Loose (2 page)

Authors: Coo Sweet

BOOK: Loose

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When their thirst was quenched, they sat with their backs pressed against the brick wall of the park’s restrooms, and took a much needed breather.

Both eleven, Sage and Peyton had been friends since kindergarten. They were tall, sturdy, handsome boys. They also shared a wicked sense of humor. Being as close as brothers, they tried to out-do one another at every turn.

Considering all their similarities, they did have one obvious difference, and it was easiest to spot when the sun cast its light in their eyes.

Sage’s eyes reflected innocence, wide open possibilities, and obvious immunity to life’s butt-ugliness. On the other hand, Peyton’s were already becoming jaded. They definitely had some mileage on them from the things he’d seen. Those eyes could never be hooded from the harsh glare of reality.

After a few minutes of quiet rest, Sage cupped the crotch of his jeans.

“Dang, I need to pee so bad I can taste it.”

Peyton snickered at the gross visual that popped into his head. He pointed to the entrance of the restroom marked Women and nudged Sage’s knee with his own.

"Bet you won't go in there and do it," Peyton teased.

Sage grinned, playfully elbowed his friend’s ribs.

"Bet you I will," he said.

"All the way in. To the last stall. And you have to sit down like a girl," Peyton shot back.

Without hesitation, Sage leaped up and raced past the doorway. Peyton hoisted himself up to bear witness. In the process, he tripped on the end his shoelace and stopped to tie it. It snapped when he tugged on it, so he had to take the time to re-lace it.

Meanwhile, Sage skidded to a stop just inside the dank, concrete structure. The piss-scented air made him scrunch his nose. He switched to breathing through his mouth.

“Stinks in here,” Sage complained.

“Don’t be a pussy,” Peyton teased. Sage flipped him off and walked a few tentative steps ahead.

It took a second for his vision to adjust to the dim space. Once his pupils dilated sufficiently, those virginal, unpolluted eyes of his bulged with shock. Directly in front of him propped against a wall sat the love of his short life.

Thirteen-year-old Serenity was ashen-faced and clammy-looking. But even that did little to mar her natural, innocent beauty.

A drying, crimson stream of blood flowed from between her legs. It stained the dam fashioned by the panties and shorts bunched around her ankles. A piece of bloody, twisted wire lay across her palm. Sage choked down a huge gulp of air and belted out a scream. He bolted to Serenity's side...grabbed her empty hand.

"Oh my god, Serenity! Who did this? What happened to you?" he barked.

Serenity’s eyelids fluttered in response otherwise she was mute. Sage mashed his lips to her limp hand. He pressed the hand to his cheek.

"Don't die. Please, please, don’t die. I can’t live without you. You hear me? Can’t do it, Serenity."

He raced to the sink and snatched paper towels from the dispenser...ran back and packed the towels into the bloody apex of Serenity's legs. He struggled with her panties and shorts until he got them back around her waist. Then he scrambled to her side, cradled her limp torso, and rocked her gently.

Seconds later his gut-wrenching wails reverberated off the stone walls.

Peyton stood rooted at the restroom's entrance. Fear, tinged with curiosity, cloaked his face. An abrupt break in the wailing unstuck his feet and propelled him forward into the restroom.

Peyton dashed toward his friends. His first reaction to the grisly tableau was swift vomiting of the bacon-and-eggs breakfast he’d wolfed down before heading to the park. He swiped his mouth with the back of his hand, rubbed the hand across his t-shirt, and dropped to his knees. Right into the puddle of vomit. The chunks of half-digested food that squished between his knees and the floor didn’t even faze him.

"What happened to her!" he asked, his eyes blinking like strobe lights.

Sage rested Serenity’s head in his lap. He stroked her hair, completely oblivious to the blood, snot and tears that splattered his face and clothes. His mouth opened and closed, but no words passed his lips.

Peyton shuddered. He cleaned a smear of blood off his friend's forehead. He wiped tears from Sage’s cheeks, while his own flowed unchecked.

Peyton plucked Serenity's flaccid hand off the floor. He checked her wrist for a pulse imitating something he'd randomly seen on some television show.

Based on his expression, Peyton had no idea what he was feeling for. He just figured it was the thing to do. After a few seconds, and no change in Serenity’s condition, he dropped the hand in frustration. It hit the floor with a soft thunk. Both boys flinched in offense at the sound of flesh hitting concrete.

Sage silently prayed for his friend to try some other heroic tactic. Please save my girl, he begged with his big hazel eyes. Peyton quickly became attuned to cues that indicated his best friend was close to a major meltdown.

"I'll go get somebody. She'll be okay," he stammered, bolting toward the doorway.

“No. Don’t leave us.” Sage shook from the waves of fear and shock that buffeted his body.

Peyton ran back to him. He shoved his face so close to Sage, he could see his friend’s pupils dilate from the terror that strangled him. Peyton gripped Sage’s shoulder. He shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth.

“I. Have. To. Get. Help.” Peyton squeezed hard, forcing Sage to focus on each word. “OK? Promise I’ll be right back.”

Sage swallowed a sob and nodded in agreement. Peyton took off running again. Sage watched his back until the sunlight outside the restroom swallowed Peyton up.

