Two Weeks After Shooting

A ray of light snuck through the dark clouds overcasting the sky and illuminated the blown-up Senior photo of Miles sitting adjacent to the mahogany casket. I wished with every ounce of my being that the goofy, crooked smile he wore in the photograph was the boy I saw every time I closed my eyes. I had spent over a week in the hospital grasping onto the little hope I had left.

The hope that it wasn't too late for me to join my boyfriend.

It didn't matter how hard I cried or how long I remained silent, my parents pretended as though nothing had happened. They went about their daily routines as if our home wasn't being egged and splattered with crimson paint, rocks and bricks thrown through windows every couple hour. Mom continued the drive to work though reporters and rioters crowded around her car and threatening her life. By the time I'd been discharged from the hospital, my mom had already moved all necessities to a hotel and put the house on the market.

It hadn't been much of a fight to come to the funeral this afternoon. Mom was on the phone with her lawyer and Dad had been staring blankly at the news as he had been for the few days I'd been home and the entire time he'd visited in the hospital. There had been a small part of me that had expected that they'd at least come with to pay respects, but I suppose I understood why they couldn't. It was easier for me to hide myself as I hadn't been thrusted into the forefront of all media outlets as my parents and brothers had. I had been shown on occasion as one of the victims and mentioned on one article online as the younger sister of the Rodgers Twins.

It wasn't until most of the people fled after the end of the service and Miles was six feet under that I caught sight of Naomi Chao. She was standing back against a tree, wearing a oversized black sweater and black leggings. Her hair was tucked securely under a beanie and though I could barely see her from where I stood, it was an easy assumption that she was as much of a mess as Hilary and myself. She lifted her head slowly, but it was as if the moment she saw me, she snapped like a rubber band back into reality and she quickly spun on her heel and disappeared back out to the parking lot.

I started to limp forward but a quick movement in my peripheral stopped my own motion. I stood frozen in place when I saw who that it was the sophomore basketball player that had saved me in the hallway. His right arm was in a sling, his left lifted in a half wave seeing that I was looking at him. I knew I should force my way over and thank him, but he seemed to read my mind as he nodded with a small, sad smile before walking away and disappearing into the mass of people that Naomi had moments prior.

With everyone gone outside of Hilary and Father Monroe, I finally maneuvered my way around a few other headstones and lowered myself to the groan with a hiss of pain.

My mother had been asking how I was healing, but I had no desire to utter a word to her, or anyone for that matter. The pain I was feeling was only a fraction of what those that had lost loved ones were.

It was only right I suffered in silence.

There wasn't much in front of the grave yet. A small photo of Miles from his championship game last year, his baseball mitt and an old, dirty ball. I gently set the rose between my index finger and thumb down in front of the photograph, blinking as tears continued to fall silently. I dug my nails into the dirt beside the ball, trying my best to steady my trembling hand.

Roses had always been our love language. The afternoon he'd asked me out in the cafeteria freshman year, he'd had a fake rose with one of those cute little teddy bears attached and all but got down on one knee to ask me out for dinner. From that moment forward, he made sure to shower me in the beautiful flower on every special occasion, and even randomly through the two and a half years we were together.

"Everly." a quiet voice was accompanied by the sloshing of her dress shoes through the damp grass. Hilary Baxter was brooding over me, a small box in her arms. "This isn't everything. When. . . you can come look through his things when you're ready. This was just what I knew was yours or what I knew he'd want you to have."

I'd communicated very dryly with her over the last couple days, but it'd all been short and to the point. She hadn't really mentioned anything about getting stuff together for me, I wasn't sure I was ready to accept it yet. Seeing her had my gut tightening too, as the last time I'd met her eyes it was her silent confirmation that her son was one of the kids being shoved into a corner truck.

A strangled sob escapes me rather than an expression of gratitude and her expression crumbled further it. She blinked rapidly and cleared her throat to compose herself. "I'm just going to leave this right here."

As she sets the box down, she hesitates in front of me, her knuckles brushing against my own, and she whispered, "Did you know? Did you know what they were going to do?"

