Exit Wound

by Alexandra Moore

  “My, my, my. Bea, what a surprise.” He knew who my brother was; he shouldn’t have been so shocked to see me here. “You’re looking great. The first month of no school has done you well.”

  I rolled my eyes and muttered thanks.

  “How has touring treated you? Surely you don’t always look so pretty like you do today.”

  I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face, but I kept my cool. “No, it isn’t always easy. I manage.” I was looking around for anyone or anything that could take me away from Crosley, and there was no help in sight.

  “Do you remember our little talk?” he asked, wrapping a hand gently around my wrist.

  “Depends, which one?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes scanning across the room.

  He chuckled into my ear, and it sent goose bumps down my spine. “About the debt you owe me.”

  My eyes grew wide, and my mind was reeling back to the messages. Was Crosley the person who had been stalking me all summer? He let go of my wrist and checked the time.

  “Oh, well look. Time sure does fly. I hope the rest of your summer goes well. Until next time, Bea.” He bowed and went on his way.

  I was left shaking, and as much as I tried to hide it, everyone seemed to notice.

  “Bea, are you cold?” Grayson asked, offering me his jacket, which I took without arguing.

  I went outside to the cab that was to take Ben and me back to the hotel. Right when I thought I was ready to escape, Splinter caught up with me.

  “Bea, wait up!”

  “What is it, Splinter?”

  “What was Crosley doing talking to you?”

  I shrugged. “Just reminiscing,” I said even though I knew that wasn’t the case.

  “You’re a horrible liar.” He shook his head and laced his fingers together behind his head. “I know something when I see it, Bea. I’m going to figure it out even if it’s the death of me.”

  I got into the cab. “I’ve got to go.” I shut the door, and the cabbie took off. My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out to check. Another anonymous message and this time it held more of a threat.

  Anonymous: Pay your dues, or I’ll find a way to get rid of you.

  “Everything okay?” Ben finally asked.

  I looked over at him and locked my phone. “Yeah, everything’s great,” I lied.

  CHAPER SIX

  The whole week I spent at the hotel was agonizing. I wanted nothing more than to cool off and get things right with my brother. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and today was our last day—the Fourth of July. We were all supposed to go to Coney Island to see the fireworks, and then we were headed off for the second leg of the tour.

  I dressed in a pair of denim shorts to go with my Green Day’s American Idiot logo tank and an American Flag bandana wrapped around my wrist. While I was doing my makeup, someone knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” I called. I noticed it was Ben.

  He smiled at me. “You look great. Real American.” I laughed, and so did he. That was the first time in a long time we had laughed together.

  “Ben, I—”

  He shook his head and cut me off. “I have something to tell you, so please sit down and listen.”

  I sat on the edge of my hotel bed. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  He started pacing back and forth. “Bea, I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass. It isn’t you—it’s me. It’s me, and it’s…I’ve been seeing someone, and not just any someone—someone I had to keep a secret. I didn’t want to, but they wanted me to.”

  I nodded, encouraging him to go on.

  “Frances, I’m gay. I’ve been seeing a guy, and we broke up. The stress from the keeping secrets was far too much. I’m sorry I took it out on you.”

  “You’re gay. All right, cool. Want to grab some pizza before it’s gone?” I asked, standing up. I knew it was a big deal to him to come out to me—even so, the fact that he was gay wasn’t much of a shocker. In the end, he was my brother, and I wanted him to be happy with whomever he pleased. So, if he wanted to be with a guy, who was I to argue?

  “That’s it? You’re all right with all of this?” he asked incredulously.

  I grabbed my bag. “You’re my brother, Benjamin. Just because you’re secretly gay isn’t going to change that. Now c’mon, I don’t want to miss out on pizza on account of your existential crisis.” I held out my hand for him, and he took it.

  From there we went to Coney Island, and it was the most fun we’d had in a long time.

  ***

  The tour had started the Monday after the holidays, and it was crazier than ever. Tonight, we were in Seattle—one of four more shows before we went on a break. We had already gone through half of the second leg, and I was shocked by how fast time was going.

  I was going over pictures and souvenirs we had picked up in Texas, Utah, and Nevada when we visited there, and I was eating the last of my fudge from San Francisco when I was told it was time to get ready. The boys had already finished practicing and were meeting up with the new band that was going to play the third leg of tour. They were all around my age if not a bit younger. I met up with Everett, who said he wanted to talk. We hadn’t done a lot of talking since my confession to him in my apartment, and it was straining on our relationship or whatever we had. I wasn’t even sure of what we were anymore. It was bothersome, and I was ready to make amends. I grabbed my coat and an umbrella and waited outside the venue for Everett like he had asked me to. He had to sneak away for a little bit just to get this time in with me, and I was wondering if it was going to be worth it.

  When Everett came out, I smiled weakly at him. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he replied. We were walking aimlessly, and soon enough, our hands slipped into a firm grip, and I knew I couldn’t let him go on like this.

