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James knows it has been almost two years since he last saw Frank Zhang. If asked he would insist he wasn’t actually keeping count, but he has the exact day marked in his calendar and last year he lit a candle--vanilla, Frank’s favourite--and hoped it wasn’t insensitive considering the unfortunate fate that befell the Zhang family home a while afterwards. It’s not like he thinks about Frank all of the time, at least not anymore, but there are always those things that make him stop and ponder and hope that he is okay, wherever he is: Frank’s favourite song in his playlist, his favourite food from that inexpensive little restaurant on the corner, the ruins of his old home, still conspicuous and devastating. It’s evident that nobody really knows what to do with the wreck so it just sits there and, though it hasn’t smouldered in a long time, in James’ mind it is always sizzling. He had heard the news, of course, when Frank’s inscrutable travels and strange companions had hit the air, and it had ignited this spark of hope in him that maybe, finally, Frank would be coming home. But the story fell away from the news and Frank never came back. James has called his phone time and time again, left so many messages that it takes him like ten minutes to scroll back up to any from Frank in their texts, but he has never once gotten an answer. He hopes the fact that the number hasn't been reassigned means that Frank is still alive and well even if he doesn’t use the phone anymore, that his childhood best friend is still out there to find.
Their friend group has dubbed it the Frank-iversary. It’s a low-key sort of thing, where they all call in sick to work or school and head to Tim Hortons for coffee and catharsis before heading to the site of the Zhang house with their vanilla-scented candle and scripts they’ve all been perfecting for at least the past week. All except for James who can’t help but leave his until the last minute in the hope that he’ll never have to actually read it. After that they have a little Frank tour where they go to all his favourite places: his favourite trail through the woods, the archery range where they’re each lucky if they even hit the target at all, the little corner of their tiny public library with the teal bean bag that still holds onto Frank’s shape, then finally to that little restaurant on James’ corner for dinner. It was Amelia’s idea, intended to replace James’ initial plan to sit in the woods alone with a burning candle and teary eyes.
There are four of them now, but they always keep that space for a fifth open, even if they don’t mean to. The table, for example, in that restaurant where they sit by the big window with the letters across it has a fifth plush chair, arguably the best one, and they never even contemplate sitting in it. On an impulse they sometimes still order a fifth coffee for Frank--Penny has even started drinking hers with soy milk because it makes her feel closer to him. They order his drink on purpose on the Frank-iversary, five extra hot soy lattes with extra vanilla, one for each of them and another for their makeshift memorial.
James has them ready to go, passing each one back to his friends’ waiting hands, and making sure that he takes the fifth as well as his own, cradling their warmth to his chest and trying to remember the encompassing warmth of Frank’s hug, the calluses on his hands and the sound of his voice. Every time he gets scared he is forgetting it he goes back and rewatches old videos of all of them, listening to Frank’s voice on loop so he never loses it, even though those videos almost always make him cry. He’s ready to leave, to abandon a quiet hum of chatter and his friends’ heartfelt contributions to the noise for the walk to Frank’s that is always horribly silent. He is stopped, though, by the jingling of the bell above the door. On impulse he steps out of the way, looking at the mud staining his chucks and letting whoever just entered the shop pass by him and make their way to the counter.
“James?”
James has gone to lengths his dad insists are unhealthy and obsessive to make sure he never forgets that voice. It’s a little bit different, a tiny bit deeper, the accent somewhat diluted, but for as long as James will live he will know exactly whose it is.
“Penny, Amelia, Cass!” the voice continues with surety and clarity and levity and James finally looks up. It’s a face he knows well, all rounded angles and soft curves, cheeks round and tinged pink with the cold, eyes and mouth smiling in a way that makes James’ stomach ache, most of the naivety and innocence in them gone. He’s taller, broader, so big he looks thoroughly ill at ease with himself, but if this is not Frank Zhang then James will shoot himself in the foot with an arrow. Twice.
