Exit Wound (10 page)

“What’s one thing you want to accomplish after you finish this tour?” I was asked, and I smiled.

“I want to be the first one in my family to finish college. I’m going to Dartmouth in the fall.”

“What are you majoring in?”

“Music.”

“Taking notes from your brother?”

“No,” I said. “I’m taking notes from myself.”

“Okay, that’s a wrap for today.”

Once the camera crew was done, I went to shower off some of my makeup and hair product, which was way more than I usually wore.

I changed into my pajamas and wrapped my hair in a towel then went around to the lounge to see what was for dinner.

“Chinese,” Splinter answered.

“Again?”

“You should know how this band feels about their Chinese food.”

I let out a sigh and told him my order since it was his turn to order it. I decided to go with something a bit healthier since I could tell the kungpao chicken was adding to my waistline. When Splinter was done ordering, he sat down next to me and flipped on the TV.

“Why do you have a towel on your head?” he asked.

I looked at him as if he was crazy. “Don’t you do this too? I mean, with your man-bun and everything, surely you know how to towel dry your hair.”

He laughed, and so did I. We began shoving each other playfully until we couldn’t breathe from the laughter.

“I don’t have a manbun!” he said. Today, his hair was long and flowing majestically.

“Not today,” I said. “Except on every other day you have a man-bun.”

He frowned, and I sniggered, and when I went to flip the towel off of my head to get the excess water from my hair, he hugged me tightly, causing me to lose the towel and have my wet curly hair stick to him.

“Splinter, what on earth—?”

“You’re kind of normal right now, so I thought it would be okay to hug you.”

I shoved him off and grabbed the towel. “I am always normal, and it is never okay to hug me. Ever.” I ran my fingers through my curls and started to French braid my hair. Splinter was watching me instead of the TV.

“Do you want me to braid your hair too, Splintykins?” I asked in a baby voice.

“Sure, why not?”

Once I tied off my braid, I looked at him like he was crazy. “Are you being serious?”

He nodded, and sat in front of me with his back facing me. “Do that braid you did on your hair to mine.”

I did as he asked. When we were done laughing from taking all the pictures and posting them to Instagram, the boys came out to see what we had done and laughed along with us.

That was the most any of us had laughed in a long time. It was really the most we had laughed since Everett died. For that, I was grateful. I was glad we were able to laugh again. Although, even though I was laughing on the outside, on the inside, I was still crying into the void.

CHAPTER NINE

The tour was coming to an end, and I was remembering little things we did together when the band was still whole. Like playing Twister on the moving bus as we left Tennessee, shopping in a mall in Minnesota and eventually running away from rabid fans, and watching Rian and Grayson make Vines together that often involved makeup, wigs, and silly sunglasses. My memories were slowly fading, and as the days passed, I wondered if it was possible to make any more memories that didn’t have Everett somewhere in them.

It was late when I had gone to bed last night, and I was hoping to at least get an extra hour of sleep.

Much earlier than I had hoped, I felt a nudge.

“Bea, we’re here,” Ben whispered to me. I woke up and then remembered I wasn’t in my bunk. I had fallen asleep in the back room with Ben, and I didn’t even care. We were cuddling, which for most siblings would be weird—though for us, it was second nature. I detached myself from him and sat up, running my fingers through my hair. I needed to run a comb through it or use some detangling spray. The knots in my hair were to die for, and not in a good way.

“Where are we, again?” I asked him.

It was quiet in the bus, and I wondered if we were the only ones up.

“We’re in Arkansas. We’ll be headed to Little Rock in an hour. You should go shower before everyone else wakes up.”

I nodded and did as he’d asked me to do. It was nice of him to offer me the shower first and to wake me up when he did. That way, everyone else could sleep in, and I could take advantage of the shower and all of its mobile glory. Of course, this was before I saw the time. It was four in the morning, and I couldn’t believe that I was even awake this early.

I showered and used the last of my detangler in my hair, and then I dried off and went to get dressed. Since I thought everyone was still asleep, I went into the bunker area in my bra and underwear to grab clean clothes. I had grabbed a shirt when I heard a whistle, so I rushed to cover myself and saw Rian poking his head out of his bunk.

“Rian, what are you doing up?” I asked harshly.

“I heard someone in the shower, and it made me need to pee.”

He got out of his bunk shirtless and clad in boxers. He slid right past me, our bare skin brushing against one another’s for just a brief moment. Rian had the tendency to cross many lines and break every rule; sometimes, I often thought that if I wasn’t his bandmate’s little sister, he would treat me as a groupie. He treated every pretty girl he saw like a groupie.

