Exposure

by Kolleen Fraser

  The couch is ripped up and flipped over, anything that can break is broken. My heart is pounding in my chest. Who did this?

  “Matty?” I call out, afraid to be too loud in case whoever did this is still here. I step over broken glass and start toward my bedroom. Matty’s room is destroyed and there is blood smeared on his door and more spotting the floor. I feel panic rising in my chest; I need to get out of here. I rush to my room; the door is open, and my stuff is thrown all over the place. Thank god, I had my camera with me.

  But my laptop is trashed; looks like it was thrown against the wall.

  “Lexi? I texted the guys, they're pissed like I told you and... holy shit! What happened?”

  I jump at hearing Elise in the other room. I toss the last few things I can fit in my bag and walk out to her. “I don't know, it was like this when I got here. He's not here. There's... there's blood all over his room,” I say, tears falling down my cheeks.

  “Maybe he just got in another fight. Come on, let’s just go, you can text him from my place, we're not staying here.” She begins pulling me to the door. “Let's go.”

  I don't know what else to do, how else to find him. I let her pull me toward the door. Which is now blocked by two very scary-looking men.

  I slowly pull Elise behind me. “When you see an opening, don’t hesitate, run and get help,” I whisper over my shoulder to her.

  “I'm not leaving you!” she hisses, looking at the men with pure terror in her eyes.

  “I can fight them, Elise, I know what I'm doing but please, you have to run,” I beg her. She ducks her head but nods. I look back at the men who are now stalking toward us, into the apartment, predatory smiles painting their faces.

  I decide to play the tough card. “Who the hell are you? Did you trash my apartment?” I point to my ransacked apartment. “Where’s Matty?” I ask, suddenly regretting mouthing off to these scary guys. They position themselves for attack, and I shift toward the living room, so I can get them away from the door, anything to give Elise a chance to run.

  “We had to teach him a lesson. He stole from the wrong person this time. Now where’s the fucking money?” he grumbles, pulling a gun from the back of his pants.

  “Look, I don't know what you’re talking about. You should leave now, before the cops get here,” I lie, trying to fake bravery. They don't fall for it.

  “You didn’t call the cops, and we sure as fuck aren’t leaving, not without our money.”

  There is no way out of this situation without a fight. I calm my breathing like Z taught me and stand with my fists up, ready to fight. It’s obvious from the look on their faces they think that me fighting them is hilarious and they both have a good laugh at my expense. Exactly the perfect distraction I need. Asshats.

  I punch the first guy in his nose, breaking it with a satisfying crunch and swing a chair from behind me into his face. Then I swing my leg around to connect with asshole number two, knocking the gun out of his hand. When they’re both down, I grab Elise's hand and we run for the door. One of them grabs my ankle and I'm down. His hand quickly closes around my throat, cutting off my air.

  Elise stands at the door, shaking, staring at me, crying. I shake my head at her, trying to tell her to run but the words don't come out. My vision is going black and the blows I'm hitting him with are doing nothing. A gunshot rings out and the man holding me drops, allowing me to I roll to the side, gasping for air. Elise stands behind the man who was choking me, a gun shaking in her grasp. She shot him.

  The gun clangs to the floor and she collapses, sobbing, clutching her round belly. I run to her, falling on my knees. “Are you okay, the baby?” I ask, holding a hand on her belly. The baby bucks against my hand and I gasp, pulling back. Elise starts rocking back and forth, crying. I cradle her head to my chest. “It'll be okay. We need to go, Elise. We can't stay here,” I tell her softly. I need her to move, we need to leave, now.

  “I killed him, I killed him,” she keeps repeating. I lift her chin, looking her in the eyes. I wipe away her tears and brush my hands over her hair.

  “He was going to kill us. If you didn't shoot him, we would both be dead right now. Do you understand? You saved us. Now please stand up, let’s go,” I beg. She nods, letting me help her to her feet. We make our way to the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs, loud noises ring out behind me. I’m thrown into the air as pain erupts throughout my body. My knees give out and I fall down the remaining stairs, cracking my head against the sidewalk. I lie there on the pavement, looking up at the sky as my vision begins to blur, incapable of moving as the life drains out of my body. This is real, I’ve been shot.

