shadowboxing

by altmive

Summary:

Sunny’s confession really screwed up their lives all over again, but Kel is fine, and he’s fixing it. Putting the broken parts back together. He did it before, and he can do it again.

He’s going to fix this.

(If only it were that easy.)

Notes:

PLEASE heed tags for warnings! thank you!

It starts slow, even in the moment; gradual, barely-there, like a paper cut brimming with blood, having just formed, between his thumb and forefinger.

Even as a comic-obsessed kid, Kel never worked much with paper. Books were his enemy. Homework is still a foreign concept. But it’s impossible to avoid getting hurt, even by something as unsuspecting as a strip of paper.

He’s not entirely certain himself why the image of a comic book is the immediate thing that pops into his head, standing in that hospital room— but it does, along with many other things. The blossoming pain growing in his chest reminds him of pouring hand sanitizer on a fresh wound, stinging with unbearable hurt until it eventually disappears entirely, leaving him clean, healed.

Because eventually, against all odds, paper cuts heal; within two to four days, if Kel is going by Hero’s med school books. A paper cut is the mildest kind of laceration. It is small; inconvenient, yes, but manageable.

Sunny, Basil, the four bluish-white walls of the hospital room closing in on him— it’s small. Inconvenient, yes, but manageable.

The foreign, smothering, emotion swirling in his gut as he stares at the top of his best friend's head while he recounts how he murdered his sister, brimming with words he can’t bring himself to speak— it is inconvenient. It is manageable.

Sunny’s voice, his words, are like two sheets of sandpaper rubbing against each other, loud and jarring and harsh. He wants it to stop immediately, but he can’t do anything except listen. The auditory equivalent of a car crash he can’t look away from.

After Sunny’s presumably finished speaking, all Kel can think is that he’s a head shorter than him, the result of a quarter of his life spent indoors.

Absently, somewhere as somebody outside of this moment, he sympathizes.

The rest of it plays out like he’s watching a movie. Aubrey’s arms fall to her sides, defenses simultaneously down and all the way up, baseball bat left against the wall. She sputters something Kel can’t comprehend before she walks out of the room, bumping Sunny’s shoulder roughly as she does. Hero goes next, hesitant, having said nothing.

And Kel just stands there.

Sunny’s making a face. There’s an emotion he can’t quite define etched in his features, and Kel thinks it’s the first time he’s seen him express much of anything in four years. Three years and eight months, if he’s being specific, because it’s early June, and Mari died in October.

Not even as long as it seems.

Sentences form in his brain. Ones that make sense, that should be said. He wants to sound like he knows what he’s doing, wants to say something like, “Sunny, I need time to think about all of this. After you move, sometime in the foreseeable future, I will reach out to you. I’d like to discuss this more. I believe that in the future, there is a good chance we will be able to repair our relationship.”

But he’s not his brother, and he’s far from a sophisticated speaker, so instead, he opens his mouth and mumbles, “Sunny, I…” then stops. Because there is nothing he can say to the confession. Nothing that would tie up loose ends, keep him content, keep Sunny content, keep everyone content. No words appear before him. He picks at a callus on his palm and feels no pain.

Eventually, he closes his mouth, can’t keep up with it at all, speechless for the first time in three years and eight months. He bites down on his lip so hard, it could draw blood, then walks out wordlessly, a mirror image of Hero.

It’s brighter out in the hallway. The morning sun shines through the window like a beacon of truth. Kel looks left, then right, but doesn’t see Hero nor Aubrey. Truthfully, he can’t think much about anyone except Mari, and himself, but that doesn’t feel right. Sunny lingers in the background of his mind, and he hardly has time to even consider Basil before he’s turning down the hallway toward the elevators.

It is easier to think about himself, but these kinds of things aren’t supposed to be easy, so he does everything in his power not to.

Eventually, he finds Hero waiting in the lobby, leaning against a wall. His hands are in his pockets; he’s staring at the floor. When Kel walks up to him, he doesn’t even acknowledge him, just exits the hospital, still wordless. The drive home isn’t much better.

What the hell are you thinking? Kel wonders, staring at his brother like if he squints hard enough, he can read his mind.

Then, quieter in his mind, he wonders, What the hell am I thinking?

He prioritizes. He shoves the thought of himself far, far, far, into the back of his mind.

━━━━━

For a few days, Kel feels like he’s woken up in a bad horror movie and switched places with his older brother, only this scene takes place three years back and the director hasn’t yelled “cut” in a week.

Maybe it’s a mistake to compare himself to Hero way back when, but he can’t entirely fault himself for doing so; he lies in bed until noon and crafts poorly-made sandwiches as meals when hunger threatens to kill him. He takes showers only when he remembers (though, to be fair, that’s not much of a difference from usual), and he swears he recognizes the look in his mother’s eye, the worried glint, when she comes in to take his laundry.

Only this time, she’s not looking at Hero like that. She’s looking at him.

Every morning, someone knocks on their front door. At first, Kel thought it was a friend of his parents, but it happens so often, and nobody tells him anything, so he can’t tell. Sometimes, he hears the knocking with his own ears; sometimes, he’s asleep, and later in the day, his mother will vaguely mention it. He doesn’t ever ask for more information.

Sometimes, he’ll come downstairs when his mom is in the middle of making dinner. She’ll always give him a once-over and a kind smile and offer him some dinner.

And he will always decline, saying he doesn’t want to wait for it to be done. She offers to bring him a plate. He tells her Hero is really busy studying and doesn’t want her to interrupt, even if he isn’t, and he never has to tack on the fact that he doesn’t want to bother him, because his mother doesn’t want him to, either.

Still, she always offers a bowl of fruit and asks him to stay and talk for a bit. Sometimes, most times, he says, “Sorry, no. I’m gonna get back upstairs,” because he knows where their conversation will go. Other times, he offers her a quick, five-minute, chat where they try to talk about anything but Sunny and Basil and Mari and the chopped down tree in the neighbor’s backyard.

He’s not sure how she found out about what happened, though the quick, tense, conversation he heard Hero having with her through a closed door after they got home from the hospital likely had something to do with it.

Every time, without fail, his mother will grow tired of the small talk and bluntly shift topics to exactly the thing he doesn’t want to talk about. She will steal a grape from his plate, sigh heavily, and say, “Be honest with me, honey. What are you thinking about all of this?” with that soft, concerned, look in her eyes that he hardly recognizes.

And he doesn’t know what to make of it. All of it.

His thoughts, most of all, because he’s never really been great at grasping on to those in the first place, but now is one of those times where he should be especially great at it. He doesn’t know what to make of her caring, because she’s always had better things to do than worry about him. He thinks “be quiet, Kel” and “quit bothering your siblings” and “can you do something useful instead of messing around?” are his mother’s favorite sentences.

(The logical part of his brain always butts in saying, She’s your mom; she’s always worrying about you, when those thoughts come up.

Sometimes, he just wishes she’d make more of an effort to prove it, but then he feels ungrateful, and then he can feel an unwanted thought spiral begin to open and swirl, and he has to close it before he can fall in.)

He always just shrugs and plasters on a smile and says, “I don’t really know, mom. But don’t look so sad! I can’t let these kinds of things hold me back. I know it’ll all work out in the end.”

She’ll relax, give him a small smile, say, “I’m glad you’re handling this so well, Kelsey,” and get back to making dinner.

After his chats with his mom, he’s learned to save some of the fruit she gives him for the rare occasion Hero will look away from his schoolwork or sit up in bed and ask, “What are you eating? Can I have some?”

So he shares the rest of his fruit with him, then gets back to reading comics.

Kel knows their mom is disappointed, to some extent, that Hero is sleeping in more, that he seems to have lost some of his drive, that the part-time job he talked about getting over the summer appears to have been nothing more than an empty promise.

He can tell by her tense stance when she folds laundry in her bedroom, the door left open, that she’s waiting for a repeat of a terrible year. He can tell by the way she talks to Hero on the rare occasion he leaves his room to come watch TV in the living room with Sally, suggesting he go to study groups in town, that she’s not happy with all of this, albeit for an entirely different reason.

Hero always just hums in acknowledgement. His mom looks like she’s thinking about the son who bought her flowers to apologize for the simple act of hanging out with his childhood best friend.

So Kel tries to do what he does best to make at least one of them happy; move on, just like before.

Eventually, he breaks out of his monotonous routine, at least in a sense. He finds time to go outside and play basketball in the quiet court in Faraway Park for a few hours most days, because he refuses to fall into bad habits. But it’s difficult, some days. He can’t help but wonder if Hero is really doing okay, or if he’s doing a great job at acting like he’s doing okay.

Most days, he comes home earlier than he usually would, anxiety threatening to take over his body and seize his heart and kill him. He makes sure Hero is still home, still alive, still breathing.

He always is.

Sudden concern isn’t anything new to him. He’s always been worried about Hero getting himself into some self-caused trouble more than himself, but he’d gotten used to worrying less, after Hero got out of bed, after he left for college.

Now, he hesitates just a little every time both of them are standing near a staircase, gets a little worried when he hasn’t seen him for a few hours, wonders if he’ll come home and find him in the backyard, too, jump rope tied to a tree branch, because, after all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

But he knows that’s stupid, and he knows, now, that it wouldn’t be imitation at all, lacking any and all flattery.

He also knows comparison is a dangerous road to go down.

Not that it makes it any easier not to.

He tries to focus on what isn’t like the past, how it isn’t like two years ago. It’s bright outside all the time. Their bedroom window is still open. Hero doesn’t seem short or snappy with Kel. He gets up some mornings to go for a run. Sleep appears, at the very least, to come easily to him most nights. He has nightmares, Kel knows that, but he always had those, even when things were good, even when they didn’t know Mari was a victim of a tragic accident and not a victim of her own mind.

Mostly, he’s just glad that Hero doesn’t seem angry at his mere existence.

It’s not like last time, Kel thinks, mostly cheerful, after every successful bout of small talk he has with Hero.

Their conversations haven’t really gotten past that. Kel knows he wants to talk about it. Both of them do. He also knows both of them have no clue where to begin or end.

So they don’t start. Not yet.

And there’s no need to, because it’s enough, for now, to share cut up apples and grapes with Hero on their bedroom floor. So Kel chooses to live in those moments and pretend he isn’t dwelling on things.

━━━━━

On a Wednesday, mid-June, a week after Sunny’s confession on the dot, Kel gets a text.

[11:40 A.M.]
Aubrey: I want to talk to you. Meet me at Hobbeez.

[11:41 A.M.]
Kel: Woah woah woah, hold your horses!!
Kel: First of all where did you get my number?
Kel: And second- I can’t just drop everything and hang out with you! what if i’m like suuuuper busy right now

[11:42 A.M.]
Aubrey: Don’t question my sources.
Aubrey: And what the hell would you be busy with? You’re Kel.

He can’t argue with her if she has a point. Well, he can, but he’s really not itching to get punched.

So he gets out of bed early that day, warms up leftovers from some breakfast his mom made, and gets dressed.

Hero wakes up when he does that. Sits up and frowns and asks, “Where are you going?” and if Kel didn’t know any better, he’d say he almost sounds, maybe even looks, a bit angry.

His heart sinks, and it’s almost concerning how quickly his mood drops. Things feel like they’re crashing down again, all from four words, all because of his tone, all because of a frown.

Things were fine— Well, as ‘fine’ as ‘completely not fine’ can be, but that’s still fine. Things were okay. Hero wasn’t mad, why is he mad, now, what did he do?

Part of him wants to run out the door right after he asks, to avoid a potential fight entirely.

But he’s not thirteen anymore and there are no staircases in sight, so he doesn’t.

It’s all part of growing up, he reminds himself, in a way he never did before he knew the truth. You have to stop being so childish. Face conflict head-on, or whatever.

“I’m meeting up with Aubrey at Hobbeez,” Kel responds, turning around after he finishes pulling on a clean shirt. “Do you wanna come? She’d probably like seeing both of us.”

Hero visibly relaxes. “No,” he says. “Just—” A beat of silence. “Have fun.”

Resentment? Hatred? Anger? Nothing at all?

Maybe he’s overthinking it.

Maybe nothing was crashing down at all. Or maybe Hero is thinking about calling him a nuisance again. He doesn’t know; he doesn’t really want to know.

Kel just adds Hero’s apparently worsening temper to his ever-growing list of concerns.

...

At Hobbeez, Kel questions Aubrey’s taste in meet-up spots.

The aisles are crowded with children and teenagers and it smells like burnt caramel and old plastic. But it doesn’t take long to find her, courtesy of her hot-pink hair sticking out like a sore thumb. She’s got her arms crossed in the comic section, studying an old edition of one he doesn’t recognize.

“Hey, Aubrey!” he says casually.

She jumps at the sound of his voice. “Jesus! Give me a little more warning next time. You scared the shit out of me.”

“What do you mean? That ‘hey’ was a warning!” Kel argues, and he finds it fitting that they’re ten seconds into a conversation and already bickering.

“God, you’re so loud.” Aubrey uncrosses her arms and turns back to the comic shelf, reaching out and crinkling the plastic protector over one of them. She spares a quick glance at Kel when she asks, “Do you remember reading this when we were kids?”

“No?” he says, though it comes out as more of a question. He studies the cover more carefully. “Looks kinda cool though. Why?”

“Nothing. Whatever.”

Aubrey is tenser than usual, Kel notes, and that’s saying something. So he makes a new plan: get the hell out of Hobbeez and find some place more relaxing.

But it seems she has the same idea.

“So…” Aubrey begins, then trails off, uncharacteristically uncertain. “...I can’t believe I’m asking you for help, but— Kim and Vance’s family went to welcome the people moving into Sunny’s new place. She said it was stupid and boring and unnecessary, but they seemed nice enough.”

Nice neighbors are always a plus, but Kel never really so much as considered the prospect of having someone else live next door. In his mind, Sunny and Mari would’ve lived in that house forever.

Well. Not exactly.

He waits for Aubrey to finish. “They have kids. Young kids. And they mentioned that they wanted to clean out the old treehouse. So I need you to help me clean it out before they can throw all our stuff away. You can do all the heavy lifting.”

She pulls two large trash bags out of the tiny pockets of her jacket, and Kel doesn’t even waste time wondering how she managed to fit them in there.

Of course, Aubrey’s glaring at him now, teal eyes boring into his skull. He may not be a mind reader, but he can tell she’s thinking, If you say no, I will kill you.

So he says, “Sure, I’ll help you out! Honestly, that sounds fun.”

“Good,” she says flatly, and they turn to leave Hobbeez.

As they’re pushing open the doors, Kel suddenly says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you the conditions of my helping you out.”

“What do you mean, ‘conditions’?” Aubrey asks, matching his stride as they walk. Her tone suggests she isn’t actually asking what the conditions are— rather that she’s asking why the hell he has a list of ‘conditions’ and won’t just help her out of the goodness of his heart.

“I wanna keep Mr. Plantegg.”

“What?!” she yells. “Absolutely not! He’s mine.”

Kel shrugs, hands in the pockets of his shorts. “Then I guess you’re out of luck.”

“Hey! I am so not doing this thing alone. You better clean it out with me. I can’t lift that table on my own, asshole.”

Kel snorts. “Oh, you can’t lift some furniture, but you think you could beat me up?”

“Don’t be stupid. I know I could beat you up.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. New deal,” Kel begins, clapping his hands together once. “We’re gonna race. First one there gets to keep your dirty little stuffed animal thing. Go!”

Aubrey only manages to sputter a quick, “What—?” before Kel takes off running down the street.

The warm summer air on his skin is like a healing balm.

He’s still laughing when he hops the fence into the neighbor’s backyard, already halfway up the treehouse’s ladder by the time Aubrey makes it there.

He holds up Mr. Plantegg, caked in dirt, but soft nonetheless, when she stands in the entrance. “If you don’t kill me, you can have him.”

Still catching her breath, she glares at him, walks over, and snatches the plush. “I was gonna have him anyway. But fine. That was so stupid.”

So they start cleaning. Well, for the most part. It turns out it’s easier to get distracted than Kel thought.

He holds up a pair of mud-covered shoes in the corner of the treehouse and frowns. “Whose are these?”

Aubrey looks up from the toaster she was inspecting. “Those were… Uh, I think they were Basil’s?”

He looks at the pair. They’re brown— obviously, from the mud and dirt— but there are hints of orange and green underneath. “How do you know?”

She shrugs. “They’re tiny?”

“Hey, Basil isn’t that small,” Kel defends.

Aubrey snorts. “Are you sure? He’s like—”

Silence sits heavy in the air as realization dawns on her. Aubrey’s voice grows quiet. She clears her throat.

