Stand U by the Sea

Prologue

Fala looked up from her phone when her bedroom door opened. Her brother carried a backpack, dressed in dark colors, wearing a white headband. She took off her headphones.

"Again?"

He nodded. "Yes."

He sat down on the foot of her bed. Fala sat up from where she was lying to sit facing him.

"Why do you do this?"

He didn't answer.

"Travis. I need to know. Why don't you just quit?"

He hunched over. "Because. It's complicated."

Fala crossed her arms. "Yeah, sure. Why don't these buddies of yours understand that you don't like what they're doing anymore?"

"We've been over this before."

"I know, but you never give me a good answer! I don't see why you can't just leave them!" Fala huffed.

Travis regained his posture, turning on her, dark eyes flashing. "If you hadn't followed me, if you hadn't snooped on my phone, if you hadn't cared about where I went, you wouldn't know anything. You already know too much as it is, and I'm not telling you anymore. It's bad enough already what you've seen, so you don't need to keep prying. It's none of your business."

Fala blinked, trying to hold herself together. "But I don't see why."

Travis noticed and put a hand on her arm. "Just understand that I'm trying." He hunched over again.

Fala watched his chest rise and fall as he took deep breathes, his face drawn. Eventually, he turned to her again. "Don't do what I do. Just don't, OK?"

Fala nodded. Travis gave her a quick side hug before getting up. Fala watched him leave her room, trying to keep tears from falling. She hated it when he snapped at her. Or when anyone else did either.

She lay back down, listening for his footsteps to go to the kitchen, for him to open the back door, then go wherever he went to meet up with his "friends."

Why did he have to go with them? How did he even get involved with that? Why doesn't he want me to tell mama and pop?

Fala got up and looked out her window into the night, the faint streaks of moonlight coming between the slats of her blinds and falling across her bed. She saw Travis cross the street, ducking around a street light before disappearing into the night. She wondered if this had to do with all the money he had been bringing home. He had said he had gotten a promotion at work, but Fala doubted Safeway paid that well. Even her parents were skeptical at first, but as it kept coming consistently, they asked no questions.

Only accepted it. And then fought over what it should be used for. Fala could hear them now, arguing in the living room, where they thought she couldn't hear them with her door shut, and her headphones in. But they were wrong. Fala could hear them.

And she hated it. She fingered the delicate seashell charm on her necklace, a thin silver chain that she had gotten when she was seven. When her family had gone to the beach and it had seemed like they were whole. Like they were the perfect image of a family, with no fights every evening, no worries, no fears. Because they had each other.

It didn't matter if they weren't rich, or even that well off. It hadn't mattered then if they couldn't go on annual vacations like other kids she knew did. But that had changed. Fala didn't know why. She looked back out her window again, wishing she was back at the coast, back in her seven-year-old self, because it had seemed then that nothing would ruin her family.

She picked up her headphones and her phone and gazed at them a minute before she set them down again.

I want my family to be happy again.

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Fala sat between mama and her father as he turned the T.V. on and set it to the channel for the 10:00 news, something that they always watched together on Saturday evenings. Fala didn't know why, as they didn't usually watch the whole thing, or care that much about it, but they did. And they had, as a family, until Travis started hanging out with that group. And then he was gone all the time. And now it was rare that they did.

Fala tuned out the first half of the news. It wasn't much anyway. Just a story about some protests on racism, a story about an animal shelter, and some political stuff about the government. Fala thought the second half had the better stories anyway. A commercial passed and this time it jumped right to a subway station, where police were moving around in the background and the reporter looked grim.

Fala paid attention, especially when she saw the headline going across the screen at the bottom; MAX STATION SHOOTING, BRIEF FIGHT AMONG GANG MEMBERS RESULTED IN DEATH OF TEEN BOY. Pappa turned the volume up. Stories on gangs were common, but not so much when they killed each other.

"At around 9:45, a call to 911 was made to the Portland Police Department from a frantic woman saying that she had just witnessed a shooting involving one of the major drug gangs, identified by white headbands and red jackets," the reporter stated.

Fala's mouth went dry. Travis had and wore both. She mentally prayed a quick prayer, hoping it wasn't what she thought it was.

The reporter droned on. "When the police arrived, a young man lay dead on the ground across the tracks, bearing marks of several knife stabs and a bullet wound in the chest. When the footage was replayed, it showed that there was some sort of arranged meeting there, in which two members got in a disagreement. One attempted to knife the other until a third member stepped in, shot one, and left with the other."

The camera swung towards the body. Fala froze. Horror seeped into her. Mama gasped. Bleeding out onto the steel tracks, deep gashes in his skin and clothing, an oh-so-familiar face looked back, blank, pale, and glassy-eyed.

Pappa leaned forward, intent on the small screen. The camera went back to the reporter, but the body was still visible in the background.

"This young man had his driver's license on him, so the body was easily identified. The casualty, sixteen years of age, is Travis L. Whicker."

Fala heard Mama shriek and Pappa's strangled cry. The phone rang the next moment. Fala could only stare at the screen unmoving, hardly breathing, then collapsed to the floor, passed out.