and K.C. or Gavin want to see.”

“It depends on when you get released before we should even start looking at what movies we could see, and by then the others might want to move ahead with the plan already.”

“I just want to see a movie, to have one more thing to do here before we leave. You know?”

Tenor’s words remind Graham that when they go forth with the plan, it means leaving behind what they have here, their parents and their school and their siblings. With the exception of Tenor and Cadence, who will be together but will also have to leave behind Zack and Jeanie. The abandonment of their hometown and their homes isn’t the strangest concept for the handful of high school seniors; after the duration of a few months, they would have been going off to college or moving onto their own careers anyway, so what’s the difference of leaving early to take on the world in Graham’s brother’s friend’s van?

“It’s not like we’ll never stop to see a movie, Ten,” Cadence says quietly, also thinking of just how much weight the statement holds. They haven’t thought of these things, of the abandoning of everything while they will be traveling in the cramped van to fuck-knows-where for fuck-knows how long. It’s rather sobering, Cadence realizes and she looks over at the boys with a curious expression.

“I guess so,” he mumbles in return and turns his gaze towards the ceiling.

Graham’s phone receives Gavin’s text message very late and he chuckles upon reading it, replying that it had been Gavin’s idea in the first place. The small exchange takes him away, momentarily, to a time before, but the steady beep of the monitor Tenor is hooked up to quickly pulls him back to reality and back to remembering what had happened at school and why his best friend is still sitting in a bed in the ICU ward.

He and he and she wish so desperately that the past could have remained to be the present; to return to a time where they were happy and slept soundly and where their friends were alive and uninjured, where they went to school every day and didn’t worry over whether they’ll see bloodstains on the carpet and the tile and the walls when they come back. They aren’t aware that a girl has taken her life because her PTSD was so bad and the nightmares so scary and so real and so red; twenty-three dead. Twenty-four if you count Drew Orson and twenty-six if you count in the two shooters who had shot themselves but no one wants to pity the villains, no one wants to pity the sixteen year old boy in a jail cell and no one wants to pity the families who are grieving the losses of murderers. The victims are more righteous, struck down in their prime by psychopaths. Cadence can’t help but agree with this statement as she looks on at her brother and remembers Alec, six feet under. Graham can’t help but think that he should be pushed in with the scorned and damned murderers, regardless of what the others insist. He’ll drink away those thoughts and he’ll find an escape eventually.

“It’s too quiet.” Tenor speaks, his voice interrupting a long silence and forces the redirection of attention towards him. “It’s too fucking quiet and I hate it.”

“It’s not quiet. It’s deafening. Just an inward sort of deafening.”

“Either way I hate it. I need music or television or background noise or anything except for that fucking monitor and its constant beeping.”

“You have a TV here, Songbird—”

“All it plays is the news.”

The news. Every day, there’s a new story about the shooting or the aftermath or the clean up or the death toll or those who have been released or those who are still in the hospital. People all over the town are giving their opinions and their thoughts and their feelings and quite honestly it’s becoming nauseating to hear the same thing every day and see the same thing every day. The kids want to get over it but the media is pumping as much as they can to keep the story going. It’s been two weeks. Fourteen days, umpteen hours and halfway through the estimated time before Riverside High will reopen its doors, cleaned and polished and bleached and with a brand spanking new security guard.

The kids are scared. Scared to return, scared to remember; what will the halls bring? Tenor knows that when he walks down that forsaken hallway all he’ll be able to think of is the bullets that had pierced his torso and the blood—his blood—that had spilled onto the floor and stained the tiles red. He’s scared to go back and to remember and to think about anything related to what had happened and he knows that the others feel the same way. It’s scary. Terrifying, horrifying and he doesn’t want to go back, so he’s leaving. Once he’s out of the hospital, he’s gone, taking that van and his friends and getting out of Riverside before it can eat him alive. Graham wants to leave too and Cadence can’t bear to stay if her brother leaves. Although Gavin wants to finish high school, he’ll go too, because what would he be without his best friends? K.C. is done. She’s like Tenor, too scared to go back and remember and relive the terrible memories. So she’ll leave with them.

It’s better than leaving like the girl whose nightmares pushed her over the edge, better than leaving with the ring of a new gunshot or the suffocation of a noose. Not like Drew, whose death isn’t counted with the number of the massacre because no one knows that he gave Callum the guns and no one will ever know because the dead don’t speak and James isn’t able to vocalize or maybe he just doesn’t want to. Most of the students don’t care, they don’t want to know and they just want to move on. It’s the parents, the teachers, the adults, the country that want to know, demand to know and crave the knowledge of what had been going through the shooters’ minds when they unleashed their arsenal on the innocents of their high school.

Edwin Brooks doesn’t want to know, but that’s because he’s too drunk and doesn’t give a shit about what his kids have done.
The Allen family, however, they want to know. They need to know why their child saw it fit to do what he did. They’re not sure if they’ll ever know but they’re moving out of Riverside at the end of the school year (or maybe before that, depending on how the kids treat Lucy with the knowledge of what her big brother did) for a different place, a different state, a different life without this legacy.

“I just want to get out of here. The hospital, Riverside…”

“Yeah, Songbird, me too, me too.”

“I think everyone wants to. You, Cadence, me…”