by T. J. Klune
“An asshole,” I hissed.
Then he told me what Wikipedia was. And how he knew the Kid had a Wikipedia account. And how I probably shouldn’t have ruined his shirt.
Psychological warfare.
That little bastard.
ROUND 3: I went online and bought my own shirt and had it rush delivered. It was awesome. Puppies, the OTHER white meat. He pointed out to me that I had accidentally put it on backward in my rush to show him. I had wondered why my neck was itchy. Winner: the Kid.
Round 4: Tyson came inside from playing and told me he’d been asked out on a date by a boy who lived down the street, and he was thinking about going. I had a heart attack and a stroke and seriously flirted with incontinence. Winner: the Kid.
Round 5: Telling him I felt bad about the puppy-shirt thing, I told him we could go pick out a dog at the pound now that we had a yard for it. Instead, I took him to the dentist. Winner: Bear “Rock Star” McKenna.
Halftime: Otter took a white undershirt of his and wrote on it with a black marker: I think you’re both stupid and wore it around the house (which in of itself is not all that funny, except that I’d found his first attempt at writing the shirt in the trash can, and he’d initially written “your” instead of “you’re”). The Kid and I agreed that he was the stupid one. Winners: the Kid and me (because Otter’s not funny at all).
Round 6: Okay, I’ll admit, by round six, I was running out of ideas. It didn’t help that there was so much more on my mind. Fuck, we had court to worry about, stupid custody hearings, whether or not the Kid was going to skip to the fifth grade or not. As much as I felt the Kid deserved whatever he got for the whole hair-loss incident, I just couldn’t do it anymore. So, being the better person (and don’t give me that look, I was being the better person) I ordered him another MEAT ISN’T NEAT shirt. I swear to God, we’re the reason that stupid vegetarian clothing website is staying in business. So, yeah. It came and he opened it, a look of extraordinary distrust on his face as he parted the tape. But that look on his face that followed? You know, that look that showed he felt the sun rose and set upon me? That’s the look I hope for. That’s the look I live for. He shouted incoherently as he’s prone to do as he launched himself into my lap and babbled in my ear.
Look. You’ve been with me a while. I know sometimes I can go on and on… and on. I overthink things. I make stupid mistakes that lead to actions that could otherwise have been avoided. I hear voices in my head that make me sound like I’m crazy and maybe I dwell on them too long. Okay, okay: way too long. Geesh. I know this. I understand this. But really? It all has a point. It has a reason. It has meaning. I’ve learned things in the past few years, things that I didn’t think were possible. I could never have imagined that I’d be where I am now, at this point in my life. It’s scary. It’s wonderful. And I know it doesn’t matter what’s out there against us, even though it sort of does. It doesn’t matter what doubts I might have, even though I still have them. What matters is the Kid in my lap, playing with my fingers as he sounds like a kid. What matters is Otter’s hand at my back, rubbing gently while he watches the two people he says mean more to him than anything else in the world. This is us, okay? For better or worse, this is us. For all of our wrongs and for all of our rights, this is us.
This is who we are.
2.
Where Bear Hears
The Kid Plead His Case
SO, WELCOME back.
To be honest, not a whole lot has happened since you were last here. I mean, good Lord, it’s only been about two weeks. But in those two weeks, there was the Great War with the Kid, where, as I’m sure you could tell, I came out the winner. There was the Big Move (It’s About Time). There were days when I couldn’t believe this was actually happening, that we were moving into the Green Monstrosity with a doorbell that sounded so very much like our own. The only thing that really sucked about the whole thing was the look I’d caught on Mrs. Paquinn’s face as she walked through our empty apartment, and it was a moment that almost completely broke me apart. I promised myself that we’d see her a few times a week and that she’d come over whenever she wanted to.
But she had covered up that look, and I did the right thing and pretended I hadn’t seen it. It didn’t stop me from hugging her longer than was completely necessary and kissing her cheek and inviting her over the next night for dinner. She had sniffled a bit near my ear, and her eyes were shiny when she pulled away, but her smile was there and her grip was strong. It helps, I think, that we’re only going to be, like, five minutes away. It was still hard to drive away from her, though.
