Instead of You

by Anie Michaels

  I didn’t see her in hysterics, but I heard her. She’d been in her room with my mom and Hayes and I’d sat on their couch, eyes wide, pulse racing.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that this might not have been an accident.

  Hayes wandered out and I must have looked like a deer in headlights because he diverted from whatever path he was on and came straight to me. “What’s wrong, Kenz?”

  “Is what she’s saying true? Will they come back for you?” I hadn’t felt fear in the days since they’d died, but I was feeling it then.

  He didn’t answer right away, but he looked at me, seeming to just take my face in. “No, Kenz. No one’s coming back for us. Mom’s just not thinking straight. Her mind’s not right.”

  “But how do you know?” The thought was terrifying.

  “Because it doesn’t make any sense. That guy was just hard up for money. He probably didn’t go in there intending to shoot anyone. He didn’t know who my dad was, or even what his name was.”

  “But he does now! This has been all over the news all week. He’s out there and he knows the man he killed has a wife and another son. What’s stopping him from finding you and—ˮ

  I never finished that sentence because Hayes pulled me into his arms, running a hand down my hair, whispering that everything was okay, that he wasn’t going anywhere.

  When the day finally came for the funeral, it felt surreal. I had never, not in a million years, thought I’d ever be attending Cory’s funeral. Even if we’d grown up and gotten married just like everyone had planned, I’d never thought that far ahead. I thought it would be years before I ever even had to go to a funeral. And even though eighteen was too young, in my opinion, to be going to your best friend’s funeral, it was most definitely too young to be dead.

  Everything about Cory’s funeral felt wrong.

  Mrs. Wallace insisted we sit in the front pew, even though I’d wanted to be as far away from the caskets as possible. Hayes sat on the end, his hand wrapped around his mother’s, resting in her lap. I was sure everyone in the church could hear Mrs. Wallace weeping throughout the funeral, and there was no denying it was heartbreaking.

  Sometimes, people refer to funerals as celebrations of life. But not that funeral.

  No.

  No one was there to remember the good times, or think about how much light Cory had brought his parents, or how lucky Mrs. Wallace had been to spend her life with her husband.

  No.

  Everyone was painfully aware that we were in mourning, that these deaths were a tragedy, and there was no way to lighten the mood. Mrs. Wallace was crying, and she wasn’t the only one.

  When the pastor of the church neither Cory nor I had ever attended finished talking about life and what a gift it was, and how we can’t always understand what was in store for us or our loved ones, he took a step back and I startled as Hayes stood and started walking toward the pulpit. The instant he was absent from his mother’s side, Mrs. Wallace slumped toward my mother and I realized she was incapable of even holding herself upright.

  Hayes walked past me and our eyes met for just one second and even though I’d never found him to be particularly easy to read, the emotion held in just that one second of contact left me reeling. It was almost as if every emotion he’d been feeling in the last two weeks was stored in his eyes, creating a storm of feelings that was about to erupt right in front of me. I wanted to jump off my seat, take his hand, and just be next to him. I wanted for him to let me help carry some of the weight I could see grasping his shoulders with invisible hands.

  But before I could even blink, he pulled his eyes away from mine and continued on his way.

  He made it to the little podium, pulled a piece of paper out of his front jacket pocket, and unfolded it, placing it on the wooden platform. He took a deep breath, releasing it audibly as the crowd in the church, which was so full there were people standing in the back, waited with bated breath to hear his broken words.

  He finally looked up and the urge to run to him only grew. I didn’t want him doing it alone.

  “The first thing I’d like to say is that, on behalf of my mother and myself, we’d like to thank everyone for their support. The past two weeks have been trying, to say the least, and things would only be worse if it weren’t for the love and support coming to us from our friends and family. You see,” he continued, his eyes darting down to his paper, “my mother and I have found ourselves to be in somewhat new territory.” His hand came up, running absently through his hair, eyes still downward. “When faced with unimaginable circumstances, there are only a few choices to be made. Among the terrible choices, one has been our mode of operation: cling to those around you. I’ve been away at college for a few years and even though I think it’s normal, I hadn’t been talking to my parents as often as I should have, and I definitely wasn’t talking to Cory as much as I should have, and that’s something I regret.

