The Bad Girl and the Good Boy

by Karla Luna

  “N-no one’s life is perfect.”

  “Zavier, don’t even fucking start with me. Because I’m deciding whether or not to shoot you once, twice, or thrice. Got only three bullets in here, buddy. What’s it gonna be?”

  That just scared me even more.

  But as clichéd as it sounds, no one’s life really was perfect. Being bad… some people think that that was what makes things better, making others miserable. Like Davne of course. He was angry and depressed on the inside but on the outside, that smirk was always there when he got to hurt someone. But others, they actually look deeper into things. It doesn’t matter how bad things get, you just live life like nothing ever happened, or like nothing is happening. You don’t try to make other people’s lives as worse as yours. You try to make them better.

  I honestly didn’t think Evelyn was ever trying to make anyone miserable. She came into my life and she certainly was a person I have never had the pleasure to meet before. People may seem bad. She had her reasons but the things she did were only things that made her forget. They were bad choices, I admit, but on the inside she was a good person and I knew it.

  I just wanted to see her one last time. I wanted to hold her in my arms, tightly hugging her petite body as if I’ll never let her go. I wanted to kiss those soft, pink lips that would always be full of laughs and smiles. And yeah, a few smirks here and there. But most of all, I wanted to show her just how much she means to me and how much I truly love her.

  “You’ve got me right here,” I said as I glared up at him, holding my arms out like I wasn’t afraid at all. The only thing helping me right now was thoughts of Evelyn. “Shoot me.”

  Davne looked me over and then smirked, holding the gun tighter and pointing it right at my head. “Gladly.”

  Now this was one of those times where it felt like things went in slow motion. I could’ve felt the bullet on my arm, stomach, chest, leg. Anywhere was possible even though I was expecting it on my head, to kill me right away.

  But I didn’t feel anything at all.

  Yet, I was still afraid to open my eyes and see for myself just what happened.

  • Evelyn •

  I already had tears running down my face as I ran downstairs to get my bike keys. I wanted to murder Davne already, with no hesitation at all. I mean, why couldn’t he just leave us alone? I hate him so much, especially for going after my teddy bear like this.

  I tried and tried to call Zavier. Over and over again. But there was no use. He never answered and I wondered if it was because he didn’t take his phone or because it was on silent.

  But dammit, I really wished he had it with him. I wanted to hear his voice and I wanted to know if he was okay so that I wouldn’t have to worry so much. And I would also be able to warn him about Davne and tell him to stay in whatever store he was in so that he wouldn’t be harmed. Then I would take care of Davne myself, whichever way I could.

  I was angrier than I’ve ever been in my whole life. Someone hurting the one you love, especially for something they hadn’t even done, was crossing the damn line. He had done it before and I wasn’t going to let him do it again.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t know where any of them were exactly. But I decided to head straight for downtown. I was screaming Zavier’s name, trying hard not to cry so that I wouldn’t crash. My eyes were blurry from the tears.

  I knew that at least one cop would find me breaking the stupid speed limit. But I ignored the red and blue, and white lights coming from behind me and only went faster.

  It seemed like it took me hours to find any of them, but once I spotted the dork with glasses and three guys in front of him, I didn’t think twice. I just dropped my bike and ran right toward them.

  “Hey!” I heard someone yell from behind me and I knew that it was the cop that was behind me when I was on my bike. But if they followed me too, they would know what was up a few feet away from us.

  There were two guys behind Davne. Davne held a gun, and it was pointed right at Zavier, ready to shoot him. I wanted to cry some more but I stopped myself and ran faster toward them.

  What happened next surprised me though.

  I wanted to be the hero, you know. The heroine that saved her true love or whatever. Like a sacrifice. Because honestly, when you love someone that much, you would rather get hurt instead of having them get hurt. And that was exactly what I wanted to do, jump right in and take that damn bullet for him like anyone else who loved him would.

  In fact, I was pretty close to doing it.

  But what I didn’t expect was Zavier’s old traitor of a friend, Ethan, coming to push Davne just as he pulled the trigger.

  I was gaping at them right where I was, a gasp barely heard coming from my dry lips. The pain was like a shock. A horrible shock that was slowly spreading throughout my side.

  I started falling almost slowly. I touched my side and could already feel the blood gushing from the bullet wound.

  “Hey, you there. Stop!” I heard someone yell from behind me, but I just kept my eyes on Zavier, who had yet to turn around and see me.

  The tears had stopped and I felt a bit dizzy. I was starting to see little black dots as I tried taking deep breaths even if it hurt.

  “Shit. Calling for back up, three guys running toward Harverville Avenue. We’ve got an injured girl by the flower shop on Dall Road. We need an ambulance.” In the matter of seconds, I was in warm arms and when I tried looking up, all I saw was dirty blond hair and light blue eyes. He looked familiar but I couldn't exactly remember where I'd seen him before. All I knew was that he was a policeman. “Hey, stay with me. We’ll get you…”

  “Evelyn? Evelyn!”

  I coughed and tried keeping my eyes open for when I saw Zavier. His voice sounded so broken and lost, and I wanted to be in his arms instead right now.