Then there’s Anna Grant, the former love of my life, the one who I thought I’d be with until the world ended. It was her I hurt the most in the fallout of this past summer. It was her that had been lied to the most. It seems that she’s on the road to forgiving me, but I’m having a hard time forgiving myself. It’s not easy when I see her and always feel a dark smattering of guilt. It wasn’t easy for me when I’d seen Creed and her in the two days following Creed’s party, when everything had finally been laid out in the open for all to see. I told myself, as I watched them out of the corner of my eye, that I wasn’t jealous, but even that felt false. The problem was I couldn’t tell who I was jealous of, her or Creed.
Creed. My big brother (ha!). Creed who’d hugged me good-bye before going back to Arizona for the fall semester. His touch had been a bit stiff, his eyes slightly guarded, and I felt a little sad then, wanting to fix this thing in him that I’d broken. I don’t really know what the issue is, whether it be how long I kept me and Otter from him, or whether it’s just the fact that it’s me and Otter, his older brother. I thought about it, late one night, wondering how I’d feel being in his position, like maybe if the Kid and him got together when Ty was older. That caused me to cringe and gag a little, so I think I could understand. But I think a lot of things have been left unsaid between the two of us, and while I want to be the bigger man (for once) and broach the subject, I think maybe the distance will be good for now, and I’ll let him come to me. It’s not avoidance if you actively plan to pursue it. Someday. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m too much of a chickenshit to ask either one of them if they’re still together and doing the whole long distance thing. I don’t know why I should even care.
And of course there’s Oliver Thompson, Otter to everyone because of me. It always seems to come back to him, seems to end with him. Otter, who still confounds me like no one else, who can—at the drop of a hat—shoot me a smoldering look that makes me forget my name, much less the involuntary act of breathing. It’s a talent he’s mastered and always reminds me he has. Sometimes I can resist. Most of the time I choose not to. Otter said he loved me and I believed him. I told him I loved him, and I think he believed me (even though his first time was done in bed and mine was done with a misanthropic seagull).
Otter disappeared for three years. (Mostly my fault, that; but do we really need to rehash old details now? I have a feeling that’ll be done enough later on in this second part of my story. Aren’t you just so excited? Drama! Angst! Vegetarians! The Kid told me that if our story was a Lifetime Movie Event, I’d be played by Delta Burke and he’d be played by Taylor Lautner. I don’t even know who any of those people are.) But Otter decided to come back, saying he was haunted by me down in San Diego. He left behind my favorite person in the entire world, his ex-boyfriend Jonah Echols.
When he heard me say this once, the Kid told me I was being facetious. I asked him what that meant. He told me to look it up. I tried to but then I had to go back and ask him how to spell it. He rolled his eyes and wrote it down for me. I found the following:
fa-ce-tious [fuh-see-shuhs] adjective 1. Not meant to be taken seriously or literally. 2. Lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous.
I went back to the Kid and told him he was grounded. He asked me if I was being facetious. I told him no sir I was not.
So Otter came back and reminded
me that for all intents and purposes, we belonged to each other, regardless of anything else. Of course, nothing is ever that easy, and I kicked and screamed the whole way, creating way more drama than was completely necessary. Of course, in my own defense, there was the fact that my entire sexuality was in question, the fact that my mother came back and threatened me because of that (for reasons I still don’t understand), and the fact that Mr. Wonderful (Jonah—that was sarcasm) tried to steal Otter back that compounded the situation. It’s hard to not create drama when it seems to explode around you anytime you open your mouth.
But we survived it, somehow, him and me, survived it to the point where Otter felt the need to buy a house for us even before he was sure there would ever be an us again. Standing in front of the Green Monstrosity (seriously, whoever thought that color was a good idea should have their eyes removed) for the first time a couple of weeks ago had been life altering, not only because of what it stood for, but because of that man who stood before me, promising me a future I had never considered. I remember being shell-shocked and heartsore, but in a good way. We walked into that house for the first time, the doorbell like my own, and I knew I’d made the right choices, even though it’d been in a crazy roundabout way. Even though so much was still uncertain and still is, I knew then I no longer had to do it alone.