The shoes were his own, he finally realizes. The pair his mom got him for his ninth birthday after he saw a character in a cartoon wearing similar ones. He begged his mom for the same kind. She was so mad when he lost them. It’s weird to think that the whole time, they were up here.

Aubrey drums her nails along the side of the old toaster. It’s loud.

Was Basil that short when we were kids? Kel wonders before he can stop himself. Did he ever actually grow, physically, past the age of twelve?

A heavy pang of hurt hits his chest, full force. Kel drops the shoes into the trash bag like they’ve burned him.

“I’m gonna throw this away,” Aubrey finally says, referring to the toaster. Her voice breaks him out of his thought spell. She starts sliding it into the trash bag.

“What? No way! That’s a perfectly good toaster!”

Aubrey makes a weird face. “Kel, I’m pretty sure there are cockroaches in this thing.”

“The toaster stays,” Kel says firmly, crossing his arms.

“Does not.”

“Then the TV stays.”

“The TV is even worse!”

Kel drags out a long, dramatic, groan, but allows Aubrey to pick up the toaster and throw it away. He’s not sure why it feels like she’s throwing away some incredibly important heirloom that he must pass on for generations to come.

Alright, maybe he doesn’t want to clean out the treehouse. Maybe he’d rather be doing anything else.

Maybe it would have been better if the neighbors just cleared it out, if Aubrey never asked for his help, because then he’d never know it isn’t his anymore. But he knows now, and he can’t take it back, even if he wants to, and upon thinking that, he starts thinking a little too hard, connecting dots that don’t need to be connected, that really can’t even be connected, that—

“Kel?” Aubrey asks, snapping her fingers in his face. He moves away from her hand and frowns. “Quit thinking so much. I can hear the gears turning in your tiny brain.”

He rolls his eyes and tries to get the television into a bag. He can feel Aubrey staring at him, like a predator eyeing its prey. Or maybe that’s just how she looks at people.

“Hey.” Aubrey takes a seat on the table, looking down at Kel, who is sitting criss-cross on the dirty carpet, struggling to pull the television into a bag. There’s a shift in their conversation, and Kel, admittedly, kind of hates that. It means she’s about to say something real, something beyond petty fighting and arguments, and while he hates it when she’s rude, there’s familiar comfort in it, too, the kind he’s fond of today.

“Are you—” The way she pauses makes it seem like it takes everything in her just to ask the next question. “Are you doing okay?”

Well, he wasn’t expecting that.

“What? Yeah?” he responds. Try again, his brain says. “I mean— Yeah, of course I’m doing fine. Doin’ great, even.” He smiles, and it feels pretty real to him, so he gets back to work on the TV.

It’s not really a lie; he just doesn’t entirely know if it’s the truth. It’s somewhere stuck in-between the two. But he’s hoping that if he says it enough, it’ll come true, because he needs it to be true. Because Aubrey needs him to be fine, and Hero needs him to be fine, and Sally doesn’t really know it yet, but she needs him to be fine, and really, everyone needs him to be fine so they can move forward. Eventually, Basil will need him. Sunny, too. Kel has to be ready.

Aubrey continues to stare him down. “If you say so,” she responds. Her trash bag rustles in her hands. “I mean, it’s just— I feel like everyone else had their big outburst, their big thing, except you. And maybe Hero.”

“Oh, Hero’s had his outburst,” Kel responds without thinking, tone heavy with levity. He realizes immediately after that that is not something to say jokingly.

“Did he do something?” Aubrey suddenly becomes deathly serious. “Is he actually mad at you? God, I swear, I’m gonna kick his ass—”

“No! No, nothing like that,” Kel quickly cuts in, trying to diffuse her anger. He looks across the treehouse at a dead plant in a dirty pot. He doesn’t even know where to begin with moving it. “Agh… It was years ago, forget I said anything. Hero is good. I’m good, too!”

The way she says, “Fine,” tells him she will not, in fact, be forgetting about it.

He doesn’t completely let her off the hook either, though.

“Did you say you’d kick his ass for me?” he teases.

Aubrey’s face flushes. “I’d take any excuse to kick someone’s ass. You’re not special.”

He just laughs and moves on to the next item, throwing it in a bag. As much as he’d love to keep every artifact up here, he knows they can’t. He also knows the table in their treehouse isn’t going anywhere; he doesn’t even remember how they got it up here in the first place. Mari and Hero probably had to assemble it up here with a bunch of screws and real tools.

He’s willing to bet Aubrey knows the same thing.

Maybe she just wanted his company.

I should have checked on her sooner, he thinks, guilt taking over and mixing in with the maelstrom of already existing thoughts of burdening and self-loathing.

No. She doesn’t think that. It’s fine. I’m fine.

He’ll fix this. He’ll fix it all. He knows he can fix it. He fixed it two years ago, taped the trophies Hero threw off his shelf in a blind rage back together. He fixed it a few weeks ago, knocked on Sunny’s door and actually got an answer.

He can tape everything back together, just like he did back then, one person at a time.

“—and for the love of god, would you stop zoning out?” Aubrey says, bringing him back to reality, her words muffled and drowned out by his own brain. She throws something at his face. It actually kind of hurts.

“Ow!” he yells, staring down at a strange squirrel-rat-like stuffed toy. “What the hell, Aubrey?”

“Put that in your bag. Mine’s too full.” Aubrey sets it down, brushes annoying strands of hair out of her eyes, then looks outside the treehouse like she’s trying to tell if she can safely drop the bag from the height she’s at. It’d be a pain to actually carry it down.

Kel says, “Careful, don’t slip,” before he can really think about it.

He realizes what he’s said all too late.

She turns her head, fast, shoots him a look.

Instead of saying, “I won’t trip, idiot,” or something of that sort, she puts one hand on the inside wall of the treehouse to hold on and gazes back down.

Kel digs his nails into his palms. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as he wants it to.

━━━━━

Hanging out with Aubrey, despite her temper, turns out to be more fun than Kel anticipated.

If he’s being honest, though, he wasn’t anticipating it to be terrible at all. He’s always been stubbornly optimistic in that sense. He certainly missed her over the years, even if she did appear to hate his guts. The ever-growing pessimistic side of his mind still doesn’t know if the same could be said for her, though.

He used to zone out on accident, stare at her from across the park sometimes. Her teal eyes shot daggers at him through her bleach-blonde bangs. Then, she made new friends, and suddenly there were many pairs of eyes shooting daggers at him, and he stopped staring. Stopped getting caught doing it, anyway.

But it takes only one group hangout with her gang for them to learn that he’s not to be messed with anymore. Mikhael mopes and whines and talks about how he can never overcome the way Kel hurt him, made a fool out of him, and that leads to everyone listing their grievances with Kel— but it all ends up fine, just like he wants it to.

He goes home with only one bruise on his arm, and Kim only glares at him three times out of the seven times she looks at him, so he thinks he’s making great progress.

“Gang” isn’t even really the right way to describe them, Kel decides after their second time hanging out; the worst they do is spray paint the back of Othermart, or steal from Othermart, or harass mean old people in Othermart.

It seems Othermart is in a rather unfortunate position.

Sometimes, they follow stray cats and feed them. Kel told them he didn’t understand how this was rebellious; Vance told him to shut up and pet the cats. Charlie advised him to just go along with it.

All in all, for the most part, Kel likes Aubrey’s friends, even if he does feel like a side character standing in the background most times.

Every once in a while, they go out for a picnic by the lake. Never under the tree, always right by the edge of the lake. Kel’s seen their picnic blanket dip into the water a few times, and Kim always groans and says her and Vance’s dad is gonna kill them for getting his blanket wet, to which Vance says, “Don’t drag me into this, it was your idea!”

Kel prefers to hang out by the tree, however, watching them from afar; Charlie, surprisingly, makes for good company. She joined him, once, and asked if he was feeling left out. He lied and said he got a call from his brother and forgot to rejoin them.

So she sat down and said she needed a break from all their yelling, anyway, and it was quiet, and peaceful, and almost nice.

Another time, Aubrey came over and asked him why he’s always trying to escape them, pointing her baseball bat down at him threateningly. That time, he really had gotten a call from Hero, asking what time he’d be home.

He told her to relax and stop trying to kill him and went back to the picnic. Aubrey lingered by the tree for a minute, picking at something in the grass.

Kel gets the feeling she’s not a big fan of the lake.

He never brings it up.

Despite his insatiable desire to fit in, he doesn’t engage in their most scandalous acts. His mom is always telling him, “Sally is going to be looking up to you as she’s growing up, and you need to be a good role model,” and he does actually agree with her on that.

Though, to be fair, she’s referring to the times he complains about doing the dishes, not committing illegal acts.

Still, it rings true; he has to grow up, learn how to be a good older brother like Hero was and still is to him. It’s so strange, how just a month ago, he would have done anything in his power to remain a kid. A single one-sided conversation with Sunny now has him wishing to be anything but.

Aubrey makes fun of him for his hesitancy to join them, of course. “What’s wrong with a little bit of spray paint?” she asked once, waving around a steel can in his face. “They just wash it off every time, anyway.”

“Aubrey, you can’t just keep vandalizing stuff,” Kel had groaned. “You’re gonna get caught one day! Besides, you have to grow up eventually... We’re gonna be eighteen soon! Adults don’t do stupid illegal stuff like this.”

She made an unfamiliar face, almost like Sunny in the hospital, when he said that. It went away as quickly as it appeared, with Aubrey brushing him off with a quiet, “Whatever, nerd.”

So he didn’t tell her to grow up ever again.

━━━━━

At night, when Kel is laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep, his mind runs wild with doubt.

He shuts it down with the same thought each time.

I am handling this well, he repeats to himself in his mind like a mantra. Not something he quite believes yet; something he’s trying to get drilled into his head. I am being mature about this. I have to be. I’m not a kid anymore. I have to grow up.

Rolling over onto his side, eyes burning but refusing to close, he realizes it will be another sleepless night. One of those nights where sleep is within his grasp, just an inch away, yet his fingers can’t reach it.

It’ll all work out in the end.

He just wishes the end would come sooner.

━━━━━

Hero makes dinner more often. Kel expected the opposite. It’s a pleasant surprise and a welcome reminder that not everything is a mirror of an unpleasant past.

Most days, Hero pops his head into his room before he cooks and asks Kel what he wants to eat. At first, Kel was greedy, asking him to make all his favorite foods— but Hero never declined.

Honestly, Kel just wanted to see how far he could push it. But after the fourth time, Kel just tells him he should stop asking for his opinion and make his own favorite food.

That’s how he gets finessed into eating vegetables.

That night, while they’re walking back upstairs, he tells Hero, “That’s not your favorite food, you liar. You totally fooled me into eating carrots! That should be a crime!”

Kel’s so outraged, he doesn’t notice the way his knuckles turn white with how hard he’s gripping the banister.

Hero, two steps ahead of him in every sense of the saying, responds, “What do you mean? I love carrots,” with a smug smile.

And much like everything else in his life, Kel doesn’t really know what to make of it, something as small as a joke.

On one hand, he knows Hero is a liar, and that he just wanted Kel to finally eat something healthy. Which is a sweet gesture, actually, another reminder that Hero still cares enough to go down to the fine details of giving him a healthy meal. God knows he needs it, with all the disgusting things he drinks.

But he also knows there’s the possibility that Hero isn’t actually lying; that he’s once again changed since he went off to college. He hates that most of all, because it, among many other things, bothers him to no end and makes it hard to fall asleep at night— the idea that people grow and change, himself and his loved ones, especially, included.

So change is necessary, he’s beginning to learn. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t totally suck.

All in all, Hero is a bit of an anomaly.

He puts food on Kel’s plate and tells him to stay healthy, then glares at him when he says he’s going to hang out with Aubrey, and he doesn’t know why. He makes breakfast some mornings and wakes Kel up just to make sure he can have it, but he doesn’t say ‘goodnight’ back when Kel is going to bed.

He categorizes it, Hero’s behavior, Hero in general, in ‘undefined.’ He moves his temperance further up his mental list of worries. He learned long ago that it’s no use translating that list to paper; he took up too many notebook pages with his big handwriting and it only made things more complicated.

More questions than answers come up. Kel feels like he’s pulling teeth trying not to talk about what’s going on around Hero. It feels like, more than ever, this should be the time of communication, yet he can’t bring himself to venture deeper than small talk and “How’s life? Oh, yeah, I’m doing great. You makin’ dinner tonight? Cool, cool.”

Hero doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, either, the complete opposite of how he was acting before, and Kel really doesn’t want to spend another year asking his brother if he’s okay, because deep down, he doesn’t know if he can handle being berated by him ever again, not after learning everything he’s learned.

But one morning, Hero surprises him. He asks, “How is Aubrey doing?”

They’re in the kitchen. Hero is doing dishes while Kel is finishing his french toast. He has to finish swallowing a mouthful before saying, “I think she’s doing good! Same as always. Not as bitter and evil… I think. No, she’s definitely still bitter and evil. But in a less awful way, I guess.”

Hero laughs lightly. “That’s good to hear… I think,” he responds, scrubbing particularly hard at a plate for some unknown reason. It looks clean to Kel, even from far away. “How’s Basil?”

Kel nearly chokes on his orange juice.

“I— I wouldn’t know?” he responds truthfully. “I haven’t seen him around. Seriously.” He pauses. “Hero, I’ve only been hanging out with Aubrey and her friends.”

Hero finishes with the dishes, and he only looks at Kel for a moment, but he’s glaring. He’s got something tired and angry in his eyes. It lasts for a moment before Hero says, “Right. Okay.”

He thinks you’re a liar, Kel’s mind informs him. He thinks so little of you, he’s assuming you’re sneaking around behind his back.

And Kel wants to respond to his brain, He doesn’t really think that. He’s just on edge…. Hey, besides, even if I did become friends with Basil again, why would it be sneaking? Hero wouldn’t try to control my life like that.

But the harsh part of his brain doesn’t have a response, because he is the harsh part of his brain— he is every part of his body and brain that he both loves and despises and will never talk about.

It’s unfortunate, the way it all suddenly makes sense to Kel. The glares, the tone, the attitude. It hits him like an avalanche.

Part of him wishes he didn’t know. Part of him, selfishly, wishes he didn’t know a lot of things.

━━━━━

In mid-July, when he’s trying to sleep at night, Kel can see a dream beginning to form before he’s really asleep.

The four white walls of the hospital. In the dream, he’s staring at Sunny, though his face is blurrier than it should be. He’s outlined by a white aura, hair more dark blue than black. Basil isn’t in the hospital bed, which has been neatly made. His brain is leaving out details.

Kel walks past Sunny and out into the hallway, his dream self moving on his own. It’s bright, brighter than it previously was inside what was, presumably, Basil’s hospital room.

He turns left, then takes another left, and finds Aubrey, her back against the wall, arms hugging her knees, head down. She’s crying harder than he’s ever seen her before.

Silently, he takes a seat next to her on the ground. He doesn’t ask if she’s okay. He doesn’t ask her anything. He already knows the answer.

She takes a peek at him through her pink bangs, and her brown eyes are watery. She took out her contacts in the hospital bathroom, slept on the chair in Basil’s room during the night. “Nobody is waiting for me at home, anyway,” she had said, and nobody had an argument for that.

Her voice breaks, in the present moment, when she asks, “How could they do that?” She shakes her head. Her bow droops down her head, revealing subtle signs of her dark brown roots growing back in. “It doesn’t make sense. How could… How could they even…?”

Aubrey trails off. Kel taps his fingers on his thumb in increments of four, bites his lip again to try not to go down a spiral like her. “I don’t know, Aubrey... I really don’t know.”

Eventually, she lifts her head. Her cheeks are flushed. A strand of pink hair sticks to her lips, which she brushes away.

She looks him dead in the eye and says, “Siblings don’t… That just doesn’t happen. Mari would never— She would never put him through that.” She sniffles. “It just doesn’t add up. I mean, have you and Hero ever had a fight like that?”

A cold chill runs through his body. He shifts uncomfortably on the dirty tile floor.

“No,” he lies. “I don’t think so.”

It’s a memory. The dream, that is.

The five minutes Kel spent with Aubrey before he found Hero in the hospital lobby. He asked if she needed a ride, if she’d be fine all alone; she said she already had one, that she didn’t need him. He didn’t know what else to do or say. He stood and left.

But in the dream, the memory stretches on, the hospital corridor darkens, and Aubrey wipes the tears off her face.

“Are you sure?” she asks, and her voice sounds like it’s been put through some kind of terribly broken filter; not human, some kind of monster. “What would have happened if you killed him, then, too?” A pause. There’s a ringing in his ears that grows louder and louder. “Maybe you did.”

He wakes up; the morning sun shines through an open window. Hero’s neatly-made bed is empty on the other side of the room.