While he waited he cooed softly to Serenity. He smoothed her shirt and placed her hands in her lap to keep them off the bloody floor.

Moments later, Peyton returned with Sage’s mother in tow.

Before she even hit the doorway, she frantically punched numbers into a cell phone, jamming it to her ear.

"I need help, quick. City View Park. The women's restroom. Yes! An ambulance. Please hurry." She clicked the phone off and shot inside the restroom.

A pair of paramedics worked feverishly over Serenity. Sage’s mother watched their frenzied ministrations. Both boys' heads were clasped to her body. Their arms wrapped around her waist.

With their grief-stricken faces, and blood-stained clothes and hair, the trio painted a picture of a bizarre group hug.

The paramedics’ tempo slowed and eventually stopped. They strapped Serenity to a stretcher. One of them pulled a sheet over her face. Sage tore away from his mother’s arms. He rushed toward the men and tugged on what he now considered profanely idle hands.

“No. Try something else. Don’t stop. Help her.”

The paramedics bowed their heads and submitted to his raging words and insistent hands as best they could. Sage’s mother and Peyton jumped into action prying him off. It took them awhile to wrestle him loose.

Sage fought for Serenity until the last of his strength was sapped. He may not have fought for her before, but he fought that day. Then he fell limp, into his mother’s aching arms.

When the men were finally freed from his grip, they hustled Serenity’s body toward the circle of sunlight beaming into the restroom.

A week later Sage and Peyton sat quietly in a sunny bedroom.

Aside from the furnishings, it was hard to believe a sixth grade boy regularly occupied the space. There was no evidence of clutter, contraband snacks, or dirty clothes hiding under the bed. Not even a telltale air freshening device to combat the odor of unwashed armpits, stinky feet, or fuzzy teeth.

The boys sat together on an immaculate bed. Their dapper suits a stark contrast to the wounded looks on their faces.

They focused, with bated breath, on a conversation outside the room. The voices drifted from a loft. Two women sat there nursing cups of coffee long gone cold. They were dressed in dark, stylish clothes.

Sage’s mother, Nadine, was the lady of the house. In addition to the somber mourning clothes she was dressed in, she also wore the stress from the previous week on her striking face.

"I can't believe they're burying that child today. Shame she died like that," Nadine said to her guest.

Peyton’s mother, Gail, wagged her head in agreement. She retrieved a compact from her purse, opened it, and checked her already flawless makeup in the tiny mirror.

"Well, you know they put her on a pedestal. Always bragging on her making straight A's in school, how pretty she was...going to be somebody great someday." Gail took another look in the mirror, “But I guess when you have a mama who runs the streets like hers did, and you have a daddy who was never in the picture, you might push yourself to do better. Rise above all the bullshit so to speak. Hell, that girl was scared to death to fail if you ask me."

Nadine shifted in her seat, noticeably uncomfortable with casting even the slightest hint of disrespect at the dead girl. She even glanced over her shoulder, as if to check for witnesses to their gossiping tongues.

"True. But what's a young girl know about giving herself an abortion? And with a coat hanger of all things? I haven't heard of anybody doing that since I was a teenager."

"Anybody know who the daddy was?" Gail asked.

"I don't know. But I’ll tell you what…whoever he is, they need to cut his balls and his thing off," Nadine snarled.

"I hear you. All these young boys think about is sticking it in whoever's willing. You let my son come home talking about he got somebody pregnant. I'll wring his neck! I'm way too fine to be a grandma anytime soon."

Gail admired herself in the mirror one last time. Finally satisfied with what she saw, she snapped it shut and slid it back into her purse.

"Oh, you got that right. Heads will roll up in here, too," said Nadine, slamming her empty mug down for emphasis.

Sage, silent and inert as a tombstone, sat on the bed with a pillow pressed to his chest. A chain of tears dotted the pillowcase.

Peyton was seated at his friend’s desk. He stabbed a note pad with a pen. The motion was slight at first, but he soon picked up momentum and jack-hammered the pen into the paper. That convulsive action snapped Sage out of his stupor. He leaped from his bed, strode to the desk, and snatched the pad and pen from Peyton’s hands.

“Stop it before you mess up my desk!”

Tension between the boys hung heavy in the air like the stink of a fresh fart.

“You stop it, dumbass!” said Peyton.

He jumped up from the desk and pushed Sage to the ground. He stood over him with fists clenched. His chest heaved from the adrenaline pumping through his body.

The sound from the scuffle caught the attention of the boys’ mothers.

Nadine raised an eyebrow.

“What in the--”

She got up to investigate. By the time she reached the doorway of Sage’s room the boys had retreated to neutral corners. Nadine stuck her head in the room. Beneath knitted brows, her eyes panned from one boy to the other. Neither of them engaged contact with her hawkish gaze.

“Everything alright in here?” she asked.

Sage ran a finger across one eye. “Sure, Ma. We’re fine.”

Peyton offered only a tight nod of his head.

Nadine crossed her hands over her chest, obviously not falling for the boys’ weak lie.

“You’re fine, huh?” She stepped into the room and walked over to her son. She raised his chin with a trembling hand.

Sage bit his lip--a painful warning not to spill tears again.

“Yeah, Mom. We’re okay. Really.”

Nadine clasped Sage to her body with a tight squeeze.