Exit Wound (2 page)

***

The ceremony was uneventful. If Frank hadn’t recovered from a possible nosedive into the river, I would have had more fun. I didn’t have to do much except put a fake crown on some incoming junior who would be the queen for the next two years unless someone usurped her. I felt sorry for her when I saw her look of pure joy. I prayed that maybe it wouldn’t be as bad for her as it was for Mackynsie—or for me. Crosley wasn’t necessarily the King of our dreams—then again, is anyone really as they are in our dreams?

When I got home, I gave one last kiss to Crosley, and it left a taste of ashes in my mouth. He was supposed to be my boyfriend, and I never liked kissing him. The touch of his lips against mine felt like a fire that wasn’t supposed to be burning. My lips turned to ash against his, and soon enough, I would choke on them.

“See you tonight,” he said with a heavy breath, ending the kiss.

“Yeah, hopefully.” Without another word, I got out of the van and went back into the apartment where I rushed to get ready. So many hair products and yet so little time to tame my unruly curls.

When I was done, I dressed in a printed maxi skirt and a short white cami, which was probably the girliest thing I owned. I put a big pendant necklace around my neck and went to grab my cap and gown.

“The ceremony is at noon,” I said to Ben. “You better be there.”

He waved at me from the couch, and I left the apartment, ready to make my way to the subway station. When I got outside, I spotted someone from my not-so-recent-past. Everett Thompson, my brother’s drummer.

“Everett?” I said in shock. After an incident when I was sixteen, which still left me with mixed feelings, I hadn’t spoken to him much. I missed him. We needed to talk and clarify a few things, but looking at him now with his messy blond hair and his piercing blue eyes, I knew I wanted to be with him more than anything.

“Need a lift?” he asked, leaning against Old Trusty, the car he had left in his older brother’s protection while he was gone.

“Yeah, sure,” I replied.

He opened the door for me, I got inside, and then he shut the door and went around to the driver’s side.

The ride was mainly silent, but when we got to the ceremony site, I wanted nothing more than to feel his lips against mine again, just as I had when I was sixteen. It had only been two years ago—could it be so different?

“Everett—”

“I know, I know. Not today. Let’s focus on you today. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up.” He ran a finger over my cheekbone, and I wondered if my flushed cheeks were growing redder with each caress.

“I should go inside,” I said, and he nodded.

“I’ll go back and gather the guys when it’s time to start,” he said. “I’ll make sure your brother is ready.”

I leaned over and gave him a hug, and with that, I was off to prepare for the rest of my life.

***

The speeches were long, mundane, and cliché. Some were downright unnecessary, and I wondered how the hell the speaker had gotten it approved for the ceremony.

When I walked across the stage and accepted my diploma and shook the hand of the principal, the director and the owner of Rosewood Academy, it was as if a weight I had been carrying inside was pushed aside and thrown away. When I was back at my seat and our school song played, we graduating students flipped the tassels on our caps. My hat went into the air, and I could feel all the weight of high school and the last year and a half fall from my shoulders as my hat cascaded to the ground with the thousands of others right next to it.

I was done with high school. I was free.

I ran to find my brother and spotted him immediately. He was wearing a button down dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, which showed some of his prominent tattoos. Aviator sunglasses covered his eyes, and his hair was gelled to look perfectly askew. I rushed to hug him, and Everett took a picture of us. Soon enough, people started to take notice of whom I was with. I heard the whispers over the thousands of laughs and conversations taking place. I took one look at my brother and saw he had been crying.

When I made mention of it, he said, “It’s allergy season,” while he dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief.

“All right, saps. Who’s ready for some food?” It was Rian who said this, and he took the sudden increase in attention in stride. It was just like him. Rian was ninety percent ego and ten percent alcohol. Although if you asked him, I believe he would change the variables around a bit. While we were debating about what to get to eat, I saw Rian taking pictures with some girls behind us, and signing their programs while the rest of us did the work.

“I want pizza. LA doesn’t have pizza like we do here,” Grayson said. Grayson, next to Everett and my brother, was probably one of my favorite people. He was engaged to his high school sweetheart, and they had an eight-year-old daughter together. I still remember when she was born, and how after that Ben was determined to scare me out of ever having sex. Unfortunately, his tactics never worked on me.

“Let’s get out of here. I want to spend some time with my favorite sissa,” Ben said, wrapping an arm around me. I beamed with pride when he called me his sissa. It was his thing, his really, really odd and silly thing to call me.

Most of the graduating students were on their phones, and others were taking pictures with their friends. I spotted Crosley talking with Frank and a few other guys, and I caught his gaze. I waved goodbye to him. This would be the last time I saw him, and for that I was glad. High school was behind me now, and I wanted to forget about the last four years as quickly as I could. I wanted to start my life somewhere else. In that moment, though, I had to spend time with my brother. High school came and it went, as did the people you met while you were there. With Ben, I knew he would never leave my side now that we were together again. The further we walked away from the crowd of people, the closer he hugged me to him. He missed me just as I had missed him, and I was sure he never wanted to go this long without seeing me again.

***

We ate at a small pizza pub in Times Square, and every five minutes, I was getting notifications on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The embrace between Ben and me had instigated a whole new level of excitement among the graduates as well as the guests. It had been hard to leave once they recognized him along with the rest of the band, and I knew I wouldn’t be much of a secret by morning. The whole confidentiality thing was complicated. Ben never hid the fact that he had a sister—though, the subject never came up often, nor did he choose to talk about it candidly. When he did, it was only of how close he was to me, and how he wanted nothing more than the world for me.

