by TJ Klune
A little voice inside tells me I’m being foolish, that I can’t make decisions that’ll affect the rest of my life just because I’ve somehow convinced myself I’m in love with my best friend. I’ll regret this moment, it says, because it’s silly to think that something like this could last, that feelings like this, so bright and new and ridiculous, could ever be returned. You’re fifteen years old, it says. What would he want with a kid? Because that’s who you are. That’s your name. That’s what everyone calls you and that’s what you’ll always be. The Kid.
Except that he’s never called me that. I’ve always been Tyson to him, nothing more, nothing less.
I smile as I open the sliding glass door. I see a few people inside the kitchen, but no Dom. I think about calling out to him, but I can’t trust my voice not to come out with a crack. My throat burns and my heart races. I almost drop the present I’m carrying because my hands are clammy. I’m nervous, beyond nervous, but it’s a good feeling, an odd feeling. Like anticipation. Like hope. Like it means something. Like it means everything.
Silly little boy, it laughs. A few days ago, it wasn’t like this. A few days ago, it was school in a far-off and magical place. That you’d always be friends and you’d talk every day on the phone and everything would be okay because you were going to change the world. You were going to be something. Look at you now! Oh, so like your brother. What’s changed? How can this mean anything? What are a few days?
A few days ago, I didn’t have a choice.
He’s not in the living room, and I don’t hear the creak of the floor above me, so I don’t think he’s upstairs. What’s he doing? Is this a game? Does he want me to find him?
A giggle, high and feminine, near the back hall.
A low murmur that I’d recognize anywhere.
I smile and turn the corner.
And stop.
Dom’s there. At the end of the hall. Near the spare bedroom.
He’s not alone.
Stacey. A little blonde thing. I’ve met her a few times. Bear introduced us. A teacher, like him. She likes to talk to Dom. She likes to talk to him a lot. She likes—
He’s pressed against her, her back against the wall. She giggles again. His big hand is in her hair. She’s smiling up at him as he rumbles something to her that I can’t quite make out. He’s grinning at her. The same grin he gives me. Then he leans down close. So very close. She rises up on her tiptoes. They kiss. It’s deep. Her arms go around his neck, and I….
I.
Just breathe.
In. Hold for three seconds.
Of course, it whispers to me. Of course.
Out. Hold for three seconds.
His lips move over hers, and I hear her sigh.
In. Oh, God. In. Please go in. Just another breath. Please.
In. Just fucking go in.
The ground begins to shake beneath my feet. It moves up to my heart. To my head.
She pulls away and buries her face in his neck, another shy laugh. It’s high-pitched. It’s lovely. It’s beautiful, like bells. I can see the flush in her cheeks.
Earthquake. No, please. Oh no. Oh. Oh. Please.
I can’t breathe. I can’t.
“Kid?” Stacey says, looking a bit startled. “We didn’t see you there.”
Dom’s head snaps up. He takes a quick step back. “Ty?” he asks, his voice low. His lips are swollen. He licks them as if chasing the taste of her.
“I didn’t…,” I say. “I didn’t mean….”
He takes a step toward me.
I take a step back.
“D-didn’t mean t-to interrupt,” I stammer out. “I j-just….”
I just came to tell you I love you. I just came to tell you that I’ll stay. I just came to—
The ground shifts again.
Stacey is embarrassed. I want to hate her. I should hate her. But I can’t. Not yet. Maybe later, but right now I can’t. She fades out, and it’s as if she disappears and he’s all I see.
Something flashes across his face, something dark that I can’t put a name to, and he takes another step toward me. And then another. And then another and I can’t move. I can’t move and he’s in front of me and he’s so big. He’s so big and he fills the world until everything else is gone—like it’s nothing more than a dream.
He’s almost to me and I don’t know what I’ll do when he reaches me. Just as a big hand of his, the same one that was in her hair, stretches out toward me, I snap my own hand up, smacking the present against his fingers.
