Dying for Rain

by Easton, BB

  “Be seated.”

  The chair behind the podium squeaks loudly as Governor Steele sits and taps the tiny microphone in front of him, “Ladies and gentlemen, I declauh that the Georgia State Superiuh Court is now in session. I hereby call to order the case of the People Versus …” Governor Steele shuffles a few papers around on the podium until the bailiff comes over and whispers something in his ear. “Wesson Patrick Parkuh!”

  He slams his gavel down, and I feel the blow directly in my own chest.

  No. No, no, no.

  “Bailiff!” He swings his gavel in the direction of the man on his right with the enthusiasm of a game show host. “Bring out the accused!”

  I’m no longer in my body. I’m not even in my living room. I’m in the back row of that courtroom, clutching the smooth wooden bench in front of me so hard that my knuckles turn white as the bailiff pushes through the door behind him and reenters the room, dragging Wes by the elbow.

  My Wes.

  The camera zooms in on his beautiful face, and thanks to the power of HDTV, I can count every black eyelash as he stares at the floor, every stubborn strand of hair that refuses to stay tucked behind his ear, and every worried crease in his lips as he chews on the corner of his mouth. He’s right there. Larger than life. So close I can touch him.

  So, I do.

  I step toward the TV as Mrs. Renshaw and Sophie and Carter come running up the stairs. Wes’s eyes stare back at me the moment my fingertips graze his cheek, but they’re not happy to see me.

  They’re downright hateful.

  “Rainbow! Get away from there!” Mrs. Renshaw snaps. “Jimbo, don’t just sit there! Turn that godforsaken thing off!”

  “I tried, Agnes! They’re broadcastin’ it on every damn channel!”

  “Well, try harder!”

  “Your Honor.” The camera cuts away from Wes and over to the judge’s stand, where one of the police officers in the front row is now addressing the governor.

  I yank my hand back and stumble away from the screen.

  “The accused has been charged with violating the one and only true law, the law of natural selection, by procuring and administering life-saving antibiotics to a mortally wounded citizen. The evidence will show that an open bottle of Keflex was found at the scene of the crime with the accused’s fingerprints on it, and the accused was identified on sight by an eyewitness. I motion to find the accused guilty as charged.”

  Governor Steele leans back in his chair and folds his hands across his stomach. “Very good then. Very good. Does the, uh, defense have anything to say?” He turns a beady eye on the second officer in the front row, who stands at attention and violently shakes his head.

  “Jimbo! Turn! It! Off!”

  “I’m tryin’, woman!”

  “Very well then.” Governor Steele nods at the mute officer in approval, and his chair squeaks loudly as he leans forward and breathes into the microphone. “Mistuh Parkuh …”

  The bailiff drags Wes over to the judge’s stand, but Wes doesn’t hurry. He crosses the courtroom on long, lazy legs, taking his time as the bailiff jerks on his elbow. With his hands cuffed and ankles shackled, he still manages to make that orange jumpsuit look cool as he stands in a carefree pose before the governor. Wes, the Ice King. He only acts that way when he feels threatened. It makes me want to reach into the TV and hug him from behind. Wrap my arms around his waist and rest my cheek on his back, like I used to when we would ride through the woods on his dirt bike.

  Back when we thought the world was going to end.

  Right now, I wish it had.

  “Mistuh Parkuh, in the face of such irrefutable evidence, I hereby find you guilty of defying the one true law, the law of natural selection. You shall be sentenced to death by public exe—”

  The screen goes black as Mrs. Renshaw yanks the plug out of the wall behind the TV stand.

  “There!” she huffs, smiling at her son’s busted face. “Justice is served. Now, let’s all get back to enjoying this beautiful—”

  I lunge. One look at Mrs. Renshaw’s painted red lips, spread in a wide smile, and I see red everywhere. I let out a primal, soul-deep scream as we both tumble to the floor, synthetic hair and synthetic pearls flying as I wrap my hands around the neck of the woman who single-handedly took everything from me that April 23 hadn’t already claimed.

  “Rainbow! What the fuck?”