  The policeman let me go and I was gently put in more familiar arms. The arms that had become my home ever since I got here.

  I tried to smile up at my teddy bear, but only managing to gather the energy to take a peek at his worried eyes and teary cheeks.

  “No, no, no… t-this wasn’t supposed to happen. I-I was supposed to get shot but you… he… you just… Dammit!” He cried out and rested his face against my neck. He kept pressure on my hand that was on my waist and he kissed me a bunch of times before looking up at me again and resting his forehead against mine. “O-okay, you’ll be okay. You’ll be okay just please, please keep your eyes open. They’ll get here soon.”

  “Teddy bear…” I whispered out, slowly bringing my shaky, free hand to stroke his wet cheek. “Don’t cry… you shouldn’t cry.” His eyes only glowed with more tears. “I—I love you, you…” I swallowed hard and coughed again. “Y-you know that. I’m sorry this had to...”

  “No, n-no reason to be sorry for. I love you, too.” He then grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Just stay with me. You’re staying with me, right?”

  I tried to give him another smile, feeling my dry lips quiver. My eyelids felt heavier by the minute, and I knew that sleep would soon take over.

  “Evelyn… Evelyn.”

  Zavier shook me but I just let my head fall against his arm.

  I guess I did take that bullet for him though.

  For my true love.

  And I was glad.

  • Zavier •

  Every sound in the hall seemed from a distance to me. Every person in here became non-existent as well. They were all trying to talk to me since I seemed calm, just sitting here and staring at the ground. But I didn’t talk at all because I had absolutely nothing to say to any of them.

  My tears had stopped on the way here and even though I wanted to cry again, I knew it was no use. I felt sad… sadder than I’ve ever been in my entire life. And I still felt angry. Because what I did back there was supposed to be for her, and now she was the one in that room getting surgery, and I had no idea whether she was going to make it or not.

  “This certainly took a turn for the worse,”
I heard Ian say as he walked over to the door that led to the surgery room where they had taken Evelyn. “Okay, she should’ve told us. We could’ve been there. Did she really think she could handle it all alone? Now she’s in there and we don’t even…”

  “Hey, calm down,” Jesse told him since Ian seemed to want to punch or break something.

  “I hate that guy more than anything. She’s like a sister to me and she is in there while he’s on the fucking loose. Do you think that’s fair?”

  I tightly closed my eyes at that since I recalled the cops talking about not finding or catching Davne. He was still out there, but his friends or buddies or whatever, did get caught. So now they were at the police station, getting questioned about Davne, to hopefully find him quicker.

  I just wanted him to get caught already. I wanted him thrown in jail for his entire life. I wanted him gone from here. I just didn’t want to know about him for the rest of my life.

  I hate him more than anything.

  Opening my eyes again, I took a deep breath and crossed my arms over my chest, sniffing.

  The same dirty blond hair and blue eyed cop that was holding on to Evelyn after she had gotten shot earlier, was close, whispering to Jesse about something yet looking over at me. I only glared at him because it was the only thing I could do. I glared at almost everyone here so they would know not to talk to me.

  But this one was a cop. He obviously didn’t care.

  After a few minutes, he nodded at Jesse and patted his back before walking over to sit on the chair next to me. I breathed out and uncomfortably shifted in my seat, clenching my fists.

  I remembered when he opened Evelyn’s cell and got a little too close to her for my liking. Sure, I was pretty angry at her but I didn’t want someone else getting close to her like that, cop or not, and because he was still young and had that look that seemed to attract a lot of girls our age.

  He stayed quiet for a moment and looked me over as if he found me interesting. But I’m guessing that I just looked broken, in pain, and depressed.

  Because I was and these things were probably more obvious than anything.

  “Hey, Zavier,” he said in a low voice, and that’s when I noticed the small notepad he held in one of his hands. “I’m Officer Guillermo. But you may call me Memo.” After he had said that, he took his hand out for me to shake, but I didn’t pay attention to it at all. If I was being polite, I would’ve grabbed his hand, shook it with a sincere smile, and introduced myself. But it’s like I had no energy at all. Plus, I didn’t like this guy. Or maybe it was the fact that I pretty much hated everything and everyone right now.

  Except for that one special girl in the surgery room.

  Memo put his hand down when he knew I wouldn’t shake it and started talking again instead. “Okay, for this case, I’m gonna need you to answer a few questions for me, if that’s alright.”

  I only stayed quiet and stared at the space in front of me. I noticed Darrel in the opposite seat, his hood over his head as he played with a few rubber bands in his hands. Everyone knew how upset he was due to his lack of appetite ever since we got here. And I couldn’t blame him. I knew just how much Evelyn meant to him and Ian.

  Poor guys.

  “Zavier, I’m gonna need you to talk to me. Unless you’d rather go down to the police station and answer questions ther—”

  “No,” I said in a stern tone as I finally looked at Memo. “I’m staying here.”

  He nodded at me. “All right, that’s fine. Just answer a few questions and we’ll both be okay. Sound good?”

  I clenched my jaw and turned back around to look down at my hands. My fists were bruised and bloody, purple and red. I had gone to the restroom to dry my eyes out earlier. But I just couldn’t resist punching the nearest wall several times in anger.

