Kendall's POV
It was October 11th, the day that our first album was set to release. Knowing that it wouldn't be long before everyone else was up and scrambling around, doing all sorts of things to prepare for the big release party that was planned for that night and wanting me to do such things with them, I ducked out of Apartment 2J before sunrise and made my way to the only place I wanted to be. I went to the hospital, stopping by the flower shop on the way just as they were opening, and replaced the wilted lilies next to Citrine's bed with fresh pink roses. Every time I looked at her, I was taken back to that night. She was our waitress at the Glory Panda the night that Buddha Bob was murdered by Bitters. The coincidence didn't escape me. In fact, it drove me insane. I remembered her delicate smile, her smooth, rich voice, her timidity and the volatile elixir of fear and longing swirling deep inside of her eyes. If only I'd known she was homeless! She didn't look the part at all. If only I'd asked her where she was going, if only I'd offered her a ride home, if only, if only, if only she'd let on that her life was this close to going boom, she wouldn't have gotten mixed up with Bitters and she wouldn't be in a coma. Then, maybe, if only… who knows, we might have been friends. Or more than friends. Or anything.
Well, I suppose I ought to address the elephant on the page. Citrine was biologically male, and so was I. So apparently, just because I'm straight, I'm expected to be blind to any beauty that the same sex has to offer. It really didn't change much when I found out that Citrine had the body of a man. All the soulful elegance of her aura was the same. What I saw in her was the same. I saw what she felt, which was that her essence, her spirit, her je ne sais quoi was no less feminine than any other girl I'd ever pursued. Let's be honest! When I fall in love with a girl, I don't fall in love with her vagina or her breasts. I fall in love with her heart, and Citrine's heart was just as pretty, pink and sweet as the roses I'd bought for her. So go ahead, give me the medal for least shallow man in the universe. I'd take it, but no mass of gold would be worth as much as that girl waking up and saying my name would have been to me. That's all I wanted.
I should've been excited, ecstatic even. BTR was finally hitting the shelves. It seemed as unreal as everything else that was happening to me. With as lucky as I was to be getting the opportunity, with as bright as my future seemed, with as much as any other teenager on Earth would have killed to be in my shoes, climbing the iTunes charts, gracing the cover of half a dozen teen rags, bathing in second-rate TV appearances and getting paid to do what I loved more than anything, I simply had no joy to give on that chilly October day. So I sat down beside Citrine and I held her hand. We had something in common, her and me. Both of our lives had gone to shit, and neither of us had done a damn thing wrong to deserve it. Because every time I looked at her, I was taken back to that night when my mom ruined everything. My mom… she'd been leaving messages on my cell phone from the payphone at the jailhouse for weeks, but I'd never listened to a one of them. Well, I was sorry to leave Citrine, but seeing as she would never know whether I was there or not, or when, or when not, I figured it wasn't so mean. One of the great things about her company was that I could come and go as I pleased, no apologies, no explanations. Another great thing was the silence. I would sit with my eyes closed and listen to the beeping of her heart monitor, willing her to wake up, but never expecting a thing. That day when I left her, I could've sworn that I saw a tear roll down her cheek as our fingers untangled. It made me sad, but I felt that I needed to see my mother, to sort some things out, and sooner was better than later.
Mrs. Knight's POV
Seven weeks in jail will sober an old girl up. Every day, they asked me if I wanted to use the phone, and they were very nice about it in fact. Every day I said yes. Sometimes I called Kendall, other times Katie, and sometimes James if I was feeling really lonely. None of them ever answered, of course. But it was comforting to hear it ring. Once… twice… thrice… a couple more times, then their answering machines would pick up.
Hello, you've reached Kendall Knight's cell phone. If you'd like to speak to me personally, please leave a message and I'll return your call. If you have a business inquiry, contact my manager Gustavo Rocque at…
He hadn't changed it since Gustavo died. A wave of guilt washed over me when I heard the name. I'd framed that man's bodyguard for his murder and protected that bastard Hawk in the process. Sometimes, when I couldn't sleep and had all night just to think about what I'd done, I wondered how I'd come to be such a scoundrel. I wondered if I would ever do well again.
Hi, this is Katie Knight's phone! You seem to have missed me, which means that I'm probably watching Judge Judy or taking a nap! Please don't leave a message! I'll call you back eventually! Okay, thanks, bye!
