#and then what kind of fragile glue held the two of us this whole time together

[sheddr]

It's true

You've been so nice and dear

And it makes none of it easier.

(I still so deeply miss you

Telling myself everyday that I don't care)

I wish I could just hate you

But I've got no reasons to.

#the way it doesn't matter whether I obsess over her or spend days without single thought about her #she stays silent #as if I (or she) don't exist at all #has it always been this way? #and then what kind of fragile glue held the two of us this whole time together #my obsession maybe? my energy pouring lavishly into this fruitless relationship #oh i am a fool #and still #I #love #poetry #poems #poems on tumblr #writing #original poem #poem #original poetry #crush #being in love

[the--highlanders]

6. “Didn’t we already have this conversation?”

on ao3.

“What did ye think was gonnae happen?” Jamie snipped a fresh length of bandage off the roll lying beside him with a little more force than was strictly necessary. Some sort of glue coated the stuff, and he grimaced, pulling his fingers away from it one by one. “Goin’ in like that, trying tae put out that ye were on that man’s side. Ye knew what a temper he had.”

“I knew what a temper he had,” the Doctor repeated back in a murmur. His head was bowed, but Jamie doubted there was any real regret in him. There never was.

“An’ ye knew how quick he turned on people.”

“I knew how quick he turned on people.” Another murmur, this one barely audible.

“Even people who really were loyal to him. An’ ye expected him not tae notice that ye were sendin’ messages back to us?”

“Well -” The Doctor’s voice was a little louder now, a little more bite coming into it. “Well, I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing, Jamie. And it worked, didn’t it?”

Jamie glared back at him, as icily as he could manage. Which was probably not particularly icily, all things considered. Not while he was wrapping a bandage around the gash in the Doctor’s arm. He looked so terribly small without his coat – even more so with one torn sleeve cut off to better reveal the wound. Oh, he saw him coatless often enough. At night and in the mornings, most often, which had put paid to his half-baked suspicion that the Doctor slept in the ratty old thing. Now, though, he didn’t bat an eyelid to see the Doctor without it, most of the time. He was small underneath it, yes, sometimes surprisingly so, but it wasn’t like it bothered him. Except for when the Doctor was hurt.

He was so seldom hurt. That was the problem, really. Jamie had never grown used to it, and he didn’t suppose he ever would.

“It only barely worked,” he muttered. “What if ye hadn’t come back, hm? What would we’ve done then?”

The Doctor just sighed, like all his pain had drained away, and he was left with only boredom. “Haven’t we already had this conversation?”

“Aye. We had it yesterday, an’ a week ago, an’ the week before that, an’ the week before that. An’ we’re gonnae keep havin’ it until ye stop acting like a fool.”

“I meant,” the Doctor put in, “haven’t we already have this conversation about you.”

The shock of the Doctor’s words made Jamie jerk the bandage tight around his arm, tight enough to make him wince. Guilt rushed through him at that, and he mumbled “sorry.” All his frustration – and there was an awful lot of it, at times like this – was not an excuse to go around being rough with the Doctor when he was hurt.

“It’s alright,” the Doctor mumbled back.

He had been expecting the Doctor to carry on defending himself, not to turn things back the other way. And there was no argument he could make against it, not really. How could he go around accusing the Doctor of being reckless, when he was nothing but reckless himself?

Not that he had any intention of stopping.

“It’s different,” he said after a moment, busying himself with fastening the bandage as he spoke. It gave him something to keep his eyes on, at least. There was not much else to look at, in this bare little bunker. Just the hard, metal-framed bed, the cracked concrete floor and the threadbare rug haphazardly thrown over it. “When it’s me. I know I’m gonnae look after myself. But I cannae say the same for you, I just have tae – tae sit around, waitin’ for ye to get back – or worse, I’ve got tae go on lookin’ out for myself, or Victoria, an’ all the while I’m busy worryin’ about you, an’ I cannae look after any of us properly -”

“You don’t have to look after me.”

“Aye, I do.” Reaching out to tilt the Doctor’s chin up, Jamie fixed him with the most determined glare he could muster. The words sat heavy in his chest, somehow more honest than anything else he had said that afternoon. Than anything else he had ever said, maybe. Some kind of truth that lived in the core of him, and he was desperate for the Doctor to understand it properly. “Aye, I do.”

The Doctor stared back for a moment – twisted his fingers together – turned his head to cough into his sleeve – but for all his fidgeting, Jamie knew he had been understood. “Can’t you – ah – can’t you just trust me, when I say I know what I’m doing?”

“I do trust ye,” Jamie protested. “It’s everyone else I don’t trust. People like this -” He snapped his hands outwards, pulling the two ends of the bandage into a knot to illustrate his point. “An’ the people who didnae get ye out in time tae stop ye bein’ hurt. I don’t trust them not tae let ye down.”