After I pulled my shirt over my head and put my hair up in a bun, I slid on a pair of pants. Buttoned and zipped up, I was in the clear; no one else was going to see my pink polka dot bra and matching undies. When Rian was done with the bathroom, I managed to squeeze back in to do my makeup, and when I was done, everyone was waking up and wanting their bathroom privileges.

One of the times Everett and I were left on the bus alone, I had come out of the bathroom right as he was passing by, and we had collided into one another and collapsed onto the floor on top of each other. We laughed and stared into each other’s eyes the way lovers do, and I wished I had known then what I know now. It wasn’t love; it was affection. A really strong form of affection. I wish I knew what love was and that maybe he could have stuck around long enough to show me. I’m eighteen, though; I have plenty of time to fall in and out of love with people. I didn’t know if it was worth the risk.

When everyone was ready, we all decided to get breakfast at a drivethru. Unfortunately, our bus didn’t make the clearance mark for the drivethru canopy, so we had to pile ourselves inside and order from the front counter. It wasn’t normally such a big deal, but with all the cameras following us around and our now easily recognizable faces, people were pouring their hearts out to us about Everett and their love for the band. They asked for pictures and if it was okay for them to ask in the first place. Ben didn’t mind, and he took pictures with everyone who asked. So did the rest of the band, including Splinter. For someone who was so bad at social interaction in high school, he acted like a pro when they asked him a million and one questions. I got our food and headed back to the bus, waiting for the boys to join me.

“Frances! Wait up!”

Splinter had just escaped from the crowd that was forming inside.

“Since when did you start calling me ‘Frances?’” I asked him, holding the bus door open for him.

“Since it catches your attention more than when I call you ‘Bea.’”

We sat in the lounge area and decided against waiting for the others to return so we could eat our food.

“How are you doing?” he asked around a bite of his McMuffin.

“I’m fine, I suppose. How are you?”

“No,” he said, “I mean, how are you…how are you with your mourning?”

Ah. He wanted to know about my ever-sinking depression.

“I’m doing better,” I lied, and he either couldn’t tell or refused to call me out on it.

“Good, I’m glad.”

We ate in silence until the boys came back. Then, things got loud. We were all singing and shouting and laughing. It was all about appearances. If I laughed enough, smiled widely enough, and talked happily enough, maybe no one would notice.

***

The show was pretty amazing, and the stakes for the pranks were high. After Ben found a creepy baby doll left on the street, we all took turns and drew on its face to make it even creepier then created it its own Twitter and Instagram account. It was a harmless thing at first, at least until it had more followers than any of us combined. Tour Bus Baby was a hit.

Before we found Tour Bus Baby, I had joined forces with Rian and spiked Ben’s shampoo with blue hair dye. Only, Grayson ended up using it instead, and his normally light brown hair came out of the shower in a turquoise shade that made us all roar with laughter.

It seemed like everyone was having a good time, and I was glad. I hadn’t had an anonymous text, I hadn’t had any nightmares—things were really getting better. When we went back to the bus after cleaning up the confetti, whipped cream, and silly string in the green room, I climbed into my bunk and skillfully changed into my pajamas without doing much moving around. It was something I had mastered during the second leg of the tour.

Usually after shows, the boys wanted to shower, and that could take all night with as much as they sweated during their performances. I eventually got fed up with all the rushing from the bunks to the bathroom and to the lounge, and figured out a way to change without being seen or getting in anyone’s way. It was truly an art form.

When I was done and the boys had finished all their bathroom business, I went to brush my teeth for the night. When I was done and I came back, I checked my phone. It was mainly Twitter feed updates and trending hashtags about Eden Sank and Tour Bus Baby. And this message:

Anonymous: Tick, tock. It’s like a clock. Pay your dues, or your head will meet with my Glock.

Wide-eyed and terrified, I deleted the message. I tried to hide my trembling by getting under the covers in my bunk and pretending to sleep. I needed to tell someone, but who could I even tell? I knew Splinter knew something was going on even though he hadn’t mentioned it.

I found it hard to sleep that night. The last time I had such trouble sleeping on the bus was the first few nights. Everett had told me a trick: “Put in some headphones and listen to a playlist. It’ll block out the noise of the bus, and it’ll help you asleep.”

I put on the 8tracks app and found a playlist. The first song that came on was, “Saturday Smile” by Gin Wigmore.

I fell asleep shortly, and I knew wherever we were headed next, I would be okay for the night. This person, whoever was sending me these texts, was only trying to scare me. I didn’t want to admit that it was working, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little frightened. However, I had to believe they couldn’t hurt me when I was with my brother and his band. I had to believe I was untouchable when I was with them—otherwise, I’d never feel safe. I didn’t know how I’d ever feel safe when I was on my own, except I wouldn’t be on my own for a while. It could wait. At least that’s what I wanted to believe.