I shouldn't have been taken back, as speculation over my family's knowledge of my brothers' actions had been the current debate on every news station. Half of the anchors agreed that we were clueless, just as much victims as my classmates and teachers. The other half were sure that we were aware in some regard. I suppose it they were the ones who were right. We had known something wasn't right with Clark and had let it go, brushed it off as though it was no more than a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. A simple phase he was going through.

"Everly." Ms. Baxter's quiet voice filled the silence between us.

I shook my head as a response to her previous question, but I could see in her eyes she was far from done asking them.

"Did he. . . my boy. . . de he say anything? Before he—"

Before he was brutally murdered inches from me.

"He said he loved you." I lied in a quiet breath. Those hadn't been his last words, and in reality, Miles' relationship with his mother was very strained and rocky, but it was what she needed to hear and she would never know otherwise.

Her entire face lit up hearing the words and hands shot to her chest as she shut her eyes and started nodding, tears rolling down her rosy cheeks.

Feeling as though I was intruding on a personal moment, I turned to look at the photo once more and urged my mind to latch on to it. Or any good memory I had with him for that matter.

"Thank you, Everly." Ms. Baxter then rose and tried to clean herself up on her way back to the lot.

I waited until she was gone entirely to nudge the box closer with my foot. The top of it was pictures. A lot of them. I hadn't realized that Miles had so many of the two of us. Beneath the layer of pics was a couple sweatshirts, and when I brought them to my nose something close to a whimper escaped me when I smelt the faint scent of his cologne lingering on them. I set them on my lap and reached in, pulling out an envelope I initially thought was empty. When I pulled it out, I flipped it open to find his necklace inside. My hands immediately started to shake uncontrollably having it back in my grasp. He hadn't taken it off in nearly three years, and there was just something so real about it sitting in the palm of my hand.

Not able to keep myself upright any longer, I clutched the sweatshirt against my chest and laid on the cold, wet grass. It wasn't until the necklace slipped through my fingers that a loud, agonizing sob broke past my lips, and I lost control entirely. My body ravaged with sobs, my cries turning to screams and slowly led to hyperventilation as I tried to catch my breath through each sob.

When I finally managed to force my eyes open and stare directly at Miles, his beautiful green eyes beckoning me in, the small little crinkles around them a confirmation he'd been genuinely happy in the photo, I stretched my fingers, unable to remain still and brushed my numb fingertips against his face. And because the words would under no circumstances be able to leave my mouth, I allowed his image to blur before me and thought it silently to myself.

I'm so sorry.

*

I felt as though I had a bucket of ice water thrown on me as I passed my childhood home. It was late, but the realtor must have just left as the porch light was on, illuminating the entire porch and front windows enough for me to see the profanities written. The front two windows had been bashed in, shards of glass laying along and just under the sill. Murderer was painted across the front porch and down the steps on to the driveway. Knowing it was risky remaining here, I continued down the street, but the cold, icy chill that had shot down my back upon seeing the house didn't leave me.

I threw the hood of Miles' sweatshirt over my head and slipped into Fiero's Bar and Grill a few blocks away. It'd been a place we'd frequented for years, but something about stepping through the front doors alone intensified the cold spreading through my chest.

My eyes followed most of the customers to the flatscreen behind the bar. It, like every other new station in the country, has my brothers faces plastered across it. The headline reads something about Clark's trial in a couple weeks, but I didn't move close enough to see exactly what it says and the chatter in the room was too loud to hear the anchors.

Then, as if the channel has been flipped, it shows bodycam footage of the raid into Lincoln Heights. My heart begins to slam against my chest as I watch the doors fly open and though the faces are all blurred out, red can be seen in every direction as the SWAT members step over the dead bodies in a long lin3 down the hallway. It's when the door of the Chemistry classroom is kicked open and my brother is spotted that I finally have to back out of the building and breathe in the brisk air outside once more.

The panic attack I'd been able to harbor at the cemetery is beginning to gnaw at me once more. My fingertips started to tingle and body trembling as I continued down the street. It's when I finally managed to reach the bus stop that I collapsed onto the pavement and clutched the side of the bench to keep from losing my balance. Turning my head, vision blurring, 1stared into the dark night, hoping that if I stared into it long enough maybe it'd consume me.