“Mm.” Idly, the Doctor picked at a loose string from the bandage that had settled over his remaining shirtsleeve. “They didn’t let me down, Jamie. I’m still here.”

“One day ye might not be.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t make any promises on that count.”

That’s the problem, Jamie wanted to scream out. That’s what gets me. But the Doctor knew that well enough. There was no point in screaming, not with blood still seeping out of the Doctor’s wound. Everything was always fragile at times like this, when one of them was hurt, and both of them were hurting. He could sit as close to the Doctor as he liked, but it would always feel like there were a million miles between them, and the whole distance was paved with broken glass.

Glancing down at the Doctor’s wound – or rather, at the mess of bandages where the Doctor’s wound had been – he gave a wry smile. “Dinnae think I’ve done a very good job of this.” At least there was no redness coming through the layers, he supposed. He had never been one to go weak-kneed at the sight of blood, but something about it oozing out of the gash had turned his stomach.

“Oh, nonsense.” The Doctor held his arm out gingerly, turning it over to inspect Jamie’s work from every angle. “I think you’ve done a fine job.”

“Och, here -” Tutting, Jamie caught the Doctor’s hand, forcing his arm back down again as gently as he could. “Ye have tae keep it still, ye daftie. An’ I dinnae think I was meant tae use three lots of the thing.” It was hardly his fault that it had gotten all stuck to itself, and to the Doctor’s skin. And he couldn’t exactly go tearing it off to do it all again without risking it hurting the Doctor. It was lumpy in places, and there was clearly too much bandage – but if it worked, it worked, he decided. Still, give him a plain old strip of cloth any day.

“Come on,” he said, pushing himself off the bed. “Victoria’ll be worried sick.”

You shouldn’t go on doing this sort of thing, he almost said. For her sake, at least.

But no. Now was not the time. Not with Victoria waiting, and the Doctor getting up so tentatively, and his own heart still pounding. It would all come out wrong. And besides, when did the Doctor ever listen?

When did either of them ever listen?

No, he thought. Best to leave it for later.

#second doctor #two/jamie #fanfic archive #my writing #fictober 2021

[sneezysmonsterlovin]

Alien Boyfriend: Yunko  Part 1

Not edited because yawn

Warnings?: Uh brief mention of death? Blood, but like really minor. I think that’s it.

Summary: You and your crew were shot down after returning from a rescue mission, and crash on an unknown planet. You find yourself waking from homeostasis, and are taken in by a pair of strange scavengers. 

Word Count: 2,519

The faint smell of something burning wakes you. Slowly opening your eyes, you feel something tight strapped your face. Something shatters not far from where you lay, muffled by the leathery belts wrapped around your head. You startle, sitting up quickly. Or, you would if your bones hadn’t felt like complete jelly. Your arms barely twitch, and you don’t think you can feel your legs.

Squinting in the dark room, you searched for the source of the noise. It was difficult, laid across an unknown slimy substance in a dimly lit room. The room was small, and you could see four giant glass containers, a dark black smoke slowly curling out the side of the one to your right. The air felt thick, and the more you breathed in the dizzier you felt. Struggling to turn your head, you felt a sharp pain in the back of your neck and you winced, freezing. A sharp piece of, what you assumed to be, glass dug into the back of your skull, the wet ooze below you seeping into the cut. “Oh no!” The high pitched shrill was somewhere behind you, accompanied by the click clacking of nails against the floor. A pair of hands clutched your shoulders, nails- no they were much to large, they were more like talons- dug into the cotton fabric clinging to your body. A second pair cradled your head, lifting it off the sludge and glass, and you gasped at the sight in front of you.

One of the glass containers, the one in front of you, had burst open. The one beside it had similar cracks in the surface, save for a single blackened hand hanging out of the largest breach, dripping in blood. The similar ooze that had stuck your legs and arms like glue as you were lifted was filling the other two containers that had not yet busted.

“Are you alive? Wait, that’s a dumb question, I meant are you okay?” The voice was closer now, beside your ear. You watched in silent horror, not able to move anymore than you were before, as a hand left your shoulder and reached towards your face. It was white, with two long curved talons and a smaller talon centered perfectly in the center of the hand. A black wristband strapped around it’s arm, covered slightly by a blue fluff that bellowed out into giant black feathers, shaping a gorgeous wing. The talons wrapped delicately around your mask and tugged, the leather straps loosening easily and dropping from your face. An oxygen mask, you noted briefly, before the hand tossed it away like trash and turned you gently.