He doesn’t feel like he’s just had a nightmare. No fast breaths or crushed sternums, just bleary eyes and a pounding heart. But something heavy sits on his chest for the rest of the day, anyway.

━━━━━

Hero practically breaks down the bedroom door when he walks in, slamming it shut behind him so hard, Kel actually jumps.

“Um… Hey, Hero,” Kel says tentatively, looking up from the fight scene going on inside the comic he’s reading and hoping it doesn’t pour out to real life. “You okay?”

Angry. Hero looks very, very angry. Then he seems to register that Kel is in the room, reading on his bed, and something in his expression falters.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m really sorry if I scared you.” He scratches the back of his head and sighs. “I’m fine. Just… Mom being mom,” Hero says, taking a seat on his own bed.

Kel just nods and hums in agreement. “Yeah, she’s usually mad about something…” Hero doesn’t respond, but Kel can practically feel him staring at him. He finally turns to him and cracks a joke. “Did I do something? Are you trying to explode me with your mind?”

“No! No, sorry. It’s just— I thought you were hanging out with Aubrey today.”

“Oh, she said something came up. I dunno.” Kel shrugs, watching Hero expectantly. There’s definitely something on his mind.

“Hey, Kel.” The serious tone in his voice is enough to get Kel to set down his comic book and actually sit up. “Are you…” Hero sighs. “I need you to be honest with me.”

Anxiety courses through Kel’s body, even though he knows he isn’t keeping any secrets. He thinks he isn’t, at least.

Besides, this isn’t his fault; Hero is the one who decided to just disrupt his peace, come barging in unnanounced like he owns their bedroom, like he’s not leaving in a month or two, anyway, to go back to college. Kel has half a mind to clean out his side of the room and make him sleep on the couch when he visits for Thanksgiving break.

He’s not sure why he starts thinking that. It makes him feel like an even worse brother. He shoves it all away and focuses on the task at hand.

“Hey, why so serious? What’s goin’ on?” he asks, brushing his hair out of his eyes. He really needs a haircut.

Hero crosses his arms. “Have you been talking to Basil?”

The question sounds more like an accusation. “No,” Kel answers truthfully. “I haven’t even seen him around. Why are you asking—?”

“Kel, I don’t care if you are, okay? I just… Would like to know, that’s all,” Hero interrupts. Kel feels something hot simmering underneath his skin. “All I want to do is make sure you’re safe.”

Safe?

The implication that Basil is a threat makes the burning sensation, the anger, everything, worsen.

“I mean, if you’re talking to him again—”

“But— I’m not, I really—”

Hero gives him a look. “Kel—”

Kel gets off his bed in one, swift, motion. His comic book slides to the floor, pages crumpled when they hit the hardwood. He doesn’t even notice. “I just told you I’m not, and I’m being honest! I haven’t spoken to him at all! Why don’t you believe me?!”

His angry response seems to genuinely surprise Hero, but there’s a glimmer of doubt in his eye, and suddenly Kel feels like he’s seven years old again, trying to convince his mom that Hector really was the one who knocked over one of her flower pots, not him.

Only this time, he actually didn’t knock over the flower pot. He actually didn’t talk to Basil. He didn’t actually go against his brother's unspoken request. And there is almost nothing worse than being accused of something he didn’t do.

“Why can’t you just believe me? Do you honestly think I respect you that little?” Kel continues when Hero’s silence stretches on.

Hero looks taken aback. “Respect me? It’s not… It’s not about respect, Kel. You don’t need my permission to talk to Basil. I just want you to be honest.”

He feels like he hasn’t slept in days. He feels something so foreign yet familiar, something akin to what he felt in that hospital room, though now muffled and beaten down.

Kel does what he does best. Pushes it down, forces it to disappear.

He won’t have a repeat of two years ago, of that fight. He won’t.

“I’m leaving,” he says, voice quivering, hands trembling with anger, and it’s a bit childish, the way he storms out of the room, but he doesn’t care.

“Kel! Hey, where are you going?” Hero asks, following close behind him as he makes his way down the stairs, holding on tightly to the railing.

Kel freezes, hesitates on the third-to-last step, can’t help but wonder if he’s ever gonna view this the same way again.

Hero seems to have the same thought in mind, because he doesn’t follow him down the stairs.

So Kel continues walking, all the way out the front door, silent. He pulls out his phone and types out a text to Aubrey, speed-walking down the sidewalk.

[5:27 P.M.]
Kel: Do you wanna hang out

[5:28 P.M.]
Aubrey: No.

[5:28 P.M.]
Kel: :( It’s an emergency
Kel: i need to hang out with someone right now!!!

[5:29 P.M.]
Aubrey: Not my problem?
Aubrey: Still no. Stop texting me.

[5:29 P.M.]
Kel: Booooooooo you’re no fun

[5:30 P.M.]
Aubrey: Stop bothering me. I’m trying to hang out with Kim.

[5:31 P.M.]
Kel: Seriously you’re choosing Kim over me?
Kel: Can’t I just join you guys

[5:32 P.M.]
Aubrey: I’d literally rather cut off my own arm than have you join us.

[5:32 P.M.]
Kel: I’ll pay for all your food

[5:33 P.M.]
Aubrey: We’re at Gino’s, see you soon!

Twenty minutes later, Kel’s sitting across from Aubrey and Kim at Gino’s, scarfing down a pizza like he hasn’t eaten in years.

(He has no money on him, but they don’t need to know that.)

“Ew… Dude, you’re disgusting,” Kim says. Her eyes, enlarged by her glasses, glare with disapproval.

“What?” Kel responds sheepishly through a mouthful of pizza. Aubrey scrunches up her nose at the same time Kim does. “Not my fault Gino’s is so good! I can’t remember the last time I came here.”

“Last week,” Aubrey reminds him. “We were literally here last week for Charlie’s birthday.”

Kel chews thoughtfully. “Yeah, whatever, last week was forever ago.”

Kim turns and whispers something in Aubrey’s ear. Aubrey snorts. Kim smiles and whispers something else, and Aubrey rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning, too.

“Hey! Quit gossipping about me when I’m sitting right across from you!” Kel says, throwing a used napkin across the table.

It gets thrown right back at him. “Gross! Ugh! Aubrey, why did you even invite him?”

“Uh, duh. She’s my friend. She had to invite me, ‘cause she loves me so much.”

“Pity,” Aubrey corrects flatly.

“That sounds more plausible,” Kim agrees.

Another napkin is thrown across the table. Aubrey throws it back. Kim grabs Aubrey’s drink and takes a sip.

“Ew! This water is warm, Aubrey,” she complains. “I’m gonna go get some ice… Don’t start another napkin fight or I swear to god… Gino’s is looking for any reason to kick us out, and this just might be it.”

Once she’s gone, Kel shoves aside his empty plate of pizza, actually full for once. Aubrey rests her elbows on the table, chin on top of her interlaced hands. She stares at Kel. “So. Why are you here?”

Kel takes a sip from his own cup of water. Ice cold. “I was bored.”

“Try again.”

“What the hell?”

“You would never offer to pay for something. Hell, you probably don’t even have money on you, do you?” Aubrey asks, and, as insulting as it is, she’s right. Kel chooses not to respond. “I thought so. Jeez… You must have really needed a friend.”

Kel ignores her callout and teases, “So you admit that we’re friends?”

“Oh, shut up and stop avoiding the question!” Aubrey crosses her arms and looks across the mostly empty restaurant to Kim, who is smacking the side of the soda machine.

Aubrey looks fond.

When she turns to Kel again, the expression doesn’t entirely disappear.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks awkwardly, clearly out of her territory here.

Kel shrugs, swirling his straw in his cup. The plastic makes an ugly squeaking noise as he does so. “Nothing to talk about, really,” he says. “I’ll be fine. Hero was just being weird.”

She narrows her eyes and leans across the table, mimicking her prior action. “Weird?”

“Yeah,” he says. “He thinks I’m hanging out with Basil again, and I think it… I don’t think he wants me to? But he also says he doesn’t care? But he also seemed mad when he was asking if I started hanging out with him again?”

Looking up from his cup, he can see Aubrey has paled slightly.

“...What?” he asks.

“Um…” Aubrey leans back against the booth, pulling some hair over her shoulder and messing with the ends. “That might be my fault.”

Kel sits up straighter, now more confused than comforted. “What do you mean?”

“God, I should’ve known he’d make it a big deal!” Aubrey finally looks at him. “Whatever. I was at Othermart the other day, and Basil was there. He just… He just happened to be there. And I don’t know why, but I… I kind of talked to him.

“Honestly, I still don’t know how to feel about him, so don’t go thinking I’ve forgiven him or something. But I had to make sure he was okay, you know? I mean— I still… I still feel terrible for pushing him in the lake. He just looked really tired. Not as bad as before, but you could still see it all over his face. So I walked up to him.

“He looked like he wanted to run away the moment I started talking, but he stayed. He was buying groceries for Polly. Said she’d been tired lately. I didn’t ask him to elaborate. We just made small talk. Seriously, it was short and vague. I asked how he’d been, and he said he wasn’t doing great, but he was definitely doing better.” She pauses. “And I think Hero saw us. I swear to god, I saw his stupid perfect hair peeking from behind one of the aisles.”

Before Kel can respond, Kim suddenly comes back over, slamming Aubrey’s drink on the table. “Holy shit, Aubrey. I just fought for my life trying to get ice out of that fucking soda machine. The employee told me he had to get some from storage, and then I had to wait? And he brought me ice, alright— In a fucking plastic glove. He brought me ice, in a latex glove.” Kim sounds bewildered. She shakes her head. “But here. Don’t ever get water without ice again. Disgusting.”

Kim slots herself back into the seat by Aubrey with ease. “Yikes. Thanks for the ice, but— Sorry, I have to kick you out of our own hangout. I kind of need to talk to Kel about something in private.”

“Oh. I get it, that’s fine,” Kim says coolly, already standing again. Aubrey must have told her about what’s been going on; Kel doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so chill about something involving less time with Aubrey. “It was cool seeing you, Aubrey.” She turns to Kel and gives him a weird look. “See you around, nerd.”

The moment she’s out the door, Aubrey gets back down to business. “What I was trying to say is— I mean, Hero knows you’ve been hanging out with me, right? So he probably saw Basil and I talking, and assumed… Well, y’know. Bad things come in threes, I guess?”

“Yeah, that’s probably it.”

“Anyway. I’ve been texting Basil since that day. Not a lot,” she quickly clarifies, like it’s a crime to talk to him, and, well, maybe it is to a certain someone. “But… Still. It’s been weird, I won’t lie. But I asked for his number and he didn’t say ‘no,’ so I figured it’d be a pretty dick move to not text him.”

That comes as a surprise. “What have you guys talked about?”

“The smallest of small talk. His new plants. Bun-Bun.” A pause. “Sunny, once.” Aubrey breathes in deep, then exhales. “I think he needs a friend right now, and… I don’t know.”

Aubrey stops to take a sip of her water, to presumably collect her thoughts. It’s an odd sight, seeing someone who’s never hesitated to blurt out the first thing on her mind, rude or not, stop to consider her words.

Eventually, she looks to Kel again.

“What do you think of me talking to Basil?”

The pit in his stomach grows. “Honestly? I’m really glad you did. I probably should have talked to him sooner.”

Aubrey looks up. “What? Why?”

“I want us all to start hanging out again! I just need to figure out how to get through to Hero… And Sunny, eventually…”

“Kel, that’s not— Hold on, I thought you said Hero wasn’t being difficult?” Aubrey reminds him, her tone suggesting that she just might kick both their asses if he lied to her back in the treehouse.

But he wasn’t lying before. Maybe not entirely. Hero seems to be about as fine as he can possibly bring himself to be, because that’s how he is; sometimes, Kel thinks he’s still making up for the past when he doesn’t need to anymore.

Kel can’t even blame him for being hesitant to reach out to anyone, either. It’s difficult, however, because he wants to give his brother all the time in the world to work through his emotions, but he also wants to just be on the other side of this already. He wants the five of them to go to the beach again before summer ends, before Hero goes back to college— he wants it to be just like it was, now that it can be.

Almost. It can almost be the same as it was.

But his brother has implied, in his own weird, incommunable way, that he’s barred from speaking to Basil, god knows what Sunny is doing, and Aubrey is… Somehow, Aubrey is the mature one.

A scary thought pops into his mind, one he can’t shove away or bury.

What if I can’t fix this? What if Hero and Aubrey never forgive them?

Then, even worse:

Do I forgive them?

“Kel?” Aubrey snaps her fingers in his face. Kel’s getting really tired of that. “Hey, you’re zoning out again. God, what the hell is up with you?”

“Sorry,” he responds, voice unusually tight, nails digging into his palm again. This time, it actually does hurt, fresh crescent moon calluses being pressed on. He stops the action immediately.

Aubrey’s cruel demeanor falters. She uncrosses her arms and just stares at him. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you or Hero… We’re all dealing with shit right now.” She hesitates. There is palpable uncertainty behind her next words. “But I think you guys should talk to Basil, eventually. He’s been out of the hospital for a few weeks now.”

Has it been weeks since Sunny confessed? It feels like it’s simultaneously been two days and ten years to Kel.

“And even if it is unbearably awkward, I think it’d be really helpful. To both of you. To all three of you.”

Well, something has to happen, sooner or later. And this is what he wanted, anyway— progress. Kel pulls out his cell phone.

“Can you give me his number?”

━━━━━

The sound of a light switch flicking on and off wakes him up.

The annoyingly loud clicking noise sends aching pains through his skull. Light seeps through his closed eyelids, then disappears, then appears again, then disappears permanently when he covers his eyes with his hand.

Finally, it stops; the light is left on. Kel opens his eyes and looks through his fingers, palm shielding his delicate pupils. He stares at the light switch by the door to his bedroom.

Something, as usual, is wrong.

The walls are moving, for starters, light blue wallpaper wiggling slowly, like there are worms within them sliding down. The clock by his night stand is not working; it’s turned to static, red numbers indiscernable, making no sense.

Am I dreaming?

“—right, okay, thanks for that.” His mother’s voice approaches from behind the door. She walks into the room, a laundry basket against her hip, lighting up when she spots Kel. “Oh! Hi, honey! I was wondering if you wanted to go out for a walk before dinner?”

Kel frowns. “A walk?” he asks. His voice sounds like it’s coming from beside him, not actually from him.

“Yes! I was thinking,” his mother continues, walking toward the bed. She takes a seat and begins folding his laundry out on the empty space of bedsheets between the two of them. “You, me, Sally, Hector, and your dad could take a walk down to Faraway Park, and you can finally show us how good you’ve gotten at basketball.”

Excitement courses through his veins, and suddenly, nothing else matters. Not even the worms in the walls. “Are you serious?!” he exclaims, laughing. “I would love that! That’d be so cool, mom!”

Her laughter mixes in with his own. He’s seated, yet practically jumping. “Now, now, settle down. What’s so different about this? We go on walks all the time. I didn’t know you liked the park so much, though. We’ll have to go there more often!”

Slowly, his laughter gets quieter, though it doesn’t disappear entirely. He’s still recovering from his bout of happiness when confusion trickles in. “All the time?” he repeats. “Mom, we never— We never really do anything together.”

All at once, she becomes very serious, gripping a shirt harshly.

This happens in dreams, Kel suddenly remembers, thinking back to when he got sick of being unable to sleep one night and read Hero’s notes on sleeping and dreaming from his psychology class. People in dreams change emotions super fast. This has to be a dream. Kel studies his mothers face; it’s distorted. Why doesn’t it feel like a dream?

“What are you talking about?” his mother asks. “How can you say that, after everything you’ve given up?”

It suddenly occurs to him that his mother never mentioned Hero joining them, and Kel quickly turns his head to his side of the room—

Empty. There’s nothing but a wall. No bed, no trophies, no medals, no neat desk. It’s just empty. The room isn’t even smaller. It’s haunting. It’s horrible. He never wants to see it empty again.

“Mom, where’s Hero?”

Her anger disappears. She almost looks sad.

“Honey, you can’t take these things back,” she says, voice equally tight and sympathetic. She squeezes his arm, and at first, he thinks it's supposed to be comforting, but then she starts squeezing harder, the pain and pressure growing.

His anxiety is tangible, a familiar and unwelcome friend, creeping up on him unannounced, as it always does. “Mom, you’re hurting me.” She doesn’t stop. “Where’s Hero?”

She stands up fast, drops his arm. The laundry basket clatters to the ground. Dirty clothes spill out, unwashed, untouched, all an illusion. “Enough of this. You asked for this, Kelsey.”

“Mom—”

Suddenly, her head snaps to look down at him, directly in the eye.

The good news: it’s so fast and blurry, Kel immediately knows, with confidence, this time, that he’s dreaming.

The bad news: the dream does not end.