“I just wanted to give you your present,” I say, not looking up at him. “It’s not much. It’s not really anything. You’ll probably hate it. I’m sorry. I can get you something else. If you don’t want it. It’s nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Ty,” he says, touching my fingers with his. “I’m sure it’s wonderful.”
Oh, how I quake. “Yeah,” I say.
“That’s so sweet,” Stacey says, a smile in her voice. She comes up on the other side of Dominic and puts a hand on his arm. He flinches, but she doesn’t notice. I do. “Why don’t you open it?”
“Maybe it should just be me and Ty—”
“No,” I say. “It’s c-cool. It’s f-f-fine.”
Claws at my throat. A vise around my heart. My breath sounds like it’s whistling up from my throat. Can’t they hear it? Can’t they hear everything?
He digs through the tape and it snaps. The paper crinkles, little blue snowmen because I couldn’t find any other wrapping paper. I should have looked harder. I should have done better.
It falls to the floor.
“Oh!” Stacey says, sounding delighted. “It’s a digital picture frame! I’ve always thought these things were so cool.” She’s trying. It sounds like she’s trying. Maybe too hard.
“You h-have to p-press the b-b-b”—breathe, goddamn you!—“the button.”
He clicks the button on the side. It sounds like a shotgun blast.
And then our life unfolds. Picture by picture. Frame by frame. It tells a story. Me and him. Every year since I was nine. Every holiday. Every birthday. Every celebration. The good days and the bad ones. It tells our story and it’s sequential, starting from the beginning, from that very day when he told me our friendship was inevitable, to just a few weeks ago, when I fell asleep and he carried me up the stairs to my bed before going home.
It’s there. All of it is there. It’s a love letter, though I didn’t know it when I made it. Anyone can see it’s a love letter. It’s so obvious. It’s so trite. It’s so awkward. It’s nothing. It can’t be anything. He can’t know. I don’t want him to know. I can’t let him know.
“Ty,” he says, his voice coming out strangled. “This is….”
I think about snatching it out of his hands and throwing it to the floor, but I can’t. I shrug instead, taking a step back. “It’s nothing. It was cheap.” It cost everything I had saved. “I had a few hours, so I made it.” It took me weeks. “Don’t even worry about it.” Please go away. Please go away because I can’t stand to see that look on your face.
Because that look is breaking my heart. His eyes are bright. He’s biting his bottom lip. It looks like he’s trying to hold back. “Stacey?” he says, his voice hoarse. “Can you give me and Ty a minute?”
She looks between us, confused, but she nods.
“No,” I say quickly. “There’s no need. Just a gift, Dom. Jesus, it’s not that big of a deal. Hey, why don’t we go outside and get something to eat?”
I turn and start to walk away.
“Tyson.” His voice is a whipcrack of warning.
I look over my shoulder, but I don’t stop. “I’m h-hungry. Don’t want all the food to get e-eaten, you know?”
They follow me into the kitchen. Dom keeps trying to catch my eye. He reaches for me, but I pretend not to see it and duck behind some people. I open the sliding glass door and walk outside.
“Ty!” he calls from somewhere behind me.
“Go
get a seat!” I say back to him. “I’ll get us something to eat.”
“Can you get me a veggie burger?” Stacey asks.
“Of course. Coming up. Don’t worry, Dom. I know how you like it, so I don’t need you to tell me.” The words are bitter, but the tone isn’t. I don’t look back to see if he’s still following. I wade through crowds of people. Some call out to me. I shake hands. My back is patted. My hair is ruffled. I don’t know how they can all stand so still when everything is quaking. I don’t know how they can be so calm.
“Ty?”
Fuck.
Otter stops me, a hand on my shoulder. “What are you doing?”
I school my face and hope it doesn’t crack. “Just forgot something in Dom’s car,” I say, my voice even. I don’t stammer. I don’t stutter.
