Exit Wound

by Alexandra Moore

  Underneath was a picture of me hovering over Everett, blood and tears on my face. So much blood. I ran to the bathroom, and I did throw up that time.

  I was being harassed and stalked, and I didn’t know by who or why—and it looked like everything was leading to Crosley. Why would he do this? Why would he go out of his way to stalk me around the United States, send me taunting messages with incriminating photographs, and why did I have “dues,” or “debts” to pay? I kept thinking back to what he had said last to me, about our conversation when he saw me before summer started. Nothing came to mind.

  I needed sleep, and sleep was evading me. Nightmares kept me up, and cold sweats kept me hot and cold all at once. I couldn’t calm down, and when we finally reached New York City again, I hadn’t had any real sleep. It was like with Mackynsie’s death all over again: the dreams, the night terrors. Everything was coming back full circle—except this time, it was far too much.

  When we got home, Ben decided to let us stay in the apartment since it was somewhere familiar. I went straight to my room and locked the door, leaving my baggage in the front entryway and my heart on the floor. I threw myself onto my bed, and all the tears came flooding out. There was no stopping it this time. I couldn’t hold back. Everything inside me was screaming for release.

  I was beyond hysterical—I was stark raving mad. I rampaged through my room, destroying it, throwing things around and breaking them until I came across one thing I had forgotten about: my songbook. In the midst of all the chaos, writing would help settle me. I picked up a pen I found on the floor and opened the journal. My blood turned to ink, forming words on the pieces of paper that had long since been abandoned.

  I sat there for hours, writing song after song. Some were trashy, some were made to be trash, and others made me feel a little less guilty. If I could feel a little less guilt with each song, I knew I’d be okay. I tried writing a new song every hour, hoping that whatever came out would be a form of purging for my heart and my soul.

  When I took note of my surroundings again, I discovered the sun had come up, and I smelled food cooking. I came out of my room, and I saw Ben scrolling through his iPad over a plate of food.

  “What did you make?” I asked him, and he pushed a plate over to me.

  “Sit. I want to talk with you while you eat.”

  I sat down, contemplating the food on my plate.

  “I think it’s time for a change of scenery,” Ben declared.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He showed me his iPad screen. He was on some real estate site looking at houses that were near the Dartmouth main campus. The one he showed me was beautiful, and I could imagine living there happily.

  “Ben, are you trying to say we’re going to move?”

  He brought his iPad back to his lap. “I’m saying I’m going to move. You’re going to Dartmouth, and I’m coming with you whether you like it or not. I need to watch out for you, and I think New York is done for me.”

  I smiled and leaned over the table to hug my brother. Out of everything that had happened, this was the best news I had received in a long time.

  “I’m going to be making food all day,” he said. “Wake up when there’s food then go back to sleep. You need sleep, Frances.”

  I yawned and then nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’ll go to sleep now.” I went over to the couch, pulled an afghan over my body, and positioned myself comfortably to fall asleep.

  I dreamed of living near Dartmouth with Ben and never having to worry about losing anyone ever again. I dreamed of how happy we would be.

  I woke up to the smell of food again.

  “Bea, your phone has been ringing off the hook,” Ben told me when he saw me sitting up. “You should probably check it.”

  I got up groggily and went to go check my phone, and my blood ran cold. More anonymous messages, more threats that were even more taunting. I tried to delete all of them, but they kept coming. One message after the next, they continued to ring in.

  “Frances, wake up! Wake up, Frances!” Ben was shaking me awake, and I sat up with a start. Ben’s face was creased with worry. I hugged him as tightly as I could.

  “Bad dreams again?” he asked.

  “Yeah, a lot of bad dreams.”

  “Well, I’ve got the cure for that.” He handed me a plate with a sandwich and my favorite bag of chips next to it.

  I ate slowly in silence, trying to keep my shaking to a minimum. I didn’t want to appear too skittish.

  When I was done, I went to start cleaning my room from top to bottom until I could find my phone, and when I did, there were no anonymous texts, no threats, and no taunts. There was nothing. I don’t think I had ever been so relieved to have nothing on my phone.

  When I finished cleaning my room, I put my song journal on my freshly made bed, and I tried to think of something else to write. Before last night, the last song I had written in this particular journal was one I had written with Mackynsie, and it was really all her. I decided to reword it a bit, and revamp it just enough to make it sound like something I’d write. When it was done, I tore it out of the journal, grabbed a match, and lit it aflame. Once it was done burning, I set it in a cup of water, drowning the ashy remains. This was the beginning of a new era for me, and I knew that. I could only wish that it didn’t have come about the way that it had. I wanted some peace, and I figured this was going to be the way I get it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was odd seeing Everett lowered into the ground just as I had seen Mackynsie. I didn’t want it to be real, so I tried to make it something it wasn’t. He was sleeping or going on some underground adventure.

  No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. I was still in a state of shock, and I wanted to wake up from it all even though there was nothing that could wake me up.

  The anonymous texts had stopped since the last one I received, and I was wondering if it was over. I suspected I was wrong, and I also had a feeling that something worse was about to happen. It’s a funny thing, intuition. You never really know you’ve got it until something bad happens. Everyone thinks you’re crazy or insane, but the moment you’re right, you think you’re crazy—you think you’re insane.