  “Stop it, Rainbow. You’re hurting her!”

  “Gotdamn it, child! Get offa her!”

  Mrs. Renshaw’s eyes bulge out of her face, but I only squeeze harder, unable to stop myself even if I wanted to. Her arms flail, slapping, clawing, and tugging at my arms and wrists, but I’m too far gone. All I hear is her voice over and over in my head.

  “Justice is served!”

  “Justice is served!”

  “Justice is served!”

  I jerk her neck after every declaration. Just as her arms go limp and her eyes roll back in her head, I feel a pair of hands as big as dinner plates wrap around my waist and lift me off of her lifeless body.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Carter shouts as he jerks my arms behind my back, tangling them in a knot so tight I feel like the slightest move might break my shoulders.

  Mrs. Renshaw comes to with a gasp, blinking and panting as she rubs the red marks around her neck.

  Sophie picks up her mother’s lost wig and kneels by her side, gently helping her sit up so she can place the nightmarish thing back on her head.

  “What in the Sam Hill has gotten into you, child?” Mr. Renshaw asks as he hobbles over to help his wife stand.

  Smoothing her dress over her wide hips, Mrs. Renshaw adjusts her wig and levels me with a lethal stare. It’s the same look she saved for the really bad kids back when she was an administrator at our high school.

  “Carter, Sophia … tie her up.”

  Wes

  Keep your posture loose. Stop clenching your fucking jaw. Look bored. More bored.

  “Mistuh Parkuh, in the face of such irrefutable evidence, I hereby find you guilty of defying the one true law, the law of natural selection. In the great state of Georgia, those who commit crimes against naychuh shall be returned to naychuh; therefore, I sentence you to death by public execution. This court is adjourned!” Governor Fuckface bangs his gavel and points it at the news crew standing in the back of the courtroom. “Back to you, missy!”

  I glance over my shoulder just in time to see the reporter roll her eyes in disgust before turning to face the camera.

  “This is Michelle Ling, reporting live from the Fulton County Courthouse. This sentencing was brought to you by Buck’s Hardware … because the buck stops here. We’ll be broadcasting live from Plaza Park this afternoon for another Green Mile execution event. Stay safe out there, and may the fittest survive.”

  Her tone is about as shitty as my mood.

  I appreciate that.

  “All rise,” Elliott says in his most authoritative voice, which is fucking ridiculous—not only because he’s a shit actor, but also because we’re all already standing.

  Governor Steele stands and almost knocks his microphone off the podium with his belly when he turns to leave. I can’t believe this piece of shit is the one who decides whether I live or die.

  Decided.

  Fuck me.

  Once the camera crew leaves, Officer Elliott blows out a breath and folds at the waist like he just ran a marathon. “Good Lawd! If I had to suck my stomach in for one more minute, I was gonna fall out on the floor!”

  Ramirez and Riggins, the two cops who brought me in yesterday, chuckle as they head past us toward the door.

  “You deserve an Emmy for that performance, Elliott,” Ramirez taunts.

  “Pssh. Please. I deserve a Oscar!” He flips his nonexistent hair over his shoulder as the two glorified beat cops laugh their way to the exit.

  Elliott’s smiling eyes land on me, and suddenly, they’re not so smiley anymore.

  “
You deserve a Oscar too,” he says, his mouth forming a flat line. “You did good, handsome.”

  I give him the same bored expression I gave Governor Fuckface and let him lead me by the elbow out the door, down a metal staircase, and through the underground tunnel that connects the courthouse to the police station across the street.

  While Elliott fills the silence with tales about all the celebrity trials he’s done, I find myself analyzing the path of the pipes and air-conditioning vents overhead, the placement of the lights and security cameras, the weapons holstered on Elliott’s belt.

  “Most actors are short as hell in person, but Chris Tucker? Ooh…now, that’s a tall drink of water! Nice, too! Have you ever seen The Fifth Element? When I saw that movie, I told my mama I wanted to be Ruby Rhod when I grew up!”

