by A. K. Smith
A text from the police not Amir, unless Amir is acting like he is the police. He could probably do that. I don’t know how to respond.
I scan the crowd. Where are the undercover police?
I stand and start walking away from the terminal, certain Amir is going to pop out at any moment.
In the distance, I see a city bus. Should I get on?
Walk and get on.
Moving forward like a robot in slow motion, I step on the bus and analyze every face. I am never getting on another bus again. I’m making myself a promise right now. No more buses.
At the next stop I can barely swallow, my heartbeat accelerates. I imagine Amir walking on this bus with a gun.
I’m wrong.
Finally, I’m approaching the Las Vegas Strip. I pull myself up, gripping the back of the seat in front of me to steady myself. Out the window I see the meeting point up ahead, I walk toward the exit and try not to run into the restaurant.
Devon is waiting in the first booth.
“Did they find him?” I whisper.
He shakes his head as he hugs me and gently guides me to the back exit. I’m shaking.
Amir figured it out.
Somehow, he knew I was lying. How? What tipped him off.
Devon takes me to the police station and escorts me through booking. Dazed and in denial, I just follow Devon’s direction and kind voice through processing.
Like a trained dog, I move on command. In a sterile white room, with four chairs and a table, I sign paper after paper. Devon explains since I cooperated and voluntarily turned myself in for identity theft and defrauding a government organization, a special court would be fast tracked and assembled due to the extraordinary circumstances. By the week’s end, I will appear in front of a judge.
And now, here I am, staring at the ceiling of the hotel room. Dead bugs are trapped under the overhead light.
I try to fit the pieces of the puzzle of my life together. My puzzle must be a million-count jigsaw puzzle that is now missing pieces. A faint light shines from the window, illuminating Jack’s beautiful features. My sunshine. He’s always been my sun. Asleep next to me, on top of the covers, his jagged pink scar is barely visible on his cheek. I know now that saving a dog on the cracking ice of Briar’s Lake was nothing compared to what he is capable of—saving me.
Jack saved me.
If he can do that, he can do anything.
It doesn’t matter to Jack why I left.
I told him everything. The hardest part was telling Jack about Tyler. Jack didn’t question me. He listened. I was ready for questions about the pregnancy, or questions of why I didn’t tell him. I was ready.
No inquisition. Jack wrapped his arms around me and whispered in my ear, “I’m so sorry, Sunday. What matters now is you’re safe and with us. We can’t change the past, but we can decide what happens next.” His love for me is unconditional. He held me tight and then he drifted off to sleep with his arms around me.
My hand touches his cheek, and I brush my fingers over the scar. His eyes open, and he sees me, and a slow smile spreads across his face.
“I love you, Jackson Grant.”
“I love you, Sunday Foster.”
“Still?” I ask.
“Forever and always.” He kisses me, and for the hundredth time in a span of 48 hours, tears run down my face. I nestle closer to him. It’s not hard telling him I love him, because now I understand what love is.
“He’s still out there.” I use the back of my hand to wipe the tears.
“You tried, Sunday, you did your best. They will find him.”
I’m not so sure. Amir is smart. He knows how to disappear.
Another day and Amir is still out there.
Jack’s parents have already started the paperwork to gain temporary custody until I turn eighteen. Devon helped me with an emancipation request as a backup. I do not want to spend time in jail, but if I have to, I am prepared to accept my consequences. I’ve known worse.
It confirms what I always knew: I had been living with the devil and his sidekick.
Yes, in light of several news reports, the media paint SHE as an unwilling sidekick, but it doesn’t really matter to me. Isn’t there something, anything SHE could have done years ago? The answer always comes back loud and clear: SHE had choices.
We all do.
I don’t know how to process this new reality, this new supposed truth. I need time.
Devon contacted the rehab facility where SHE had been admitted. When the detox period is completed, the doctors will tell her I am alive. I can’t imagine SHE would care—well, at least the old SHE—and people that old don’t change. Do they?
When I was presumed dead, old remnants of morality bubbled to the surface. Apparently, SHE went ballistic after the shooting. Jack showed me the media reports. I read half a dozen articles.
Abused woman walks into the Owning Mills Police station and accuses her spouse of killing her son.
Cindy Foster of Ownings Mills, also the mother of Sunday Foster, a victim of the Ohiopyle Shooting walked into the police department yesterday bruised and battered, to press charges against her husband Charles Foster, of Ownings Mills. The mother told the police her husband, Charles Foster drowned her son, Clark Foster, in a violent rage, seventeen years ago in Fenwick Island, when he found out she was pregnant with a daughter from another man. Foster stated he threatened to kill her newborn daughter if she went to the authorities and has been threatening her ever since. The woman was quoted as saying: “My daughter Sunday is now dead, so I don’t care if he kills me; my life was over a long time ago when he murdered my son.”
Little flashes fill my mind: vivid images of HE screaming at SHE in the kitchen. HE holding a shiny silver knife and SHE pushing me behind her, screaming, “I won’t ever tell! I won’t ever tell!” I never remembered her protecting me until now. Somehow, that image knocked on my memory door. Was I five? Maybe even four. Had SHE actually cared about me at one time, or was I reinventing these memories?