“Look at me,” he says, a quiet command.
I do. It’s Otter, so I do.
“Are you okay?” he asks slowly.
“Oh, sure! I’m fine. Just don’t want to forget my shit, you know? Make Dom drive all the way back here.”
“He lives right down the road, Kid. Is it that important? We’re going to do the cake in a bit. I was hoping to get some help. This is your show, after all.”
“Hey, can you ask Bear?” I say. “It might take me a few minutes.” Please believe me. Please believe me and go away. Otter, please.
He doesn’t believe me. “You’d tell me if something is wrong, wouldn’t you?”
I laugh, though it’s forced. “You worry too much, Otter.”
“Kinda my job,” he says with a tight smile.
“I’ll be back soon,” I promise. I just gotta get somewhere safe. Everything is falling and I have to get safe. Everyone knows you gotta get safe when there are earthquakes. Everyone knows.
“Okay,” he says reluctantly.
I can feel his eyes on my back as I round the side of the house.
BY THE time I hit the front door, I can’t breathe.
It’s odd, this reaction. From a distance, like I’m floating above myself held only by a string, I can see it empirically. Here lies my intelligence. Here, I can scoff at myself for the child I really am inside. So things aren’t going the way I wanted them to. So things aren’t going the way I planned. Do they ever, really? Does anything ever really work out? And this of all things? I magically and without warning decide I’m in love with a man six years my senior when I’m fifteen years old? So what if I’ve thought there was always something there. So what if I just couldn’t give it a name. Bear gave me a way out from my own cowardice, and I ran with it like I was nothing but a child, a kid, incapable of making decisions, incapable of deciding my future for myself. And this is pain? I think this is pain? I survived my mother leaving me when I was five. I survived the death of the woman who filled her place when I was nine. After all of that, after everything I’ve been through, this is what brings me down? This is what knocks me to my knees? I deserve it, then. I deserve every part of it because if I can’t survive this, then I can’t survive anything.
Empirical. Cold. Real. That’s all my mind is. Through the haze and panic, my thoughts are hard. I’m pragmatic. I am logical and I am reasonable. This is nothing. I don’t need this. I don’t want this.
Except I do, my heart whispers. Except I do.
I may be floating and my mind may be running, but it’s my body that can’t breathe. My heart is the tether holding me to myself, and it ignores all reason. It ignores rational thought. It ignores everything but the hurt and the want and the need, because that’s all it knows. Now that I’ve allowed the walls to crumble, allowed myself to feel something, it won’t go back. It won’t fade. It just wants to burn.
It feels like everything is shaking when I hit the stairs, tripping on the first one and then the second. I grab the banister and I think wildly about the first time I saw Dom, standing across the street from me, watching me, his shoelace untied and trailing after him as he followed me down the road as I followed the ants. It was inevitable then, and it’s inevitable now.
The door to the bathroom stands open, and I slide on the tile floor, almost falling. I grip the edges of the bathtub and kick the door shut behind me. Even as it feels like the room starts to collapse, and I close my eyes against the vertigo, all I can see is his smile against her lips, the way his hand went to her hair. All I can see is their mouths together as she sighed. He’s mine! I want to scream greedily. Unfairly. He’s mine and you can’t have him! Because, I know, I understand, that’s how I’ve always thought of him. That’s how I thought he’d always be. Yes, there’s me and Bear. Yeah, there’s me and Otter. But they belong to others. They belong to each other. But him? He belongs to me, and that’s the way I want it. I found him. I brought him home. I kept him. He’s mine. He belongs to no one other than me.
“Ah,” I moan. “In. Just hold it in.”
But I can’t. I can’t catch my breath. With all the strength I have left, I lift myself up and over the bathtub rim and slide down into it, crashing onto the bottom, my shoulder twisting and my head rapping against the hard surface. Cold stars flash across my vision for a brilliant moment, but then they’re gone and all that’s left is my constricted chest in this shaking house.