My little girl. She's what kept me crying all the time. I just wish I had the chance to tell her how sorry I was, but I knew it was too late. I'd already ruined her life, and it was all so wrong and terrible when I thought about it that it made my brain ache and my eyes well up with fiery hot tears. She was so young when Kyle died. Since then we'd been each other's everything every day. I couldn't remember the last time we were separated, and now seven weeks apart and she didn't even answer me on the phone. It drove me up the walls, not knowing how she was doing or who was taking care of her. I'd put nine years of my soul into that girl, and one night of James putting his apparatus into me just blew it all to Hell. It was like a classless soap opera, and I was the character that everyone loved to hate. I had to accept the possibility that I'd never hold her in my arms again.
Hey, thanks for calling the official cell phone of James Diamond, lead singer of the fabulously popular musical group Big Time Rush. Leave a message and I'll call you back. Unless you're a rabid fangirl, in which case you should try my other number, 1-800-GET-REAL.
Oh James. I didn't know whether to love him or hate him. The truth was that I had a lot more on my mind than just the possibility of my children never forgiving me for abandoning them if I was sent to prison. There was a new issue, one which weighed heavily on my thoughts. Something had to be done about it. It couldn't be ignored. It might've even been my only hope of avoiding prison time at my trial, and I needed to talk to James about it more than anything. But I knew there was no chance of getting him to visit me. I didn't see why. Of all people, I thought he would've felt most obligated to make an appearance, considering we'd both done the crime and I was the only one doing the time. I guess he was too ashamed, or maybe he didn't want to make it seem like there was anything meaningful between us for the sake of my acquittal. If he hadn't been such a pussyfooted lightweight with our big secret, everything would've turned out fine. But for some reason, I just couldn't bring myself to be angry with him for telling. The truth is I saw it coming from a mile away. He was just a boy. That was the whole point.
Then, five days before my trial was set to begin, my son appeared on the other side of the bars of my cell. He was my first visitor. Suddenly, looking into his eyes, it was like seven weeks had passed in an instant, and none of it had ever happened. But the cold tone of his words brought me back to reality.
"How are you?" he asked unsympathetically.
"Well, y'know, getting along. There's no reason to worry about me Kenny, but you're sweet for—"
"Good. Can I talk to you about something?" he pulled a chair over from the corner and sat down in the hallway facing me. He was all business. It must have been satisfying for him to torture me by giving me none of the information that he knew I was starved for about the goings-on at home.
"Sure, sweetie… I'm all ears." I sat down on my bed, trying not to cry happily for not being alone.
"Did you kill Gustavo?"
I stopped mid-breath and stared at him. It was a stone-faced delivery. He obviously didn't care how the question made me feel. He obviously had no faith left in me after what I'd been arrested for. "Kendall… why would you… no, I didn't. Of course I didn't! Freight Train did it! He was charged and escaped. Why would he have run if he wasn't guilty? Besides, I had no motive—"
"I don't believe that Freight Train did it. Something happened between him and Gustavo on the day he was murdered. Freight Train caught Gustavo attacking Kelly. They had a fight and Gustavo fired him. So yeah, it seems to make sense. But I don't believe it. I saw him with Kelly at the hospital. He seemed genuinely surprised that Gustavo was dead. You didn't. She found your earring in his room and she's still sure that you did it. You know what else? Kelly told me that she talked to Det. Simms, and it turns out that they tested the life support cord from Gustavo's room for fingerprints."
"…they did?"
"Yeah, and whose do you think they found?"
"I don't know. Freight Train's, presumably."
"They found Freight Train's, and Hawk's, and yours. Mom, I've had plenty of reasons to doubt Hawk's trustworthiness in the past, but I know him now. He's a better man than we thought, and he wouldn't have killed Gustavo over their rivalry, no matter how heated it got. As for Freight Train, he's the most honorable, dependable person I've ever known. He's not a murderer. As for you…" his eyes narrowed and he took them off of mine to scowl at the ground. "…I'm not sure."
"Honey, I know you're angry with me over what happened with James, of course you are, but don't go taking me for a murderer! I'd never do it… and there wasn't any reason for me to, anyway…" I trailed off and I could tell that all my stuttering and pausing was only affirming his suspicions.
"See though, I thought this all through while I was sitting in Citrine's hospital room this morning. What if Gustavo saw you and James together… what if he somehow found out your secret? You'd have killed him for that, wouldn't you have? To keep me and Katie from losing you if you went to prison, you'd have killed anyone… and now that's happening anyway. Then, I'm guessing you made up everything you said about Freight Train to Det. Simms that led to him being arrested, and you probably got Hawk to make shit up too to protect himself from harm when it came to light that his hands weren't clean, either. How am I doing so far?"