You held your breath, stomach lurching as you were turned to face the alien creature whom cradled you in it’s arms like a fragile doll. It was smaller than you, not by much but it was noticeable. It’s head was round, lips hardened and black in what resembled a beak. Skin just as white as it’s hands, the blue fluff had trailed its way up the creatures arms and covered its body, it’s face clear reminding you vaguely of a monkey, with a few flecks of what you realized to be scales outlining it’s cheeks. The side of it’s head was shaved, a single black line-Tattoo?- sliding around the side of it’s head, curving around it’s cheek and stopping at the chin. In place of ears were small, bean shaped holes, and as your head drooped to the side you noticed it’s loose white collared tank, a second pair of arms sprouting closer to it’s stomach. The pair that had once cradled your head, you realized as the aforementioned hands trailed down your shoulders to wrap around your torso and thighs, the larger pair of arms supporting your neck and knees. “Right, I’ll get you to the med room. I can’t believe you survived so long, this ship must’ve been abandoned for a while if the rust is any indication.” You picked up a faint masculine tone to it’s voice, with a more apparent tone of muscles that pressed against your side as it lifted you easily. You were left with no other choice but to watch your surroundings as the creature carried you out of the room.

The ship was familiar, and as the alien practically skipped through the halls, you faintly recalled boarding it. You and your crew had just returned from transferring a group of refugees to a safe-zone when something had shot you down. In a rush to try and preserve yourselves, your crew had went into homeostasis. Tears pricked at your eyes following another rush of nausea as you realized who that hand from before had belonged to, and you tried your best to blink them away with a shaky breath. The woman had been like a second mother to you, having taken several bullets for you and you had trusted her completely. Your heart clenched, the blood rushing your cheeks as you choked a single, quiet sob. It had sounded horrid, voice croaky and broken, and the vibrations against your throat felt foreign. The creature- it seemed rude to just refer to it like that but you really had no clue what species it was, humans had only encountered two other intelligent alien species and neither had resembled this one. His feathers bristled at the noise you had made, and its tight grasp faltered. You noticed it staring at you out of the corner of your eye, but as the airlock opened and revealed the planet you had crashed on, you really could care less. Well, that’s not true, it was slightly unnerving to have those bright golden eyes, three of them, fixated entirely on your being. But as you stared out at the cold desert that seemed to stretch on forever, the horizon only breaking upon reaching a smaller ship then the one you had just been on,one that was sleek and black, with green lights and a curious logo stamped on the side of three eyes and tiny square just below it.

The wind seemed to be colder than the air itself though, and the warm fluff that was so tightly tugging you against it distracted you. The creatures pace picked up, and you reached the space ship in no time, door opening automatically at your-well, the aliens-presence. You noticed it smelt strongly of something familiar, but you couldn’t quite place it. And as the alien stepped farther up the stares, you noticed the creature smelled just the same, albeit a bit stronger.

The creature continued into the ship, the door slowly shutting itself behind it, and a voice echoed throughout the metal structure. It was clearly robotic, and spoke in a tongue that was just as strange as this whole incident. The alien cooed at you, seeming to find your expression shift into one of confusion amusing, and kept up his fast-paced skip walk. The ships insides were very open, a table centered in room with several stools nailed to the ground around it, twice as many doors lining the wall. A brief glance to the left of the table revealed the ships control room, but you only got a small glimpse of the many flashing buttons and lights before the alien had brought you through on of the doors on the far side of the room, one that was filled with several black beds, iron bars lifted just so slightly to keep patients from rolling off. There were plenty of cabinets and jars of different liquids with a language that you assumed was the one that the ships voice had used stamped onto the white tags taped to their sides.

“My name is Yunko, I’m a scavenger. You’re pretty lucky, you know.” The alien gently rested you on the bed nearest to the far wall, propping you up on a pillow that held the same texture and consistency as a bean bag, molding to your back like jello but stiff enough to hold you up. Yunko turned, resting one of his lower hands on the wall that faded from its plain silver metal into a sort of window, the gray sand and soft brown sky catching your eyes once again. “Your life pods were about to blow. Actually, they did, the liquid that was in yours just seemed to manage to protect you from most of the blow. Pretty cool. You’re pretty cool too, I’ve never seen something like you.” Yunko turned, and you watched in surprise as the scales that lined his eyes, cheeks, and nose turned a beautiful shade of orange. “I mean, someone. I think. My translator is active, so I’m assuming you’re capable of speech.” The orange lightened. and shifted back to the previous snowy color, and you almost wished he’d stayed the breathtaking color forever. You assumed it was a he, at least. It seemed rather masculine, although it is an alien so who was to tell.