I curl up my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around my legs, and wait for it to stop.
I DON’T know how long I’ve been in here, but it can’t be more than minutes. My shoulder still smarts and my chest is still tight and I still can’t think clearly. I still can’t think rationally. I can’t stop shaking because I’m cold. My skin feels like ice. My teeth won’t stop chattering.
There’s a knock at the door.
Go away. Go away.
“Tyson? You in there?”
Bear.
I open my mouth to tell him I’m fine, that I’ll be out shortly, but all that comes out is a weird croak. Get it together. Now. This is not you. You are better than this.
I clear my throat. I wrap my arms tighter around me. “Yeah, I’m in here,” I say, my voice high. I cough. “I’ll b-be out in a b-bit.”
Silence.
Then: “What are you doing?”
“I’m in the b-b-bathroom.”
“You sound funny.”
“Thanks. Can you l-leave me alone?” My voice comes out like I’m begging, and I can’t stop it.
“Your voice,” he says.
I wait.
“It’s echoing.”
I say nothing.
“Ty?” He sounds pained. “Are you in the bathtub?”
I twist to lie on my back so my voice rises instead of hitting the sides of the tub. “No. Jesus, Bear, go away.” Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I take a shallow breath. It hurts.
“No,” he says, and I groan. “I’m not leaving until I see you.”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I snap at him.
“You forget.”
“What?”
“That I know you. I know you better than anyone.” He opens the door. I close my eyes and try to collapse in on myself so I’ll just disappear. I try to stop shaking but I can’t, because I am so fucking cold.
“No,” he moans. “Ty? Oh, honey, oh please.”
It only takes him a second before he’s in the tub with me, curled up against my back, pulling me into his arms, wrapping himself around me. It’s a bit of a struggle; we don’t fit in here like we used to when I was just a little guy. But somehow, someway, he makes it work, like he always does.
“What’s wrong?” he asks me, trying to warm me. “What happened?”
The worry in his voice is almost my undoing. The anger on my behalf is almost my breaking point. God, does he know how strong he is? How solid? I am nothing like him. I am weak and scared and little. I want to be like my brother, but I don’t know how. I don’t even know where to start.
“Just got a little scared, I g-guess,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “It g-got hard to breathe.”
“Earthquakes?” he murmurs.
I nod once and grab his hand, holding it to me close. He splays his fingers out against my chest. He must feel my jack-rabbiting heart.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to distract him, distract myself.
“For what?”
“This. All of this. I thought I was better. I thought I had this under control.”
“You don’t need to apologize. Do you hear me? Ever, Kid. You don’t need to apologize ever.”
I wish I could believe him. “I don’t know how to fix me,” I whisper. “I don’t want to be like this anymore. I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want to have to come in here. I don’t want this, Bear.”
He kisses the back of my head. “I know. We’ll figure this out. I’ll make it all okay. Somehow.”
He sounds upset and I want to apologize again, but somehow, I keep it down. Instead, I open my mouth and make it worse. “Probably wish she’d taken me with her, huh?” There’s no question as to who I mean.
Bear stiffens behind me. “What?”
“Mom. Do you… do you wish sometimes that she took me with her when she left? It would’ve been easier for you. You wouldn’t have to deal with… all of this.”
“I’m going to say this once and only once,” he grinds out furiously. “Are you listening, Tyson?”
“Yeah,” I manage to say.
“Things might have sucked. Things might have been hard. Things might have seemed like they were dark and that we’d never make it through. But we did. Me and you. That’s all there was for the longest time, and we survived. Without you, there would have been no me. Otter may have my heart, but you are my soul. So, no, I don’t wish that. No, it’s never crossed my mind. No, I will never leave you and I will never let you go. You are stuck with me for the rest of your life, and if you ever ask me a question like that again, I swear to God you will see me angry like you’ve never seen before. You get me?”
I can’t speak.
He shakes me. “You get me?”