  Jesse tried to help me with the bruises once he saw them but it felt better to leave them this way. Memo clearly noticed, so he walked off and came back like two seconds later with a white, rolled up bandage and some tissues. He handed them to me and then sat back down.

  “Okay, Zavier, first thing…”

  From there, he basically asked me all that I knew about Davne. And so I answered with everything that I actually did know. How he was in the past, what happened between him and the people I knew. How horrible, repulsive, and notorious he was around here. Many things, really. There was too much to say about this guy and I found myself becoming angrier just by talking about him.

  “So he was originally going to shoot you?” Memo asked me, and I slowly nodded. “Why did he shoot the girl instead?”

  I only shrugged. After Davne had said ‘Gladly’, that was when I closed my eyes and waited. But nothing came. So did he somehow accidentally shoot Evelyn or did he do it on purpose? I wish I knew.

  But either way, I wanted him dead now more than ever.

  “Okay well, we’ll be doing the best we can to find this guy. Meanwhile, we’ll keep security around here in case he comes in.” I nodded at him and he patted my back before turning around once we heard the doctor.

  “Um, anyone here for Evelyn Jo?”

  I quickly got up and went over to the doctor along with the other guys. Even Memo came up beside me, as if he was an old friend of Evelyn’s.

  “Yes, Doctor, how is she?” I asked him, and he pressed his lips together while looking at all of us.

  “Are you the guy’s family?” he asked, making me grab on to my hair rather tightly. I just wanted him to tell us if she was okay or not. She didn’t have a family. Well, she did, I suppose, but not biologically. Nobody, not even her, knew about them. So there was no point.

  “We’re her brothers,” Ian said, pointing at Darrel and himself. “How is she?”

  The doctor sighed and looked at a few papers on his clipboard. “The bullet got in quite deep, hitting the ribs, but we managed to get it out.” I breathed out in relief. “She lost quite a lot of blood but we might be able to help with that.”

  “Can we go see her?” I asked with hope in my eyes. The doctor only stared at me and seemed rather nervous or scared to tell me something.

  “She hasn’t woken up yet, and… I’m not entirely sure she will.”

  I felt my heart drop to my stomach as I clenched my jaw, stopping the tears that were threatening to fall down again.

  No. She had to wake up. Maybe not this instant but later, right? She had to. She just had to. I didn’t know if I could ever handle her being…

  “I’m sure you boys know that at times, when someone gets shot or just gets severely injured, they get into a coma. And, well, coma is often unpredictable. We’re not sure when she’ll wake up, or if she even will. You just gotta have hope.” All of us were quiet after that, but you could tell simply by our faces how depressed and shocked we were. “If you’d like to see her, she’s in room 256. But one at a time for now, please. We can’t have five guys hogging the whole place.”

  We all nodded and thanked him before he left. I grabbed on to my hair again to calm myself down and started going back to my seat when Ian called out to me. I turned and raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Aren’t you gonna go see her?” he asked, gesturing the way to her room.

  I shook my head. “You guys go. You’ve…”

  “It’s fine. We’d like you to go first.”

  “You sure?”

  Once he nodded at me, I slowly started walking to her room. I was shaking the whole way there, biting my tongue to stop from crying out. I wanted to see her but at the same time I didn’t, because it would break my heart all over again.

  Standing in front of the door that read ‘256’ was almost like debating whether to enter a dream, or staying in the real world. Well, the real world would always have problems and unfortunate events. A dream could be a paradise. But in this case, the dream was Evelyn’s room and I didn’t want it to be there at all.

  I wanted her to be here, in the real world, right next to me, no matter how bad things got.


  But she wasn’t.

  And I knew I had no choice but to enter anyway.

  So I did.

  47: Wake-Up Call

  • Zavier •

  This was like those times when you hear about a person who really loves someone who got hurt and ends up in a coma. Then that person would just sit there, almost day and night, depressed, waiting for their loved one to wake up.

  Well, I’ve always heard about them. And even those pained me. But the fact that it actually ended up happening to me was just the worst. I wanted Evelyn to wake up already. I honestly didn’t even care if she woke up and told me it was all a big prank. A horrible one, yes, but I would prefer that compared to all of this painful reality.

  In the past month, I barely left her room. I barely ate. I barely slept. And I barely talked to anybody. It’s like everything was shut down and I was sleeping next to Evelyn, my body in one place yet my soul was looking and walking around.

  But even then, I would only pay attention to her pale, motionless body. Once in a while, the heart monitor’s beeping would get to me and I would end up freaking out for some reason. It almost caused me to have panic attacks like I did when I first walked in here.

  I saw her and the fact that she wasn’t going to wake up soon was scaring me so much that I couldn’t breathe properly. The doctor ended up walking in and they helped me get in a room where I could calm down. So after that, I was careful not to get panic attacks anymore because I didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want them to check up on me, even though I actually wasn’t fine.

  My mother was worried. About Evelyn, and of course about me. Because of how I was acting, and the fact that I wouldn’t even acknowledge her existence when I saw her.