“You asked for this,” she repeats, this time choking on tears. “You didn’t want a brother. You couldn’t even respect his one and only wish. How many times will you hurt him? Stop acting like you care. You’re just like him, Kelsey, you’re just like him.”

“Just like who?” he asks desperately, unfamiliar emotions coursing through him, like grief increased tenfold, overwhelming, drowning him.

His mother glowers at him. “Well, Sunny, of course. You’re just like Sunny.”

“I’m not. I’m not like Sunny. Well— I don’t know, in some ways? But not like that. I’m not him, mom. I’m not him.”

“You keep killing him,” she interrupts, and he doesn’t know who she’s referring to.

His heart thumps a little faster, something he didn’t think was possible. “Mom, look, just… Just tell me where Hero is.”

“You’re just like Sunny,” she repeats again. “You didn’t want a brother.” Not true. “You killed him.” It’s not real. “He didn’t want a sister. He didn’t care about her. He killed her. He lied about killing her.”

His mind goes blank.

“Murderer, murderer, murderer,” she says, over and over and over, and he just stands there. It gets louder, and louder, and louder, and louder, and louder, the volume unbearable, until—

He sits up with a gasp, choking on oxygen. It’s bright out, again; morning.

Footsteps approach, but he’s too busy keeling over to really notice, his hands grasping desperately at his chest to calm his heart. “Hey, take a breath, Kel— Are you okay?”

Hero’s hand is warm on his shoulder. Kel coughs into his elbow upon realizing he’s not alone and remembers the way Mari used to constantly have to remind him to do that when he was younger, to ‘avoid giving your friends all those bad germs!’

That makes the coughing fit worse.

“I’m—” Another cough. “I’m fine!” The coughing slowly turns into nothing more than a sputter, until he’s eventually really fine. His throat hurts when he speaks. “Sheesh. Sorry… I’m alright, I promise. I must have choked on my own spit or something.”

Hero laughs, but it’s clearly out of pity and nervousness, his face contorted with concern. “Are you sure? You looked like you were sleeping just fine a second ago. Did you have a bad dream?”

“No. Uh, I really don’t know what that was,” Kel responds before he can even think about it, and although he’s barely processed the fact that he’s even awake, his mind begins to berate him once again.

Just how many things are you going to lie to him about? he asks himself. Maybe your mom was right in that dream. You don’t deserve what you don’t respect.

But I do respect him! he tells himself. He’s my brother! And honestly, I don’t even know for sure if he doesn’t want me talking to Basil! He would tell me if he didn’t, because he can communicate— he’s the adult, not me!

Clearly.

Kel gives up, dips his head and stares at his bedspread.

There’s a part of him, buried somewhere deep inside, that wants so badly for Hero to press. Part of him wants him to sit down next to him and never take his comforting hand off his shoulder and ask, “What’s really going on?” because if that were to happen, Kel wouldn’t be able to lie, and then he wouldn’t have to carry it on his own, but it wouldn’t be by his own doing, so it would be okay. He can’t hate himself if it isn’t his choice to open up.

But Hero just pats his shoulder once before retracting his hand and says, “It happens. Just let me know if it keeps up, yeah? You might be getting sick or something.”

Kel smiles. “Right. Thanks, Hero.”

However, Hero doesn’t leave just yet. In fact, he takes a seat on Kel’s bed, and Kel almost thinks he was wrong, before. Maybe this will be an intervention. He doesn’t entirely know how to feel about that.

But Hero doesn’t bring up the ordeal again. “So… Where did you go yesterday?”

Oh, that’s right. They had an argument.

“I hung out with Aubrey,” Kel responds, running a nervous hand through his hair, which has been tangled from sleep. He sits up straighter in bed, sitting criss-crossed under his covers. “I’m really sorry I yelled at you. I—”

Hero cuts him off. “You have nothing to apologize for,” he says firmly. He averts his gaze from Kel to the floor, messing with his hands in his lap. “I was entirely out of line. I shouldn’t have yelled at you or cornered you like that. The last thing I want is for you to think I don’t trust you. Besides, it wasn’t really my business anyway, whether you’re talking to him again or not.”

Stunned, he just stares at Hero in silence for a few seconds before saying, “But— But it is your business, too! I get it, dude. You’re… You’re allowed to be all…” He makes a vague, messy, motion with his hands. “...I don’t know. Messed up about it? Mad?”

“I know, I know. And I believe you when you say that you’re not talking to him, but I wanted to tell you that I don’t mind if you do decide to start. Not that you even need the green light from me or anything. I guess I’m saying, just… Don’t let me hold you back from reaching out, okay? I’m working through my own stuff, but it’d be hypocritical if I broke us all apart. I think it’s good that you’re trying to talk to everyone again— That you’re talking to Aubrey, at the very least.” Hero pauses, smiles fondly. “You’ve always been like that. Trying to fix everything. It’s admirable.”

Admirable. He thinks my efforts are admirable.

He’s just lying to make you feel better. You think he wants you talking to the guy who hung his girlfriend? Staged her suicide? Tied her up in a tree like she was some mannequin prop in a bad horror movie? You really think he’s okay with that?

“Kel? Are you sure you’re okay?” Hero’s smile is gone, replaced by another concerned frown, and Kel is getting very, very, tired of everyone’s clearly misplaced concern. He’s the last person anyone should be checking up on.

“Yeah! Sorry, just zoned out.” Kel clears his throat. “Thanks for saying that. Apology accepted. But it’s not like you really needed to explain yourself… I know I’ve been acting weird. I guess I’ve been vague about who I’m talking to ‘cause I didn’t want you to think I’m doing crazy illegal stuff with the Hooligans...”

Hero visibly pales. “You’re not doing illegal stuff with them, right?”

“No! Of course not!” Kel quickly clarifies. “Sorry… Look, I’ll try to be more open from now on. You should hang out with us sometime.”

He laughs. “I… Think I’m a bit too old for their teenage antics,” Hero says. “But thanks.”

Kel waves his hand dismissively. ”Psh. You’re never too old to hang out with friends!” he says, and Hero just smiles and thanks him again.

Kel knows he has to say it. The thought that’s been bothering him, weighing him down— he knows he has to say it before this moment dies, before Hero gets up and leaves.

“I’m gonna text Basil. I’m gonna talk to him,” he blurts out. “I dunno when. But I’m gonna do it. Aubrey gave me his number.”

And, true to his word, Hero appears calm, entirely neutral. He nods. “Okay,” he says. “I hope it goes well. Tell me if it does. Or doesn’t. Or don’t tell me at all. It’s up to you.”

“Thanks! I will,” Kel says, though he’s not exactly sure what he’s promising, and the conversation ends.

Hero stands up and heads for the door, leaving it open when he walks out.

“Come downstairs for breakfast!” Hero calls one more time before disappearing down the stairwell, and he didn’t even realize he was putting up a fake happy act until he doesn’t have to anymore.

Liar. Liar, liar, liar. Hero is a liar. He’s lying to you. How can you not see it?

Kel’s pretty sure his brain has hated him more these past few weeks than it ever has in his entire life. He buries his face into his pillow and begs no higher power in particular for it to go away. It does not.

His lungs ache. Something hot wells up behind his eyes, within him, all over.

He blames it on the cough.

━━━━━

It takes him a week to finally text Basil, for reasons he can’t define even to himself, though he’s pretty sure Hero and his own thought spirals and bad nightmares probably have something to do with it.

The first time he texts Basil is after a nightmare of his own, one that leaves him paralyzed in bed for what must be half an hour and leaves him acutely aware of every creepy sound the house makes.

[1:29 A.M.]
Kel: Hey Basil!! This is Kel, Aubrey gave me your number. Hope you don’t mind me texting you!
Kel: How have you been? Sorry if that’s a dumb question
Kel: Oh shit sorry I didn’t realize how late it was
Kel: I mean shoot*. Don’t tell hero i said shit
Kel: Oh my god I said it again
Kel: Moving on, just text me back whenever you get the chance! No pressure

[5:35 A.M.]
Basil: Oh, hey Kel! Thanks for reaching out,,, I’ve been doing okay!
Basil: I think I’m doing better than before, at least?
Basil: Um I promise I won’t tell Hero. Haha
Basil: How have you been? You sent those texts pretty late at night. Why were you up?

[6:53 A.M.]
Kel: Just didn’t realize how late it’d gotten
Kel: I do that a lot, u know how it is with summer vacation
Kel: I'm doing good! I’m glad you are doing better too

[7:14 A.M.]
Basil: You should try going to bed earlier,,, Take better care of yourself, please!
Basil: I’m glad to hear that! Thank you as well, Kel.

[7:15 A.M.]
Kel: No prob! So look I wanted to ask you something

[7:20 A.M.]
Basil: Yes?
Basil: I’m helping Polly make breakfast right now, so I’m sorry if I don’t respond right away.

[7:21 A.M.]
Kel: You’re fine dude don’t apologize
Kel: Would you maybe wanna hang out with me Hero and aubrey?
Kel: Aubrey said she talked to you in the store but it’d be cool if I got to see you too
Kel: and I think it’s about time we finally actually talked
Kel: But we don’t have to if you don’t want to talk yet too! I just wanna hang out, like old times

[7:21 A.M.]
Basil: Oh,,, Do you mean today?

[7:22 A.M.]
Kel: Yeah! Today hopefully but whenever you’re free works

[7:28 A.M.]
Basil: Alright. Let me ask Polly if we’re doing anything today.

[7:34 A.M.]
Basil: Okay, I’m free. Do you want to meet me at Gino’s? Maybe at noon?

[7:34 A.M.]
Kel: HECK YEAHHHH
Kel: Let me ask Aubrey and hero!!

[7:36 A.M.]
Kel: Okay aubrey is free
Kel: Hero is busy today, sorry
Kel: He’s studying like a total nerd :/
Kel: But Aubrey + I will still be there

[7:37 A.M.]
Basil: Okay. I’ll see you guys then!

…

If he’s being honest, Kel has been incredibly dishonest, as of late.

It’s such an odd and uncomfortable thing, to carry so many secrets on his shoulders when he’s so used to being a mostly open book; it’s even worse knowing he doesn’t have to carry it all on his own, that he’s cared about, that he could just talk about it if he weren’t so stubborn.

But he is stubborn, and he is going to do this, to prove that he’s still strong enough to. He’s not going to bother anyone with his own thoughts, because everyone else is dealing with the same stuff, anyway, and they’re not bitching about it.

He wonders how people do it. How people can lie and hide for so long. Then he wonders more about how Sunny and Basil used to do it, imagines himself accusingly asking Basil how he managed to lie for so long from across the table at Gino’s, and he has to cut off that train of thought, close the spiral before it can trap him.

Hero was never going to be part of this, but Basil doesn’t need to know that. Basil doesn’t need to know Kel is starting to get sick of Gino’s, something that should be impossible, from the pure painful nostalgia it produces. Basil doesn’t need to know he hasn’t purposely tried to stay up late a single night this summer, but that he just can’t sleep normally, anymore.

(He’s starting to feel concerned about himself, something he only used to do once in a blue moon, something he used to be able to solve easily with more sleep, more water, less gaming, more basketball. But nothing seems to be working like it used to, so he just moves on to the next-best coping mechanism: ignorance.)

When he leaves that day, he manages to miss a conversation and a question from Hero. The task of getting from his home to the restaurant is uninterrupted, and his spirits are actually quite high when he walks inside.

It seems he’s the late one, despite being right on time; Aubrey and Basil are already sitting in a booth. She’s on the opposite side from him.

He can’t read her expression, but she doesn’t appear to be displeased. Her mouth is moving. She’s actually having a conversation with him. He can see the top of Basil’s hair peeking above the booth, still blonde, of course, though smoother now, tangles brushed out. The flower has been discarded, it seems.

When he sits down, he slides in next to Aubrey and smiles. “Hey, Basil! It’s good to see you.”

Basil freezes like a deer in headlights, and it’s actually kind of sad, but also slightly funny. Like he expected Kel to sock him in the face instead of say a kind greeting.

It takes Basil a moment to regain his composure, but Kel supposes he’s always been kind of like that— expecting the worst at all times. He used to warn them about sea urchins in the water when they went to the beach, used to tell Kel he’d choke on sand and die if he kept eating it (which was a brutal way of putting it, but Kel stopped eating sand after that. Ate less sand, at least.)

When he finally does collect himself, he smiles. Kel thinks it could very well be the realest one he’s worn in years.

“Hey, Kel. Thanks for coming.” He pauses, like he’s waiting to see if Kel or Aubrey want to guide the conversation; he’s given the spotlight, however, so he continues. “Um… Sorry, Aubrey and I were kind of in the middle of a conversation. I was just telling Aubrey about Polly’s birthday being next week. I don’t really know what to get her.”

“Yeah, and I’m helping him figure it out,” Aubrey says, voice flat, though she’s clearly not displeased with Basil, but rather with Kel. She elbows him in the side. “Thanks for greeting me. Jerk.”

Kel frowns and rubs his side. “You’re the jerk! I was gonna greet you right after I said hi to Basil…”

“Yeah, sure you were,” she grumbles.

Across the table, Basil laughs. Aubrey and Kel look at him in sync. He suddenly appears anxious, like he’s just done something awful. The joy disappears from his face.

Kel makes a mental note to just laugh whenever he laughs, in the future.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Basil says. “It’s just— You two really are the same as always...”

Kel snorts. “Uh, she’s the same as always. I’m way more mature than her.”

“Hey!”

He goes to elbow her in the side— not even in the rough way that she did it to him; he’s gentler than her in every aspect— but she still manages to dodge that.

It’s just like old times. Maybe with a little more physical pain because of Aubrey. But still like old times.

Kel doesn’t get it, really. He doesn’t understand the feeling he gets when he sees Basil sitting across the table. It’s as if his body has a reaction separate to his brain, with his body protesting being within twenty feet of him, simmering with something low and hot and sad, while his mind comes up with ways to get closer to him again, to be his friend. Love drowning out hate, hate drowning it back out, love fighting in retaliation— it’s an endless cycle. His heart pumps a little more than it has to at his mere presence.

Kel doesn’t mind it— the feeling, he finally decides. It will go away, in the end, anyway. It has to.

Aubrey somehow seems more comfortable than him; her yelling and Basil’s gentle laughter mix in with the rest of the conversation in the restaurant. And Kel smiles and nods along and laughs when they do, but he feels like he’s not part of it; like he’s watching a movie about the turn his life is supposed to take.

Like his life, the scene, this— it isn’t happening to him, but around him.

They order pizza and soda and water, and they talk about safe things, things that only scratch the surface of something beyond small talk.

Things like how Basil’s in therapy, but nothing beyond that brief mention. How Aubrey lost a CD she borrowed from Kim and can’t find it, now, and is probably gonna get beat up by her. How Basil’s been gardening more. How Aubrey’s been looking at colleges on the computer at the library, “just for fun, of course.”

How Basil’s been texting Sunny, every now and then.

They move on from that topic pretty quick.

Kel eats one slice of pizza and his stomach hurts, so he doesn’t eat another. In the end, they’ve barely managed to make a dent in their food.

“Hey, why aren’t you eating?” Aubrey asks suddenly. “Gino’s is practically a delicacy to you.”

Kel leans back in his seat and shrugs. “I’m too stuffed.”

She gives him a weird look, but brushes it off, jumping back into a conversation with Basil about Bun-Bun.

I should have just grabbed another slice. Now she’s gonna be all weird. I shouldn’t call her weird. She’s just being a good friend. Is she even worried? She just looked annoyed. Not my fault my stomach hurts. Why the hell does it even hurt? Oh, whatever— I should worry more about Aubrey getting mad at me. But she’s not mad, is she? She’s kind of always mad. I don’t even know if she’s worried. What the fuck is going on? It’s just pizza. It’s just Aubrey. It’s just—

Two snaps, right in his face. Kel jumps. “Earth to Kel?” Aubrey says, tone dripping with annoyance. “Basil asked how your mutt’s been doing.”

“Mutt?! He has a name, thank you very much.” Kel rolls his eyes. “Hector’s doing great! He’s still good with kids, like he was with us. He really likes Sally,” Kel explains, slightly grateful he’s been welcomed back into the conversation- not like he was ever shunned, though. He did that to himself.

He briefly wonders if Basil even knows who Sally is. He can’t remember if he ever told him. Basil doesn’t ask, so he presumably does.

Maybe Aubrey told him.

He hates that.

He doesn’t know why he hates that, so he tries to stop hating it, but it lingers, even once it’s been exiled from the forefront of his brain. Thoughts that simply linger are worse than thoughts that stick to the walls of his head. He can rip things off the walls of his mind. He can’t rip a lingering feeling out of the air.