Do I still have doubts? I think I told you that I do. Of course I do. I’m human, after all. I’m the brother/parent of the smartest nine-year-old vegetarian ecoterrorist-in-training (who just recently told me he would like to start tantric yoga—what the fuck?). I’m the son of a woman who left Ty and me more than three years ago to fend for ourselves just because her new man didn’t like having kids around. I fell into a routine then that bordered on paranoid obsession, making sure the Kid would never want for anything. My mother came back and tried to take all of that away from us, all that work we’d done to rebuild ourselves during her absence, making things infinitely worse for everyone before disappearing to wherever. Our attorney thinks I have an awesome chance of getting custody of Tyson. I try to believe her. I am the boyfriend (“Partner,” the Kid tells me. “Boyfriend makes it sound like you’re in middle school, and he asked you to circle ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”) of a man who thinks the Kid and me walk on water. We have a roof over our heads, a place to sleep at night, people that love us completely and fully. Everything is just going hunky-dory. How could I not have doubts?
You know what, though? Before this goes any further, before we can see what kind of an ass I can make of myself this time around (because we both know that’s exactly what’s going to happen), there’s something you should know so there will never be any doubt about it: I love Otter. I love the crap out of him. Like, in a cheesy epic romantic comedy kind of way. If he was getting on a plane to take a job in China, I’d run to the airport after him and tell him I loved him right before he got on the plane. I’d stand outside his bedroom window with a boom box over my head and blast Celine Dion. If he was getting married to someone else and the priest said, “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” I’d be standing in the front row with a bullhorn screaming as loudly as I possibly could. Do you get it? The point I’m trying to make? I love him, yeah? Let’s never doubt that.
“You can’t even tell you’re losing your hair,” Otter says to me as he wanders into the kitchen this bright, early morning, kissing my forehead before taking a seat beside me. “Except on the front part, where it’s way noticeable.” The Kid snorts in his cereal and laughs so hard the soy milk comes out his nose. This grosses me out and I start to gag. Otter just stares at us as the Kid drips his snotty soy milk into the bowl and as I make weird retching noises that I can’t stop because my little brother is so fucking disgusting. Otter shakes his head, pausing to sip his coffee before opening the newspaper, all the while grumbling that he never gets to have a civilized breakfast.
Love is so completely overrated.
And finally, the last little piece of the puzzle, the last part that makes me whole: Tyson, the Kid, he of extraordinary intelligence and charm, he with milk dripping out his nose. He that can spout off some random eloquent quote one minute and then laugh hysterically in that high-pitched way he does so well the next. I told him once that he’d kept me alive after the events of three years ago, and that was not hyperbole, even though I sometimes bask in it. One could argue, I suppose, that if the Kid had never been born, life would have been significantly different. One could even go as far as to say that what happened with our mom might not have happened, at least in the way that it did. But, regardless of that fact, regardless of however hard it’d been, the Kid was and is the reason I am alive. While all the others had clustered around us to make sure we stayed afloat, it was him I turned to at my darkest, when I didn’t think anything else could matter ever again.
Oh man, I’m getting maudlin again.
Shit, sorry about that. I can’t promise that won’t happen again. But, hell, would you expect any less of me?
The Kid finally starts to breathe again, his face an alarming shade of purple. I scowl at both him and Otter, showing exactly how not funny I think they both are. They ignore me, of course, quite used to the little fits I get into every now and then. Otter’s hands are shaking the paper, and I know he’s trying to regain his composure as well, and I roll my eyes.
You see what I have to live with? Idiots, the lot of them.
“You’re not going bald,” the Kid assures me, a little too late, a huge grin on his face.
“I know,” I mutter, demolishing my toast.
Otter snickers.