  “Everett—”

  “I know. You don’t love me.” His short statement made me shrink back inside of myself. “I love you. And I want you to be happy. That’s all that matters to me,” he continued. He was calmer about it, calmer than I expected him to be, and when I looked up from staring at our feet walking down the damp sidewalk, I smiled at him.

  “Thanks. I want you to be happy too, with someone who can give you what I can’t.”

  “What can you not give me?” he asked.

  “My heart,” I confessed. We stopped in the middle of an abandoned sidewalk, and the rain was starting to come down.

  “Didn’t you bring an umbrella?” I asked him, trying to open mine.

  “Bea, stay close,” he whispered to me, and I looked away from his gaze for a moment and saw exactly what he saw: a masked man carrying a gun headed straight for us. I drew closer to him, and he wrapped an arm protectively around me, putting his own body between me and the gunman as a shield, something I never knew a man would so willingly do for me.

  I sensed something in the air that night. It wasn’t the rain or the air from the rain, it was something so familiar and yet so foreign. I wanted to say I had been in this exact position before—I couldn’t tell you where it was or when. I just wanted to get out of there. I couldn’t move or think because everything had happened so fast. I was staring down the barrel of a gun. My heart was pounding in the center of my chest, and I could hear it loudly like a drum in my ears, like Everett’s drums. The barrel of the gun moved from my face to Everett’s. Then, the gun went off once, twice, thrice—then a fourth and a fifth and a sixth time. Everett was down on the ground, and I was kneeling over him screaming. I thought I was screaming. That’s what it felt like. The guy took Everett’s wallet and his phone and left me with only a stare. As soon as he was gone, I called for help.

  By the time help came, I thought that maybe Everett was too far gone. I rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital, and when the boys got there, all we could do was wait.

  The show was supposed to start in thirty minutes. With a drummer down, the other boys were considering canceling the show—canceling the tour if it was bad enou
gh. I was covered in raindrops and in my own tears as Ben tried to comfort me.

  “I’ll take his place for tonight. You guys shouldn’t have to cancel the show when I know all the songs,” Splinter said. “Everett taught me some of them. The rest I learned by watching and listening. If I screw up, you can totally fire me, but I want to help you.”

  For a moment, I didn’t even recognize his voice. It sounded so different. Everything was so different. “I’ll stay,” I whispered to Ben, and only then did he agree to go off to play the show. After the boys left, I looked back to the nurse’s station, planning to get some information on Everett.

  The nurses in their brightly colored scrubs drove me mad. They were all smiles, rushing about, trying to get everything they needed.

  The white walls were dripping with a feeling of false hope and serenity, and the smell of antibacterial soap and saline brought back memories that I wanted to forget. Memories of Mackynsie and memories of the night we said goodbye to our mother when she was admitted into the treatment facility.

  I flagged one of the nurses and asked about Everett. The annoyed look that flashed across her face when I went to the window to ask for information told me I was doing so too frequently. They didn’t have any answers for me. They only had answers for his family.

  “His family is all the way in New York, I’m all he’s got. Please, tell me something!"

  The nurse slid a glass door shut to cut me off, and if it weren’t for the menacing security guard in the corner, I would have slammed my fist into that glass. Instead I saw my reflection bouncing off the glass, and that’s when I realized I was splattered with blood. The EMT hadn’t been wiping my face from the tears but had been wiping away blood that had sprayed my porcelain skin.

  I rushed back over to my seat to wait all over again. I didn’t want to check the time—I was too scared to know how much had passed.

  They say no news is good news; I had to believe that meant he would be okay. However, each time the clock ticked in the nearby corner with the wooden carving of Jesus on the cross, I swore I could hear each gunshot replaying in my head. Except it didn’t stop after six. It went on for the repeating sixty seconds that passed.

  I would hear the doors open and a rush of people enter, and I would hope that it was someone I knew—someone that was here for Everett. It never was.

  I had nearly fallen asleep, curled up in the waiting room chair, when I heard someone mention Everett’s name. I peered up drowsily and spotted the familiar figure standing at the check-in desk.

  “I’m here for Everett Thompson. He’s my younger brother.”

  “Is anyone here with him?” Ryker asked, and when the nurse pointed over to me, Ryker did a double take before turning back to the nurse and in a low, angry tone he chastised her.

  “And you didn’t let her back. Why? I don’t care what hospital policy is! I almost couldn’t make it! What if something had happened? At least she was here. Yes, I will fill out this paperwork. Let her back. She’s as close to family as he has around here.”

  When the doors to the ER opened up thanks to one of the nurses at their station, I practically sprinted through. It wasn’t hard to find out where Everett had been; I saw a janitor mopping up the blood and another one throwing out bloody sheets.

  “He’s in the ICU,” one of the nurses told me. “Follow the red arrows.”

  When I found the ICU, I stared around until the on-call nurse asked, “Are you here to visit someone, ma’am?”

  I nodded. “Everett Thompson.”

  She smiled sweetly as if she knew that I needed the smile to get through what I was about to see.

  “This way, sweetheart.” She grabbed a clipboard and led me through the ICU after being let in with her badge. When I saw him, it took everything in me not to run up to him.