  Something cold touches my hand and I look over. Elise is lying next to me, a line of blood running out of the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are locked onto mine, round with pure fear. One bloody hand is shaking and clutching at me desperately. The other is cradling her round belly.

  “Elise,” I cry, crawling myself closer to her, pain radiating through me. Blood has completely soaked the front of her shirt, coming from a hole in the left side of her chest. She tries to talk, but chokes as blood spills out of her mouth. The whole world narrows as a black cloud encroaches my vision.

  I try to press my hands on her wound, but my right arm isn’t working. Ignoring the pain shooting through me, my hands start shaking and my head spins wildly. I can’t see her, something is in my eyes, I try to wipe it away but the blood soaking my hands makes it worse. I fall onto the ground beside her, clutching her hand as the life slowly drains out of us.

  “I’m sorry.”

  We lie there taking our last breaths together. Noah's voice comes from somewhere in the darkness. Warm hands touch my face; it feels so real. I think I feel his lips kiss my palm, but his voice fades away like a leaf on the wind. I can't keep my eyes open; it's so cold. In the distance, sirens approach. Too late, I think, before I let the darkness take me.

  Chapter Seven

  I wake to a slow and steady beeping. Pain radiates over my whole body and my head is pounding. It takes me a few tries to open my eyes but when I look around the impossibly bright white room, it registers: I’m in a hospital room. Sensors are attached all over my body and an IV is stabbed in my arm. As the events that led me here come rushing back, I start to panic, pulling at the wires with my right hand. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, and the beeping gets faster.

  A nurse runs into the room, looking sweet and stern, the way nurses do. “Stop tugging at those. You need to calm down, miss, though it’s nice to see you're finally awake.” After checking my IV, she picks up my chart and walks to the machine at my right. She writes something down and reattaches the sensors I managed to wriggle free, while I stare at her in silence.

  “Where am I?” I croak. My throat feels like it's on fire.

  “In the hospital, of course.” She states it like, isn’t that obvious. I shake my head. I run my hand over the bandage on my left leg, cringing with the pain the movement causes in my right shoulder, which is also bandaged.

  “You were shot, twice. You've been out for a few days,” she says.

  I jerk up in bed. She can’t be serious. “Days! What about Elise? Is she okay? I need to go, I need to see her.”

  “Whoa, whoa, settle down! You're not going anywhere,” she says, trying to hold me down.

  “Where is she? Is she on this floor? Can I see her? Just for a minute, I need to see she's okay. Did someone call my brother?” I blurt out, in a panic.

  “Calm down, miss. I don't know who you’re talking about. I’ll go get the doctor to come check on you. Then, when you’re ready, there’s a police officer wanting to talk to you. He might have some of the information you’re looking for. Just calm down before I’m forced to sedate you,” she warns sternly. I give up struggling and wait for more information. The doctor comes first, ignoring all my questions.

  “Young lady, you are lucky to be alive. You were brought in with two gunshot wounds; one in the shoulder,
and one in the thigh, you’ve also suffered a concussion...” I stop listening to him. The last thing I remember is holding Elise's hand. I need to know if she's okay, I need to see Noah. I need answers.

  “The girl they brought in with me, please, Doctor, she’s

  my best friend. Can you tell me where she is? I just need to make sure she’s okay.” He won't look in my eyes. Once he finishes checking my wounds he walks out without another word.

  A few minutes later, a police officer walks in. He stands at the foot of my bed.

  “I'm Officer Stevens, I was first officer on scene the night you were shot. You and another patient were being loaded into ambulance when I arrived, one man found dead in the apartment and one shot in pursuit. That’s all the information I have. It’s your turn to answer a few questions I need you to answer, see if we can shed some light on what happened. Could you tell me what you remember from that night?”