  “My mom called me a few weeks before Cory’s birthday and invited me home for his birthday dinner. I wasn’t far, just a two-hour drive, but I was too busy. Too involved in my own life. Too cool, maybe? I was a lot of things, but I didn’t bother coming home.” He let out a loud, swooshing breath, swaying back and forth like he were moving his weight from one foot to another. “I have no idea what would have happened had I come home. There’s no way to tell. I like to think I would have gone with them, would have been with them in that convenience store, would have done something to prevent us all from having to be here today, but I’ll never know.

  “What I do know, what I’ve learned in the last two weeks, is that nothing is guaranteed. Things you think you are owed, you just can’t count on. You think you’ll never have to bury your brother and your father on the same day? Think again. You think you’ll be old and gray before someone close to you passes away? Nope.”

  I could see his hands shaking, his body growing restless. I knew he was a ticking time bomb, and knowing that, I felt the same. I was antsy, wanting to run to him, pull him away, tell him he didn’t owe anyone any more of his words or thoughts. Enough had been taken from him.

  “If Cory were here he’d tell you all, I’m sure, to live as if tomorrow weren’t a given, as though you’ve only got this one chance to take what you want from life. And if you can’t take his word for it, take mine.”

  My breath caught as Hayes’s eyes met mine. My chest ached as he spoke directly to me, even though the entire church was full of people holding back cries and wiping their eyes.

  “If you let that one moment pass you by where you could have grabbed what you wanted, there will come a day when it’s out of your grasp, and regret will haunt you, just like a ghost.”

  My heart sputtered in my chest, my fingers clenched into a tight fist. I was suppressing every natural instinct I had, forcing myself to stay seated. If I stood, I was either going directly to Hayes, or straight out the door.

  “My mother wants everyone to know how much she loved my father.” Hayes’s voice cracked with his words. The sound pierced my chest and cut my heart right in half. “They had a good life together, and maybe one day she’ll be strong enough to tell you all how he earned her love every day. Maybe one day soon she’ll be strong enough to tell you how much she loved Cory, how from the day he was born until the day he was taken from us he was her baby. In fact,” he said with a sudden short laugh, “he’ll always be her baby and I’ve given up trying to compete with him anymore. The competition is now eternally unfair.” He laughed again as a single tear streamed down his cheek, and light laughter came from a few more people in the church.

  After a few moments he took another deep breath, then let his gaze sweep the church, seeming to take in the sight before him.

  “Again, we’re really thankful for everyone’s support. We hope the death of Cory and my father isn’t in vain, though. If anything, we hope you all will live your life a little fuller, a little more aggressively, and remember that tomorrow is never promised. Nothing is promised to
us. The only thing we’ve really got is the here and the now, and if you let it pass you by, if you sit by and let it go, there’s no guarantee you’ll get those moments, or those people, back.”

  He folded his piece of paper up as he walked back down the stairs toward the pews. He came closer and closer to me, and it was almost as if the magnetic force between us grew stronger with each step because the instant he was right in front of me, I stood and opened my arms to him.

  I was sure to everyone in the church it looked like one person offering a lifelong friend support during, arguably, the hardest day of his life. I was sure everyone watched us embrace and was happy that Hayes had a friend like me in his life to help him deal with his staggering loss. They all thought my motivations for wrapping my arms around him, for spreading my fingers wide over his back to feel as much of him as I possibly could, was innocent.

  I would spend the next few days trying to convince myself of that too.

  Chapter Six

  Hayes

  Funerals were exhausting.

  Fuck that.

  The last two weeks were exhausting. But yesterday was the most draining day of my life.