I am not HE’s biological daughter. HE is not my father.
So, who is my father?
My body is limp with exhaustion from the trauma of the last 48 hours, but my mind is a raging fire that has a long time to burn before it can go out. Embers can stay hot for days. Jack has fallen asleep again, his head against my arm. Oh, how I love this boy. His love gives me courage to work through this mess of a life. And, oh what a mess.
I remember the quote the kind woman had repeated at the bus station in St. Louis: “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours; if it doesn’t, it was never meant to be.”
Jack came back.
Chapter 32
Silver Stars, Fallen Angels, and YOLO
The TSA agent appears irritated when Ed hands him the letter from the courts in Nevada. He opens it and turns to me. His stare is unflinching.
“What is your home address?”
I stumble, stutter, and cower from his gaze. What is my home address? It’s an easy question I can’t answer. The cold stone house I grew up in—never a home—was seized when HE was also arrested for tax evasion. Ed supplies the agent with his address, his arm tight around me, as I just stand there. Typing in his database, the agent pulls up my Maryland driver’s license. Technically, being seventeen, I do not need an I.D. to travel. He made his little squiggle on my boarding pass and I breathe a sigh of relief. I am through security and on my way back to Maryland.
“Your home is our home,” Jack says as we walk toward the gate. “And, we are so glad to have you home, Sunday.”
Home. All I ever wanted. And the Grants are all I ever envisioned a family to be. How many high school seniors are lucky enough live to with their boyfriend?
Today is the last day before Christmas vacation begins at Sunset Park High School. A light dusting of snow covers the ground, not yet sticking to the spindly branches of the trees. White fairy lights twinkle in the trees and bushes.
&nb
sp; Jack’s arm is around my shoulder as we walk into the ballroom to attend the Christmas Dance. Our Senior Christmas Dance. Jack looks beautiful in his black jacket and grey shirt. My short black velvet dress makes me feel sophisticated unlike the clothes I wore in Vegas. I study the picture on my iPhone, that we took before we left. My hair, back to blonde, is still short, but wavy. Marcia helped me put it in an up-do with little curls around my face. Jack calls it my sassy look. To be honest, I am sassy. And happy. All things considered, I am extremely grateful to the Grants and how everything turned out. I am alive, with my own identity and with a family I love. Love. I must’ve been born under a lucky star, not just Jack.
The media reports have finally died down on my reappearance and the information I shared regarding Amir and the shooting. I wanted to meet with Amir’s parents, but they refused to see me. Jack told me he heard they’d moved out of town last week. They cooperated with the police, handing over everything of Amir’s. The police scrubbed Amir’s computer. Nothing was found. His lack of contact with his parents, his forfeiture of his MIT scholarship, and my recording of our conversation made him a person of interest in the Ohiopyle shootings. I tried to locate the mom-and-pop gun store in West Virginia where he had used a fake I.D. to buy the gun, but no one ever confessed to ever seeing anyone that looked like him buying a gun. The gun Eric used didn’t have any serial numbers on it.
Besides the recording and my testimony, I am certain they will never find tangible evidence to link Amir to the shooting. He is too smart for that.
Things worked out for me.
The courts were extremely compassionate regarding my case, and I’m on probation until I graduate from high school. Devon has stayed in touch with me, and assisted me on putting closure on Tyler. He set up the meeting with the Towson police regarding my statement. Ward surprised me, he sent me a large black top hat, inside a hand written note stating ‘maybe this hat will be YOUR magic hat’ and included a large check labeled ‘college fund’. I have now logged 100 hours of community service with runaway teens. I will not have to spend time in jail or juvenile detention, and the teens I’ve been working with in the Baltimore youth shelter have taught me more about redemption than any prison cell ever could.
I know now what I want to do with the rest of my life. I want to help teens in trouble. Teach them, counsel them, and be there for them. I’m not sure exactly in what capacity, but I’m thinking guidance counselor or mental health counselor. Who knows? The teens I speak to and meet with one-on-one find it hard to imagine I lived in Sin City on my own.
Of course, I leave the whole pseudocide element out of it. We don’t want anyone getting any crazy ideas about faking their deaths, note my mentors, Mitchell and Mildred Alexander, an absolutely wonderful couple who run the center. They have taught me how to be there for teens.
I’m really just there to listen. Listen and observe.
Because if you listen, every once in a while, you hear the cries for help behind their tough exterior. Troubled youth: what to do with them? Mental health, how do you fix it? You fix it by paying attention and working with kids, taking notice when their parents don’t, or can’t. All I know is, you can’t just push it off on the parents. Even great parents like Amir’s will ignore the truth, push it under the carpet, attribute it to video games. Everyone needs to stop making excuses and pay attention. The signs are there.
I’ve lived the lie and acted the parts I thought everyone wanted me to be. My experience in ‘playing the part’ help me identify the façades. When you act like different characters, you can usually identify them, in a second.