  As we climb the stairs that lead up to the police station, I find myself analyzing Elliott as well. At first, I thought he was just filling the silence because he’s a self-absorbed, narcissistic star-fucker, but when he glances at me, there’s a sadness in his eyes that tells me he’s not trying to impress me.

  He’s trying to distract me.

  Because I was just sentenced to fucking death, and the only thing he can do about it is try to take my mind off of it for a few minutes.

  When we get back to my cell, Elliott pats me on the back. “Okay, my man. Officer Hoyt will be back with your dinner in a few minutes. You green?”

  “Super green,” I mumble, walking through the open bars.

  “Ha! I knew you’d seen that movie! You got Korben Dallas written alllll over you, honey!” Elliott beams as he closes the door and gestures for me to turn around and stick my hands through the bars.

  On second thought, maybe this asshole wasn’t trying to make me feel better, I think as I face the wall and let Elliott take off my handcuffs and shackles. Maybe he was trying to make himself feel better.

  Guilt. I can work with that.

  “How did your sentencing go, friend?” Doug asks from the cell next to me. His voice is raw and tired.

  I groan as Elliott walks away, twisting my sore wrists in front of me. “It fuckin’ went.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It is what it is.”

  There’s a silence, and then Doug clears his throat. “Officer Hoyt’s bringing me my last meal soon. They let me choose between the chicken Alfredo and beef Wellington.”

  Fuck, man.

  Doug’s trying to sound tough, and for some reason, that makes it even worse.

  I swallow the lump forming in my throat and ask, “What’d you go with?”

  “The beef,” he says with a sniffle. “My wife never let me eat red meat.” His voice breaks at the mention of his girl, erupting into the kind of sob that’s so painful it doesn’t make a sound. Only gasps and gurgles and deep, guttural moans.

  I let my head fall back against the cinder-block wall and close my eyes, but I don’t fucking cry.

  Because unlike Doug, I’m gonna see my girl again.

  I thought I could do this.

  I thought I had changed.

  I thought I could sacrifice myself for her and make God happy for once in my shitty waste of a life.

  But fuck that.

  If God wanted a martyr, he shouldn’t have chosen a motherfucker who knows how to pick locks with a plastic fork.

  Rain

  Our garage doesn’t have windows.

  My garage.

  Their garage.

  Their garage doesn’t have windows.

  It’s pitch-black in here, day or night.

  I don’t know which one it is anymore.

  The sound of cockroaches scurrying around makes me think it must be getting dark outside. They usually only come out at night.

  Thank God I have my boots on.

  Not that I can feel my feet anyway. I haven’t been able to straighten my legs for hours. Sophie dragged a chair from the dining room out here, and Carter duct-taped me to it. He bound my ankles to the wooden legs and taped my wrists to the armrests.

  Now I can’t feel my hands either.

  I spent the first hour or two tugging on my restraints, trying to shuffle my chair across the floor without making noise, trying to think of something in here that I could use as a tool or a weapon, but once my anger wore off, I remembered that it doesn’t really matter.

  What’s the point of escaping when you have nowhere else to go?

  This used to be my home.

  Then, Wes became my home.

  And now … I’m just homeless.

  I picture Wes’s face, bitter but not broken, defiant but not desperate, as he stood before the governor. Since the moment they ripped him away from me, I’ve thought of him as dead. But he’s not. I looked at him, and he looked at me. And somehow, that makes it hurt more. Knowing he’s out there and I can’t get to him. Touching his cheek and feeling nothing but dust and static beneath my fingers. Knowing that he’s locked in a cell somewhere, while I’m locked in one of my own.

  If the tables were turned, Wes would come for me. I know he would. He would storm the castle and slay the dragons and burn the entire kingdom to the ground to save me.

  But no one’s coming for him.

  And the saddest part is that no one ever has.

  The door to the kitchen swings open, and I wince when the overhead fluorescent lights come on. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to bury my face in my shoulder to hide from the unbearable brightness.

  “Dinnertime.” Mrs. Renshaw’s voice is raspy but strong as she drags another dining room chair across the cement floor.

  I hear the click-clack of high heels and the crinkle of a paper bag, which I assume holds the French fries and greasy hamburger I’m smelling.