  I’d led a pretty low-key life. I wasn’t high maintenance by any means. I was focused and driven. I set a goal and I went after it. Well, most of the time. The last four years of my life had been so incredibly concentrated on getting my degree and moving on to my master’s program, I’d barely had time to live the normal college life.

  It was only now, in the midst of the biggest mind fuck of my life, that I’ve realized I wasn’t just focused, or concentrating on life, I was avoiding things.

  When Edward Harris had called me late that night, the night my father and brother were killed, he tried not to freak me out. He didn’t want me panicking as I made the two-hour drive, so he just told me there was an emergency and that I needed to come home. But I’d known something was wrong. I never could have imagined everything that had happened. But since the moment I walked in that door, I’d been bombarded with every single thing I’d been trying to run away from since I left town.

  Oh, and the murder of my dad and brother. That happened.

  So even though I’d been exhausted, even though it was all I could do at the end of the night to strip to my underwear and crawl into bed, I never found sleep. Instead, I’d lain in my bed listening to my mother cry through the walls. Or when she’d managed to fall asleep, I’d lain in my bed and thought about Kenzie. But then, like I always had, I’d push thoughts of her away and I’d think about school, wondering how everything was ever going to be okay again. In the midst of all the rambling of my mind, my mom would wake up again, and I’d listen to her crying through the walls.

  It was an endless cycle.

  When I noticed the sky becoming lighter, I knew I’d been awake all night.

  I sat up, reaching for my phone and disabling the alarm that was set to go off in another hour, and headed into the hallway. I stopped outside my mother’s door, leaning in, trying to see if I could hear her crying. I could hear her breathing, but there were no cries.

  Even if I couldn’t sleep, I was glad she could. Although, she’d been put on medication just days after the murder. I made a mental note to e-mail her doctor as obviously she needed a stronger prescription. I didn’t want her to cry every night. She needed rest. Pieces of her mind were slipping away all the time. The sleepless nights, the worrying, the paranoia, simply dealing with something a mother and wife should never have to deal with, each of those things were slowly robbing her of her sanity, and I knew she’d never get better if she didn’t get any rest.

  I continued down the hall, holding my breath as I passed Cory’s room.

  I hadn’t been able to even open the door since I’d been home. I was terrified of what would happen if I did. So far, aside from kind of losing it at the funeral, I was the only person in my family who wasn’t in the midst of a mental breakdown, and I didn’t want to take any chances in that department. So Cory’s door stayed closed.

  I locked myself in the bathroom and prepared myself for another day. Another day where I avoided all the emotions clawing away at my insides, fighting their hardest to break their way free of me.

  When I went downstairs thirty minutes later, Lucia was standing at our kitchen sink washing dishes. I’d asked her the day before, sometime during the wake, when forty or fifty people were in our house sharing memories with each other about Dad and Cory, to come and sit with my mother.

  She’d given me the same response she had for the last two weeks anytime I asked anything of her.

  “Of course, sweetheart. Anything you need.” That was always coupled with a gentle squeeze on my shoulder and the saddest eyes on anyone I’d ever seen.

  I was so thankful for the Harris family. Lucia and Edward had done so much for my mom and me since the murder, but I needed things to start getting back to normal if I was going to continue to avoid the feelings I was constantly aware of, just in the periphery.

  That was also why I was glad it was Lucia in my kitchen, and not McKenzie.

  “Good morning, Hayes,” she said quietly just after turning off the faucet.

  “Morning.”

  “Sweetie, you look terrible,” she said, that gentle yet worried tone in her voice.

  “I didn’t sleep much last night. Mom was crying a lot.”

  “I see,” she said softly, her eyes moving all along my face, trying to find the part of me that worried her the most. Was it the dark bags under my eyes? My sunken-in cheeks? The red veins in the whites of my eyes? “Whatever you’ve got going on this morning, can it wait? Maybe you should go upstairs and try to get some sleep. I’ll listen for your mom.”