I’m getting used to living with the Grants, Ed, Marcia, and Jack. It’s the sitcom family I have always dreamed of, and I now know love and respect among family members actually exist. We are like a real family: we discuss issues and opinions and ask for advice. We ask permission and we respect each other. Tara is at college and so I have camped out in her room. It is a little odd with Jack and me being boyfriend and girlfriend, but after everything we have been through, the trust is there. Everyone is thankful for the happy ending. Jack and I are both so grateful; we would never take advantage of the situation.
Jack and I are applying to colleges together, and ironically, they are all back East. We want to stay close to Jack’s parents. I finally have a reason to be around family. Good family and good people.
And speaking of good people, my mind pictures handsome, one-of-a- kind Hudson. He waited in the restaurant with Devon and the Grant family the whole time, while I waited for Amir to show up. I will always remember the last time I saw him in Vegas.
Hudson hugged me and told me, “The police will catch him. You’re going to be okay. I know because you have a great family right here,” he motioned to the Grants, and gave me a hug. When I thought I was going to cry again, of course he had to add, “And did you know Shaquille O’Neal was not only one tough dude on the basketball court, but the 7-foot Hall of Famer was a police officer as well? Yeah, besides basketball it was one of his first real jobs. Dennis Farina from Law and Order, same thing, first job was a Chicago police officer.”
Hudson attends UNLV full time and is coming out for a visit to Ocean City, Maryland to see his mother. We are all going to Ocean City to visit him and spend a weekend at the beach during spring break.
HE (who is not my real father) has been sentenced to life without parole. I was indifferent when I heard the news of his conviction. HE confessed, so he wouldn’t stand trial for a death penalty conviction. HE is nothing to me but the monster of my youth and the murderer of Clark.
I can’t erase the nightmares, but they are put away, although I now know, I am going to have to take them out of the closet and deal with them in counseling sessions.
SHE is awaiting trail and her attorney wants me to meet with her. Ed, Marcia, and Jack have told me they will support me in whatever decision I make. Jack thinks I should at least meet with her one time, hear what she has to say, and then decide.
I’m undecided.
Hudson’s mother’s quote sticks with me: the truth will set you free. I just might give her a minute, one day, to see if her truth sets her free.
The students at Sunset Park are gentler and kinder since the school shooting. I hate to admit that Amir was right about anything, but the horrific devastation formed a closer community. In his sick, twisted mind, he took credit for the transformation. Maybe that’s what tragedy does to you: it wakes you up and gives you a second chance at life.
When you’re faced with death and you survive, you try and dissect a reason why you made it and the others didn’t. The students who decided not to go on the whitewater rafting trip that day realized that one small decision changed their life. Take one of the Dream Team members who survived because she ate bad shrimp the night before and couldn’t go on the trip. Bad shrimp saved her life.
You only live once.
It’s that same message written in the words of a poem or the lyrics of a song, “If you knew this was your last day on earth, wouldn’t you live it a little bit sweeter?”
Holidays have always been difficult for me, and this year, it is a holiday of healing and remembering. The gym’s twinkling white and silver lights metamorphosized the sweaty space into a Christmas wonderland. A 12-foot tree stretches high to the ceiling, decorated with twenty-eight shiny silver star ornaments, each star inscribed with the name of one of the fallen angels from the shooting. The stars sparkle as they slowly turn. I’m elated there is not twenty-nine.
It is a Christmas miracle there is no star with my name or Jack’s.
My eyes scan the crowd. This new habit is ground in deeply, I just need to make sure Amir is not here or close by or watching. They have not caught up with him and it’s been months. I can’t imagine where he’s hiding. I close my eyes and swallow the fear away.
“Where did you go right now?” Jack asks.
“I’m taking it all in. I’m right here, happy.” I nuzzle my head in his neck.
“It’s okay Sunday. Wherever he is, I’m sure it is far away from here. They’ll find Amir, he can’t hide out forever.”
I’m not sure I believe that. I wrap my arms tighter.
The magic of Christmas swirls around us as we dance and hold each other close. The smell of Jack hasn’t changed. Underneath the new cologne he’s wearing, I still smell dryer sheets and cookies.
He kisses the top of my hair. I lift my head; Jack’s smiling brown eyes melt my heart. He whispers in my ear, “I love you, Sunday Foster.”
“Still?” I whisper.
“Always and forever.”
The computer screen is blank as my fingers rest on the keyboard. Time to write my college essay. The three most challenging questions in front of me invoke a book of complicated answers.
What does #YOLO mean to you?
How has your family background affected the way you see the world?
Write about one decision you made, that you have changed your mind about in the last three years?
Wow, where do I begin?
I could write a book.
Epilogue: A college campus, somewhere in the northwest
A classic fall day greets me. I roll my bike into a small motorcycle area in the heart of one of the most prestigious college campuses in the Mid-West. The heat of the yellow ball in the sky is a welcome distraction from the activity on the ground. Leaves on the towering trees are turning to the warmth of the sun, transitioning to their final effort: brilliant reds. I like the red leaves. Red is power. Red is death.
Soon they will turn to their last vibrant moment and with a gust of wind will fall to the ground. They will shrivel up, crumble and die.