Kel reminds himself not to hurt himself, not to dig his nails into his skin, because the last thing he needs to do is draw his own blood during lunch with friends.

Basil nods, fidgeting with his hands on the table. “That’s good… I’m glad Sally is good, too. I wish my parents would let me get a pet... L-Like a dog, or a cat! I’m not calling Sally a pet,” he clarifies nervously. Aubrey and Kel laugh in sync.

“I knew what you meant. What kinda pet do you want?” Kel asks, trying far too hard to sound normal while Aubrey uses her straw to swirl around the ice cubes in her drink.

“Hmm… I’m not sure… Polly really likes cats, so…”

Kel likes cats well enough. Cats don’t really like him, but that’s never stopped him before. “Aww! That’d be awesome. I remember Mari’s old cat. She was so cute.”

It goes silent for at least five, long, horrible, seconds, before Basil just laughs nervously and says, “Yeah. Mewo was adorable.” More silence. Kel waits for Aubrey to butt in, but she doesn’t. “Um, anyway… Thank you guys for inviting me out today, but Polly wanted me home before two o'clock to do some stuff…”

“We get it. It was cool seeing you,” Aubrey says.

“Yeah. See you around, Basil!”

Bssil says his own quick goodbyes and slides out of the booth, and Kel feels like he can breathe again.

Aubrey elbows him again, right in the sore spot she already hit.

“Ow! What the hell, Aubrey?”

“Move. I’m leaving, too.” She doesn’t sound mad. Not exactly. So he just stands and gets out of her way, and Aubrey heads for the door.

Kel follows after her, the bell above the door jingling violently as they exit. Basil is already halfway down the street opposite of Gino’s, headed home. “Hey, Aubrey! Did I do something?”

“No,” Aubrey responds. Then, angrily: “Yes, you idiot! I could feel how uncomfortable you were, and it was weird!”

“Well, so-rry!” Kel replies sarcastically, shocked by her sudden outburst, because he thought he was performing pretty well, acting totally fine with all of it. “I don’t know how you want me to act!”

Aubrey stops by the fountain and takes a seat on the edge, chewing on her lip. “I thought you were ready for this. You’re the one who planned this whole thing,” she says, and if Kel didn’t know any better, he’d say she almost sounds soft, maybe considerate, in her own rude and annoyed kind of way. Quickly, she becomes harsh again. “Jesus, Kel. You should have told me if you weren’t.”

“But I am! I wanted this! I want us all to be friends again!” Kel argues. “I thought that went fine, Aubrey.”

“You’re so lucky Basil didn’t seem to notice anything. You wouldn’t eat the pizza, and you were so quiet when we were talking, and you kept zoning out! And—” She presses her lips tightly together. “Bringing up Mari like that when the conversation was going so well? What the hell was that all about?”

Kel sits next to her and throws his head back, groaning in exasperation. “You can’t seriously be mad at me for bringing up Mari. I barely mentioned her… And besides, we have to talk about Mari eventually! We can’t just avoid it like—” He cuts himself off, decides not to go down that path at all. “Whatever. Is it a crime to not be hungry and zone out a little? Jeez…”

“When it comes to you, hell yeah it is.”

“I’m not some little kid who just eats everything he sees anymore,” Kel grumbles.

Beside him, Aubrey goes still. “Wow.”

“What?”

“I never thought the day would come where you admit you’re not a kid anymore.”

“I’ve totally said that before!” Kel defends. Aubrey shakes her head in disagreement. “Well, whatever. I’m a teenager. I’m almost seventeen. That’s basically an adult.”

He can’t read her, and he hates it more than anything, because he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be good at this kind of thing. He’s supposed to be helpful and polite and listen and help and heal and be able to tell what someone is thinking just by glancing at them.

Now, he just feels lost. He can barely pinpoint what he’s feeling himself.

Aubrey stands up and rolls down her jacket sleeves to have something to fiddle with. “...Whatever. Weirdness aside, thanks for bringing us all together, I guess. I think Basil was happy to see you, at the very least.”

“I hope he was.”

She studies him for a moment, then nods. “Right.”

And she walks away.

Kel dips a hand back into the fountain and feels around for pennies on the bottom. Not to take. Just to acknowledge that there are people who still believe in their dreams and make wishes and cling on to hope.

He’s still one of those people.

(He’s pretty sure he is.)

━━━━━

That night, when he’s getting ready for bed, washing his hands under a stream of warm water, Kel stares into the mirror and catches a glimpse of his younger self in his reflection.

He’s thirteen. It’s early October.

In a few weeks, it’ll be a year since Mari hung herself in her backyard. In five days, it’ll be a week since he got into the biggest fight of his life with his brother.

He’s telling himself, That wasn’t normal, but siblings get into fights all the time, and Hero is going to be okay, now. If anything, it was for the greater good.

He’s telling himself, Hero is going through a lot right now, and I shouldn’t have bothered him, anyway. Besides, he apologized. It’s totally fine!

Nearly three years later, it stings like a fresh wound.

Memories are like knives to his psyche, constantly attacking, never forgotten. He used to tell himself he forgot, for the most part, as if he could somehow fool his brain into erasing the past. It almost worked.

Parts of it linger.

The end, the end, the end— he’s got no idea what this end he keeps reaching for is.

Kel turns the handle on the sink and watches water swirl down the drain. Foam clings around the drain, bubbling.

Where the hell does it finally end?

━━━━━

Sleep, Kel has come to learn, really is a luxury for most.

It’s not unbearable quite yet. He can sleep most nights, can get a solid few nights every week free of dreams and memories and things his subconscious forces him to think about, but when he can’t escape them, it consumes his nights.

He manages to avoid his own dreams maybe four times a week. Even then, no longer are the days where sleep comes easy; he has to spend at least an hour tossing and turning and removing images from his brain just to start sleeping. He almost envies Hero, his ability to just sleep, almost gets angry at him, but he can’t. He’s not angry, anyway.

There was one time where he stole melatonin from the bathroom cabinet, the part of it that his father specifically tells him to never touch.

He fell asleep, sure, but what he thinks was a side effect- a terrible dream about Mari that woke him up at one in the morning and made it impossible to sleep again- made it entirely not worth it.

He was exhausted, too, the next morning, stumbling into the kitchen. Hero had already made breakfast that day, and was sitting at the counter eating it.

“Good morning!” he said cheerfully while Kel nearly knocked over three other glasses trying to get a cup out of the cabinet. His cheery tone faded quickly, watching his brother’s tired, frenzied, movements. “Kel? You okay?”

While filling up a glass with water, Kel yawned and said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just—” The word ‘tired’ died on his tongue. Too vague, too concerning. “Just— Uh, the crickets were so loud tonight. Way too loud! Made it super hard to sleep. Man, I love all the cool bugs that come out in the summertime, but I hate it, sometimes, too.”

Hero, practically a goddamn lie detector when it came to Kel, gave him a concerned look and asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, um… But because of that— the crickets— I stole one of dad’s sleeping things.”

“Melatonin?”

“Yep, that stuff.” He leaned his back against the fridge and drank his water.

Hero carried his plate to the sink. He turned it on and started cleaning it. “You really shouldn’t take it unless you absolutely need it,” he said. “I mean, you can survive a couple crickets, right?”

Despite saying it two sentences ago, Kel had nearly forgotten his lie about the crickets being too loud. “Yeah. Um… Yeah, no, I can handle it. I won’t take any of that stuff again.”

The sink turned off. Hero leaned against the counter, looking over at Kel. “I didn’t mean it to put down your sleeping troubles or anything. Just try not to take it anymore, yeah? If you take it too much, you can become dependent on it.” He paused, like he wanted to say something else, but didn’t.

Kel nodded and finished his water, waiting for him to continue, but Hero didn’t say anything.

Hero just patted his shoulder on the way out of the kitchen and said, “Hopefully it’s quieter tonight,” with a kind smile.

━━━━━

To say it’d been an eventful morning would be an understatement.

At around nine, Kel got a text from Aubrey saying her and her friends were going to play softball out by the lake, and asked if he wanted to come. He got the feeling he would be beaten to a pulp if he said no, so he told her he’d be there as soon as possible.

It turned out Aubrey had gotten herself into a contest of sorts with her friends; whoever won this game of softball got a whole five dollar bill.

Wow, Kel thought sarcastically, lifting a bat up and down to gauge its weight. What a prize.

But it was something Aubrey wanted him to be a part of, so he stayed. She lost, in the end, against him, which was certainly a blow to her ego, but Kel couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled so hard, so it was worth it.

Kim is the one who gives him his money. It’s crumpled up; there’s a tear in the corner. She says it fell in the lake twice. Totally an accident, both times.

Well, five dollars is five dollars.

After their game, he sits with Aubrey under the tree by the lake, drinking fruit juice and making origami out of his money, which is very difficult, because he doesn’t know how to do origami, and the money is about one wrong move away from being entirely unusable.

Aubrey still can’t seem to accept that she’s not great at softball. That Kel, who hasn’t played it at all besides the few times with Mari and the others when they were kids, somehow managed to beat her. Being athletic has its perks, it seems.

“I used to be great at softball when we were kids!” Aubrey complains, slumped against the tree trunk, stewing with anger. “You remember all the softball games we played when we were younger, right? And how Mari would let me play practice games with her? I always won those. I beat her at her own damn sport every time.”

Kel rolls his eyes. “You weren’t great back then, either. Mari just let you win.”

“What? No she didn’t,” Aubrey says, and she almost sounds genuinely offended. “Mari was not letting me win out of pity!”

A pause.

“Oh my god…” Aubrey shakes her head. “Mari was letting me win out of pity.”

“Are you actually surprised? She played for a real team! I mean, who’s gonna win— a sixteen-year-old who’s been playing since she was a kid, or a twelve-year-old who can barely hold a real bat ‘cause it’s too heavy?”

Aubrey shifts to sit up. “I can’t believe this. She had me fooled. I’m so mad at her,” she says, her words lacking any genuine anger.

“Well, duh. This is Mari we’re talking about… She wanted us to think we could do anything.”

A gentle breeze washes over them. Aubrey’s pink hair flutters in the wind. She seems unaware of the way her expression softens.

“Yeah, she did.”

They reach a lull in the conversation, sit in silence for a little while. Kel listens to the Hooligans chattering over by the lake, splashing water around with their hands, chucking softballs into the deep water and using sticks to drag them back to shore.

Aubrey stands up, stretches, and throws her bat— a real bat, the one she just used for the game, that has not been defaced by nails and screws— over her shoulder.

“Hey, Kel.”

“Yeah?”

“You. Me. Hero, by association— We’re having a sleepover one week from today.”

With that, she starts walking away. Kel quickly scrambles to stand. He follows after her. “Wha—? Aubrey! Hey, no way that’s happening. My mom would freak out!”

“That sucks for her, ‘cause I’m gonna be there at seven o'clock sharp.”

They step back to the park, away from the hideout, and a blast of summer air hits Kel’s face. “Are you serious?” Aubrey slows down to walk next to him; he’s grateful for that, at the very least.

“Yes, I’m serious. We all need to talk. It’s long overdue. And I know for a fact you haven’t mentioned Basil to him, which is honestly just outrageous. So what if you’re talking to him again? Hero has no right to be mad at you for that.”

“I kind of think he has every right to be mad,” Kel fires back, and he’s surprised by the defensiveness in his own voice, the rising anger.

Aubrey looks slightly taken aback. She recovers quickly, though, glares at him through strands of her messy hair. “Don’t give me that. You know what I meant.”

For what could very well be the first time in his life, he doesn’t want to fight her.

“Whatever,” Kel dismisses. “And for the record, he does know. Well— kind of. We talked. I told him I was gonna start talking to him again.”

“Really?” Aubrey asks, unconvinced. “What did he think of you meeting up with Basil at Gino’s?”

Kel’s shoulders slump. “...Okay, I didn’t tell him about that. But he knew I was thinking about talking to Basil!”

“He knew you were ‘thinking about it’? You can’t keep him in the dark, Kel! You told me yourself that you wanted to fix things. If you want us to be friends again, you actually have to talk to all of us. You think this is fixing it? Lying to everyone?”

That hurts. Her words actually hurt, dig under his skin. Mostly because she’s right, and god does he hate when Aubrey is right.

“Lay off, would you, Aubrey? Jeez… I’m trying to fix it. I’m gonna get around to telling him. It’s not a big deal. He said himself that I don’t need his permission to talk to him.”

“Yeah, you better get around to telling him,” Aubrey says determinedly. “Or don’t. Either way, he’ll know by the end of next week.”

She speeds up and heads down the street, away from where Kel needs to go. “Hey, Aubrey! I’m serious! You can’t—” Aubrey makes it further away. “You can’t just sleep over—!”

He cups his hands around his mouth to yell, then lowers them.

It’s no use.

━━━━━

Kel is dreaming when he wakes up.

Thinks he’s dreaming, at least; it feels like a dream. A lucid dream, maybe. Something in his gut tells him it isn’t real right off the bat, but that’s not the alarming part— the alarming part is that it doesn’t feel like his gut should be telling him it isn’t real, because nothing is wrong.

He’s sitting up in his bed; it’s his room. A bit darker than it is now. Hero has fewer trophies hanging up. Kel’s side of the room is, impossibly, cleaner than Hero’s.

Oh. He’s thirteen. It’s September. Something is wrong.

The bedroom door creaks open with nobody pushing it, and a voice that sounds like Hero’s asks, “Kel, can you come here?”

He doesn’t move.

Wake up. he tells himself. Wake up. Fly through the ceiling or something. This is my dream. What’s the point of a lucid dream if I can’t take control of it? That’s so stupid.

Instead, when he blinks, he’s standing at the top of a staircase.

Hero’s yelling something, familiar insults, things Kel was supposed to push down and repress and forget a long time ago.

It’s not him who decides to push Hero; his dream self just does it without hesitation. And then Hero’s stumbling, and then he’s falling, plummeting.

Wake up. He stares down at the lump of pajamas at the bottom of the staircase. Everything is dark. It’s quiet. Something red and ugly and jarring against the black-and-white scene of nighttime pools out of his brother’s body. Wake up.

Nothing happens.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up—

He wakes with a start— a real start, the kind that has him sitting up in bed gasping for air and clutching his sheets just to ground himself and remind himself that he’s here, that he’s alive in this very moment, right now.

It takes him twenty seconds of hyperventilating, maybe crying, to realize Hero is sleeping a few feet away, and then he remembers he does actually have a healthy pair of lungs and hands to wipe away tears, and it all settles, a bit, at least to an ever-so-slightly above unbearable amount.

He shivers under his warm covers; shapes and shadows in the darkness loom over his bed. He wants to be eight again, waking up Hero after a nightmare so Hero can tiredly reassure him with a hug that monsters aren’t real and he’ll be just fine and he can sleep in his bed, just for tonight.

But he’s not eight anymore, so he just digs his nails into his skin once again, grounding himself in the worst way he can.

His brain forces him to run through the dream again, even when he tries to think of something else. Images he never wants to see again are burned on the inside of his eyelids.

Banister. Stairs. Argument.

”You’re a nuisance. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I wish you’d quit bothering me and grow the hell up.”

Banister. Stairs. Only Kel’s pushing him, this time. He can hear his brother’s spine crack. Or maybe it’s his neck. Something certainly breaks.

And then he’s staring down, again, murderous palm still held out, and it’s all so dark, but it’s not night time, it’s just black and white.

He wonders, momentarily, if Sunny and Basil heard something crack when she landed. Was there a snap? Was it quiet?

Did they know if she was really dead before they strung her up?

The morose thought makes him something beyond scared, terrified of himself, of his mind, for what might actually be the first time in his life.

Kel squeezes his eyes shut until he sees nothing but drifting splotches of color behind his eyelids, reaching blindly for the walkman next to his bed. He puts on his headphones and clicks ‘play’ without even looking to see what the CD inside is. A soft melody fills his ears, played on the piano; Hero probably borrowed it and put in a classical CD.

It almost makes it worse, but nothing worse could possibly happen.

He doesn’t try to sleep; he knows he won’t. When he closes his eyes, the drifting colors are gone. He can still see her corpse, swinging back and forth.

He stares at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling instead and tells himself the shadows in the corners of his vision aren’t real.

He doesn’t believe himself.

(The next morning, Hero is in the kitchen, frying eggs and bacon.

“Good morning!” he says cheerfully when Kel waltzes into the kitchen tiredly. “How did you sleep?”

Kel, who wasn’t expecting to see him there— and he’s not really sure why he wasn’t expecting to see him, because Hero is there almost every day, but still— suddenly has to stand up straight and remember how to act alive.

He smiles and responds, “Great, as always! You?”

“Same here.” He holds up the pan. “Bacon?”