The next morning, I woke up to the smell of bacon and eggs. It was enough to get me to crawl out of bed and track down the source. The boys were all sitting around the table, eating, and when I sat down to join them, I noticed how quiet they were being.

“What’s going on, guys?” I asked, piling food onto my plate.

“Nothing, Frances,” Rian said sharply.

Though curious about what might be happening, I didn’t prod any further. I would have to find out like everyone else in the world: through social media. I checked my phone underneath the table, and what I found left me in disbelief. They had found the person who’d shot Everett—and he was dead. Apparently, the guy came forward with some information about another planned shooting, and he couldn’t even get through the door of the police station because someone had shot him on the front steps, execution style.

“What does this mean?” I asked quietly.

“We don’t know, Frances,” Ben said gently. “They’re going to investigate, but this isn’t our business. It’s the business of—”

“Everett’s family, I know. But he’s our family too!” I cried out.

They had to tell us something. If Ryker could tell Ben that his shooting was intentional, then maybe he could tell us what was going on with the shooter. I wanted to know—no—I
needed
to know. Whoever this guy was, he was going to come after me next. He held the answers to the reason I was being harassed so relentlessly, what my “dues” were, and who I needed to pay them to. Now, he was dead, and someone else held the answers I desperately sought.

Violently shoving my plate away from me, I rushed back to the bunks and curled up into a ball. I didn’t know what to do about this. I was only eighteen, and I had the world on my shoulders. That’s what it felt like every damned day. The weight of the world was breaking my back, and I had no one to help me take a load off. Everything was falling to pieces when it should have been falling into place, and I didn’t know how to ask for help. I was helpless, and I was filled with remorse all over again. I didn’t realize I had been crying until Ben squeezed himself into my bunk and held me.

“We were going to wait to tell you,” he said, and it only made me cry more.

“You could have at least tried to act normally,” I replied through the tears.

“We couldn’t. We couldn’t be loud and obnoxious with this on our minds. We knew how it would hurt you, and it hurt us. We couldn’t bear to do that to you. Sissa, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

I cried even more. Whenever he called me Sissa, the nickname wrapped a secure layer of love and protection around me. Right then, I felt frayed at the edges and like a piece of junk. But once he called me Sissa, it was as if none of that mattered. It used to annoy the crap out of me, and now that he called me that stupid little name, I was a heaping mess of tears.

“Today is a break day. Why don’t we go look around town?” he suggested.

“Where are we?”

“We’re in Springfield, Missouri. We can look around if you want. We don’t have to do anything drastic. We can wear wigs and costumes to hide from everyone so no one will know that it’s us.”

“Yeah, okay. Let’s do it.”

We got dressed in clothes that would easily blend with the crowd, and Ben wore sunglasses and a beanie, as well as a jacket to cover his arms full of tattoos. I dressed in my usual attire of a tank top with an open flannel shirt, denim shorts, and Converse. Today, I had my hair up in a bun, and my eyes were covered by a pair of aviators. When we went out to go sightseeing, it was wonderful. We spent the day eating and doing everything we could within a few hours. When the sun was setting, we went over to a park and looked at the horizon while eating convenience store burritos, something I told Ben we would be paying for later that night.

He wrapped an arm around me. “You know, you’re young and wild. At least you can be. Frances, the world is yours for the taking. You can literally do anything you want. I’m not saying that because I’m your big brother and I believe in you more than any college or manager ever will. I say that because it’s true.

“You’re my little sister, and you’ve been through so much in such a short time. It’s sad, but let me tell you something I learned a long time ago: the people who have seen the most tragedy end up having the most success in life. You know why?”

I shook my head, and he smiled.

“They never give up—that’s why. They’ve been to Hell and back, and they survived. You’re a warrior, Frances Beatrice Morrison. You fight to get what you want and what you deserve. You’ll do whatever it takes to get on top. I know this since I’ve done the same thing. We’re bred to be fighters, Frances. We weren’t born to be quitters. We were born to fight. And fight we will, until our last breath.”

I laid my head against his shoulder. It was nice to hear all that from him, and it gave me a bit of hope. Hope for a future I had trouble envisioning at the moment. I knew everything would be all right. As long as I had Ben by my side, I would make it out alive. He was right; we weren’t born to quit—we were born to fight. I was being a quitter when I needed to suit up and take back what was mine. I needed to find the warrior within me and let her take over. Everything that was happening to me was for a reason, and I wasn’t going to let it take me down now. Not when I had so much to live for.