His eyes stabbed into me and I started to cry. I didn't know what to say. I was so damn tired of lying. I wasn't sure I could lie to my own son, to his face, when he had just spoken almost all the truth, and when I was the cause of almost all his problems. I just couldn't bring myself. So he took my silence as a positive answer. After a long pause, he spoke again, with a pathetically forced pleasantness.
"The album is coming out today. I don't know if you're keeping track of what day it is but… it's the eleventh. It came fast, didn't it?" he looked at me again. I was still trying my hardest not to cry. I was a grown woman, after all, and it wasn't my place to be crying all the time over my own sins.
"How's Katie?" I asked in a pleading way, hungry for any modicum of comfort.
He frowned and I saw his eyes get wet too. He choked a little, and then stood up angrily. He pushed the chair back into the corner and said, "You should ask her yourself."
"Kendall, please! I tried! I've tried calling all of you! Just tell me she's okay. Tell me you're all okay without me and you'll be giving your mother an immeasurable gift!" I put my hands on the bars and tried to catch his gaze again, but he was standing at the door of the cellblock.
"I'm not sure I want my little sister talking to a murderer. She needs a lot of love right now, but the kind that you have to offer has no place in any of our lives. It's too…poisonous. Goodbye…mom."
Freight Train's POV
After seven weeks of paranoia and homelessness, I would've killed for a shower and a cup of tea. I only wished there was some way for me to talk to Kelly, to see how things were coming along with her exoneration efforts. But I didn't let on that I was starting to lose faith, because I knew that Peridot was counting on me. Not just to keep the morale high for both of us, but for everything else too. It was terrifying, at first. Peridot's weight as I carried her on my shoulders was like the world with all her pure, contagious love to boot. But then I sort of slipped into it, becoming the parent that I always should've been. Then it was the most comforting thing in the world. The way she held onto my arm (which she seemed to barely be able to get her arms around, the size difference between us being cartoonishly extreme) for dear life as she slept soundly and without complaint, whether we were sleeping in an alley or a ditch or an abandoned house if we were lucky, gave a rainbow of new shades of purpose and meaning to my life. Nine years, almost a decade of my life I had wasted without love. Almost a decade of my life was as good as trash when I'd only been caring for myself and going through the motions. I'd have given the rest of my life away, too, if it was the only way to spend just one day with Kelly and the child we lost.
One day (how the Hell was I to know what opinion the calendar had of it), when we'd just got done stealing some canned beans from the soup kitchen and were resting in an overgrown parking lot beside a derelict grocery store to eat them, Peridot spoke up out of the blue.
"Percy, I think tomorrow's my birthday." She didn't look up, just kept poking her spoon into the can.
"Really? How do you know?"
"I've been counting the days since Citrine left. If I counted them right then tomorrow's the twelfth of October and that's when Mama and me always celebrated my birthday."
"Alright, well that's great! We could use an occasion to celebrate. I suppose you'll want some cake?"
"Cake? Why? I don't like cake that much. It's awfully dry in my mouth."
"But that's what children do on their birthdays; they get cake and presents and a party. Didn't your mama ever give you those sorts of things on your birthday?"
"No… no I don't remember any cake or presents or parties. It seems like it's been forever since she died, but I do remember the last birthday I had with her. We sat in the parlor and watched her brand new TV. Well, it was brand new to us but I think she got it at some flea market for a good price. It didn't show no color on the screen and she had to pull and bend and wrangle with the metal sticks on top of it to find the Wheel of Fortune, but she found it and I got to sit on her lap and drink my lemonade and watch television and that was the best time I'd ever had. She made some popcorn, which was always a treat as I remember it, though I haven't had any since. Then we sat at the table and played cards. I'm not sure what else we did that day but I get a nice warm feeling when I remember it. Mama was a real lady…" she trailed off and wiped her eyes with her arm. "…she'll always be a real lady to me… even if nobody else remembers her at all… she's my mama for sure… forever…"
"Peridot, honey don't cry." I picked her up and she hugged me, and she cried into my shoulder, and I didn't have to ask why. I just hoped she didn't notice that I was crying too. After a while, I set her back down and she went back to picking at her beans. I lifted her chin gently up to look at me, which she generally didn't do because she was so shy and avoidant, and we saw each other through common tears. "I lost my mama too. I was considerably older than you. I was pretty near grown, in fact. She fell down the stairs in our house when I was supposed to be there with her. But I wasn't, and I've lived with that every day since. It was my fault. I know what it's like, honey, to watch the best lady you've ever known die. It hurts in a place you can't touch. It never leaves you alone. But, Perry darling, you have to believe me… I'll never leave you alone either. We'll be together for as long as you need me, until you can walk on your own two feet… in so many words."