“So,” I say, changing the subject. “You sure about this, Tyson?”
He scrunches up his face like he’s getting ready to ask one of his All Important Questions, and I give him a moment, just in case he does. You should know that no miracle has happened in the last two weeks, no divine hand of God has come down and cured him of his idiosyncratic ways. He knows that Otter is here and here to stay. He knows that I’m not going anywhere. He knows we’re doing our damndest with the whole custody thing. But you can’t change years of quirks in this short amount of time, no matter how settled we seem to be. He still asks when I am going to be home, no matter where I’m going, if it’s not with him. I’m expected to check in if I’m going to be late. He still won’t be the first to go into a public restroom, and the bathtub still gets some use if there are earthquakes.
My biggest concern when our mother had come back was just how far this was going to push us back, just how much ground we’d lose after all we’d done this summer. I still remember coming home that night after she’d shown up, after I’d broken things off with Otter. How limp he’d been in my arms, his eyes wide and glassy. I remember how angry he’d been, both at her and with me. I wish I could say that his anger toward me hadn’t been justified, but we all know that it was. I’d acted the only way I could think of, having been pushed into a corner. I wouldn’t have allowed anyone to take him away from me, and I curse her again in my head, wondering what cracks lay beneath his surface, if any. He’s shown an uncanny resilience this last time, and I hope it’s strong enough to do what we’re about to do. I hadn’t wanted this to happen, not really, but Otter convinced me, saying it wouldn’t be fair to the Kid if we didn’t. I had sighed, but in the end, agreed.
His face goes slack as he looks me in the eye. “You know,” he says seriously, “I think you’re way more nervous about this than I am. It’s just skipping a grade, Papa Bear. It’s not like it’s anything big.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, no. Nothing big at all. You’re only going to be the shortest kid in your class and everyone is going to stare at you weird.”
“Nice try,” he says, seeing right through my bullshit. “I’m the shortest no matter where I go, and the kids will only be staring at me because of how spectacular I am.”
No ego, that one. Humble to the core.
“I know you’re spectacular,” I concede. “I’m just worried that it’ll take everyone
else a little longer to figure that out.”
He looks annoyed. “I can take care of myself,” he retorts. “I’m not worried about a bunch of hormonal fifth graders on the cusp of puberty.”
Otter snorts from behind his paper but doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t changed the page in a few minutes, and I know it’s because he’s listening to what we’re saying. But I also know he understands that this needs to be between me and the Kid, at least for now. He’s said what he’s needed to say to me about the matter, knowing that the final decision needs to be mine. And yeah, I’ve already made up my mind, but I wouldn’t be Bear if I didn’t second-guess every little thing I did.
One day you’ll grow up, my conscience whispers sweetly. Won’t that just be a fun day?
I sigh. “I know you can,” I tell the Kid truthfully. And I do, really. But hell, I’ll be the first to admit that this whole thing scares the crap out of me. I remember how little I was when I got to the fifth grade, how hulking all the other kids seemed to be. Granted, I never had the support Ty does, or the brains, but I’m still worried that this is too much, too fast. With all that’s happened in the past four months, I wonder if the Kid needs another change this quickly. This could all very easily just blow up right in our faces, and what then? Send him to the fourth grade and pray a therapist can fix all the damage?
Oh God, speaking of therapy, I haven’t yet told the Kid that our attorney told me and Otter that we’d most likely have to visit a therapist for the whole custody thing. To make sure that I was a fit guardian and the Kid was not in danger. Or insane. The last time I’d broached the subject of a therapist a couple of years ago, the Kid had told me that the only people who go to therapy are the ones that have no friends to cry to. I hadn’t bothered to tell him at the time that he didn’t have any friends besides me. Back then, that just made me sad. Now, I would be totally fine if I was his only friend in the world. And not because I don’t want him to go out and make friends (which he seems to be doing, at an alarming rate). No, I’m just worried about that poor therapist being exposed to the brain in the Kid’s body. Ty’s not exactly… subtle.