Behind the Bars

by Brittainy Cherry

  I stumbled to my feet and rushed over to Katie. Her breaths were swallow and her eyes widened, panicked.

  “Eli,” she murmured, and I wrapped my arms around her.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, panicking when I noticed the blood on my fingers from where I’d touched the back of her head. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

  She started to shut her eyes, and I shook her.

  No…

  “St-stay here, Katie. Stay h-here.” I reached into her purse and searched for her cell phone, but then remembered Todd had taken it. My eyes darted around, and I found my cell phone on the ground where the guys had tossed it. I hurried over and dialed 9-1-1, and then I was back to Katie. I held her in my lap, and I didn’t let go of her again. She stayed still as her breaths grew lighter and lighter, and my panic grew louder and louder.

  I didn’t remember what I said to the dispatcher.

  The person on the phone asked me questions, and I didn’t remember responding. I didn’t remember anything. Every inch of me was numb. Every part of me dying from the pain.

  “No,” I begged, holding her, pulling her motionless body close to mine. “No, no, no, pl-please. Katie, please,” I cried into her as the dispatcher told me they were sending someone our way. An ambulance was on the way. An ambulance… An ambulance is on the way…

  I began to sob into my sister, because I knew she wasn’t going to make it. I knew when the ambulance pulled around the block, they’d be too late to help.

  I held my sister as she took her last breaths in my arms.

  “Katie, no,” I yelled as I sobbed uncontrollably.

  When they arrived, they pushed me to the side, tried CPR, and then loaded her onto a stretcher. They took me in the truck with them. As they pulled away, they pronounced her dead.

  Every part of me died right there beside her—my sister, my family, my very best friend.

  I was forever ruined when Todd Clause stole the life of the best human I’d ever known.

  And nothing would ever be the same again.

  Subject: Making her proud

  Eli,

  I feel like I haven’t been myself in so long. Whenever I sing soul music, it’s at night, and it’s almost a whisper so Trevor and my mom won’t hear me. I’m sorry I haven’t emailed you much. Mom has been yelling at me to stay off my cell phone. I hate that you’re so far away. I hate that I can’t see you.

  There’s this superstar producer I’m supposed to meet with. He’s known for making megastars for pop music. I’d gone over and over about how I could tell everyone no. I’d thought about how I could run away and just not come back.

  Run back to you. To us. To soul. But then, I think about my mother. This might be the what I’ve been looking for this whole time. Maybe if I do this, maybe if I have a pop career, then she’ll be proud of me. That’s all I want.

  That’s all I ever wanted. Sometimes she smiles now, ya know. When I sing what she wants me to sing, she smiles.

  Don’t worry. I’m still singing soul music. It’s just a little quieter than before.

  How are you?

  -Jazz

  Also, still love you.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elliott

  I stumbled to my feet and rushed over to Katie. Her breaths were low, and her eyes widened, panicked. “Eli,” she murmured, and I wrapped my arms around her.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, panicked when I noticed the blood on my fingers as I touched the back of her head. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

  She started to shut her eyes, and I shook her.

  “Son,” was barked my way, forcing me from my thoughts. My recent memories were on replay in my tangled mind.

  “Son, focus!”

  I shot my eyes open.

  Two officers stood across from me as I sat on a bench in the hospital hallway. One was mute with a notepad, and the other talkative with no notetaking. He was the one who kept calling me son, even though I wasn’t his son.

  “Son, I need you to understand, we need all the information that you can give us. We need every detail about what happened. What you saw. Do you understand, son?”

  I’m not your son.

  I stared forward at the wall, blinking every now and then. A light kept flickering down the hallway, and each time it flickered, I twitched. Please stop flickering. My hands were shaky, my throat dry. Each time I swallowed it felt like cuts against my windpipes.

  “Son, please. The sooner we get this information, the sooner we can move forward with this accident.”

  “It it it i…” I murmured, blinking my eyes shut. “It wa-wasn’t wasn’t…”

  “Come on, then. Spit it out,” he urged me. “What were they wearing? How many of them were there? Did you have any relation with them? Do you know their names?”

  My body started to rock back and forth, and when my eyes opened, I was staring down at my ripped, bloody knuckles. Covered in both my blood and my sister’s.

  I blinked my eyes shut once more.

  No.

  No.

  No…

  Tears streamed down my face as acid rose from my stomach and landed in my throat.

  I wasn’t strong enough. She was dead because of me.

  “Maybe we should take a break, Kenny,” the mute cop spoke. “Wait till his mom gets here. He’s in shock.”

  “But,” Officer Kenny started.

  “Just a break,” the other said, cutting in. “I think he needs it.”

  When they walked away, I went back to staring at the wall as the light continued to flicker above me.

  Please stop flickering.

  “Elliott,” Mom cried, rushing into the hospital waiting room toward me. I’d been staring intensely at my bloody hands, shaky as I waited for her to arrive. The moment I saw her, I stood from my seat. TJ wasn’t many steps behind her.

