We Can Be Heroes

by Kyrie McCauley

  Beck stopped just outside the open window of the van and dropped her phone on the seat, offering the music app as a truce.

  “Thanks.” Cassie’s voice drifted up from the middle seat.

  Cassie had said she didn’t want to put her family through losing her again, but what did that mean for Beck and Vivian? Beck could already feel the distance Cassie was putting between them, and it felt like she was doing it on purpose, giving them space before she was gone for good. They could see her so clearly now, and that shadow on Cassie’s head had grown darker. Cassie could move objects with ease. She’d even thrown a sock at Vivian’s head the other night.

  But Cassie was still there. And Beck was terrified of the moment they’d lose her altogether.

  On Vivian’s front steps, Beck stopped to find the key Cassie said they kept in a potted plant. Her fingers brushed the paint as she unlocked the door, and came away wet. They must have just missed the bastards doing it.

  Inside, Beck went upstairs and knocked softly on Vivian’s bedroom door.

  There was rustling inside, and the sound of Vivian swearing, and then the door opened, just a crack.

  “What?” Vivian asked. “Is Cassie okay?”

  “Well, I don’t know what’s up with her tonight, but she’s there. Being ghostly. Haunting the hell out of my van.”

  Vivian smiled, but it was weak.

  “Can I come in?” Beck asked, pressing against the door.

  Vivian seemed to genuinely debate the answer for a second.

  “Fine,” she said, swinging the door open.

  Beck gaped at the room.

  Vivian’s wall, the one she’d filled for years with awards and certificates and running trophies, was stripped, already half bare. And on the floor was a garbage bag, half full.

  Vivian was throwing away everything.

  “Vivian,” Beck began, but Vivian held up her hand.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “You can help me, or you can go.”

  Vivian returned to her wall, ruthless. She was tearing down every last bit of her old self. And putting it in the trash.

  Beck sank to her knees by the trash bag.

  “Vivian, what is this?” She pulled out a letter, addressed to Vivian. “This is from your school.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Vivian said, breathless, standing on her desk chair to try to reach her highest shelf.

  “Vivian, this says they’re giving you another scholarship. Since you can’t run track for them anymore. This is a full academic ride. Jesus, V. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because, even with the scholarship, we are drowning in my medical bills,” Vivian said, more harshly this time. She couldn’t reach the shelf. “So. It. Doesn’t. Matter.”

  Vivian fell.

  And took half the wall down with her.

  The shelf tore off its nails, the plaster under it breaking and crumbling onto the floor, coating everything in dust.

  Beck moved to where Vivian had landed, offered her a hand.

  “Can you stop now?” Beck asked.

  “No,” Vivian said. “I can’t stop. I need it all out of here, Beck.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it doesn’t mean anything anymore. It meant everything to me. And now it doesn’t.”

  Beck didn’t say another word, but she started to help Vivian.

  She picked up all the trophies. She swept up the piece of wall and the plaster dust.

  “You can’t hide here forever,” Beck said. “Our real lives might have been put on hold when Cassie . . . last spring. But they’re not over. You are still gonna be a doctor. You are still going to do all those things you worked so hard for. It doesn’t mean nothing. The meaning just changed.”

  “Why can’t I hide here? Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  Beck wanted to correct her. Tell her she was pushing herself, too, pushing past this debilitating grief that she’d been stuck in. Not just since she’d lost Cassie, but longer. Since she’d lost her parents.

  But she hadn’t gotten that job yet. She didn’t know if she had a future outside of Bell.

  So she said nothing.

  Beck took the bag with her. She was afraid Vivian would walk it right down the street to the dumpster outside the gas station if she left it behind. And she knew Vivian would want these things back eventually. Maybe not for a while. But she’d want them someday.

  Beck grabbed a bucket from Vivian’s kitchen. Found some gloves in the cupboard. She couldn’t find alcohol but grabbed soap and hydrogen peroxide. If Beck knew anything, she knew paint. She’d find a way to get it off that door.

  It took her an hour to clean the front door, and when she got back to the van—back to Cassie—that song was playing. The same one. It was always that song now. But Beck didn’t say a word about it. She reached down and turned the volume up and sang along.

  When Cassie joined in singing, unable to resist, Beck smiled.

  Her friends might be hurting, scattered, and aimless. But that was Beck’s specialty. They’d spent the last decade holding Beck down, keeping her from flying apart in grief and fear.

  She had to do the same for them now.

  She had to finish what they’d started.

  Cassie

  Betty is parked on the edge

  of Beck’s grandpa’s property,

  behind the barn

  and right up against

  the Warrens’ sunflower fields.

  Beck let me choose the spot,

  and from here I can see the

  flowers reaching up,

  like children standing

  on their tiptoes,

  faces tilted to the sun.

  But not all the flowers

  are blooming.