  When I got back to the apartment, my life was in boxes. So was Ben’s, but he had less to pack. Our mother’s things were off to the side, and we were still waiting to find out when she would be released from Lily of the Valley Rehabilitation Facility. It was odd not knowing when or where she would go home to.

  “Ben?” I asked quietly after he had made me a cup of coffee.

  “Yeah, Frances?”

  “Where is Mom gonna go when we leave? What is she going to do when we’re gone?” I clutched the hot ceramic mug, and the heat against my palms was comforting.

  “I don’t know, Frances. I’m sure they’ll help her find transitional living.”

  Transitional living. Another way to say they’d help her find a place so she wasn’t homeless. I wanted her to be okay. I wanted everyone to be okay.

  “When is our move date?” I asked him.

  “August 30th. Just in time for you to start school.”

  The fall term at Dartmouth began the third Wednesday in September, so I knew I’d have plenty of time to settle in.

  “Okay, good. Why don’t you let me pick the furniture? You don’t have the right kind of taste.”

  He handed me his iPad, and I started scrolling through Pottery Barn and picked out most of the living room furniture, as well as his bed and mine, adding everything to his virtual shopping cart. I got most of the dining area and the bathrooms done. When I handed it back, he didn’t appear as shocked by the price as I was. Then again, money was like paper to him. He had a lot of it.

  “Do you want anything to eat?” he asked, tapping away on his tablet.

  “Sure, what do we have?”

  “I was actually going to order in if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine. You know what I like, so I’m go
nna head to my room.”

  Ben nodded and waved at me as I left. I wanted to hole up in my room for as long as possible without having to come out. I knew it wouldn’t be very long, but looking at all the boxes with my life packed into them made me feel empty. I didn’t know how to explain the feeling to have it make any sense. Nothing made sense anymore. I felt whole in my emptiness, and I didn’t know how that could be. I didn’t care about the details anymore; I just wanted to get through this life in one piece. I was a million pieces taped together, trying to pass off as a whole person when I really wasn’t. I may have felt whole in my emptiness, but I knew I wasn’t. I was broken up inside, like a childhood porcelain doll fallen from the top shelf. So beautiful to look at, even when it was broken into irreparable pieces.

  After a while, Ben came in to tell me the food had arrived. I realized then my coffee was cold, and I dumped it out in the kitchen sink and then went to sit at the table to eat my kungpao chicken. The fortune in my cookie read:

  You will find everything you lost

  in due time.

  I called BS on that one. Everything I’d lost was gone forever, and there was no getting it back.

  ***

  A few days after Everett’s funeral, the band got back together at their practice space to determine whether or not they should continue the tour. Everyone from the PR sector of the label was against going forward, however, the band members thought it would be an injustice to stop when they were so close to finishing. I could understand that—though, I didn’t know how they would do on the road without Everett.

  “What about that kid, Splinter?” Grayson suggested. “What if we hired him as a temp drummer for the tour? He knows all the songs, and he played one show already.”

  PR nearly lost it when they heard that—though, Grayson was only being honest. He was right too; Splinter was a safe bet. So they called him. He was ecstatic and wanted to start right away. PR had a few conditions. They wanted to film a documentary, which was the original plan for this tour, and ultimately Ben had decided against it. They said if they didn’t agree to it this time, they weren’t going to fund the rest of the tour.

  They wanted to record our every thought and our every move. I thought it was sickening. Then I thought, What if it helps?

  It was frustrating to be filled with something you could barely recognize. I felt like that more and more each day. I wanted to be freed of all of whatever it was that I was feeling, and nothing seemed to work.

  After signing the contracts, and Splinter signed on as a temporary drummer, we went out to eat as a band—as a family. We had pizza, and I had a few sips of Ben’s beer. He didn’t notice, except Splinter did. He didn’t say anything, and for that I was thankful.

  After Ben and I went home that night, I went straight to sleep only to wake up trembling from another nightmare. Mackynsie’s death and Everett’s continued to haunt me. When I got up to get a glass of water, I heard Ben talking to someone. It sounded like Ryker, and I tried to keep quiet and to listen at the same time.

  “There were more than three shots. It was overkill. The shooter had it out for Everett. This wasn’t a chance shooting—this was intentional.”

  The guy who had shot Everett had taken a photo of me and had sent it to me later. This was my fault; Everett was dead because of me. The memory of staring down the barrel of the gun flashed before my eyes, and the thundering of the gunshots echoed in my ear. I gasped, giving away the fact that I had been eavesdropping. Ben came to check on me, and he helped me to the kitchen while Ryker got me a glass of water.

  “Bea, what’s the matter?” Ryker asked, setting a glass of water near my hand.

  I shook my head, and I couldn’t speak. How could he not know what was wrong? How could he not know what was going through my head? Given, I knew he wasn’t a mind reader. Despite everything, he knew where I had been when Everett had died and when all of the drama had unfolded. He even knew what had happened with Mackynsie.

  I guzzled down the glass of water once my sobs subsided to hiccups.