Kel grabs a cup from the cabinet and nods enthusiastically before filling it up with water. His throat feels drier than a desert. His head hurts like hell. He blames the nightmares. The lack of sleep. The lack of everything.

No, don’t go down that road again. Stop it. It’ll get better. It’ll all be fine in the end.

“So, we doin’ anything today? I was thinking of taking Hector and going for a run if you wanna come along,” Kel says, and he goes on and on and on before he can even hear his older brother’s response.

When he sits down to eat, he’s too busy digging into his breakfast to notice the clear concern Hero is staring at him with.)

━━━━━

“Oh, my— What a surprise! Is that you, Aubrey?”

Kel’s mother pulls open the front door, and Kel watches in horror from the living room couch as Aubrey and her hot-pink hair enter his house.

“Hi. Yeah, it’s me. Uh, my bad, dropping in with no warning— But I brought you some flowers,” Aubrey says, forking over a bouquet really quick, like she’s dying to get it out of her hands. She looks to the couch, where Kel is sprawled over the cushions, watching them carefully. She shoots him a sly smirk. “I know it’s short notice, but could I stay here for the night? I—”

“Of course, honey! You’re always welcome here,” Kel’s mother says before she can even get her reason out. “Are you doing okay? Your hair looks thinner... You look pale, too. Are you getting enough sunlight? Did you have dinner—?”

Aubrey doesn’t even have time to answer her questions. Just watching them interact is enough to get Kel up off the couch. He stumbles over to them. “Mom! Why would you tell her yes? Get out of my house, Aubrey!”

He’ll be the first to admit he’s being a bit harsh, but this polite act his mother is putting up isn’t fooling him. He’s probably going to be in huge trouble tomorrow, all because Aubrey didn’t listen to him and still swung by his house.

Kel’s mother glares at him. She hands the flowers back to Aubrey. Yellow and white ones. Basil probably grew them, though Kel can’t know for sure.

Turning to Aubrey, she asks, “Would you give us a moment, honey?” Aubrey nods politely.

Kel’s mother grabs his arm rather roughly and takes him down the hall, getting close to his ear and whisper-shouting.

“Kelsey, that is no way to speak to somebody! Do you know what that poor girl has been through? Her home life is a mess! Her father isn’t around anymore, and her mother, pardon my rudeness, is hardly fit to be raising her. I thought I raised you to have more empathy than this. Aubrey is the kind of friend you should aspire to be. She came by our home every day asking if you were okay while you were sleeping all day. She is welcome here anytime she likes!”

She came by every day?

So that was the knocking he kept hearing.

He’s so touched, he actually doesn’t know what to do with himself. Not bring it up to Aubrey, for starters, because she’ll kill him.

But he’ll always remember it.

And you couldn’t even be bothered to stop by her house and ask how she’s doing.

There goes the soft, touched, feeling.

Kel looks past his mother’s shoulder to see Aubrey staring at them with mostly confusion, but also a hint of amusement. Like she’s saying I told you so, with that small smile and the tilt of her eyebrows. He narrows his eyes at her, and she actually sticks out her tongue at him.

“Okay, okay!” He breaks free from his mother’s grasp and rubs his sore arm. When they head back out into the living room, his mother watches him expectantly, arms crossed. “...Sorry for telling you to get out of my house, Aubrey,” he mumbles without an ounce of sincerity.

“It’s whatever. Here are your flowers, ma’am.” Aubrey hands them back to Kel’s mom and heads for the stairs.

But of course, they don’t get off that easy. “Aubrey, dear— Did you eat yet?” Kel’s mother asks. Aubrey pauses and turns around to face her. “I can warm something up for you. Do you need a toothbrush for the night? Oh, I better find the guest towels—”

“I’m fine. Seriously,” Aubrey interrupts. “Just hanging out for the night. I’ve got everything I need. Thanks, though.”

She still looks worried as she smiles at Aubrey and turns toward the kitchen. “You let me know if you need anything at all.” Her expression darkens when she looks at her son. “And Kel, you be nice to her! Give her your bed! You can sleep on the couch, or the floor.”

“What the—?!” Kel cuts himself off, grumbling. “Yes, yes, fine. Can we go now?”

Kel’s mother waves them off, and the two of them rush for the stairs. Kel trips going up, but catches himself, and Aubrey looks like she wants to kill him herself just for that.

Upstairs, Aubrey opens the door to his room before Kel. Hero looks up from where he’s sitting and presumably doing homework at his desk, then has to do a double take.

He turns in his swivel chair, already smiling at the mere sight of her. “Hey, Aubrey! Good to see you.” Then it gets kind of tense, awkward, the sort of palpable tension Kel got used to, living in the same room with his recluse brother two years ago.

But it doesn’t last. “Yeah, you too, Hero… You’re still studying? Jesus. It’s summer vacation.”

“He’s a bit of a nerd,” Kel says teasingly. “You should take a break sometimes, Hero!”

Hero laughs. “Haha, I wish. I’m going back in September. It’s important to stay up to date and get a head start on things,” Hero says. “Uh, anyway- What brings you here, Aubrey?”

“Sleepover,” Aubrey answers simply. She pulls off her blouse. She’s wearing a graphic T-shirt underneath, one that looks perfect for sleeping. She sprawls herself over Kel’s bed and sighs. “Wow. I could fall asleep right here, right now.”

If only the same could be said for Kel.

Kel tugs at her arms, trying to pry her off, but Aubrey is firmly planted and doesn’t move. “Hey, get off my bed, weirdo! Hero, get her off!”

Hero turns in his chair again to face the two of them, then sighs dramatically. “I wish I could, Kel, but I’m just so busy being a nerd...”

“You wipe that smug grin off your face!” Kel yells.

Hero does not, in fact, wipe that smug grin off his face.

By the end of the night, Aubrey’s been offered dinner three times, given her own toothbrush, offered four sweaters Kel’s mother doesn’t wear anymore, and told she can have a ride home tomorrow. Aubrey declines all but one sweater.

Kel’s dad, on the other hand, had to be reminded that her name is Aubrey, not Audrey nor Abby, twice.

So the sleepover is going pretty great.

It’s around eleven when Aubrey starts getting tired, and surprisingly, the same can be said for Kel. Usually, sleep doesn’t roll around for him until far later into the night, though, so he’s prepared to toss and turn for hours and potentially earn a “Can you just be still for two minutes?” followed by a smack from Aubrey.

He gives up his bed to her, even though Aubrey says he really doesn’t have to. Namely because if his mom walks into his room in the morning and sees Aubrey sleeping on the floor, Kel will never hear the end of it.

He opts to sleep on the floor instead of the couch. The prospect of waking up from a nightmare alone in the dark living room is worse than the pain of sleeping on the hardwood floor. At least if he wakes up from a bad dream in his room, he knows there are people somewhere in the room with him, that he’s not alone. Though, that’ll end soon, too, when Hero leaves for college again and then he has no idea what he’s going to do.

Ten, maybe twenty minutes after they’ve finally laid down to sleep, Aubrey speaks.

“Kel?” she says, tone questioning, voice low.

He rolls over to his side and peeks up at the bed. “I thought you fell asleep. What’s up?”

Aubrey meets his eyes. It’s rare he sees her without her blue contacts in. He’d like to say he understands at least one of the reasons she wears them; the eyes are a window to the soul. Cover that up, nobody can see into her head. Well, not unless it’s a late-night sleepover, it seems.

He’s forced to stop thinking about her eyes, though, when she suddenly says, “Look, I’m not gonna tell Hero about Basil.”

Kel sits up. “What? Seriously?”

She looks surprised at his vehemence, his shock. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t make it a big deal. I had time to think about it. And I guess it’s not really my place to tell him. But you fucking better, soon, or I swear to god—”

“No, no, I—” Kel clears his throat. “I will. Seriously! Pinky-promise.”

He holds his pinky up to her. Aubrey looks at it with disdain. “Gross. A verbal promise is fine.”

Kel suppresses a smile and lies back down.

“Is that all you had to tell me?” he asks, admittedly enjoying their conversation. When they were kids, sometimes her voice alone was enough to send spikes of pain through his head. Now, he could probably fall asleep to it. She keeps her voice low. It seems as though she’s actually being considerate of the fact that Hero is asleep a few feet away, that Sally is, too, on the other side of the wall.

In response to Kel’s question, Aubrey admits, “No.” The sheets shuffle together as she moves to sit up straighter. “I feel like I never…” she swallows, then looks away, then decides to just lie down. “...Never really said sorry.”

The sudden resuscitation of the past is nearly enough alone to bring on a headache. Kel gives in to her need for reassurance, however— at least, he thinks that’s what she’s looking for.

“Yeah you did,” he says. He runs through his memories, flipping through them like mixed-up files in a broken cabinet. “Right? It was… It was at the tree stump, or the treehouse, or your house, or… somewhere with trees or houses or both. You did. That’s why we’re friends again.”

“Yeah, okay,” Aubrey gives in. “I just wish we didn’t have to be friends again.”

Kel’s heart sinks. This is a terrible place to confess she doesn’t want to be his friend anymore. “What?”

Aubrey sits up again. Her hair cascades messily down her back. “Not like that. It’s stupid to say. I mean— I wish we didn’t ever have to stop being friends, because if we never stopped, we wouldn’t have to be friends for a second time.” She pauses. “You were like my little brother.”

“Aubrey, I’m older than you.”

“If only you acted like it,” she jokes. He rolls his eyes. Judging by the way she smiles at him, she can see it, even in the darkness. “I guess you still kind of are like a brother. I mean… Even with all the time we spent apart.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s kind of how family is. Doesn’t matter how long one of ‘em goes away. You’ll always love them.”

If Aubrey is touched by his referral to her as “family,” she doesn’t show it, but maybe she smiles a little harder.

Kel becomes acutely aware of how uncomfortable his dented pillow is. He interlaces his hands behind his head. “Aubrey, don’t dwell on stuff like that. We have the rest of our lives to be friends,” Kel says, and his smile looks a little ditzy when he offers her one, but it’s only because he’s suddenly exhausted.

She shakes her head. “How are you like this?”

He’s getting too tired to keep up with her, but he still tries. “Like what?”

“You just keep moving forward. You don’t want to stop for anything. And I don’t mean to attack you for that, ‘cause I guess it’s not entirely a bad thing,” she quickly clarifies. “But it’s kind of worrying. It’s like you’re just rushing to get to the other side of this whole thing. If I were you, it’d be killing me inside, to just act like it doesn’t bother me. I mean— I know how I act, and I know I’m the one who talked to Basil, first, but it’s not like I forgive him. Sunny, either. I don’t… I don’t know how to feel about Sunny…” She stops, realizing she’s not really saying anything of substance anymore. “Seriously. How do you do it?”

Does he act like that?

“It… It does bother me,” he begins with uncertainty.

“Yeah, no shit. I hope it does. I’d be more worried if it didn’t. You just don’t exactly show it.”

Kel kind of hates that, even though he thinks he’s supposed to like the fact that he seems undisturbed and optimistic.

When they were younger, when Mari died— he didn’t move on fast. He just tried to pretend he did. Somebody had to.

Mari was his family. That would have been even truer had she lived. She probably would have gone on to marry Hero, and then she would be his big sister, for real, proven by a legal document.

Kel used to think that was the coolest thing in the world, being able to choose his family, join them together just like that.

But he realizes now that he never needed a paper to tell him Mari is family. He never needed a document to inform him that she’s his sister. He already knew. He always knew.

He still knows.

He never forgot about her. Of course he didn’t, contrary to what Hero had said in the moment of their fight. He knows now that Hero didn’t even believe that himself, either. Quite the opposite. He just knew she wouldn’t have wanted him to stop. She would have told him he should start playing basketball if he loves it that much, and that he should go to school and go off to the best college and live his life.

It was that mindset that got him through it. The realization that people, what they wanted, how much they loved others- it lives on after they die, no matter what.

Hero just didn’t get that, the fact that she would have wanted good things, and Kel didn’t really understand it, back then, but he does, now— thinks he does, at least. Every opportunity, every good thing— what’s the point of living in the moment if the person you love doesn’t even exist anymore?

Every good thing is a burden, because it’s happening to you, not them. It can’t happen to a dead person.

But that thought becomes a spiral, which becomes obsessive, and then it leads to nothing good, so Hero had to stop thinking it, even if it did take him a year.

(Truthfully, Kel doesn’t know if he ever truly did stop, but he hopes. That’s all he can ever do; be there and hope.)

Now, every night, Kel has a thought, a quiet, Does Mari care? Would she have wanted us to keep living, when her life was snatched away from her before she could even really live it? Maybe not.

And that becomes his own spiral.

So he has to stop thinking about it. But trying not to think about something makes it so much easier for it to fester in his mind.

He thinks he understands Hero more than ever, now— the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Kel used to wish he would just get up and ask for help and realize that Mari wouldn’t have wanted this.

But he has no idea what Mari would have wanted, because the day she died, she didn’t want to.

She probably started her day off like any other. She wasn’t rewriting lines of a mental suicide note in her head the entire day, she was thinking about how to celebrate after the recital, how exciting it would be if Sunny finally got it all down right. She wasn’t practicing tying a noose all afternoon, she was trying on recital dresses.

She wanted to live. It was still embedded in her, the human desire to keep breathing and continue on and move forward. It hadn’t left her.

That might be the only thing Kel still knows about her, for sure.

“Kel?” Aubrey asks. Two snaps in the face. He’s gotten used to this by now. “You doze off?”

“Is it bad that I don’t show it?” Kel blurts out after a long moment of thinking and falling asleep, both ignoring and answering her question with his own.

Aubrey’s covers shuffle again; he can tell she’s decided to lie down as well. “No? Yeah? I don’t know. Take it from me. It’s not normal to keep it all buried inside. It just resurfaces as something worse, and… I think it just makes us worried. ”

“‘Us’?”

“What, you think Hero isn’t worried, too? He’s your brother. He’s always worried about you. It’s what older brothers do.”

“No it isn’t. Hero is busy worrying about… College, and all of this mess, and stuff.”

She hangs over the side of the bed just to glare down at him. “You can’t seriously think that. You’re always worried about Sally and Hero, too.”

“That’s different!”

“Is it?”

Kel shuts his mouth. He hates making people worried, but lately, it seems he can’t do anything but.

Aubrey sighs. “Can you just talk to him about this? Hell, even me. I’m- I’m worried about you.”

Jesus. If Aubrey of all people is admitting it, it must be really bad.

No, Aubrey I can’t talk to him. I can’t tell him about Basil, because there’s still a chance that he’ll get mad. I can’t tell him about the nightmares, because he’ll think I never trusted him enough to talk to him. Because then he’ll have even more reason to be concerned, and there’s no reason to be. It’s just thoughts. It’s all just thoughts. It’s all in my head. They’re just dreams. And once I’ve fixed all of this, we won’t even remember these strange few months in-between—

Cold hands grab his warm ones, icy fingers forcing his own to uncurl— Aubrey.

His nails leave crescent moon indents behind in his palm. The pain disappears. “Quit doing that. You’ve got enough calluses from basketball as is,” she says.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been doing it again. She drops his hand immediately after. He puts his hands behind his head again and closes his eyes.

“Aubrey, you have no reason to be worried about me,” Kel mumbles after another long stretch of silence.

Above him, Aubrey sighs in defeat. “You don’t even— Okay. Okay, fine, Kel. I’m going to sleep.”

“Goodnight, Aubrey,” he responds kindly.

Something unspoken hangs in the air. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, Aubrey does not leave it unsaid.

“Talk to Hero,” she mumbles with finality through a tired sigh.

Kel doesn’t reply. Exhaustion weighs him down. When he falls asleep, it’s within minutes.

He does not dream.

(The next morning, he wakes up without opening his eyes to the sound of a quiet, muffled, nearly whispered, conversation.

“—don’t know, he’s just been acting seriously weird,” a girl’s voice says.

“Weird how?” That’s definitely Hero.

And what is definitely Aubrey’s voice responds, “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

Uncertain, Hero says, “I’ve noticed. I think he’s… He’s having nightmares. I know that much. And he seems… On edge, distracted, all the time. But I figured that’s a normal reaction to what’s happened. I haven’t talked to him about it. Part of me keeps hoping he’ll just tell me on his own. The last thing I want to do is corner him and ask him a bunch of questions. I mean… we’re all dealing with stuff, right now.”

“Hero, you— Ugh. You need to talk to him,” Aubrey whisper-shouts. “You know how he is. He’ll die before he asks for help.” She pauses. “Sorry, poor choice of words—”

He hears Hero sigh. Kel keeps his eyes shut. “No, you’re… You’re right,” he admits. “I’ll… I’ll talk to him. Thank you, Aubrey.”

