Chapter Text
I hate the world now. No irony—just exhaustion. Once, I loved skiing in Vermont. These days, the outdoors only drains me.
Now the woods serve only as reminders of that awful day, the one decision that changed everything. What felt safe has become suffocating.
Six months earlier, near Burlington Pond, everything shifted. Back then, life felt lighter—even with summer on the horizon, I had no sense that change lurked ahead.
“Crap!” my best friend, Sebastian, exclaimed. He tumbled down the hill, bounced back up with a goofy grin, and held a bracelet in the air like treasure. He’d acted as if he’d just found it after a lifetime of searching. I took my bracelet back and slipped it onto my wrist.
“Samzies again,” he said, showing his matching bracelet.
“You didn’t have to. I could’ve grabbed it,” I said, grinning.
“Then how could I flex my epic reenactment?” Seb replied.
“You don’t have to act like an idiot. But you’re my idiot,” I teased. Seb gasped, clutching his chest.
The past years were brutal—Dad’s suicide, then Mom lost to grief. The Waymans took me in, but depression stayed with me.
Seb ruffled my hair. “Earnie? Earnie? You’re doing that weird ‘trailing off into space’ thing again.”
I literally shook myself out of it, and then looked at Seb, whose eyes were studying me with genuine worry.
“Are you—” he began, but I cut him off. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Seb didn’t know that today marked two years since my parents died. I wiped my tears, wishing I could ask for comfort, but instead stepped away.
“Earnest, did I say something wrong?” he asked, and it physically hurt me to hear the genuine care in his voice. Why was he so invested in giving a damn about me?
“J-just… let it go. I want to leave,” I said, voice cracking. He sped up, and we finished the hike in silence until Mom’s car appeared.
When Mom got out, she saw my tears instantly. My ruined makeup only deepened my humiliation and isolation. The meds were supposed to help—why couldn’t I hold myself together? “Baby, what’s wrong?” she rushed over, her voice thick with worry. I could barely stand.
“N-nothing. I’m just tired. I don’t want to talk about it,” I sniffled.
She nods, knowing not to prod me any further, as it would only make things worse in the long run.
“Ok, it’s alright. Get in the car,” Mom urged. Seb helped me in—my height made it tough to climb alone.
I could feel Seb and Mom watching, trying to see just how upset I was.
I snapped. “I’m fine! Stop staring!” Shame flooded me. They didn’t know how hard today was. Relief came only when Rufus greeted us at home.
With the help of Seb, I got out of the car, and once he gently set me on my feet, Rufus bounded over to me, almost knocking me over with his enthusiasm to greet me.
“Hey, boy! I missed you too!” I said. Rufus tried to lick my face, finally making me topple backward into the soft grass as I laughed. Eventually, Mom called Rufus inside, leading the over-excited dog away.
“Want to go to the pond? Alone? We could talk… Or I’ll jump in with rocks for being a bad friend,” Seb joked. “I’d never turn down a chance to push you in,” I shrugged.
“Oh, you little—” Seb growled playfully. Mom called out, “Do you boys want lunch?”
“Um, no thanks! I’ll eat something later!” I said, but Seb said, “I want some!”
Because of our friend’s code—and because Seb would lose his mind if I swam alone—I had to follow him inside.
“Can I take lunch to the pond? Ernie and I want to go soon,” Seb asked. Mom sighed but nodded, putting a PB&J in a Ziploc and tossing it to him.
“Stay here. I’ll get our swim trunks and bug spray,” Seb said, returning from the laundry room with both items.
“I refuse to let you get Lyme disease,” Seb declared. I rolled my eyes but let him spray me with repellent before we headed outside.
Soon we pulled on trunks and shirts. “Do you want to talk about what happened at the pond?” Seb asked as we walked.
“Look, we don’t need to talk about it. It was nothing.” Seb let it drop, but I knew he’d ask again.
I backed up. “Nope. Last time, I belly flopped.” He raised an eyebrow, picked me up, and tossed me in.
Damn this tiny body. I hate it—but honestly, it was a blast.
I hit the water and made a big splash. I closed my eyes, felt the pond’s slimy bottom, then swam up laughing.
Later, after our swim, dusk faded. Quiet tension grew as we wrapped ourselves in towels and started the walk home. The mood changed with the falling night, signaling another challenge ahead.
“I have no regrets about swimming that long,” Seb panted as we reached the house. At last, I responded.
“It’s so f… freaking cold,” I said. My teeth audibly chattered. We went inside, leaving our wet towels to dry on the porch couch.
“I’ll make you tea,” Seb said, wrapping his arm around me, sharing his warmth.
“Frickin’ grandma,” I teased, teeth chattering.
“Shut up,” Seb said with a smile.
Seb walked me to the couch and bundled me in blankets. “Frickin’ grandma,” I teased again, teeth chattering. “Shut up,” Seb smiled, heading to make tea. I heard Mom and Seb exchange words in hushed voices.