  Instead some shrink on their stems

  and the soil beneath

  darkens with rot

  and when you look closer,

  maggots.

  Days pass and I watch

  the rot spread,

  one sunflower to the next.

  I don’t know if it

  was always there

  weaving its death through

  patches of flowers.

  I wasn’t ever looking

  at the earth beneath them,

  I was so fixated on the blooms.

  It’s hard to notice

  changes when they are subtle,

  and it’s even harder when they

  are hidden by something pretty,

  so maybe I missed it before.

  The same way I missed Nico’s

  grip squeezing tighter

  each time he held my hand,

  until it was so hard it hurt.

  The way his compliments shifted,

  began to contain threats.

  Your voice is beautiful

  became

  You should only sing for me.

  I’ll love you forever

  became

  Whether you like it or not.

  Be mine was not

  like the hearts on valentines

  that we dropped

  into decorated shoeboxes

  every February.

  And maybe we shouldn’t

  teach children

  that love and possess

  are synonyms.

  The sunflowers remind me

  to look closer now.

  At the fields.

  At the town.

  I am realizing now

  the danger was always

  right there, right in front of me

  but I was raised to fear

  strangers, not boyfriends.

  It was too subtle for us to see

  until it was too late.

  Too late for me,

  and for the sunflowers.

  Their stems cracking open

  while they’re still drinking up sun.

  Bell looks different now.

  For a while I thought

  it was me,

  bei
ng dead and all of that.

  But the longer I stay,

  And the closer I look,

  The more I see it.

  My eyes are on the roots now,

  and the roots are rotten.

  Because this is a place

  that in its own subtle way

  decided long ago

  the company comes first.

  This place is a dog

  that’s run away from me

  and come home again.

  I want to greet it,

  arms wide open,

  this thing I missed.

  But its eyes are a little wild

  on approach

  and when I step too close,

  it bares its teeth at me.

  It is something possessed,

  not loved.

  And now it is rabid.

  And as good as dead to me.

  We Can Be Heroes

  Season 2: Episode 17

  “The Editor”

  MERIT LOGAN: Welcome back, listeners, to We Can Be Heroes. Let’s get right into it. Earlier this week, Congresswoman Maria Roberts went on public radio to talk about guns getting into the wrong hands, and she referenced Cassie Queen and the Bell murals.

  [Audio clip]

  “It’s great that our youth care. That they’re using their voices and their art to send messages about gun violence. That burden shouldn’t be on their shoulders. We ought to have addressed these issues long ago. But we can act now. I’m inspired by those murals, and Cassie Queen, and I’ll be introducing some new legislation in response to these important conversations around violence.”

  MERIT LOGAN: Just yesterday the Bell Review, the local newspaper, published an opinion piece that targeted Vivian Hughes, the eighteen-year-old student who was wounded but survived the school shooting. Joining me today is the editor of the Op-Ed department at the Bell Review, Ryan Ripley.

  MERIT: Mr. Ripley, thanks for answering some questions today.

  RIPLEY: Happy to do so.

  MERIT: Can we talk about this piece you just published, the one about Vivian Hughes?

  RIPLEY: The author of the story found evidence that Vivian Hughes wasn’t in school the morning of the shooting. That seemed like relevant information to me.

  MERIT: Don’t you think that another piece of relevant information might be . . . I don’t know . . . the medical records that show that Vivian spent that entire week in the ICU being treated for a gunshot wound to her upper leg?

  RIPLEY: Of course that’s relevant, too. That just wasn’t in the op-ed.

  MERIT: Mr. Ripley, do you think it was a bit dishonest, to print only the first part of that information?

  RIPLEY: I do not. Our readers have every right to verify the news they read in our paper. And we didn’t print a lie. Vivian Hughes’s card was used that morning, at the precise time of the shooting. The writer of the op-ed merely raised a question. One of importance in this lawsuit that could bankrupt a business employing half the town. Besides, health records are protected by privacy laws, so we couldn’t have confirmed those details anyway.

  MERIT: Do you think Vivian could face retaliation for what was printed in your paper?

  RIPLEY: No, I don’t. And even if she did, I can’t see how the actions of individual readers could in any way be our fault.

  MERIT: Even though you printed false information?

  RIPLEY: Again, there were no lies in that piece.

  MERIT: Only misleading, incomplete truths.

  RIPLEY: Opinions, Ms. Logan.

  MERIT: Opinions posed as truths, Mr. Ripley.

  RIPLEY: The stakes are very high in this lawsuit, Ms. Logan. We’re merely relaying information. Our readers have the right to form their own conclusions about it.

  MERIT: Your readers or your advertisers?

  [Extended silence]

  RIPLEY: I don’t understand the question.

  MERIT: There is a lot at stake. But I pulled some information on the Bell Review. Steven Bell pays for a great deal of ad space, both in the physical paper and online. In fact, Bell Firearms has been the paper’s most consistent advertiser for as long as the paper has existed.