She says something about how he shouldn’t beat himself up over it, but exhaustion wins for the second time around, and Kel tunes them out, falling into yet another dreamless sleep.)

━━━━━

Days pass. Sleep is limited.

During Hero’s first year of college, over winter break, he cleaned up his old room with Kel and talked about how medical school was really interesting in the kind of way that suggested it was actually, secretly, super boring.

Hero had said something, one night, while they were climbing into bed. All nonchalant without a hint of a worried undertone.

“In my psychology class, they told us about how it’s actually not healthy to fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow. It’s a sign of exhaustion.”

And Kel, fourteen and a kid who thought he knew everything, actually laughed at that.

“That’s so not true! I’m not exhausted… Don’t go diagnosing me just ‘cause you’re some super official doctor guy, now,” Kel had grumbled, and then Hero laughed, and they moved on.

He keeps thinking about that, now. Longing for that exhaustion.

Where Kel thinks things are supposed to be getting better, they drag on, getting worse.

He got Sunny’s phone number from Basil.

It was such a casual thing, too. Just a simple hang-out in the park, just a random summer afternoon. One moment, he’s sitting on the bench arguing with Aubrey about something stupid. Next, he’s typing Sunny’s phone number into his contacts list.

”In case you ever want to talk to him again,” Basil had said, clearly still uncertain himself, looking to Aubrey like she’d offer support. She just stared at him, expression neutral. ”Aubrey told me you’re trying to get us all back together again. Just… Don’t be too surprised if he doesn’t reply to your texts.”

The number sits in his contacts list, unmessaged, untouched.

This is a pretty shitty way of fixing things, Kel thinks. Refusing to talk to people— that’s gotta be the worst way to bring them together.

Yet he just can’t bring himself to message him. He’s typed out what must be hundreds of texts, even tried writing some down on paper, planning what to say, how to begin, but nothing comes out. Sunny’s mere existence makes him think of himself, makes him compare, and comparison is an awful, terrible, thing to be put through, especially by oneself.

Sometimes, in dreams or in waking, he’ll catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he’s Sunny, aged twelve, and there is blood on his hands he will never be able to scrub off. Then he blinks, and it’s gone.

You didn’t kill your brother. You got into a fight with him, and you didn’t kill him. He’s been alive for years. You didn’t kill him. You never thought about killing him. There wasn’t an opportunity for death to occur. You didn’t kill him.

He’s not sure.

Back in the hospital room, Sunny’s words were quiet. He said more in that room than Kel thinks he’d ever said in his entire life.

Said things like, “It was my fault, but it was an accident.”

“Her knee gave out.”

“It was an accident.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It was an accident.”

Mari had been six feet under for nearly four years, and here was Sunny, telling them, telling Kel, “It was an accident.”

That was it. Sixteen years, down the drain, all because of an accident. It’s stupid, really. Just plain idiotic how if they had decided to argue three feet to the right, Mari would still be here.

Closure may be the cruelest part of healing. Never knowing why Mari took her own life hurt, of course, and the dull ache of grief never went away— but he got used to it. Made peace with it, found ways to move forward. More importantly, he learned a lesson, one that stuck.

And now, it’s come unstuck, half-peeled like a wet sticker, and he can’t help but wonder what the point of any of it was.

So he just waits. He waits for it to go away. Waits for someone else to make the next move, for someone else to give him an in.

Time, he’s come to learn, is a cruel, cruel, thing.

━━━━━

One morning, Kel walks into the kitchen, and something is different about Hero. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say he almost looks relieved, though he has no idea why.

He’s standing by the stove making pancakes. He doesn’t acknowledge Kel when he walks in.

“Good morning!” Kel says cheerfully, grabbing a plate, ignoring the headache pressing on his skull. “Whatcha making?”

“Morning! Nothing special. Just pancakes,” Hero responds, moving the pan back and forth. It sizzles. “How’d you sleep?”

God, he really hates that question.

“Same as always,” Kel says, impatiently bouncing on his heels, watching Hero cook. “Are they done yet? Man, I’m hungry.”

Hero laughs lightly, runs a hand through his tangled hair. Kel knows he hasn’t been sleeping very well either, though for an entirely different reason; he’s been studying like crazy. “It’s almost ready. What does ‘same as always’ mean?”

“Huh?” He’s too tired to keep up with Hero this morning; his headache is getting worse, but his mom got rid of every pain reliever in the house after Sally was born. God knows why. She couldn’t reach the medicine cabinet if she wanted to, and the child-proof caps exist for a reason, but Kel supposes that even babies will find a way if determined enough.

Kel sets down his plate and instead grabs a cup, just to have something to do with his hands, just to follow a routine. He heads toward the fridge. Maybe the pancakes will be done by the time he drinks his water. Maybe his headache will disappear if he hydrates enough.

“You said ‘same as always’ when I asked how you slept,” Hero reminds him. He flips one of the pancakes. It’s perfectly round and crisp. “What’s that mean?”

“Oh! I slept well. I mean, you know me. I sleep like a baby.”

He hates lying, but he’d hate being honest, more.

Something heavy settles on his chest; he’s grown used to the feeling. He drinks his water. It tastes funny, but that may just be him.

Hero hums in agreement. He watches the pancakes carefully, pushing them around with the spatula.

“Really?” he asks, tone a bit too casual for Kel’s liking. “‘Cause you were awake at two in the morning.”

Kel freezes.

He was awake at one in the morning, actually. That was when he woke up from his second nightmare that night. But he didn’t fall asleep again until four, so Hero is kind of right.

Oh, how he wishes he wasn’t.

“Um…” Kel coughs into his closed fist. “Was I? I don’t remember being awake. I must’ve fallen right back to sleep.”

Hero gives him a hard look. Kel falters under his stare. His brother’s still taller than him, after all this time, even after all that basketball and all that time he had to grow.

“Look, Kel. I know you’ve been having nightmares.” Oh no. “And I know you’ve been lying to me about it every time I ask.” Oh no. “I’m not forcing you to talk to me, but you know that you can, right?”

Hero takes a deep breath, then lets it go. “I know things have been… Weird, lately. I know how I’ve acted toward you, and toward everyone else… But I’m still your big brother, and I’m still here for you.”

Kel’s mind goes entirely blank. He feels cold all over. He shivers in the warm heat of the kitchen. He has to set down his glass because he thinks he may drop it, watch it shatter all over the floor, pick up every last shard of glass with his bare hands, and enjoy the pain.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. When did I get so bad at hiding things?

“Uh, thanks, Hero,” he finally manages to say, feeling stupid, wringing his hands. “I know, I know… And I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s not like I don’t trust you or anything, I just…”

Didn’t want to burden you again.

“I can handle it, I promise,” Kel says instead, because admitting he’s a burden will only worry Hero more.

This has to stop happening. He can’t know. It’s supposed to be fine. I’m bringing everyone back together. It has to work out. I can’t be a bump in the road in my own damn plan.

Hero just looks so worried.

“Listen, it really isn’t that bad,” Kel adds on. “It’s nothing I can’t handle! I mean, everyone has nightmares sometimes.”

“Not for weeks on end, Kel. That’s concerning, even with… Everything that’s going on. Sometimes, it helps to talk about it, too,” Hero says, voice gentle, careful, still sidestepping even after time has stretched itself thin. Kel just nods. His throat feels tight. All he can think about is how much this wasn’t supposed to happen.

Suddenly, Hero abandons the task of making breakfast entirely and engulfs Kel in a hug. He reciprocates before he even has time to fully process it, like it’s just muscle memory for something he stupidly thought he’d never experience again.

Even with the heat of the summer sun beating down on him every day, this is the first time in a very long time he’s felt warm.

Hero pulls away after a moment, hands on Kel’s shoulders to force him to really hear his words. “Listen to me.” He does. He listens. “No matter what is going on, no matter what I’m feeling or how I’m acting toward you— I’m here for you, Kel. And I know you said you can handle it, but if you ever can’t, tell me. Just wake me up, or call me if I’m away. I’m right here, okay? I’ll always be here. I love you.”

Wow. He really wasn’t expecting some kind of intervention at eight in the morning.

Kel swallows the lump in his throat and smiles.

“Love you too, dude. And— And thanks, but I promise I’m okay. Seriously! They’re dumb nightmares, anyway. I always go right back to sleep.”

“It’s not dumb,” Hero says firmly. He looks like he wants to say something else, but it doesn’t come out.

Kel just clears his throat, so deeply grateful for his brother, but also tired of the sappiness. And hungry. Incredibly hungry.

“Alright, alright… I think your pancakes are burning, dude.”

Hero ruffles Kel’s hair (and is met with extreme resistance, otherwise known as Kel’s palms slapping at his hands wildly) before he turns back toward the stove. Kel fixes his hair and watches him carefully while he cooks.

Hero’s developed a talent for hiding how he feels, but growing up with him has given Kel the advantage of recognizing when he’s pretending.

Hero almost looks crestfallen.

And Kel knows he’s somehow fucked up again.

━━━━━

[Draft]
Kel: Hey Sunny! Just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing

[Draft]
Kel: Hey Sunny! It’s Kel. how’s the city? Hope you’re doing well

[Draft]
Kel: Hey Sunny, it’s Kel! I know it’s been a while. I’d love to talk to you sometime. how’s the big city? we all miss y

[Draft]
Kel: hi Sunny, it’s Kel! I’d love to talk to you sometime so text me back whenever you get the chance! I hope you don’t mind that I got your number from Bas

[Draft]
Kel: Hey

[Draft]
Kel: Hi Sunny! Kel here, just wanted to text and see how you’ve been doing. Let me know how the city is! I know it’s probably a big change. it was the same way for Hero when he went off to college. Maybe he can give you some advi

[Draft]
Kel: Sunny I just don’t understand why you guys didn’t tell us before

[Draft]
Kel: Hi Sunny

[Draft]
Kel: Sunny,

[Message deleted.]

━━━━━

It all comes to a halt one unsuspecting Saturday night in the comfort, or, more accurately, discomfort, of Kel’s childhood bedroom, after what should have been a routine nightmare.

‘All’ being, genuinely, actually, all-encompassing. His life— it’s ending. He’s dying.

Thinks he is, at least; it’s safe to assume, just going off of the speedy, unnatural, thumping of his heartbeat, like a kick drum at a rock show, lurching into his throat. His heart is beating so fast, his ribs might break; maybe they already have. That would explain the unbearable pain.

The threat of death comes on so suddenly, he doesn’t even have time to process that he’s dying, just that it’s happening, and that he may become the youngest teenager in the world to ever die of a heart attack. Maybe he’ll make it into a world record book.

He’d really rather not make it into any world record books, at least not if his name isn’t under the ‘sports’ category.

In favor of not dying ten feet away from Hero, he sits up and registers that he’s in his bed, and that it’s very dark outside. Shadows creep along the walls and threaten to swallow him whole, black and gray tendrils swarming him. Everything feels like it’s spinning around him, being cut up into choppy motions; every movement makes his eyes and his brain and everything hurt.

It feels like his body is giving up on itself, tensing up, frozen, limbs like static on a TV screen, tingling with no movement. Like paralysis setting in, and submitting to it feels like suicide; he’ll never move again.

But the worst part is his lungs.

Somebody might as well have taken them right out of his chest. Every breath of oxygen has nowhere to go. His brain fires off signals that never go all the way through, because there is nothing to supply it, no air reaching his brain, no oxygen.

Put simply, he can’t breathe.

It’s like he’s being crushed by an anvil. Every attempt to inhale scrapes his throat dry, and he presses, hard, onto his chest with his palm, but it makes no difference. He can’t get through. All he can feel is the thumpthumpthumpthumpthump of his stubborn heart, refusing to slow down.

Trying to collect himself feels impossible. Death is imminent. An impending feeling of doom swallows him whole, and he knows it’s all over. It’s finally coming to an end, but it’s not the end he hoped for.

Well, he can always try to stop the end.

He reaches for his phone on the nightstand— who he’s going to call, he doesn’t know; an ambulance, perhaps, to take his heart out and tell it to slow the fuck down before putting it back in— but all he manages to do is knock it off. It lands on the floor with a heavy thud, maybe even a crack, but he doesn’t even see it, squeezing his eyes shut to protect himself from the darkness.

Then, there’s a voice; quiet, groggy, confused, breaking through the haze of his growing panic. “Kel?”

Hero is awake. The one thing Kel swore to himself he wouldn’t do was wake him up, and now he has, right in the middle of the aftermath of a nightmare he doesn’t even remember.

He doesn’t respond. It’s quiet for a few more seconds, and then something shifts on his bed, and he forces himself to look. Hero sits in front of him; visibly tired, trying to connect the dots.

Most of all, he looks panicked, just like him, and that is a horrible thing to see.

Kel beats him to talking. His voice sounds like someone else’s, nothing like how he’s supposed to be.

“Something’s wrong,” he blurts out simply. “I might- I might be having a heart attack, or something, I-I don’t know—“

“Okay, something is wrong,” Hero repeats, his words quick, clearly trying not to sound panicked. His hands are hovering, like he wants to reassure him somehow, but doesn’t know if he should. It is slightly comforting, however, that he even believes him on this whole “I’m dying” thing, a drop of relief in an ocean of anxiety. “Hey. Gotta be more specific. Talk to me, Kel. You said it feels like a heart attack, right?”

Kel shakes his head, then nods, then shakes it again, and he’s certain Hero has no idea what he’s trying to say, because he has no idea, himself. “I don’t know,” he says through a gasp, another failed attempt to breathe. “I’ve never had a heart attack— Well, obviously not, but it feels like it, I don’t know—“

“Focus, okay? Focus. Forget about a heart attack. Just tell me what’s going on. Just words, alright?”

Symptoms. He’s asking for symptoms. Of course he is, he’s a goddamn doctor. Almost a doctor. Basically the same thing, especially given how smart he is, how many textbooks he’s read ahead of time.

Kel twists the fabric of the front of his shirt in his hand, and Hero reaches out and takes it, and his hand is warm and grounding and a gentle reminder that he’s not alone in this.

“Can’t breathe,” he begins. Hero nods. “Dizzy. Stomach hurts. The room, it’s all spinny and stuff, and I— Maybe I’m dreaming again—“

“You’re not dreaming,” Hero interrupts. He still looks worried, concerned beyond anything he’s seen on his brother's face before— but something shifts in his expression, something noticeable. “Hey, Kel. Listen to me. I’m gonna name some symptoms. Tell me if it applies.”

Kel nods, squeezes Hero’s hand, and Hero squeezes back, like he’s reminding him he’s still alive, not dreaming. He’s given up on words.

“Numbness, like paralysis.” A nod. “Dread.” Another nod. “Feeling like your heart is beating out of your chest.” Definite nod. “Shaking… Nevermind, you’re definitely shaking. Do you feel nauseous?”

“Yes, to— To all of that. What—?” Kel has to cut himself off to try, and fail, to get a breath in. “Am I gonna die—?”

Hero’s own panic fades away in a second, just like that, tense shoulders dropping. It brings Kel some semblance of relief, just knowing that his brother knows what to do, because, well, if anyone can fix a heart attack at home, it’s Hero.

But Hero says nothing about heart attacks. In fact, he doesn’t even move to call an ambulance or something. He removes his hand from Kel’s, and it’s cold again for a moment.

And he hugs him.

He pulls him in like he’s seventeen and Kel’s thirteen, like they’ve just fought about Mari’s death and Hero’s reclusiveness, only this time, Kel is the one clinging to him like a lifeline, and it’s peaceful, soothing. This time, the only tears come from Kel, like a water main has finally bursted.

It’s very difficult to cry and struggle to breathe and focus on someone’s words all at once, but Kel tries, anyway.

“You’re okay. Everything is okay,” Hero reassures, one hand tracing gentle patterns on his back, the other behind his head. “Try to match my breathing. That’s all you have to do, okay?”

It’s a simple breathing pattern, the same one he sees Kim forcing Aubrey to do when her emotions, her anger, start to consume her. He tried to memorize it, once, in case Kim ever wasn’t around.

It takes a long time to fall into the pattern, however. At least, it feels like an eternity to Kel. Every time he thinks he’s starting to get it under control, his heart picks up speed again, and it all comes crumbling down again.

But Hero doesn’t leave, nor does he panic again, or get impatient. He sits and stays and continues reminding him that he’s safe, that he’s okay, he just needs to try to breathe again, that he’s not alone.

Slowly, somehow, it stops. It goes quiet. Kel can feel his breathing even out to match Hero’s, and he doesn’t slip up; it sticks.

So he does have working lungs.

He forces himself to pull away from Hero, to wipe at his face with his forearms and furiously rub his eyes.

Hero doesn’t say anything. He just watches, still so clearly concerned. The look on his face alone is almost enough to make Kel start bawling again, but he bites his tongue and holds back.