“…I just realized that it’s the day… they died,” Mom whispered. Seb replied, but I couldn’t hear him. Of course, I knew what, or rather who, they were discussing.
“Hey, buddy,” Seb said softly. Judging by his tone, I knew he was afraid of upsetting me on the anniversary of the worst day of my life.
“Hey… what’s going on? Why do you look so sad?” I asked, choosing confusion over calling him out.
“Nothing!” Seb said after a pause, forcing a smile as he handed me the tea.
“Thanks,” I said, sipping. He remembered—no honey, nothing extra.
“Good?” Seb asked. I nodded, set the mug down on the coffee table, and turned to face him.
“Seriously, dude, what is it? You look like Mom just said Dad can’t be at your birthday,” I teased.
“Well… fuck, Earnie. You know what this is. I just heard from Mom. I’m sorry we forgot.” Seb's eyes filled with tears. I’d never seen that before.
My family was gone. I pretended so Seb and Mom wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.
Because nothing was fine. That void is bottomless—I’ll never see them again. Anxiety ate at me.
“It’s fine. Seb talked to me,” I told her. She tried (and failed) to hide relief. I wasn’t mad.
“Good, that’s… good. But listen, Earnest, I’m so sorry that we didn’t realize sooner-” She began, but I put a hand up, and now it was my turn to put on a fake smile.
“Really, I’m fine. Promise.” I aimed for my most convincing ‘I’m fine’ tone.
She didn’t look convinced, but let it go. To ease the quiet, we started movie night—Mom made popcorn, Seb and I picked Pirates of the Caribbean, and we settled in.
I guess that when I was 12 last year, and it was my first couple of months living with Seb’s family that I hadn’t really ever recognized my strange feelings for him, but now that I was 13, and I realized that I was most certainly not ‘straight’, I ended up noticing all the different ways that Seb managed to make my entire body feel like there was a metaphorical fire inside my gut, and my body did things that I… definitely didn’t want it to do.
“Seb?”
“Mm?”
"What if I stopped taking my meds? What happens if I don’t take antidepressants or methylphenidate?"
“That’s… random,” Seb said, turning to me, looking concerned.
“That’s not an answer,” I said, noticing I was weirding Seb out, but I pushed.
“Earnest, are you feeling ok?” Seb asked, taking my hands in his.
“I’m fine. Just curious.” I shrugged.
“That’s a weird thing to be curious about, Earnie,” Seb commented, but when I persisted, he sighed and took out his phone.
“It says that sudden discontinuation of taking your kind of meds without proper supervision from a doctor can result in some pretty bad symptoms, as well as obviously raising the risk of… You know.” Seb said.
“Ok. Thanks for answering my random question.” I said, grinning in a phony way.
“Sure. Hey, you sure you’re ok?” Seb asked, still looking worried.
Before I could respond with a deflective response, Mom came in holding two popcorn bowls, giving one to me and one to Seb, and keeping the other for herself.
Little did we know, everything was about to go downhill really fast.
After the movie, Seb and I left the living room and went upstairs to get ready for bed.
After the movie, Seb and I went upstairs. Seb helped me get changed into pajamas, and he stripped down to his underwear (which I tried to turn around during but sneaked a peek once or twice). Seb went to bed, but I went to the bathroom. Leaning forward onto the sink, my palms pressed up against the edge of the basin as I looked into the mirror, realizing that yet again, I had forgotten my features. My freckles, my nose, my hazel-brown eyes, and realized that I wasn’t happy with it.
My grip on the sink tightened, my knuckles turning white as I realized I had started crying, once again. I hadn’t bothered to reapply my mascara in the morning, so it was smudged and imperfect. I scowled and turned away from the sink. I opened a cabinet drawer, uncapped a bottle, poured all the pills down the toilet, and flushed.
I tossed the empty bottle, grabbed another marked ‘methylphenidate,’ and put it in my pocket. I was done pretending my life didn’t suck, done with my meds. I hated how I looked, how I talked, how I existed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to exist.
I was done with lying. Done with covering up for the benefit of how other people around me felt, because basically every time that I had done that, I ended up only further down shit-creek without a paddle. I unlocked the door and went into the bedroom, but when I got into bed, I couldn’t manage to fall asleep. So, after around an hour and a half of being unable to sleep, I got back out of bed and silently walked downstairs, thinking that maybe if I just watched TV on mute for a while, my brain would eventually give up on trying to pay attention and turn itself off.
This, however, was wrong, and by the time the sun had risen in the sky, I had gotten only around 30 minutes of sleep. When Seb and Mom came downstairs, they both did a double-take at my slumped form. My head was resting on a pillow, but my eyes were still wide open; my mascara was still defiantly messed up.