  RIPLEY: I don’t see what that has to do—

  MERIT: I’m merely relaying information for my listeners, Mr. Ripley. They have the right to form their own conclusions about it.

  Mural 5

  TITLE: CIRCE

  LOCATION: THE OLD MILL

  Cassie

  Tonight I see Beck

  before she sees me.

  She’s drawn her legs up

  under herself

  in Betty’s driver’s seat.

  Her wild red curls are

  barely contained

  in her usual loose knot,

  a messy bun

  on the top of her head.

  Her illegal-midnight-

  mural-painting uniform

  includes:

  an old tee,

  overalls,

  and a flannel shirt,

  despite the heat.

  One of her sketchbooks

  is open in her lap.

  Instead of a drawing,

  Beck makes a list called:

  “People Who Killed Cassie Queen.”

  There are many

  who would say

  that the list had only one

  true, rightful name.

  The person whose finger

  found a trigger

  and pulled.

  But Beck adds his father,

  his mother, the sheriff,

  and that deputy, the young one,

  who took my statement

  that first time at the police station.

  Beck writes her own name last.

  Underlines it.

  Circles it.

  Goes over and over the marks

  that make her name

  until you can’t even read it,

  scoring the page with her pen until

  it tears through, and

  the ink bleeds onto the next page.

  I don’t know why

  Beck blames herself

  for my death, but

  I do know Beck.

  And the only person

  who can forgive her

  is herself.

  When she turns the page again

  Beck sketches out her

  mural for tonight.

  Our subject: Circe.

  When women in the myths

  were born or cursed with gifts—

  extraordinary gifts,

  ones they could even

  use in self-defense—

  they became something new.

  Not heroes, never the heroes.

  They became something to blame.

  Medusa had her snakes

  to disguise her beauty,

  eyes to turn men into stone,

  if and when they refused

  to respect her boundaries.

  Circe had her island,

  and her magic.

  If I were alone on an island,

  I think I might

  curse strange men landing

  on my shores, too.

  I wouldn’t have made Nico

  a pig, but sometimes I think

  he’d have made

  a fine mosquito.

  I’d want him small,

  small enough to crush

  on the palm of my hand.

  Beck’s style for the mural

  is the same as the others.

  Bold, dark lines.

  Simple, clean shapes

  form an island with

  dark blue waves all around.

  Circe stands in the center,

  willowy like a tree.

  Beck gives her

  my ink-dark hair

  and ocean-blue eyes.

  Circe’s arms are full

  of the flowers she’s gathered,

  the island’s treasures,

  to hide from the men

  who c
ame to steal them,

  the men she transformed

  for their trickery.

  Beck fills in the island,

  pink,

  adds sharp black lines

  to form a sea of snouts

  and ears,

  and round bellies.

  Pigs all around,

  surrounding Circe,

  trapping her in

  her very own home.

  On the side of the mural,

  Beck adds words rising out

  of the sea.

  Collige Virgo Rosas.

  Gather, girl, the roses,

  while you still can.

  Gather them all,

  before angry gods,

  and sullen kings,

  and jealous men,

  and ravenous monsters

  (but I repeat myself)

  come to take

  them from you.

  Beck

  “YOU’RE NOT AS SNEAKY AS YOU think you are,” Beck said to the ghost in the back seat of her van.

  Cassie appeared in the rearview mirror.

  “Can you do that when you want to now?” Beck asked, and Cassie smiled at her, proud.

  “I guess haunting takes practice.”

  “Well, you’ve got the time,” Beck said, and she didn’t like the way Cassie’s eyes dropped at the words. “Don’t you?”

  Cassie didn’t answer, and then Betty’s passenger door was wrenched open.

  “Almost ready?” Vivian asked.

  Tonight’s mural was going on the old mill, at Grandpa’s suggestion. Of course, that was before the reward. The added attention and the added risk. Before Grandpa asked them to stop for a while, and let things cool off, and Beck had only given it a few days. She wanted to wait longer, but the reward wasn’t going away, and the op-ed and the paint on Vivian’s door had made her more determined than ever.

  There had always been risk in this plan of theirs. That wasn’t enough for her to stop. And this wasn’t just for Cassie, but for Vivian, too. Grandpa didn’t know about the red paint streaked across Vivian’s door. The trophies and awards tossed into a garbage bag. The scholarship that would go to someone else, all because Vivian couldn’t escape the nightmare that Nico Bell had thrown her into.

  Beck had to fight for her friends. She had to.

  None of that reasoning made Beck feel less guilty for going behind her grandfather’s back to keep painting. Beck turned, looking up at the farmhouse. At dinner tonight, he’d thanked her. For taking a step back from everything. “I know it’s not easy for you to sit on the sidelines, even for a few weeks.”