  “I-I-I-I-” My lips parted as my shaking grew. No words could form in my head, or my heart as I tried to apologize to my mom. I tried to craft words to beg her to forgive me, to understand my mistake. “I-I-I…”

  No.

  No.

  No…

  I needed words, but I couldn’t grasp them. I needed air, but no breath was there.

  I was dizzy. I was nauseous. I was broken. I was lost.

  My legs shook beneath me, and my vision began to blur. The second I was about to collapse, Mom wrapped me against her body and held me. Still, that didn’t stop either of us from falling to the floor as heartache attacked us intensely.

  “No, no, no,” Mom cried against me. “Not my baby, not my baby,” she sobbed uncontrollably.

  TJ tried to help us, but he couldn’t. There was no way we could be put back together.

  Mom couldn’t catch her breath as she began to realize she was suffering from a parent’s worst nightmare. She lost herself on the hospital floor and was unable to be fixed, because once a parent lost their child, they lost themselves. There was no way to fix a broken heart that beat for a child. There was no way to console a person whose world had just been stolen away from them.

  There was no way to make any of this okay.

  As Mom tried her best to comfort me, I tried my best to hold her tight. Neither one of us would ever be okay again. Something inside of each of us snapped, and it was beyond repair. That something would be damaged forever, unable to know what it felt like to be alive ever again.

  That something was our hearts.

  My heart stopped beating the moment Katie died because of me.

  Mom’s stopped beating the moment she realized the truth.

  I’d never forgive myself.

  I’d never expect Mom to forgive me, either.

  As we sat there on the floor, broken and damaged, I managed to push out the only words that kept flying through my mind. As tears fell down my cheeks and my throat burned, I finally spoke the four words that would never mean enough, the four words that would haunt me each day moving forward.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom
. I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry, Mom.”

  I kept repeating it over and over again, and still, it felt empty.

  Subject: 4,624mi

  Eli,

  Hey, you. I haven’t heard from you, but I’m guessing you’re busy. I’ve been a bit busy, too. But I just wanted you to know I’m still thinking of you.

  London is four thousand, six hundred, and twenty-four miles away from New Orleans.

  Today I thought about walking each and every one to get back to you.

  -Jazz

  Also, still love you.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Elliott

  The day of the funeral, I stood in front of my bedroom mirror, staring at myself in the black suit. My eyes were puffy, and I couldn’t tie my tie. I kept looping it repeatedly, but no matter what, I couldn’t do it. Katie always did it.

  She always fixed my ties.

  “Let me?” TJ asked.

  I knew he was standing behind me in the doorframe, but I didn’t speak to him. I hadn’t really spoken to anyone. Words seemed pointless. Tying ties seemed pointless.

  Everything was pointless.

  I dropped my hands to my sides, defeated, and TJ stepped into the room. He picked up the two ends of the tie, and as he did it, he cleared his throat.

  “You can talk to me, you know. About anything. About everything. About nothing.”

  I remained quiet.

  Mom walked past my bedroom and peered inside. She paused for a moment and parted her lips as if she were going to speak, but nothing came out. She hadn’t spoken much to anyone, either.

  Especially not to me.

  I’d never known eyes could look so sad until I stared into my mother’s. She was my Wonder Woman, and watching her walk around so unbelievably broken was beyond heartbreaking. I’d caused her that pain, that suffering.

  “She do-doesn’t look at me the same,” I whispered to TJ. “She hates me.”

  He frowned, shaking his head. “Elliott Adams, no one could ever hate you.”

  “She doesn’t talk to me.”

  “Not because she hates you. It’s just that she doesn’t know how to communicate right now.”

  I glanced down at my shiny black shoes. “Because I kil-killed Katie?”

  TJ shook his head back and forth and gripped my chin in his hand, forcing me to look at him. “Boy, if I ever hear you speak those lies again, I will rip out your tongue.” My body started shaking in his grip, and he stared me hard in the eyes. “Do you understand me?” he ordered as tears cascaded down my cheeks. “Do you understand that what happened wasn’t because of you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I lied, and he knew it was a lie.

  TJ’s eyes filled with tears, and he pulled me into a tight hug as I shook against his hold. “You didn’t do this, Elliott. You didn’t do this at all. Never say that again. Never say that,” he said over and over again, shaking himself. As he held me tight, I could feel it happening to him, too.

  His heart breaking.

  Many people showed up at the funeral service, and that pissed me off. All of the ‘friends’ Katie once held walked into the church building as if they hadn’t disowned her for the past year. A lot of them even had the nerve to bring tears along with them.

  “They sho-shouldn’t be here,” I angrily barked, my hands forming fists from their level of disrespect. How dare they show up for her now, when in reality they should’ve stood by her side last year during the darkest times of her life?

  How dare they want to speak their apologies?

  How dare they pretend to care only because it was too late to change anything?

  “Let them be,” TJ told me, squeezing my shoulder. “Guilt has a way of swallowing individuals whole, and now they are remorseful.”

  “They hurt her,” I told him.