I smiled as best as I could and she smiled too, but she couldn't think of anything good to say in return so we just ate in silence for a while longer. Then, when we were done and getting ready to move on so as not to leave our scent too strong in any one place, she spoke up again, and I could tell it took a lot of effort.
"I want to go back."
"Where? Back to the overpass? It's very far away by now and too close to the police station for comfort."
"No, not the overpass! I'll be happy if I never go back there in my life! I want to go back to the place where I spent my last birthday with Mama. I was just thinking about it and I remembered all of the sudden that we weren't in her apartment. We were somewhere else. We were in the old house in the country where she said she lived when she was a little girl like me. She took me there when we got locked out of the apartment and had nowhere to go, and that's where we stayed through my birthday, until we went to the homeless shelter, where she… where she left me alone."
She looked at me solemnly and I could tell that this was what she really wanted. "Alright child, if that's your only birthday wish then I'll be more than happy to oblige. Do you have any idea where in the country this old house is?"
She thought for a moment, and then jumped a little like an idea had come up into her from underground. "I have a letter! An old letter that we got when we were living there, which I could never read, but I know for sure that it must have the address on it because all letters have to have the address where they're going on the front, don't they? So you can read it for me and find out where we lived!"
"Where's the letter at? Do you have it with you or is it at…" I stopped and she nodded.
"It's still under the overpass."
Citrine's POV
"It won't be easy… you'll think it strange… when I try to explain how I feel…" I sung quietly into the bathroom mirror as I brushed my long, brown hair and then started to take the straightening iron to it. Logan and Carlos had left before I got up, probably for some important album-launching meeting at Hawk Records, and I was alone in Apartment 2J with my thoughts, which seemed to fit perfectly with that song. I was singing about Kendall, and James, and Peridot, and my mom and even my old body, which I had started to regard finally as another person after seven weeks in Katie's body. Citrine seemed like an old friend who I'd parted with on good terms, but I still missed her sometimes.
"…that I still need your love after all that I've done." I finished straightening my hair, put the iron down and looked at Katie in the mirror for a few minutes. Feeling like I was about to cry for some enigmatic reason, I left the bathroom with her hairbrush and went center stage in the living room, standing up on the coffee table and singing at full volume into the pink hairy microphone.
"You won't believe me. All you will see is a girl you once knew, although she's dressed up to the nines at sixes and sevens with you." I gulped and got a clear picture in my mind's eye. Kendall was sitting beside my old body. He'd bought pink roses just to put beside it. He was talking to it. He was holding its hand. I saw my own face. I saw a tear roll down its cheek. Trying to shake it out of my head, I sung louder still.
"I had to let it happen! I had to change! I couldn't stay all my life down at heel, looking out of the window, staying out of the sun! So I chose freedom! Running around, trying everything new!" I knew it wasn't my imagination. It was real, a vision, of the past or the future or of anytime, but it was real. Kendall was falling in love with me. The only problem was that I'd jumped ship too soon, and now I was stuck in a body that he could never love, with no way to tell him how I felt. I knew it would happen this way. I knew karma was coming for me; this was my much-deserved poetic justice. I'd gotten everything I ever wanted, but cut myself off from the one thing I needed to survive. "But nothing impressed me at all… I never expected it to." Being Katie was supposed to be perfect. But what was so great about it? Wasn't I the same basket case Citrine that I'd always been, screwing up every chance I got? What the Hell had I accomplished?
"Don't cry for me, darling Citrine! The truth is I never left you! All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise! Don't keep your distance." I saw it all so clearly now. In order to have true love, I just had to be myself! It was the last thing I ever expected, but it made me even happier than stealing Katie's body ever would've! I was about to get down from the table when a voice behind me picked up where I'd left off.
"And as for fortune and as for fame… I never invited them in, though it seemed to the world they were all I desired." I turned around and saw Kendall standing at the door. He closed it behind him. "They are illusions. They are not the solutions they promise to be." His singing was beautiful and heartfelt, and it made me feel weak but alive.
"The answer was here all the time." I sang back.
"I love you and hope you love me." he finished. He walked over to me and lifted me down off the table. As we stared into each other's eyes for a moment, I was sure that he knew who I really was, and that we were about to make sweet love. But he just blinked and sat down on the couch, running his hand through his hair. The moment was gone and neither of us were sure what to make of it.
"Kendall…" I finally said, sitting down next to him, "I'm surprised. I didn't realize you were an Evita junkie like me."
He chuckled and shook his head. "I'm really not. But Carlos and Logan listen to nothing but show tunes 24/7 and they've somehow pervaded my subconscious. It's a little scary." He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled a little. I could tell he had something big on his mind; something that he thought was too big to talk to an almost nine-year-old about. "I didn't realize you were such a good singer. You must only do that when no one's around. Your voice, it gets kind of… low… and warbly… where did you learn that?"