  I nod, wanting to get this over with. “I went home to see my brother. The place was trashed and when we, Elise and I, tried to leave, two men were waiting at the door. We fought, one grabbed me by the throat and Elise shot him. She only did it to save me. You can't charge her for murder when it was self-defense, can you?” I ask, my eyes filling with tears.

  “No charges have been laid, yet,” he assures me while continuing to write notes. “Did you know the men? Had you seen them before? Were they friends of your brother, Matthew?”

  “I didn't know them, no. But I doubt they were his friends. They kept asking me where the money was.”

  “What money?” he asks, this piquing his interest.

  “That's what I said. I didn't know what they were talking about, but they made it clear they wouldn't leave without it.

  That’s when they jumped me.”

  “And you fought them, on your own. Two grown men,” he asks skeptically.

  “I tried to buy Elise some time to get away,” I say, remembering how she didn’t run like I told her to. I hope she’s all right, she must be so scared. “Okay, I've answered your questions, now please answer mine. Where is Elise? I need to see her. Did anyone call Marco and Noah? Did you find my brother?” He shakes his head.

  “We haven't found your brother, no. We have a Noah King and Marco Heart in custody. They were found on scene, covered in blood when officers arrived. We were keeping them in custody until we could get some answers.”

  “Elise must have told you, they didn't do anything. They weren’t even there when Elise shot the gun, you have to let them go!” I say, getting frustrated that Noah was locked up for days while I lay here unconscious.

  The officer shifts his feet and clears his throat. “They will be released shortly now that you have confirmed their story. I’m sorry Miss Young, but the other gunshot victim was pronounced dead on arrival, you were the only survivor.” The whole world drops out from under me... only survivor.

  “No! You’re wrong, the girl who was with me, her name is Elise Heart, she was pregnant, she can’t be dead!” I'm struggling with the lines attached to my body as I try to get out of bed. “She’s not dead, I’ll find her, she’ll be okay, you’re lying, she’s okay, she’s alive.”

  I start screaming, pulling at sensors attached to me and ripping the needle from my arm. The officer tries to hold me down, but I refuse to be stopped. I hit him and scream until more doctors and nurses come running in. Something jabs into my arm and suddenly, my limbs feel too heavy to move.

  “She's not dead, she saved me, she saved me, she has to be okay, she can't be, she can’t be,” I chant to myself, falling back on the bed, shaking my head. She can't be dead. I slip into unconsciousness and dream of Elise holding her baby on the beach on the sunset. She can't be dead, God would never let something like this happen. I grasp onto the hope that I’ll wake up and see her smiling face. This is all just a bad dream, a horrible mistake.

  But it isn’t a mistake; Elise is dead. Through a cloud of sedation, they tell me no one has been able to find my parents and I’ll be sent into foster care once I’m cleared for release. They tell me the girl who was brought in with me died on the street from a gunshot wound to her heart—her beautiful heart. I sink into this fresh hell and refuse to hear any more. I scream until the meds kick in and rock myself.

  I should never have gone back there—she asked me not to, but I wouldn’t listen. This is my fault, I’m responsible for the death of my best friend and her unborn child. I curl away from the words that hurt worse than the hole in my chest, words spoken with cold indifference by a doctor while I’m strapped down to a bed in the hospital.

  My scars and outburst deem me a suicide risk. They keep me sedated until my body is healed enough that I can't cause damage to my wounds. I don't care anymore; I’ve got nothing left in me, I'm already dead. Like my mother, I’ll happily keep myself drugged enough to not feel the pain of the world.

  After three weeks recovering in the hospital, I slip up. Everything was closing in on me and I couldn’t breathe. In one moment of weakness while getting my bandages changed, I grabbed the scissors and tried to cut at my wrist. I swear I wasn’t going to end my life. I just needed a quick release, a moment where I could breathe without pain. An orderly with a hero complex tackled me to the floor and disarmed me before I could cause any damage. My ‘suicide attempt’ garnered me an extended stay in the psych ward for evaluation. In hindsight, I know it was a stupid move, and up until then they saw me as a victim of a crime, not a mental case ready to end her life.

