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Snow was always white, and the sky was always gray, and everything underneath it was dead, save for the pine trees that poked out from between houses and lined the roads, defying all of the dead trees around them.
They drove in silence. Chase and Aaron in Chase’s car, Tammy riding with Carolyn, and Amanda alone in her Thunderbird.
Chase and Aaron had decided by the end of the year that they could no longer stay in Bellingham—or in Washington for that matter—and when the gallery owner did in fact come through about giving him his own show, along with the infamy of his ordeal, Chase and Aaron thought it was the perfect opportunity to get someplace as far away from Bailey’s legacy as possible.
Carolyn and Tammy had decided to move in together, finding a place they both liked in Seattle, and Tammy had found it easier than she thought to transfer back to the University of Washington.
Amanda had written a serialized piece for the Bellingham Herald, which ended up receiving national attention, and soon offers were flooding in from all over, including two book deals, which allowed Amanda to relocate wherever she wanted.
When the offer came in from New York Magazine, she was quick to say yes.
At first they all had tried to make it work, but everywhere they had looked there was death; and though Christy and Trish had had Andy’s room fixed up and rented out to a sweet freshman gay boy named Peter, they couldn’t escape her—and for Aaron, that meant there was no hope of letting go.
As much as he had cared about Andy, despite the strain and her possessiveness towards the end, he had really loved her, but he didn’t want to be haunted by her. He had already spent a decade listening to rattling chains in the dark. He couldn’t do it again.
Chase had applied for and gotten into U.C. Berkley’s School of Law, and aside from some of the boxes in the trunk and the backseat, their things were on a truck, meeting them at their new place just off Shattuck Avenue.
They were all spending their winter break helping them move and get settled in, and Aaron’s first solo show was set for the twenty-first of December.
They had been haunted by an endless spring for so long that they welcomed the quiet darkness of winter. They only had one last thing to do before driving out of town and leaving Tacoma and Bailey Nguyen behind.
––––––––
It was bitter cold, and the rubble was everywhere. Proctor Middle School was now nothing more than ruins, piled like broken gravestones on the property. Carolyn held a bouquet of red roses in her gloved hands and passed a stem to each of them, and they all gave a somber nod as their breath plumed in front of them.
The sky was darkening and holiday lights glittered in the evening blue, twinkling like multicolored stars and reflecting on the packed snow.
They stood there for several moments before laying the flowers on top of the snow-covered ruins, marking the place where for four kids, childhood had died and the dark poison of another’s cruelty had taken its place.
Amanda Willis was the first to lay her rose down, sniffling and brushing her long blonde hair from her face. She was followed by Carolyn, who held tight to Tammy’s hand as she laid her rose down next to Amanda’s.
“Goodbye, Bailey,” Chase said as he tossed his rose into the snow.
“You didn’t win,” he whispered. “You didn’t win.”
Chase brushed the hair from his face, and leaned into Aaron, kissing him gently on the mouth.
Aaron was the last to lay his rose down, and he did so with shaky hands. He still wasn’t confident on his feet, and he had regretted leaving the sleek black cane in the car.
He tried so hard to see it as it once was, a place filled with the laughter of teens and rustling adolescent bodies. He could almost envision the large gym and the cement of the basketball court. He could still picture the cubicle to their left which had been the French room, along with the row of dim, brick buildings used for the orchestra class.
Aaron knew his future, knew where his life might lead, and Bailey Nguyen was not a part of that ride.
Bailey was finally gone.
Just a dark shadow of a truly bad time, and even though his brother had killed, Bailey had not. He had tired. Everything had been leading to that, and if he hadn’t died, there was no telling how many others Bailey would have killed once he got older.
All serial killers had started somewhere—only in Bailey’s case, that was where he had stopped.
It was finally time to move on.
They walked from it slowly. They finally had to say goodbye. Proctor was gone. Bailey Nguyen was gone, along with the lingering phantoms of their adolescence.
Bailey was there—embedded in the stone—forever and always part of Proctor’s legacy. The blood and tears of that year made up that school’s soul, and though the city of Tacoma was going to build anew, nothing could erase that year, that year when darker thoughts and horrifying acts were committed, and four damaged adults were formed out of the ashes of a decimated childhood.
And the snow kept falling.