  “Nightmares…flashbacks,” I said.

  Ryker asked me a bunch of questions, and I nodded yes or shook my head no to each of them. He whispered something to Ben, and I only sipped more water as they talked.

  “Bea, I think you have PTSD.”

  “What? No, I don’t. I’m just…I’m just in shock.”

  “No, you’ve got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

  ***

  It took a while for Ben and Ryker to convince me to see a therapist, but I reluctantly agreed. I saw her the day before we were supposed to leave for the tour. She told me exactly what Ben and Ryker told me—that I had PTSD. I didn’t want to believe it, mainly because PTSD was something I thought people who had been in wars or had been assaulted suffered from. I didn’t think I had earned the right to say I had been traumatized. I didn’t tell the therapist that, and remained quiet while she evaluated me and went over my case.

  When we were done, I went back to the apartment to finish packing. I could tell Ben didn’t want me to come on the tour this time—except I knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to heal. This was my way to do that.

  “Frances, I think you should rest a little while longer,” Ben said.

  “I’ve had enough rest,” I insisted. I kicked a box that I hadn’t realized said “fragile” on the side until I heard something break.

  “I’m working through it, Ben. I’m writing songs again, so please just let me do this on my own. Let me come with you, and let me work.”

  He finally agreed to let me go with him for the last leg, and I was so grateful I started crying again. I dried my tears and forced a smile. “Okay, I’m gonna go finish packing.”

  When I got back to my room, my phone was buzzing, and I stared at it fearfully. I looked at it carefully. Though there weren’t any anonymous texts, there were a bunch of Twitter notifications.

  “#RIPEverett” was trending again. I just needed some peace and quiet. I turned off my phone, and when I went to finish packing, I looked toward the window. It was still shut and locked up with the wind chime dangling from the top and the curtains pulled closed. I started to wonder how anyone knew that that was my window escape. Only a few people knew about it, and those few people only knew about it due to personal experience of sneaking through my window before. I went over to the window, opened it up, and sat on the fire escape looking up to the moon.

  “Everett, if you can hear me, please let me know who is doing all this. I’m sure you know all of what’s going on now, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to get hurt. Guess I couldn’t prevent that. If you could tell me who is doing this, who is sending those messages and who is threatening me, that’ll be great.” I sighed, ready to climb back inside. “I’m sorry you didn’t get what you wanted.” I tried to hold back the tears as I finished my monologue to the moon. “I guess you needed to go.” I went back inside and shut and locked the window again.

  After changing into my pajamas, I crawled into my bed for the last time knowing that this would be mine. When we left, we were going to throw it out and replace it with a new one, and with that thought in my mind, I fell asleep. I was trying valiantly to fight the nightmares, but I couldn’t escape them. One about Mackynsie and one about Everett, and then the next thing I knew, both of them are dying at the same time.

  I think the way one dies says a lot about them. A drunk driver sideswiped Mackynsie’s car and killed her instantly. Everett was shot to death over something I didn’t know was spinning out of control. I wasn’t sure what that said about them. All I could think of was how they were both emotionally invested in me, and they both died when I was with them. Mackynsie had died driving me home, sitting right next to me. Everett had died protecting me and because he was in love with me.

  Two people I loved had died when they were with me. Thinking of this made me want to curl up and hide away from everyone, including my brother. However, I couldn’t possi
bly hide from everyone for the rest of my life. Was I worth the loss of another life?

  Every time I woke up, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe—as if the breath from my lungs had been sucked out of me each time I went to sleep. I needed a good night’s rest, and it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen. I got up, turned on the lamp, and grabbed my journal to write some more.

  I wrote until my hand went numb from holding the pen so tightly in my grip and until I was numb on the inside.

  When I was done, it was time to get into the bus for the tour. There was a camera crew in the apartment, and they were already asking Ben a bunch of questions. I put on a hoodie over my tee shirt and jeans, pulling the hood over my head as I came out. I didn’t want to deal with them right then, and I got my baggage into the bus and boarded before anyone noticed me and started prodding me with questions.

  I found my bunk and saw with sadness that Everett’s still had his name on it. Thankfully, Splinter still had his own bunk, and I was glad that, even though he was taking Everett’s place in the band, he wasn’t trying to take his place in our hearts. I crawled into my bunk, exhausted. Soon we’d be in Colorado, then Kansas, then Oklahoma, and then Arkansas. We would be traveling up the center of the United States, and I wouldn’t be able to hide the entire time. I needed to breathe, and I needed to sleep.

  Simply breathing had gotten harder since Everett had died. I needed to keep my head above water, keep the air in my lungs, and most of all, I needed to keep fighting.

  I was the porcelain doll on the top shelf waiting to be played with. I was broken, and I was filled with nothing but dust.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After the show in Oklahoma, I sat in my bunk and journaled everything. It was a great show. The band had had nothing less than great shows. Could they carry on without Everett? Right now, they were doing interviews for the documentary. First Ben was interviewed, then Grayson, then Rian, and then Splinter. I was supposed to be interviewed last, but I hid out until they dragged me out of my bunk. I didn’t want to talk on camera about Everett’s death or anything else for that matter.