I shrugged and swallowed hard with a dry throat. "Oh, y'know, I take pages from the books of great divas and such things. Cher, Barbra, Liza, all the greats. Gotta do something to fill the time."
He squinted at me and laughed. "My God, I'm starting to think that I'm living with three gay men instead of just two!" He got up and went over to the kitchen. He reached down under the fridge and pulled out a little key, then put it into a padlock that was hanging from the handles on the cabinets above the fridge. Unlocking it, he set it aside and opened up the cabinets. They were full of booze!
"Hey Kendall, what're you doing?" I asked, climbing one of the barstools to get a good look.
"I need a drink." He said matter-of-factly, taking down a bottle of vodka.
"Wow. I didn't know mom was such a heavy drinker. When does she find the time?"
"Who knows? Who cares? She'll probably never come back to finish these bottles off anyway. We might as well drink to our freedom—as long as we've got it. That's what she'd do." He got a plastic cup and filled it one-fourth up with vodka, then got a can of Mountain Dew out of the fridge and poured it in too, stirring the cocktail up with his finger and licking it.
"Ew." I scrunched my nose up at the smell of it.
"You'll understand when you're older." He said, patted me on the head, and then chugged the whole drink without taking a breath.
"You're gonna get drunk now? It's not even noon. Shouldn't you be at Hawk Records with the rest of the band talking about the album release with the party and the press?"
"Yup, I guess I should." He put his hands on his hips, nodded for a few seconds, sighed, and then started mixing another drink. I watched him as he downed another Dew-driver.
"Kendall… what's wrong? Why don't you care about the launch? What happened?"
He put his back to the fridge, and then slid down it until his butt hit the linoleum. I tried to avoid going in the kitchen whenever I could. Every time I looked at that floor I was reminded of Rose's blood, and how it filled in the crevices of the linoleum around the ice machine and dried rusty brown, and how it smelled, and how it was everywhere. Unfortunately, going in the kitchen made me want to throw up, but I went in anyway and sat down beside him. I put my hand on his knee where his jeans were ripped on purpose, touching, feeling the bare skin boldly. "Kendall." I murmured, "Tell me."
He sniffled, just once, so I knew he was sucking it up to talk to me. He stared at the floor while he told me. "I visited mom in jail this morning. She asked how you were. I didn't tell her."
"Why not?" I asked sympathetically. I felt something bigger coming.
"Well, basically she admitted to killing Gustavo. But there's no proof, and she wouldn't admit it in court if it came to that. When it comes to that, she'll get on the stand with Hawk and they'll both lie—to put Freight Train away forever."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This whole thing was seven more layers of fucked up than I'd expected.
"She's changed, Katie. I couldn't talk to her about you anymore, or about the band, like I did seven weeks ago, like she's still our mom. Something's missing between us; something's missing in her eyes that used to make me feel okay. Now it just makes me sick. I don't think we'll ever be okay again—the three of us. Something's ended. I think it could be… childhood? We can't really be kids anymore if our mom is in prison. I'll have to raise you from now on—that's the way it'll be. I'm not sure we can even afford to worry about her from now on."
He punched the floor, suddenly, forcefully, then slid his hands down his face and moaned. "I can't do it anymore Katie! Every time I see James, I just want to strangle him, then beat his head against a brick wall, then run him through a wood chipper! And Carlos and Logan, they're so happy together, while all this shit is happening to us and the whole world is going to Hell! Then there's Kelly, who never stops talking about mom, every day, and how she killed Gustavo, and how she's found some new way to prove it, and how it won't be long before Freight Train's exonerated! Katie, it's just like the song said! Fame and fortune don't solve anything! They're worthless without love and happiness! The answer is here, you and me, that's all we need!"
"Kendall, what're you saying?"
"I'm saying it's too much! How can I go to that party tonight and celebrate BTR when the whole record is drenched in Gustavo's blood? We wrote and recorded every song together, the six of us, Big Time Rush, Kelly and Gustavo, and he was the most important one! That was the best time of my life; this is the worst! At that party tonight, everyone's going to be smiling, and laughing and acting like Gustavo never even existed! But he did; he was the soul of Big Time Rush, and I'm finally realizing that it can't go on without him! I can't promote this album for Hawk Records. It's everything Gustavo would've never wanted, and if our mother is responsible for his death, the least I can do is stand up for his honor, one last time."
"You mean… you can't mean you're going to—"
"Katie, I'm quitting the band."