"Um, Earnest? Are you feeling ok?” Mom asked, pausing to look at me worriedly, and my face was still in its ‘bite me’ expression.
“Ugh… no, not really,” I grumble, managing to push myself up into a sitting position, my eyes half-squinted, my brain oddly numb and yet sore at the same time. Is this how it feels to be hungover? I wondered to myself.
“Buddy… you look… really sick,” Seb said, and I groaned, sticking my middle finger up at him.
“No frickin’ crap,” I grumbled, and both Mom and Seb looked thoroughly taken aback by my less-than-warm personality. I was rarely like this around them, but right now, I didn’t really care enough to abide by their expected personality of mine. I didn’t care anymore. This simple realization felt both sickening and liberating at once, and if I was honest, I wanted more. I wanted to taste more of this sweet, sweet freedom.
“Earnest, what is going on? You seem…” Mom began, but this is when I stood up and looked right at her, scowling.
“I don’t see anything, Mom. I don’t seem to fucking exist. So, forget it.” I growled. Both Mom and Seb looked extremely taken aback by my attitude. Theneb stepped up, walking towards me, and trying to take my hands in his, but I yanked them away.
“Earnie… what’s going on? Is there something wrong?” Seb asked, and to me in the moment, this sounded like the stupidest question ever.
“Oh, s-orry! Am I too fucking emotional right now? Am I making your single fucking iota of common-sense overload?!” I rage, before storming past him, opening the door, walking outside, and then slamming it closed behind me. I walked deep into the woods, not wanting to turn back yet, wanting them to have time to realize what overly happy assholes they were right now.
Eventually, I reach some small brook, and I sit down on a rock nearby the brook, watching as little bits of sticks and leaves flow down, going to God only knows where. I sigh, and get off my brooding rock, and continue walking down the forest trail, not exactly knowing how long I was going to be walking till I turned around, or if I would turn around at all. Maybe I’d find a bigger brook and drown myself in it, spare myself the absolute torture and humiliation of facing my adoptive family and my secret crush after my ‘bitches be crazy’ tantrum.
“Screw them. I can look after myself.” I grumble to myself as I walk through the forest, and after what was surely at least 2 hours, I stop, leaning up against a tree. I surveyed my surroundings, realizing that I hadn’t ever really gone this far into the woods, and knowing that I must have exceeded the property line at least half an hour ago. Exhausted from the first bit of real, extensive cardio that I’d had in days, I slumped down onto the ground, leaning against the tree.
Another couple of hours went by, and after a total of 4 hours of walking away from the house, I finally decided to turn around. I had been walking and walking, trying to remember where I had even come from, and at the same time keeping a crude sense of time by the lightness of the sky. It must be around noon now, since the sun is fully overhead.
“Earnest?!” I heard the worried voice of Seb call, and before I knew what was coming at me, a giant, fluffy dog bowled me over, barking happily and licking my face exuberantly. Soon, Seb found Rufus and me, and a look of pure relief appeared on his face as he walked over to me and looked at me with the kind of eyes that made me feel like he was trying to perform an X-ray on me with just his eyeballs.
“Seb, stop looking at me like that,” I say, self-consciously picking at the hem of my baggy hoodie. He ignored me and just picked me up in his arms and set me back on my feet. Rufus tried to jump up and resume the licking of my face. I basically do a walk of shame back to the house, with Seb point-blank refusing to give me anything more than a foot and a half of distance.
“I swear, you’re going to piss me off if you keep on giving me a flat tire,” I say, finally, turning around to face him.
“I don’t care.” He said, and for the first time… he looked and sounded angry, but not at someone else, but… at me. For the first time in my life, Seb was genuinely, officially angry at me. Not for some dumb, childish reason, like when he got upset that I teased him or called him joking names when we were little, but he was angry.
“Seb, what’s going on?” I ask, hurt creeping into my voice, despite my wish for it to just stay out.
“Nothing,” Seb said, his jaw clenched, and he was doing that thing where he narrowed his eyes ever so slightly when angry. I realized that I had truly, really, terrified my family. I had run off into the woods without any explanation; I hadn’t returned for hours; I hadn’t even sent them a text or anything. (Not that the woods had cellular signal, but still).
"Seriously! Seb! It’s not my fault you took things out of proportion!” I said, the anger that seemed to be becoming increasingly normal for me was coming back with a vengeance. At this, Seb removed all the distance between us by walking up to me, his chest at my eye height. He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up at him from an awkward angle, and his eyes burned with a kind of rage that made me want to cry.
“What the actual FUCK?! WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH YOU?! I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU’D LET ANYTHING GET INTO YOUR HEAD SO BAD THAT IT CAUSED YOU TO ACT LIKE… LIKE… SOME LONER!” Seb raged, and he let go of my chin, and I stepped back, feeling a kind of sickness rise in my throat. I wanted to throw up. I didn’t want to be here, not to be alive.
I didn’t want to be alive.