By Bay Chateau

Content Warning for gun violence and homophobia

I woke up to gunshots, several of them, firing one after the other. They were distant, and not uncommon in the center of the city, but something about them seemed off, seemed so personal. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I instead started journaling, one of the main goals I had for the summer. I wanted everything to be documented, wanted to be able to look back on my teenage years when I was thirty and remember every moment as if it was yesterday. I had finished school the previous Monday, and we were leaving for Santa Monica the next day. Freedom.

I wrote in my journal about my plans for the summer. See Hileni every single day. Get a job. Read more. Fall in love. An hour later, the gunshots hadn’t stopped and the number of sirens only grew. I decide it’s time to go to sleep. Earbuds on, classical music playing to drown out the commotion outside my house, sleep washes over me quickly. Takes me off guard, ambushes me from the comfort of my fluffy blankets and too many pillows. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

When I wake again, my phone is littered with messages. Frantically written, misspelled texts from Hileni telling me to check the news, and hundreds of notifications from the school’s gay-straight alliance, pure grief. I didn’t know what was going on but I knew it was grief. 

My mother didn’t bother to knock as she came into my room, carrying a plate with freshly made waffles, the syrupy smell wafting into my room, overpowered by the intense emotions showing on my her face. She opens her mouth to speak, and that’s when I find out. At two this morning. Forty-nine people.

I can’t think.

I don’t say anything to her. My mother lays a hand on my shoulder, says my name thrice before I finally look up to her. 

She asks me how I’m doing. I take my waffles.

She tells me our flight is at three, that we need to leave soon. I look over at the suitcase I packed last night.

She mentions a memorial service this afternoon that we will have to miss. She says we can take a walk to the club, to look at all of the candles people are setting out, pictures of the victims and such.

I take a bite.

The next couple of hours are a blur. Somehow, I take a shower. Put on my Dad’s orange hoodie from a music festival in ‘08. I comb my hair, brush my teeth, add last-minute items to my suitcase, hairbrushes, phone chargers, and a teddy bear. I function like a normal person would, but it’s all a blur. We pass the scene of the crime on the way to the airport. The rainbows, each color with its own unique symbolism, all blur together in my mind. The plane ride is five and a half hours long. I wear my headphones the entire time, De La Soul playing way too loudly in my ears. I’m sure everyone in the seats next to us can hear it. I don’t check my phone.

We get to Los Angeles International at eight-thirty in the evening. It’s a twenty-minute car ride from the airport to the beach house. My mother, my well-meaning mother, makes me take off my headphones in the taxi. She asks me to talk to her. She pulls me close to her, seat belts be damned. The taxi driver looks at me sympathetically in the rearview mirror. I briefly wonder what he thinks is happening to me. A breakup, a bad exam result. Certainly not my entire life falling apart. Certainly not thousands of years of Queer trauma settling uncomfortably in my stomach. 

Hileni is at my house when we arrive, having found the key in our garden and let herself in. She gives me a hug and I fall into her. My mother makes us tea, chamomile, and I sit on the couch between the two of them. My mother reaches for the remote, rapidly switching the TV to some cartoon from the news channel it was on before. We watch, we laugh at all the right times, I feel myself smile for the first time today. My mother walks Hileni home around ten. I go to sleep.

I clutch my pillow that night and drown out the waves, the smell of salt, the faint bustling of the boardwalk. I try to forget about the fact that I didn’t visit Joseph when it’s usually the first thing I do. I try to forget about the fact that not twenty-four hours ago I was making a summer Pinterest board and scheduling the rest of the week. Not twenty-four hours ago I was hearing lives being taken in real time, last words being murmured, last breaths being exhaled. 

Is Queer blood still diseased if they’re the ones spilling it?

–

Bay Chateau is a high school senior from North Carolina, USA. She plans to study linguistics in university and travel everywhere she can. She is involved with her school’s book club and does political volunteering. In her free time, she enjoys skateboarding and going to concerts.