  My circumstances—the fact I'm an underaged, homeless, suicide risk give the powers that be little choice other than placing me here at the ‘hospital’ until I'm fully healed and finished with my therapy, both physical and mental. I don't care about getting better, all I can do is float along in this mind-numbing existence. Sleep, medicate, eat, therapy, sleep, medicate, eat, therapy. Lather, rinse, repeat, until each pointless day blurs into the next. No one comes for me, no one visits. Matty has gone missing and Noah probably hates me for killing his sister. Why can’t they just let me die? It’s torture to keep on living this life when I stole Elise’s from her.

  ***

  The gunshot wounds to my shoulder and leg are almost completely healed. It's been three months since the shooting with no word from my mother, brother, or Noah. I’ve officially been thrown away. Again.

  I’m constantly being dragged from one therapy to the next: tell us about your childhood, tell us why you’re sad, tell us why you won't speak, tell us where the bad man touched you. I’ve check out mentally, I can't answer their questions. I still don't understand how my life could change so drastically in a heartbeat.

  Elise is dead. I swear I can feel her absence in the world.

  Noah left me, taking all the light in the world, and my sanity with him.

  Matty and my own mother abandoned me; I’ve never felt so alone.

  It should have been me. Elise should be out in the world with her baby, living their happy life, and I should be cold in the ground.

  I push food around my plate, unable to eat, and I don’t sleep unless sedated. I stay up at night, going over every second of that day. Trying to work it out like a puzzle, wishing there was some way I could go back and fix everything.

  I’m an empty shell. All the rejection and lack of love I carry with me from childhood comes rushing back. My mind screams horrible things at me; I'm disgusting, unlovable.

  Noah left me. A waste of space that no one could ever love. I killed Elise and her baby, it’s all my fault.

  I collapse from the weight of the words that have pierced my heart. Some days, I pretend to be over it. To be able to walk away from the pain of my childhood and the pain of being cast aside again but the reality that Elise is gone, that Matty and Noah don’t want me is too much to bear. I'm desperate to make the pain go away. To try and cut it out of my body forever but no matter how deep I cut it stays. Useless, unloved, unwanted. Matty was my savior, the person who said he would take care of me. Noah promised he would
love me forever. In the end, no one wants me, everyone leaves; pain is the only thing that stays, the only thing that’s real.

  My own parents didn't love me. Why should anyone else?

  My eyes dance around the doctor’s office looking for something, anything to dull this pain, to quiet the voices telling me how little love I deserve. A set of keys sits on the desk in front of me; I imagine the sensation of pushing the little spikes into my skin and dragging. Not sharp enough. I pick them up, remembering the feeling of dragging a cool blade across my wrist. I hold the keys in a tight grip over my arm, willing myself to press down, but the butterflies etched into my skin remind me of the love I had once: the way Noah made me feel, the way being a part of a family made me feel.

  I cover my face, screaming as tears stream down my face, and throw the keys across the room. I break down completely.

  I'm trash, I've been thrown away by everyone who was supposed to love me. I feel the vomit rise in my throat as I run for the bathroom, unable to stomach how close I came to ending it all.

  “But you didn't cut, Alexa, that's the whole point. You had the opportunity and chance, and you fought those urges. This is a good thing, small steps. You’re taking each day, each episode as it comes. It shows great progress on your part. I think you are ready to leave this place,” Roxanne, my caseworker, states in our therapy session. Like me almost slicing my wrists open is normal. Hell, for her it might be.

  “I can’t leave! What about Matty? No one has found him. Where would I go?” I ask, desperate for this one ray of hope.

  “Alexa, I’m sorry, there’s been no trace of him. And unfortunately, your mother has an arrest warrant in Las Vegas, and with her track record, it’s unlikely we will find her. Even if we do, she will be sent to jail. We will be placing you in a foster care group home until we can find a more permanent placement for you.” I just stare at her, absorbing her words. That’s it, they’ve given up on me too.