He breathes out. It works. It’s okay. He can still feel his heart beating in his chest, but it’s not trying to break out of his ribcage anymore. The only thing that remains is the shaky feeling, the tremor. He avoids looking at Hero and opts to stare at the floor instead.

“Um… Thanks,” Kel finally gets the sense to mumble, and he can’t help but feel a bit embarrassed. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem,” Hero responds, but he doesn’t look even the slightest bit relieved yet. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know. Fine?” Kel says, uncertain. He looks across the dark room. His mind makes up creatures out of the shadows. He tries to swallow the lump in his throat. “My hands are still shaking. But I’m fine. What was that?”

Hero frowns, looks away for just a moment, then meets his eyes again. “What do you think it was? Has it ever happened before?”

The question confuses him. Maybe Hero doesn’t know something, for the first time in his life. He offers his best guess, anyway. “No, it… It hasn’t… I mean, it’s usually not that bad, at least.” He doesn’t tack on that it was terrifying in favor of not sounding childish. “A heart attack? Asthma? Probably not… I don’t know. I thought I was dying.”

“You weren’t dying,” Hero says, and Kel should’ve figured that he knows what it was; since when has Hero ever not known something? “I think you had a panic attack.”

Panic attack. The name alone sounds scary. “What’s that?”

“It’s, uh…” He can see Hero struggling to find a way to explain it in a way that is actually understandable. “When you get overwhelmed or stressed, your body overreacts to danger. It makes you feel like you’re forgetting how to function. They’re not actually dangerous though, unless you-” He cuts himself off. “Nevermind. But I promise, it only feels like you’re dying. You aren’t, really.”

That sounds absolutely horrifying to Kel, and he quickly decides he never wants to experience it again.

It gives him a name to assign to the terrible episodes of oxygen-deprivation he sometimes gets when he wakes up from particularly bad nightmares. Only, those go away in a minute, and he doesn’t actually feel like he’s dying dying.

He’s not sure why something broke in him tonight.

“Hey. Are you still following?” Hero asks after a moment.

Kel nods. “Yeah— Yeah, I am. Just thinking.”

Stupid. You would have been fine. You didn’t need to bother him. You shouldn’t have knocked over your phone. Should’ve been quiet—

Hero studies him for a moment. “I’m not mad at you.”

“What?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says calmly. “And I’m not mad that I woke up. I’m not mad at you at all, okay?”

Kel’s chest tightens. He nods, fearing that if he speaks, he’ll start crying all over again.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting Hero to say next; he really doesn’t know. It could range from a ‘goodnight’ to a full-blown lecture about how he’s important, how he should talk to him, blah blah blah. Either way, something’s going to change, because Hero knows, now, realizes how fucked up it’s really gotten.

You can’t fix it. You can’t bring anyone back together. Face it.

Kel ignores his own mind, a very difficult, mostly impossible, task.

Hero fidgets with the cuff of his pajama sleeve for a moment, and Kel realizes that he won’t be the first one to speak. He’s being given an opportunity to say anything. They could sit here for hours.

Kel should dismiss him. He should tell him he’s way too tired to deal with this, even though he’s wide awake now, still filled to the brim with adrenaline. He should wait it out, give Hero the satisfaction of saying, “You have to talk to me, now,” even though he thinks— knows— Hero would never force him like that.

Just go to sleep, he thinks.

Instead, he looks at Hero and shakily admits, “I don’t think I can do this again.”

Hero reaches a hand out again, touches his shoulder comfortingly, but it just makes it even harder not to burst into tears. “Do what again?”

“Do what I did. What I always do,” Kel begins, struggling not to stumble over his words. “I want to fix everything. I want it all to be like it was. I want— I want the five of us to be friends and hang out again, and I want everyone to forgive each other, and I want to do what I’ve always done, and I want to fix it, because I did it before, so I know I can do it again, because— Because I was the one who got you out of bed after Mari died, even if you did get mad at me, and I’m— I got Sunny to come outside, so I thought I could do it again, but Aubrey is ten steps ahead of me, Hero, Aubrey is— And nothing is happening like it should, and I don’t know why I can’t just move on like before— I’m like— I’m stuck, in the past, and in all these dreams, and I don’t know why it isn’t working. I don't know why I can’t fix it, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. It should have been fine, by now, but I can’t—”

“Kel.” Hero’s attempts to cut him off go unnoticed; he’s rambling now, barely making any sense, but Hero is listening, anyway, because of course he is. “Kel. Kelsey. Stop for a second, slow down. Just slow down— It’s okay. Take a breath.”

So he does stop. Hero takes in an exaggerated breath, and Kel mimics him, although Hero’s is much smoother. He feels like fragments of himself, and the pieces are all falling apart and all over the floor, and he can’t do anything about it.

He knows Hero is about to respond, but Kel still doesn’t let him, because he doesn’t know how much longer he has before Hero just gives up and grows tired and abandons him.

“I’m still trying,” he says desperately. “I’m still— I can still fix this. I know I can. And I will. Please just pretend this never happened. I’ll be okay. It can still be like it was.”

“Kel, none of us know what we’re doing. I can promise you that,” Hero begins gently, and then his own voice wavers. “I mean- Not even Aubrey. Not even me.” He pauses, presumably collects his thoughts. “It’s all confusing right now, for all parties involved. No one expects you to be able to navigate this, alright? We don’t know a single thing about how to handle this.”

And that’s it. No “but,” no “you could still try to do this and that, though,” no, “maybe try a little harder.” That’s it.

“I should be able to do this, though,” Kel argues, though all the anger is directed at himself.

“It’s… It’s not all up to you.” Then, again, more firm, like it’s the only statement that matters, and it just might be. “Listen to me, Kel. It’s not all up to you.”

It’s the most foreign concept in the world; it’s not all up to him. He’s not alone. He isn’t alone.

It’s not all up to him.

I can’t fix everything, he thinks blankly.

He believes it.

And god, does it hurt.

He crumbles for the second time that night, shatters like an already broken-edged mirror, and Hero still stays, still pulls him again and doesn’t let go.

“You’re not alone in this. Not like before,” Hero says, voice shaky, almost regretful, and it’s really the only thing Kel ever needed to hear. That he isn’t alone, never was, that the effort it takes to bring together a team has to come from every person within that team. “You can’t fix everything on your own.”

Still, through a sob, voice muffled, Kel responds, “But I did, before.”

“It’s not like it was before. Not in the slightest. You can’t compare things,” Hero says. “You have to ask for help, too. You deserve support. Nothing good ever comes out of being alone. Just… Just talk to me. Please.”

He doesn’t have it in himself to resist, especially not when Hero asks with such conviction. Even if he did, he wouldn’t.

Right then and there, he decides he’s through with making people worry.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m just like Sunny,” he finally blurts out, and it feels wrong to admit it out loud. His heart seizes painfully again.

“You’re not like Sunny,” Hero counters firmly, not even needing elaboration. “Kel, I’m here. I’m… I’m still here. I’m always going to be here. I promise.”

Kel shakes his head, breathes in shakily. “You can’t promise that.”

“Yeah, I can. You’ve never tried to hurt anyone, Kel, and you especially haven’t ever hurt me.”

Oh.

Don’t act like you care, Hero had said, seventeen and fuming, completely unlike himself. You’re a nuisance. I don’t understand why you can’t just leave me alone.

It clashes with Hero, now, twenty and wiser and calm and honest. You especially haven’t ever hurt me.

He believes the latter.

Kel takes a moment, just to process and think and express the things he told himself he never should.

“I didn’t— I didn’t want to be a burden. I don’t want to bother anyone,” he blurts out before he can stop himself, because if he’s going to be honest, he might as well.

Hero squeezes him a little tighter and says, voice equally pained and fierce, like he really believes it with every bone in his body, “You could never be a burden.”

And he doesn’t know what to say to that, but he couldn’t reply if he wanted to, anyway, because the tears just keep coming, still choking him. He spirals, thoughts all over the place with nothing to pin them to, and this time, he doesn’t push it down; he falls right in. He thinks, and thinks, and thinks, until there’s nothing left to think about.

Time stretches on, and on, and on with seemingly no end, and it occurs to Kel, suddenly, that there never was going to be an end. That he’s been reaching for an illusion.

It doesn’t end. Grief doesn’t end; knowing doesn’t become any easier— hell, it never even truly becomes manageable. It seeps through the skin and makes a home in the heart and weighs it down an amount that feels like it’ll last forever at first, then just becomes another part of the machine, but it never truly disappears.

That seems to be the common theme with pain. How inescapable it is, how the aching hurt will never fade no matter how hard he wants it to. No matter how hard he tries to shove it away, push it to the back of his psyche, pretend it never even happened— it is always there.

Like a papercut between his thumb and forefinger. Inconvenient, there for what feels like forever, unable to be covered by a band-aid without interfering with the rest of his movement, the rest of his life. It stings for a lifetime, a week, and leaves behind nothing but a subtle white scar that can’t be spotted under light.

And he’ll spend the rest of his life getting inconveniently-placed papercuts, in the form of nightmares and episodes of grief and anniversaries.

But perhaps the hurt isn’t all bad, though for none of the reasons he thought. It doesn’t make him feel more human. It doesn’t make him feel less alone. It doesn’t make him feel much of anything except at peace, knowing there’s nothing he can do but keep living and growing with it.

You can’t be a kid forever. Everyone grows up. Everyone moves on.

He can’t blame himself for trying to be. Can’t bring himself to hate how he tried, and tried, and tried, and failed, and keeps trying. He can’t blame himself. Reflection leads to growth, but to reflect, he has to think back to when he was eleven, think back to when he was a kid, think about how he can and can’t be that same person who used to collect rocks and set them by the windowsill and chase beetles in the tall grass with his friends anymore.

And yet he’s still him. He’s still collecting, still chasing. Just after different things.

Somewhere in the future, he knows there is a version of himself that goes to sleep at night and doesn’t think back and long, and ache, and yearn, but instead thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and falls into a dreamless sleep, anyway.

Somewhere in the future, he exists, and he’s okay.

Somewhere in the past, he’s still a child trying to bandage inconveniently-placed papercuts.

One day, he’ll learn— past, and present-self.

Back in the moment, back in the darkness, basking in the warmth of a promising future and beginning to let go of other burdens, he thinks, Okay.

He reaches into the crevices of his brain to find more words and comes up with none. So he just thinks it again.

Okay. It holds some semblance of finality. Yeah, alright.

And something settles within him.

━━━━━

In early September, Kel watches Hero get on a train and head back to college.

The station is cold, colder than usual that morning, warning him that autumn will arrive early that year. He can’t really remember the last time he was here, in this station. Spring break, maybe? That sounds right. Usually, he goes with his family to pick up Hero every time he comes home for holidays.

This summer was kind of an exception.

Kel makes it a goal to be as loud and obnoxious as possible in the station every time he comes home, acting like he hasn’t seen his brother in decades, making a huge scene. He finds it hilarious. His mom and Hero, not so much. He’s been reprimanded by his mother more times than he can count. His dad, on the other hand, seems to find it funny, and though he does a good job hiding it, Kel knows his antics will finally get to him some day.

It’s always a little sad, watching Hero leave, but there’s something nice, this time, about knowing there are people waiting for him back in Faraway, too, that his brother’s not the only friend on his side.

He’ll return to Faraway and be play basketball with Aubrey, and maybe convince Basil to try it out, too, and spam Hero with stupid messages throughout the day because he knows he’ll never block his number, even if it’s just for a minute.

Before Hero boards the train, he looks at his family and says, “I’ll be back for Thanksgiving, so don’t miss me too much,” and Kel laughs, and his mom laughs, and his dad cracks a smile, and Sally babbles something indiscernable and giggles with delight, hands reaching aimlessly for Hero, then for Kel.

His mom envelops Hero in a big hug before he can walk away. And even though Hero nervously says he needs to go, that he might miss his train, he still makes time to hug Kel and ruffle Sally’s hair and promise his dad that he’ll do his best again this year.

The train takes off soon after Hero boards. Kel watches it speed off until it becomes nothing more than a blur of silver windows.

And he’s not sure why, but a conversation from years ago pops into his head.

Kel was fourteen, and Hero was sitting at the kitchen counter filling out a paper, and Kel asked, “What is that?” and Hero looked up. He didn’t look tired, which was a very good thing, and another thing Kel didn’t realize he missed until it disappeared.

“I’m filling out a college application,” Hero said, and then he got nervous.

It was difficult to spot, because Hero was always at least a little bit nervous, back then. But he still caught it.

“I don’t know if they’ll accept me… Mari and I, um… We used to talk about different colleges all the time. She told me this seemed like a good school for me, if I decided to become a doctor.”

This was an achievement, a rarity— Hero talking about Mari without crying.

So Kel tried to act as casual as possible. He grabbed a glass out of the cabinet, filled it up with orange juice, took a swig and said, “Oh, man. I forgot you have to apply for that stuff. I’m just gonna apply to, like, a hundred of ‘em. One of them’s gotta accept me!”

“It’s not that simple, Kel,” Hero said, looking up at his younger brother. “A lot of places make you pay just to submit an application.”

“What?! Seriously?” Hero nodded. “Does this one?”

“Yeah.”

“Woah… How much?”

“Fifty bucks,” Hero said, all casual, too, like that wasn’t hours of work at his minimum wage part-time job he barely managed to land.

Kel nearly spit out his juice. “That’s crazy! Why’s it cost so much?” Hero shrugged. “But you don’t even know if you’ll get in! What if you paid fifty bucks just to get rejected?”

“You have to take chances in life, Kel,” Hero said, all wise, as usual. Kel went on about how unfair life is, rinsed his cup in the sink, told Hero he’d totally make it into that school, and left.

(And he was right. Hero did make it into that college.)

He’s pretty sure the memory resurfaces from a place of word and area association, given that he just said a temporary goodbye to Hero, and he’s heading to college— but he can’t help but take it as a sign from the universe, in the way. Or maybe a sign from his subconscious.

You have to take chances in life, Kel.

Taking chances. He thinks he’s pretty good at that. Fell behind for a second, but getting back up to speed was taking a chance in itself.

When he goes to bed that night, he thinks about Sunny, solemn, and falls into a peaceful, dreamless, sleep, anyway.

The next morning, three days into September, the sun shines through the window in a way it never did in the summertime. Kel’s standing in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of orange juice, patting the top of Hector’s head, and typing out a text to Aubrey.

Lately, she’s been full of a strange kind of wisdom. Full of the kind of stuff he thinks a therapist is supposed to come up with, if a therapist was getting paid to be a tough, brutally honest, asshole.

That’s Aubrey.

When he finally told her about what had been happening, alongside how he thought he was really moving past it, now, she listened. And it’s a very nice thing, having someone to listen.

Of course, she had her own way of putting it. “You were just bullshitting yourself. Pretending to know how to fix a problem,” she had said all casually over the phone at one in the morning. This time, he was actually awake because of Sally crying. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

He tries not to lie to himself anymore. He knows there are some similarities he’ll never be able to shake off, but that’s one he’s certain he can.

His text to Aubrey is in response to her asking if he wants to hang out this morning with Basil, because he’s finally decided that he’s ready to talk about things, too. In ‘certain ways more than others,’ Aubrey had said, quoting Basil, and that didn’t really make much sense, either, but then again, nothing ever truly does, and what was important was that he said he’d try.

Try to answer questions. Try to really move forward. Kel knows that ‘forward,’ and the future, might not include him at all— but he’d still really like to think it can. He’d like to think they can sit at a table at Gino’s and talk about their lives and throw birthday parties again, eventually.

He’d like to think it can include Sunny, too, one day.

I’ll be there, he texts in response to Aubrey’s invitation, and his finger goes toward the power button on his phone. Before he turns it off, a contact at the bottom of his list catches his eye.

And, well.

If Basil’s gonna try to do this, he might as well, too.

[8:24 A.M.]
Kel: Hey Sunny! It’s Kel
Kel: Do you think we could talk?

Notes:

shadowboxing (n.)

making a show of tackling a problem or opponent while avoiding any direct engagement.

i’m adding this authors note approximately eight months after i initially posted shadowboxing. it’s funny to think, now, that i was ever scared to post this, and i have every single person who said anything nice about this fic to thank for that growth in confidence. i don’t have much to say besides thank you to every single person who took the time to read this, and to every single person who took the time to tell me what it meant to them. i stopped responding to comments for some time, but i do read every single one i receive, and every single kind thing any of you have ever said about my work has truly touched my heart and soul. it touches me on an even more personal level to know that something i started on a whim and wrote over the course of three weeks in january sitting on my bedroom floor can mean so much to someone.

thank you so much for all the love.

*note from 01/2025: this fic has been transferred to my new account, as i no longer use my old one.

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