To his credit, he manages to squash the fast-building urge to sob that sits like a stone in his chest and his throat, but he can feel his face grow so hot he’s half convinced it must be glowing and his eyes are stinging and blurring regardless of how determinedly he tries to blink back the tears. Carefully, a large hand reaches over and brushes his, easing the cups of coffee gently from his lax grip. They’re marked by the texture of scar after scar, namely slashes and burns, the calluses James remembers multiplied tenfold, and he suddenly isn’t sure that he even wants to know what happened. He knows one thing, though, and that is that when Frank reaches his strong arms around him in a hug James’ memory could never even hope to do justice to, he never wants him to let go. More arms join, first Cass’ then Penny’s then Amelia’s and he isn’t sure how long it lasts but he knows they must look an absolute state to the poor college students behind the counter who are just there to make coffee and wages but James can’t care about that right now, Finally, after two whole years, Frank Zhang is back in his life. The big question he never, not once, wanted to contemplate has an answer, a good one: Frank Zhang is alive .
When they all step back from their prolonged group hug James’ ribs kind of ache and, as Frank steps to the side, his eyes fall on a girl who is standing to the side, awkwardly entwining her hands with each other but smiling genuinely nonetheless. She’s tiny, about their age but shorter than even Penny whose height is a constant running joke amongst them. Her eyes glint a disconcerting, fascinating gold and the coils of her hair reflect the light with a similar hue even though James is sure there’s actually a cool, bright white being projected from the LEDs overhead. She stops fidgeting to wave and Frank recedes to stand by her side. Next to each other, they’re so wildly different in size that James almost laughs, only when he tries his throat makes this sort of crackling, laboured noise instead. He sees a wet spot on Frank’s purple pullover where his face was pressed and realises he wasn’t actually all that successful in his quest not to cry violently in a Tim Hortons.
As though on impulse, before James even thinks to ask Frank what happened, where he’s been, why he left, why he never called back, he picks up both coffees from the table Frank put them on and hands one to Frank. He takes a sip of it and it probably isn’t extra hot anymore but he grins like it is the best thing he has ever had. “You don’t know how long I’ve been craving that,” She short girls smiles up at him and goes onto her tiptoes, creasing her stained white tennis shoes, to kiss him on the cheek before walking quietly to the counter and ordering herself a hot tea and a cake that she sinks her teeth into gratefully as she walks back.
“I love camp and all,” she says. She has this sort of southern drawl that James finds himself smiling at involuntarily even though he knows precisely nothing about her. He might just be influenced by the way that Frank looks at her, absolutely smitten--James can’t help but be happy for him even though he knows he is still entirely in the dark about the past couple of years of Frank’s life. “But the food could be better,”
Frank nods back then turns to them all, staring dumbfounded in the middle of the shop and taking up almost all of the space (at least it’s a slow day, James supposes, and the staff seem more intrigued than bothered). “Right,” he says, “Sorry this is kind of, y’know,” he stumbles over his words, eventually deciding to forgo them entirely in favour of simply making a motion like an explosion on either side of his head. There's a scar across his knuckles, red and puckered and sore-looking, that makes the oddity of his absence impossible not to think about. “Guys, this is Hazel. Hazel, this is Cass,” they lift a hand in a wave, their glasses still wonky from where they were displaced in the hug, yet to be readjusted. “Penny,” she steps forward to shake Hazel’s hand, “Amelia,” she smiles brightly, widely, baring all of her teeth, and James remembers that she has gotten her braces off since Frank last saw her, “and, of course, James,” he tries to smile but his face could be quite literally sliding off of his skull and he isn’t convinced he’d notice the difference, all of his attention focused on Frank, waiting for the answers he doesn’t want to have to ask for, doesn’t know how to.
“I guess you’ve all got questions, huh?” Frank rubs his hand over his buzzed head as he says it, gnawing nervously on his lower lips until Hazel taps him gently on the arm and he realises what he is doing and stops. James could punch the air because finally, two years later, he gets to know what is going on, where the first friend he ever made went, why he hasn’t been back, whether or not he will be there to stay. “We should probably go somewhere else to talk,”
It’s Cass that suggests they go to the restaurant to talk. It’s the wrong time of day, a complete deviation from their plan, a direct copy of the same day a year before, but they all agree and Hazel’s smile grows. “We should get better food at camp,” she decides. Frank nods along, mirroring her enthusiasm.
“Why haven’t we done that yet?” They talk familiarly and closely and James’ heart pangs in his chest. They’re obviously close, obviously dating, and there is obviously something big they share, and James is outside of that, doesn’t even know her last name. As kids he and Frank always swore they’d go to college together, rent an apartment with each other in their twenties, never lose touch. Maybe it was a bit of an optimistic outlook for them to have had, but it had never felt like a pipe dream before.