When the band was starting to get a lot of hype, he and the record label he was signed under drew up a confidentiality contract. No one was to mention that I was his sister. It wasn’t really that difficult to hide. Most people wouldn’t guess that I was his sibling, considering how much we differed in appearances. His chestnut hair, coffee bean eyes, and the tone of his light skin differed greatly from my raven-haired, green-eyed and porcelain-don’t-even-think-about-tanning skin. I really didn’t look like anyone that I’ve ever known in our family. Then again, I had very little family that was still living to compare myself to. Ben hated not being able to speak openly about me. It wasn’t to protect himself, though; it was to protect me and my mother. No one really knew the state of our mother’s health, and they didn’t know much of me at all. Ben was determined to let me finish school without cameras flashing in my face and people asking me questions about the band 24/7. It was going great until tonight, since everyone now saw that I was the sister he so fondly spoke about on occasion.

The pizza pub wasn’t really crowded, and so we were able to eat and talk in peace. Ben said that now everyone had figured out our relation, he was going to have to call his record label’s legal sector and talk about a new agreement.

I put my hand on his arm, and smiled at him. “Don’t bother.” He looked at me with a quizzical glance, and I shrugged. “Everyone is going to know by morning. They’ll be asking who I am if they don’t already know, and if they don’t know, someone is bound to tell them. Ben, I’m eighteen. I think it’s time people know who I am.”

The boys all agreed with me—though, they didn’t want to say anything in front of Ben.

As we all filed into the apartment that night, they told me exactly what they thought in the tiniest of whispers.

When we got home, Mother was gone. Ben didn’t worry as much as I did—although, this gave me the grand opportunity to pack for the first leg of his tour he had invited me to accompany him on.

Ben gave me a luggage set as a graduation gift and for the tour. Kind of like a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone gift. It was nice, and it even came with a weekender bag, something I had always wanted when I would spend weekends at Mackynsie’s house. Music played in the background as I packed. Ben stood in the doorway to my room, examining it without comment. I wasn’t the only thing that had changed since he left; my room had too. Ben would often send me allowances, and I eventually saved enough so I could redo my room. It used to look like a fifth grader lived in it instead of the freshman in high school I had been at the time.

Mackynsie had complained about how silly my room looked and how she had been determined to help me redecorate it. So off we’d gone during the weekend before our first year in high school to buy me a new room. The bed frame was a classic Victorian styled brass rod head and footboard. It was the only thing that stayed in my room after Mackynsie’s makeover. The bedding changed from my brother’s ratty old quilt to a bohemian styled comforter. It had jewel tones and bright, contrasting patterns and prints. My bed was constantly covered with decorative throw pillows and shabby chic blankets. It was a lot busier than an old, ratty quilt. The walls were no longer bare; they now had bookshelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling, filled with journals, photo books, and novels I had acquired over the years. There was also a small writing desk and an old computer that was about ready to die out on me. I had pictures hung on the walls, some of which I had taken myself, others stock photos I had bought in a store. The paintings I had made myself.

Ben appeared to be thinking really hard, and while I was refolding a t-shirt that seemed a little too ratty to come on the road with me, I tried to think of what questions to ask him. I suppose my silence and his curiosity had led him to go looking through my room, which resulted in him finding the Dartmouth shirt in the corner of my bed.

“What’s this?” he asked, picking it up and nearly squealing like a girl when he saw the imprinted name across the front.

“Dartmouth? That’s the school you’re making me pay for? Damn! Frances, I knew you were near genius status, but wow.”

It took me by surprise when he called me Frances. He always did simply because it was my first name. I preferred going by a shortened version of my middle name, Beatrice, hence why everyone called me Bea. Ben always called me Frances, unless I was in trouble or he wanted my attention.

I shook my head and promptly took the shirt from him and packed it away. “Shut up, Ben. It’s no big deal.”

“‘No big deal’? Bea, you’re the first in the family to go to college. You’re the one who is going to
change
things for this family.”

Folding another shirt and fitting it into the suitcase, I looked to my brother in annoyance. “
You
changed things for this family, Ben. I’m changing things for
me
.”

He was ready to argue, and in that moment, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to argue with him. We had never argued, and yet he was so ready to start a fight with me. Then we heard the sound of something breaking in the distance and Grayson’s voice yelling something about alcohol. Everett came in without warning, and I could smell the scent of vodka coming from the living area.

“Rian is on a bender again,” he announced, which was enough to send Ben out of the room, completely forgetting about the argument we were about have.

Now Everett and I were alone, and I looked at him with my contact-covered eyes and a cheap lipstick smile.

“You look really pretty tonight,” he told me, moving closer with every word.

“Thanks.”

Then he was right in front of me, staring into my eyes. That’s when he noticed the difference. They were violet instead of their normal green.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Contacts,” I admitted.

“Take them out—you don’t need them.”

I shook my head. “I like them, don’t you?”

Everett cupped my face, and his other hand wrapped around my waist. “I like the real you. You don’t need violet contacts to be pretty to me.”

His lips brushed against mine. It was as if I was in my own little world, and for a moment, I really was. Then I heard the wind chimes. Turning to look toward my window, I saw I had left it open—and that there was a dark, hooded figure ready to flee. I rushed to the window in a moment of panic, by the time I got the front half of my body out to see the culprit, he was gone. I went back to Everett, and he wrapped his arms around my neck.

“What do you think he wanted?” he asked.