  I gave her the best smile I could muster. “Thank you, but this really can’t wait.”

  Thirty minutes later I found myself in a situation I never could have ever seen coming.

  “Hayes, it’s good to see you. Please, take a seat.”

  I shook the hand of my high school principal and took the seat she offered me across the table from her at the only coffee shop in town.

  “Mrs. Anderson, thank you so much for meeting with me on a Sunday. I know it’s a hassle, but it’s the only time I could make this happen. Life’s been, well, a little hectic.”

  “I am so sorry for your loss, Hayes. Everyone at the school has been reeling from the loss of Cory, and we all extend our deepest sympathies.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a nod, the words practiced and rehearsed to perfection in the last two weeks. I could take a condolence like a champ. “I don’t want to take up too much of your Sunday.” That was my subtle hint to Mrs. Anderson to move off the topic of my brother’s death, and on to the real issue at hand.

  “Yes, well, I think I have all the information I need. I’ve been communicating with your supervisor at your university and it looks like we’ve ironed out all the details. But, first, why don’t you tell me a little bit about what you’ve accomplished academically in the four years since you’ve graduated from my high school.”

  The smile she gave me then was one of pride, which I welcomed. I could talk about school all day long—it had been my focus every day since I left this town. Talking about it now was the most welcome distraction I could have asked for.

  “Well, I went into the university knowing exactly what I wanted to do and I didn’t waste any time. All my elective courses were either related to my major, or in my area of study. I took courses all summer every year. I took night classes and at least twenty credits a term and I graduated at the end of my third year with a major in History. I applied to the graduate school of education, was accepted, and now I’m working on my master’s. At the end of the year I hope to have my degree and my teaching certificate.”

  Mrs. Anderson looked at me, a smile still wide on her face. “That’s a lot of work, Mr. Wallace.”

  I shrugged. “It’s what I wanted.”

  “And how has the year progressed for you, academically
, up until this point?”

  “So far, it’s been great. The graduate program started over the summer, so for two terms they really pile on the classes. Then in the fall I was assigned to a classroom and a teacher, and I shadowed. This semester I was supposed to take that class over to get my student teacher practicum completed. It’s one of the last steps in the licensure program. I can’t get my teaching license without it.” I took in a deep breath, knowing we were getting to the point in the conversation where I was going to find out whether or not four years of hard work was getting thrown away. “But, obviously, the high school I was assigned to is two hours from here. And I’m not in a position to leave my mother right now.”

  “No, I can’t imagine you are.” Again with the sad voice.

  “So, I reached out to my advisor and asked her if there was anything I could do, any way I could finish my practicum here. I believe that’s when my university contacted you.”

  Mrs. Anderson was quiet for a moment, a long moment, but then she spoke, her tone no longer sad. She sounded like a principal. Like someone’s boss.

  “I called a small meeting with all the social science teachers at the high school. I explained your situation and asked if any of them were in a position to host a student teacher. As you know, since we’re so far from the university, we’ve never hosted any, not since I’ve been here.”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask, and I wouldn’t normally, but—ˮ

  “But you’ve got extenuating circumstances, and we all understand that, and we want to help. Mr. White was planning on starting a new unit this Monday with his senior World History class. The other three teachers are in the middle of units and don’t feel like it would be fair to ask you to step in. Mr. White is excited to have you, though.”

  I felt a rush of tension leave my body as my shoulders slumped forward. She was giving me a chance. There was not one tiny molecule in my body that didn’t understand how much I was asking of everyone—of the high school, of my university, of my advisors. They were all bending over backward for me, and I knew it was mostly out of sympathy, but I didn’t care. I’d worked so hard to get where I was and I had been so close to the end, just to have it all teetering on the edge of disaster. I couldn’t leave my mom. And if there was nothing to be done but postpone my work, then I would have done that, but at least now I can still finish my degree and be there for my mom every night. “Thank you, Mrs. Anderson. You have no idea how much this means to me.”