  “He’s resting, but it isn’t really good. Right now, he’s as stable as he can be, but we don’t know if he’ll make it through the night.” She told me this in a quiet, calm tone. I wanted to yell and to scream.

  “What should I expect?” I didn’t look at her, and my voice held no hope. I was numb, and I knew she must have seen it.

  “You should prepare for the worst. You should prepare to say goodbye.” For once, I didn’t care if my tears fell and made my face flushed red with the hot emotion I was feeling.

  “Okay, thanks.” I didn’t know what else to say. What did you say to someone who tells you you’re not going to be leaving with one of your best friends?

  I walked up to his bed and sat down next to him. I took his hand in mine and felt the coldness in it. I wasn’t a praying type of person. I often questioned the worth of prayers in hospitals. Once, I’d heard that prayers in hospitals are more sincere than those in chapels, and suddenly, all I could think of was praying. If hospital rooms could procure a miracle on account of a few prayers, I was willing to shake the dust off my religion and try to make a miracle out of this disaster.

  I said a few Hail Mary’s, and I said a prayer for Everett and another for the first one to be heard. I was shaking, and I wanted nothing more than for Everett to live through this.

  “Hey there, beautiful,” Everett’s voice said, and when I looked up I saw him awake, trying to fight through the pain. He was paler than usual, almost ghostlike.

  “Shhh, don’t say anything. Save your energy.”

  He laughed and squeezed my hand as tightly as he could. “You save it. We both know where this is going.”

  “If we know where this is going, we can stop it,” I said, hope lighting my trembling voice.

  “You can only fight Death for so long before He comes to take you, Frances. I'm not going to fight anymore.”

  I tried not to sob. Even so, my face still contorted in the way it usually did when the unstoppable tears came running out.

  “Do one thing for me?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Tell me what you need. I'll do it.”

  “Tell me you love me.” My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. How could I lie to the face of a dying man? How could I lie about the biggest thing before he went into the light?

  “I…”

  Everett’s hand went limp in mine, and the alarms on his machines starting bleeping. There were so many, and I was trying to figure out which one it was coming from.

  “Get out of the way, girl! Get her out of here!” The doctors had rushed in, and a nurse was trying to pull me aside.

  “No! He can’t go! I didn’t tell him I love him! I need to tell him I love him!” I was fighting the nurses so hard that I didn’t realize Ryker, as well as Ben and the other boys were outside the doors, hearing my every word.

  “I need to tell him I love him! That’s all he wanted! Let go of me, goddammit!” I screeched at the nurse, and it took Splinter grabbing me to let the nurse guide me away from the scene. Splinter pulled me into a tight hug, and with my face buried in his shirt, I fell into horrible chest-racking sobs. He didn’t seem to mind that I was getting his shirt wet or that I was a complete mess. He just held me, and when I heard the doctors calling the time of death, everything stopped. Only, it didn’t. It only slowed down.

  Ben wrapped an arm around Ryker, who was sobbing. Everett was his only sibling that had hope for a future, and now he was gone.

  Rian and Grayson stood in solidarity together, and I was trying to remember how to breathe and how to think. I was unaware of what I was doing, and when Splinter pulled me away from the scene, I tried to collect myself.

  We were outside on a balcony, and there was still a hint of rain falling from the darkened skies.

  “Do you love him?” Splinter asked after he was tired of the silence.

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Did he love you?”

  “Yeah, he loved me. He loved me for a long time.”

  “Were you two together?"

  “It’s complicated.” The steady fall of soft rain kept my face damp, and I couldn’t tell what was rain and what were tears.
r />   “Bea, if you need anything, I—”

  “Just shut up, and tell me about the show. I want to think of something happy. How did it go?”

  He told me every little detail of the show. He knew exactly how I needed to hear about it, and with every small detail that he gave me, I felt farther away from the situation I was in.

  When we got back to the bus, we were all silent. We were in our prayer circle stance, except there were no prayers or chanting.

  “Everett is gone,” Dean started. “It’s a great loss, and we will write a formal letter to notify the masses. We have canceled the remaining three shows for this leg, and will continue to cancel shows as we see fit. We’re going home, and we’re going to take time to mourn.

  “Remember, everyone mourns differently. Be kind and courteous, but don’t overstep your boundaries. We have therapists who are willing to talk with each and every one of you as soon as you’re ready. For now, get some rest. You’ll be needing it.”

  With that said, the tour manager went to his bus, and we all separated for the night.

  Everett’s death was already trending on Twitter, and I wanted to vomit.

  I remembered what it was like to lose Mackynsie. A car accident was quite different than a gunshot wound, but it still hurt the same to the people left behind. You want to do everything in your power to ban alcohol, guns and bullets, and arrest the people who use them. It was never that simple, though. I wanted to scream from the rooftops. I wanted to punch someone in the face. I wanted to be punched in the face. I wanted to feel pain and release it—there was an overage of it in my system.

  I needed a distraction, so I checked my messages again—and as if on cue, there was an anonymous message.

  Anonymous: It isn’t what I wanted to do. Now that you’ve seen what I’m capable of, it’s time to pay your dues.