Frank doesn’t sit straight on the seat they always saved for him, the one with the best view of the window that sits away from the draft and in the line of the heaters. He pulls it out for Hazel instead and grabs himself a chair from another nearby table. It’s lunchtime so there are people in the dining room aside from them, but not nearly as many as will be there later. Hazel shakes her head fondly as she sits on the chair’s overstuffed cushion. “My knight in shining armour,” she says sarcastically.
“Please,” Frank says, “You could beat me up easily,” she laughs and doesn’t contest it and James notices, as he finds his own seat to Hazel’s left, how different Frank is from when he left them, not only physically but mentally. He holds himself differently, has a sort of confidence he never used to have and a sort of hardness to his face that doesn’t chisel away at the softness but simply schools it. He still has a baby face but there is no way to deny that he has been through a lot without James, that he has moved on whilst James has stayed right here, finding himself sneaking out to walk amongst the remains of Frank’s old house in the middle of the night and never telling anyone that he has felt, every day for the past two years, like he doesn’t know who he is anymore. And here Frank is: someone who has found himself and built himself and become something and someone else. James hasn’t even changed his hairstyle or bought new clothes or started wearing glasses even though his optician told him he should, because he didn’t want to take even the slightest risk of Frank not recognising him if he ever saw him again.
James continues to stare as he leans over and reads sections of the menu to Hazel as she squints at it so intensely she must be giving herself a headache. Eventually she nods and they order and, as they wait, Frank turns to them all and spreads his hands. “Ask away,” he prompts. He says it in a way that suggests he is used to addressing crowds of people and having them listen to him. The Frank that James remembered once had a panic attack because their English teacher asked him to read a paragraph he had read to their class of twenty. James doesn’t have any words at all, it seems, but Amelia has her questions locked and loaded, firing them off so rapid fire that nobody else gets the chance to step in. But still, Frank and Hazel haven’t answered anything that is especially concerning to James. If he hears the words “family emergency” one more time he is sure he will rip his hair out so, after a while, he just decides to cut Amelia off and she settles back into her seat, smiling a little guiltily at him. He waves her off and fights his dry tongue for the ability to conjure words that are more than a dragged-out monosyllable.
“Why…?” he pauses and stumbles and forces himself to ask more. “Why haven’t you been back?”
He finishes the sentence and Frank is silent. Hazel is looking at him with an encouraging tilt to her lips and the rest of them have found themselves leaning in, elbows braced on the table. Frank sighs and shakes his head and James’ stomach drops, suddenly convinced he isn’t going to get an answer, that maybe the only reason Frank hasn’t been back is that he stopped caring about them, outgrew them and here, had nothing to come back to.
“I’d love to tell you,” he says it so earnestly that James’ eyes start prickling with tears again, he sniffles and swipes definitely at them with the back of his hand. It’s not a good enough answer and he shouldn’t be upset right now. If anything, he should be angry, furious that he was left behind, that he gave up two years of his life to mourning a friend who wasn’t even just dead, who could never even be bothered to call him back. But it’s Frank: he can’t make himself feel anything but a brand new and slightly shifted of that same grief that has been following ever since Frank disappeared. James wants to press but Hazel beats him to it.
“Why not?”
Frank furrows his brow. “What?” he seems a bit taken aback, “What do you mean? You know why,”
She shrugs. “Yes,” she says simply, “But on the other hand, who’s going to stop you?” She gestures between themselves, a meaning that is clear to both her and Frank but that James cannot interpret.
Frank thinks for a moment. “Big man upstairs?” he posits.
“Well,” Hazel says, “I’d like to think we have a little bit of sway with him-” Frank looks ready to interrupt, features tight and concerned, so she steps back in. “And, if not, we have Percy,” James knows that name, heard it much more often than Frank’s in the reports of their sporadic national and international travels. He knows everything publicly available about Percy Jackson. He tenses a bit when he hears the name, concerned about the history of manhunts and the strange disappearances and all of the weirdness and conspiracy surrounding him, but Frank relaxes, slumps back in his seat.
“You’re right,” he decides, and then he looks back at them, eyes meeting James’ directly. “This might be a bit much,” he warns, “Just bear with me. Do you know anything about the Roman gods?”