"You want me to keep going? It's cool if you don't," I said, honestly. I vaped and passed. Mo still held my hand, though he probably could no longer feel it.
"It's not going to make it untrue if I don't hear it," he said in a moment of clarity. "But fuck."
"Yeah," I agreed. "It's rough." I shrugged, and continued. "We all tried to hide, but there was nothing to hide behind. It was just this little room they rented a couple hours a week for us, you know? It was empty. There was nothing."
Evie and I had cowered in the corner until Hadley and the twins made it to us, faces stricken and tear streaked. Hadley was making a keening sound so high pitched I almost couldn't hear it. My hand had been red from wiping my gore-splattered face.
I'd looked for Cam, and Freddy was just yanking him toward us, both of them on their hands and knees.
Cam's mom had dropped then to her own knees, and fallen forward onto her face, without raising her arms to stop herself because she was dead already. The delayed roar of the gun then followed. A bloody hole had blossomed on her back like a dahlia and blood soaked it as Cam began screaming.
"You were a hero even then, Ginger," I said, not that anything could lighten the mood for this tale. "Getting Cam away even as his mom got shot. You pulled him over to us and we tried to hide him."
Here I faltered for the first time. There were many times I wished I did not recall, but this one was near the top of the list.
Cam's dad had turned and fired blindly into the group of kids shielding his son. I'd watched as he did so and I swear I had felt the bullet enter into my body, heard the shattering of my collarbone before the gun deafened me once again. Then I'd only felt cold, so cold I'd known I was dying.
Fortunately, I'd been mistaken.
"He--" I paused, drank some more water. Harder than I thought. I hadn't talked about it in years, not like this.
"I can," Mohammed offered, moving so he was closer and I could lean against him. My insides relaxed a little. He looped his arm around me, his hand near my left shoulder. "He sh-sh-shot Dory, h-h-here." He touched where the starburst scar was.
I put my own hand up to feel the smooth scar tissue, and continued. "It went through me and hit Hadley and got stuck in her arm. They had to operate later to get it out. She hated the scars."
I hadn't known Hadley was hit at the time. I hadn't known much. Just blood, and pain, and freezing, and fear. I'd heard the pat, pat, pat of my blood dripping onto the floor but nothing else before I passed out.
"He was out of bullets, and someone came from outside to help, and they tucked Cam's dad away in a padded cell where he stays nice and medicated. The first cop there was Spencer. Cam's therapist was already my mom and he joined the fam."
I recalled the months of him screaming night after night, black circles under his eyes, no relief in any way until he began the heavy meds at twelve. It made me heartsick to think about so I stopped.
"But you're okay," Freddy said, half questioning. He shook his head. "I mean, you know, as much as you can be?"
"My collarbone healed," I agreed. Which is not the same but it was what he meant.
"I can't believe I don't remember that shit," he said again. "It trips me out that it's all in there and I can't access it. Drives me a little crazy." He ate a handful of cheese doodles. "Dude."
"R-r-right?" Mo gave me an extra squeeze and moved back to his spot, going for the potato chips. He had his sister's appetite.
"After that, they pretty much let us do what we liked. And we liked being together." I handed him the stack of pictures. Mo and I both shifted so we could see which one he was looking at as he went through them.
"Wait, we're like . . . a dance team or something?" He held a picture of six of us in matching outfits in the same pose. We were fourteen.
"Well," I said, trying to hide a smile.
"S-s-six of us," Mo put in.
I grinned. "Sorry, Ginger, but you have no rhythm. Surely you know this still. Fortunately you show great talent for choreography."
His cheeks were red. "Damn," he said good naturedly. "Embarrassing."
I acknowledged this with a nod. "So yes, we were a dance crew, as we called ourselves. And we won contests and pretty soon people were actually screaming our names and shit. It was pretty amazing."
I stopped to reflect. It had been amazing. And we had been incredible at what we did, as we were with everything. Nothing had ever felt so good as dancing and nothing ever would again, and now that was gone too.
Fuck it. C'est la vie.
"Amazing," Mohammed echoed, stars in his eyes. The fans had loved his freaking guts.
"Well, you're welcome for the moves, I guess," Freddy allowed. "So show me some videos already."
I didn't know if we could do that. But fuck it. "Um. Yeah. Here." I slid down and sat at his chair, opened YouTube, and after only a brief hesitation searched for our crew name.
More than a hundred videos popped up, most a minute or under clips, but some full performances. I didn't look at the thumbnails but instead lowered the volume and swiveled around to allow Freddy to change me places.
Mo saw my face. "S-s-smoke?"
I nodded, thankful for the idea. "We'll be right back. Check them out. All your moves, by the way."
He opened the first one, and we got out of there before we accidentally saw too.
We went downstairs and noticed Freddy's mom's car was gone. "Thank God," I said with relief. We sat on the back porch. Moey lit a Marlboro. "I hate you," I said without rancor.
"I know." He took a deep drag and blew it away from me. "Sorry. I'ma q-q-quit tomorrow."
I hit my vape pen, which was a disgustingly poor substitute for a cigarette, and only had marijuana oil in it, to boot. But I wasn't willing to go through the nicotine quitting process again so I refrained from sucking down the rest of his cigarette. "Flip you for telling him."
He just shook his head. He knew I wouldn't make him stutter through the rest, but that's not why he was shaking his head. "K-k-kind of fucked to l-l-let h-him--" He paused as I put my hand on his arm, getting his thoughts together and slowing down. "Get to know h-her," he finished, his eyes holding mine.
"And then take her away?" I asked gently. "I don't know how else to do it. He wanted to see."
"BLC fo' life," he said under his breath, taking a last drag that I envied down to the marrow of my every bone.
"You got it, bb." I pulled him to his feet, which was silly as he was almost a foot taller, and we trudged our reluctant selves back upstairs.
Freddy was enthralled as he watched tiny versions of us in perfect unison. "Wow," he said as we crashed back on the bed, not looking at the screen.
Even though the music was low I could hear it and the corresponding video played along in my mind anyway, down to our faces and our expressions goofing to the music. "Could you turn it off?" I asked suddenly, not able to hear any more.
His eyebrows knit together but he reached to hit the spacebar. "You guys are amazing. Seriously, with my moves, we put the talented in talented and gifted." He smiled a little.
He didn't even know we all said that in jest, which made it that much more awesome that he said it. "But what about Hadley? Where is she now?"
Fuuuck.