  “And they know that. And that guilt they are feeling? That’s not between you and them. That’s between God and them.”

  I hadn’t the nerve to tell TJ there wasn’t a God. At least not one I’d stand behind after he took my sister.

  “Those people made bad choices, Eli. There’s no getting around that. They made their beds. Now they have the rest of their lives to sleep in them. But for today…just let them be.”

  I hated TJ in that moment, because he always did what was right.

  At the burial, we gathered around the casket, and I watched them lower my big sister into the ground. It was all so surreal. It blew my mind how one day everything could be fine, and then the next, your loved one was gone.

  “Elliott,” a voice said behind me. I turned around to see a chubby red-haired guy walking toward me with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

  “Jason.” I narrowed my eyes, confused that my best friend was standing there in front of me. “Wh-what are you doing here?” I asked.

  He was still supposed to be in Nebraska with his mom.

  He shrugged. “I wanted to come back to stay with my dad for a while.”

  “You hate your dad.”

  “Yeah, but you’re my best friend,” he said, somberly. “So, I’m going to stay with my dad for a while.”

  He’d never know how much that meant to me. Whenever I’d start to cry, he’d pat me on the back and turn his head away so I wouldn’t see his own tears. Katie was Jason’s first crush, the girl he thought he’d someday end up with after life lined up for the two of them. She was the first girl to ever tell him he was good enough the way he was, and she was the first girl to ever call him handsome. He loved her, and I wasn’t surprised.

  How could anyone not love her? She was everything good in a bad world.

  “They are, um, the lawyer Mom got wants to charge the guys as adults inst-instead of minors,” I told Jason.

  He grimaced. “That’s still not enough.”

  “No,” I agreed. “Not enough at all.”

  Letting someone sit in a prison cell didn’t seem like justice to me, not when it was supposed to be the justice for taking my sister’s life.

  For the remainder of my life I’d be trapped in the prison of my guilt. I’d be trapped behind the bars of my mind, unable to break free from the damage that had been done to my heart and soul.

  Yet still, that wasn’t enough.

  Not enough at all.

  We stood in the cemetery for a long time until Mom was ready to say goodbye to Katie…until I was ready to say goodbye.

  “When my grandpa died, I remember being really sad that I never got to say goodbye. So, my mom turned to me and said, ‘Never goodbye, always goodnight until we wake again.’” He knitted his eyebrows and he shrugged. “I never understood what that really meant until now. You’re not saying goodbye forever, Eli. Just good night for now.”

  I lowered my head. “That doesn’t make it easier.”

  “No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t. But maybe someday it will.”

  Death was such a foreign creature. You knew it was a sad thing for people, but you never truly understood the grief until it washed up against your shore. Then, once you saw the strange being, you wished you could go back in time to all the others who’d lost someone close and apologize for not giving them any extra comfort. I wasn’t sure who death hurt more—the ones who left, or the ones who had to stay behind.

  As each day passed, I realized how impossible it was to ever really get over missing someone. There were always the small reminders that brought the loved one rushing back to the forefront. Maybe it was the way someone laughed in a supermarket or danced poorly. Perhaps it was the way you could be sitting alone in a dark room, missing the warmth of your loved one, so you’d cry alone in the darkness. Or it was the way you could be standing at a party with a lot of people, surrounded by love and happiness, and out of nowhere you fell apart because the celebration cake was purple and purple was their favorite color.

  In a way, it was as if our loved ones never truly left. They were within everything, within everyone.

  I wasn’t sure yet if that was a blessing or a curse.

>   It took seven days for Mom to be able to stand in front of me and not cry. One night, she came into my doorway and crossed her arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she told me.

  “I’m sorry,” I replied.

  Her eyes glassed over, but she didn’t cry. “It’s not because of you, Eli. I just need you to know that. But when I look at you…” She took a deep inhale and released it as a heavy sigh. “Your beautiful eyes. You have your sister’s beautiful eyes. And I guess that’s hard for me. But I’m working on it. Okay? I just want you to know, I’m working on being better. For you. Always for you.”

  She walked over to me and kissed my forehead. “You are my world. Do you know that?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  After that talk, each night, Mom would come check on me. She’d smile my way and be the bravest woman I’d ever known. She’d tell me none of it was my fault. She’d say she loved me fully. She’d beg for me not to blame myself for something the devil had laid on our doorstep. She’d say it without a single tear falling from her eyes as the sadness poured out of me.

  Then, she’d stand up, kiss my forehead, and tell me to try to get some rest.

  Later, I’d hear her.

  She kept her tears locked away from me, but I always heard her crying in her bedroom.

  So, I’d check on her.

  I’d smile her way and be the bravest man I could be. I’d tell her none of it was her fault. I’d say I loved her fully. I’d beg for her not to blame herself for something the devil had laid on our doorstep. I’d say it without a single tear falling from my eyes as the sadness poured out of her.

  I’d stay with her until I knew she was sleeping.

  Then, I’d fall asleep right there beside her, because I selfishly didn’t want to be alone.