  Once my eyes adjust to the light, I blink them a few times and find Mrs. Renshaw sitting directly across from me—legs crossed, pantyhose on, wig smoothed down, jewelry for days. She glares at me like I’m in an interrogation room, and with this lighting, I might as well be.

  Mrs. Renshaw places a Styrofoam to-go cup in my right hand, which is still lashed to the armrest, and then rips the piece of duct tape covering my mouth off in one swift motion, taking the skin off of my dry, chapped lips along with it.

  I open and close my mouth, working my sore jaw. Then, I lean forward and take a huge slurp from the red plastic to-go cup straw. Cool water fills my mouth, but it could be gasoline for all I care. I haven’t had anything to drink all day.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” Mrs. Renshaw says, her penciled-on eyebrows arching to the heavens as she leans forward, wrapping her forearms around the bag in her lap. “I ain’t sorry for what I done. You can be mad at me all you want, Rainbow, but I will never apologize for trying to protect my family.” She drops her eyes to my belly. “One day, when you’re a mama, you’ll understand.”

  A wistful smile tugs at the corners of her glossy lips before she sits up straighter and furrows her brows at me. “I always thought of you as one of my own. I loved you like you was family. But I was wrong about you.” She wags her finger at me like I’m sitting in the principal’s office. “You are no child of mine. You are yo’ daddy’s child through and through. Evil. Violent. Disturbed. Just like your savage friend who attacked my boy.”

  I squeeze the to-go cup in my fist, digging my fingernails into the Styrofoam until I feel tiny streams of cool water running down the sides of my fingers and over my palm. When the water reaches my wrist, I get an idea.

  “You’re carryin’ my grandbaby, so I can’t turn you in, but … I can’t let you come near me or my family again either.”

  Mrs. Renshaw reaches into the bag and pops a handful of French fries into her mouth, closing her eyes as she savors the food just to torture me. Luckily, it gives me an opportunity to twist my wrist back and forth to help the moisture make its way underneath the duct tape.

  “So, I decided”—Mrs. Renshaw swallows her mouthful of fried potato and licks the salt from her freshly painted fingertips—“I’m
gon’ keep you out here till the baby’s born.”

  “What?”

  Her lined lips curl into a sneer as she takes in my horrified expression. “Don’t worry; we’ll find you somethin’ to sleep on and a place to do your business, which, honestly, is more than you deserve.”

  Mrs. Renshaw digs around in the bag again. The crinkling sound masks the noise the tape makes when I give my wrist one final twist, breaking the adhesive bond. Water runs down my forearm and drips out the other side of the tape, causing a jolt of fear to surge through me. I hold my breath and shift my hips in my seat just in time to catch the stream on my thigh. It lands on my jeans almost silently, and I exhale.

  Leaning forward, I pretend to take another sip from the cup, holding it in place with my chin so that I can let go of it with my hand. I manage to wriggle it free from the now-useless tape as Mrs. Renshaw swallows another mouthful of fries.

  “Now …” she mumbles, rummaging in the bag and pulling out a King Burger wrapped in shiny yellow paper. She peels the wrapper back on one side and holds it toward me. “Open up and say—ahh!”

  Mrs. Renshaw lets out a shriek as my to-go cup flies toward her face, spraying water in all directions like a loose fire hose. She drops the food and squeezes her eyes shut, shielding herself with her hands. It buys me just enough time to reach into the back of my jeans, grab my Daddy’s Beretta, and hit her upside the head with it as hard as I possibly can.

  Her eyes snap to mine but only for a split second before they glaze over and roll up under her eyelids. Mrs. Renshaw slumps sideways in her chair, knocking over the Burger Palace bag along the way. Golden fries spill onto the oil-stained floor as I clutch the gun between my thighs and struggle to unwrap my left wrist.

  Mrs. Renshaw moans and makes a smacking sound with her mouth as I free my left hand and start on the tape around my ankles.

  The moaning gets louder as I free my right foot, but when I go to work on the other side, a hand shoots out and grabs my wrist.