chapter twelve

rockstar - nickelback

"where the girls come easy and the drugs come cheap, we'll all stay skinny 'cause we just don't eat."

Once my feet hit asphalt, I kept running and I didn't look back. I could hear Nate shouting my name, but I couldn't hear over the ringing in my ears.

"Charis! Charis, slow down!" Nate was shouting, words blending together as I headed down a sidewalk that cut through the other side of the street.

The further we could get away from Regis' house, the better.

I ran until I physically couldn't any more, my legs buckling from underneath me as I let out a sob. My hands hit the road, scraping and scratching from the small pebbles and the asphalt paving.

Regis was dead, and it was my fault. If Nate and I had never hopped the fence into their backyard, those two little kids would still have a father. That woman would still have a husband.

It was all my fault. If Nate had gone over first, he wouldn't have stuck around long enough for Lords' foot soldiers to realize where we had gone, to send gunshots over that white picket fence.

"Oh, Charis." Nate mumbled, kneeling down next to me in the middle of that road, parked cars on either side of us as he pulled me into his arms, running his hands up and down my shaking form. "Baby, there's nothing that we could have done. It's not your fault." He said softly, pressing a kiss to my hairline.

"How many other people are going to get hurt, Nate? How many people are going to get shot at, or attacked or have their houses broken into because we saw something that we shouldn't have?"

"You can't think like that, Forrester. We're going to make it to morning, and we'll go to the cops."

I shook my head, wiping at the tears starting to bubble over my eyelids. "I can't go into witness protection, Nate. I've only just become comfortable with who I am, and they'd make me become someone else. I'd have to leave everything behind, and I just can't do that to my parents and TJ."

They may not have been perfect, and it may have seemed like they didn't always know that I was there, but they were still my parents and I loved them more than anything. Right now, sitting in the middle of Station Street, having just run away from gunfire, I would have given anything for a family movie night, even if my father's movie of choice was Paul Walker's Varsity Blues, or baking muffins with my mother, even if she insisted on using dried up cranberries instead of chocolate chips.

I missed the creature comforts of home.

"I know, I know." Nate kept whispering, his lips a grounding wire against my cold, sweaty skin.

We drifted into a silence that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. It was only ten o-clock at night.There were still hours to go before that sun peaked above the Bayview Skyline again.

"Charis, do you hear that?" Nate said, his voice at a normal octave as he straightened, head swiveling around as he tried to find the source of the noise.

And now I heard it too.

It was faint, but surely loud enough that the fences and flowerbeds in the neighbourhood were shaking. The guitar riff was unmistakable, a chorus that I couldn't forget if I tried. It was so absurd that I almost laughed.

"That's Nickelback. Nate, do you know what that means?" 

He nodded, a look of recognition flashing across his deep blue eyes. "The frat party."

"T.J. He can help us, Nate. Lords wouldn't think of shooting up a place that populated."

We scrambled to our feet, a new wave of hope spurring me on as my legs shook. I grabbed Nate's hand and we ran, following the music and the trail of cars, each one either beat to hell or souped up in the way that only college students' cars were.

We could still survive this nightmare. It could be as good as over.

The Kappa Zeta Tau house was unmistakable. A basketball hoop was tacked over the garage door, emblazoned with the hand-painted Greek symbols. The frat wasn't even official, it was just something that the washed-out athletes who peaked in high school that called the house home had come up with. An assortment of brakeless (and sometimes seat-less) BMX bikes lay scattered across the front yard as Nate and I picked our way to the back gate, 'Rockstar' now playing so loud that it was threatening to burst my eardrums.

We were let into the backyard with very minimal fuss, a spinning disco light lighting up the wooden fence with glowing dots in all the primary colors. An inflatable hot tub was set up on the patio, already packed far beyond the reasonable capacity limit.

As we came in, a chump in a snapback and a basketball jersey passed us both bamboo necklaces, and I finally allowed myself to relax as I slipped the cheaply made novelty item over my head. With Nate on my heels, I stepped up on to the deck, opening the screen door and slipping into the dimly-lit kitchen.

Scanning the kitchen counter, which was laid out with any kind of alcohol under the sun, I reached out and blindly grabbed a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, cracking it open and taking a large sip.

"I didn't think you drank, Forrester."

I shrugged, passing a bottle of Bud Light to Nate. I knew him better than he thought I did. "I don't. Coolers are the most I can handle, but if there was ever a time to drink, it's now. It tastes like McDonald's Sprite, if there was alcohol in it."

The song changed, cheers filtering through the screen from outside as the partygoers cheered for the opening bars of Nelly Furtado's 'Promiscuous'. Against my better judgement, I found myself swaying slightly to the beat and the rhythm of the throwback pop hit. Nate smiled, grabbing my hand and playing along as we left our open cans on the kitchen table, arms around each other and smiles on our faces as we allowed ourselves to let go for a minute.

To forget that our lives were on the line.

We sang along to the chorus, the adrenaline subsiding as we laughed with each other. I pressed up on my toes to kiss Nate gently. And that, my friends, is when I caught, out of the corner of my eye no less, the flat screen TV in the living room playing a twenty-four hour news channel.

Teenagers sought in connection to Lasku shooting.

My face fell instantly, and Nate was quick to notice the change in my mood. I squeezed his shoulder through the padding of his denim jacket, pointing a freshly painted and newly chipped fingernail at the television set.

"Bayview High seniors Charis Forrester and Nathaniel Macauley are being sought in connection to a gang shooting outside of a Polish restaurant earlier tonight. The teenagers have not been seen since, and police are urgently seeking their whereabouts, as detectives believe that they are in extreme danger."

"Oh, fucking hell."