Black Waters (Frank Ocean Love Story)

Chapter 四

Christopher’s View.

I performed some material from both Nostalgia and channel ORANGE at the concert last night. It was great; the crowd cheered for every move I made, and I had the clan up in the box too. When I stood up on that stage with the band behind me and the microphone in my hand, I felt right where I belonged.

But of course, something was wrong. Something was missing.

I don’t know what it was; I just felt like something very wrong had happened. But fortunately, I started having that feeling after I was done performing; I didn’t have to be on stage and be distracted by something else. So when I was leaving and we were walking home (yeah, it’s tradition that after our concerts we all walk home together), I started talking to the boys.

“Is anyone else feeling what I’m feeling?” I asked them.

“I don’t know…it depends on what you’re feeling.” Taco replied. I sighed.

“It’s like…I don’t know. Something’s wrong. Something was missing from the concert. I feel like I’m expecting something, but I don’t know what it is.” I explained.  

“Um, I think something did happen.” Tyler said, swallowing whatever he had been eating.

“What you mean?” Earl asked him. Tyler nodded ahead of us, and we all followed his gaze toward the baseball field, which had been quickly creeping toward us, getting closer and closer in sight as we walked. It didn’t look as calm and serene and cozy as it usually did. There were cop cars surrounding the field, news vans with cameras, helicopters up ahead, and clusters of people looking to see what was going on.

It looked like someone had died.

But I couldn’t think that way. Death made me shiver. Every time I thought about death, I wondered if maybe…if maybe I hadn’t heard from her because she was dead. But that made me want to cry.

I walked up to one of the people watching the commotion.

“Hey, do you know what’s going on here?” I asked. He turned around, and took a double-take when he saw me.

“Hey! Um, I think so. Some girl was walking through the field a little earlier tonight, and four guys ganged up on her and raped her.” He explained. Some of the boys shook their heads, others made disappointed comments…But I stayed silent. My stomach began twisting. My heart was pounding.

It was impossible that I just heard that news reporter say her name.

I walked away from the man and walked toward the news reporter. She was smiling to the camera while reporting a rape story, which was nothing to smile about. That’s why I didn’t watch the news.

When I was almost close to her, I realized that I couldn’t go in front of the camera. I would draw too much attention.

So I walked up to a police officer.

“Do you know exactly what happened here?” I asked him. He nodded (and he didn’t seem to know who I was, which I didn’t mind).

“A young woman arrived here on a plane earlier this evening.  She left the airport and came here to the baseball field, to take a shortcut I assumed. She was almost out of the field when she was confronted by four men. I don’t know exactly how it happened—there are no surveillance cameras here—but they gang raped her. Her body was left in the middle of the field, fully naked with bruises.”

I gulped. It made me shiver thinking that while I was on stage having a good time, a girl was getting raped only a couple miles away from me.

But then I remembered that I heard the news reporter say a name…it almost sounded like her name.

“What did she look like?” I asked. It was the most indirect way to find out if it was her.

“Short brown hair, slim, light brown skin.” He said. By the time he said short brown hair I knew it. She had come for me; she looked for me. She was alive, breathing, living, watching things. She still existed. She hadn’t forgotten about me, or what we shared.

She still loved me.

“Her name was Ajahni.”

That night, I didn’t talk to the rest of the boys. I didn’t explain to them what happened; they eventually figured it out when they asked the police officer I had spoken to. None of them even knew who Ajahni was; they just thought I was feeling sorry for a random girl.

On the way home, I fought hard not to cry. It was difficult. As soon as I made it inside,  I locked myself in a bedroom and lay on the bed, crying my heart out. You know that type of crying when you’re crying so hard that you can’t breathe, and you have to gasp just to get in a little bit of air? And when the tears on your face aren’t even really tears anymore—it’s just a flood of water spilling out of your eyes too quickly? I think they call that bawling.

So I was bawling my heart out.

Either way, it was painful.

I did that for two days, until Earl came into my room with a popsicle in his mouth.

“Why you crying for?” He asked, sucking on the Popsicle. I was lying on my back in the bed, with eyes filled with water.

“You mean, ‘what are you crying for’. And it’s because something bad happened.” I mumbled.

“Oh, that girl getting raped right? You know her, don’t you?” He asked. Earl jumped on the bed next to me and turned on the TV with the remote.

“I knew her, yeah. How’d you know?”

“I think you should go to the hospital. That’s where she is. Just visit her. What are you scared of?”

I’m scared of facing her, seeing how hurt she is that I abandoned her back in California.

I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t just disclose everything I was feeling and thinking. But then again, Earl was just an innocent teenager. He really didn’t understand what I was going through. So if I told him, he would probably forget in the next ten minutes.

But it was my own secret to keep.

That same day, I got out of bed and went to the hospital. The guys offered to come with me, but I wanted to go alone. So I walked—slowly as possible—down to that hospital. When I got inside, I wanted to walk right back out. There were men and women in long white coats and people coughing and….that terrible smell.

This wasn’t my type of place.

“How can I help you, sir?” A woman asked when she noticed me looking around aimlessly.

“Yeah…I need to see a patient. She was brought here last night.” I murmured to her.

“What’s the patient’s name?”

I gulped. Just say it. “Ajahni….Ajahni Nash.” I replied.

“Oh, uh, I’m not too sure if she’s still upstairs; they might have moved her or something like that…But she’s most likely in room 530.”  The woman said, handing me a clipboard. I signed it and took the pass from her, and walked toward the elevator.

The whole time in the elevator, I was chanting: please be there, please be there, please be there…

The fifth floor was flooded with doctors and people talking. There were even a few security officers and police officers there. I walked timidly through them until I saw one cluster of doctors that looked like they were in charge.

I tapped on the female doctor’s shoulder.

“Um, you’re standing in front of room 530. I’m here to see that patient…Has she been moved?” I practically whispered.

“What? No. She hasn’t been moved.” The woman said. I let out a breath that I was unaware I had been holding. I was overwhelmed with relief.

“But she isn’t here. This morning the doctors came and the lights were still off, the windows had been pried open, and she was gone. She broke out of our custody. She’s a fugitive now.”