“You should get some rest, I’ll be in the other ship, doing my job.” Yunko shrieked, and you concluded that it was in amusement. “As soon as you can move, you just come find me and we’ll run some tests to see if I have anything for you to eat.” With that, Yunk swiftly turned, skipping out of the room happily. Your gaze flickered down and realized that he wore a tight pair of silky pants that tightly hugged his bird-like legs, and peaking out of the bottom of his shirt was a pair of long black tail feathers. Gaze trailing even lower, you caught a glimpse of his strange feet, and realized that his skip-walk was due to a slight limp he had in his right leg, caused most likely due to a lack of talon on the inside of his clawed feet, throwing off his balance. You mused briefly that he looked kind of cute in the baby animal kind of way, before closing your eyes to ponder all that has happened.

You didn’t see Yunko again until what felt like hours later, spending your time mourning your lost friends and past life, very much aware of the fact that you might never see any of it again now that you’ve been stranded for who knows how long, and picked up by some random alien scavenger, that admittedly wasn’t as bad as you first feared. You were still a little worried he might turn out to just want to eat you- it wouldn’t be the first time you met an alien that saw humans as another food source rather than a fellow intelligence, but he was really your only hope. Your ship, if the gaping holes and smell of death were anything to go by, was in no condition to fly, and Yunko seemed nice enough. The thought that he might eat you was quieted when you realized if he wanted to do such a thing, he needn’t get you back to full health to do so, unless it was a weird alien ritual.

You weren’t tired, and felt restless to get out of bed, so as soon as you got feeling back in your legs you pulled yourself over the cold iron, only to regret it afterwards as you tumbled to the ground, your muscles not used to being used in such a long time. The sound of something clattering to the ground in the other room surprised you, and you looked up just in time to watch as the doors flew open and a new creature stormed in. This one was much larger than Yunko, and by extension, you. It had only one arm though, the spot the other would be covered in plenty of scars. He was completely scaly. except for a metal jaw and long red hair pulled back into a bun. He wore a tight sleeveless black suit, a gold belt hung loosely from his thin hips. He didn’t wear shoes either, his feet ending in a pair of hooves. His ears were pointed and droopy, a lighter shade of lavender than the rest of his body.

For a brief while, you simply stared wide eyed at the alien as he seemed to speak to you in the language from before, and he only paused when he seemed to realize you couldn’t understand him. His shoulders slumped and he raised a hand to his jaw, and you watched as he spoke once again. “She’s awake? Oh! Just stay right there! I’m just about finished, and then we can take off!” You realized the alien had called Yunko, as the bird man prattled on through the speaker, loud clashes of metal softly made its way through the speaker-er, the aliens jaw.

Said creature seemed to look exhausted as it made it’s way towards you, towering over you with such an intimidating presence you didn’t bother fighting as he plucked you up by your waist and made his way out of the room. The alien surprised you as he gently turned you over in his grasp, gently placing you onto one of the stools instead of dropping you like you had expected. He then turned without a second glance at you and made his way towards the control room.

You sat in silence, kicking your legs and every so often pressing your weight onto them, waiting for Yunko to arrive and break the uncomfortable silence that hovered like a storm cloud throughout the room. You could still see the other aliens muscly arm as it moved about the controls, and wondered quietly if every scavenger was as strong as these two.

Yunko didn’t take much longer to return, speeding through the archway that led to the common room with several bags tossed over his shoulders. Upon seeing you, he placed them down by the door, and rushed over like an excited child.

“You’re up! How are you feeling?” He trilled, talons clicking together when he leaned over the table to peer at your face.

“Okay...” You croaked, scrunching your nose once more at the uncomfortable feeling talking had caused. Yunko didn’t seem to notice, and simply tilted his head in interest at your expression. You briefly realized neither he nor the other alien made any real facial reactions, Yunko’s face stoic other than the occasional squinting, and the scarred alien having a literal jaw of steel, leaving not much room for any expressions in the first place.  

“You sound horrid.” Yunko stated simply. “But I guess I can’t imagine every alien to sound as darling as I.” He straightened, before looking over at the alien in the control room. “That’s Ciks. He looks plenty scarier than he actually is, don’t worry.” Yunko turned to look at you once again, eyes squinting as another birdlike shriek tore through his throat. The noise surprised you, as it did the first, and you couldn’t help but giggle quietly at the sudden noise. Yunko stared at you wide eyed, mouth slack before he straightened and nodded, motioning for you to follow him.

“This way, dear! Let’s go see what we can do.”

#Alien Boyfriend #Alien x Reader #Female Reader #Aliens #Stranded in space idk #exophilia #monster boyfriend #my writing #unedited #trash

[whitetigerdemoness]

I’ve started titling this “Evie vs Lila” in my drafts and I kinda wish Penknight was still Evillustrator so I could have Marc call him that.

Master post of all chapters

Ladybug and Chatnoir didn’t have to look far for coffee. Being a news station they had their own little coffee shop on the first floor, whom were more than happy to give the heroes free java in exchange for tea. I mean, details about the akuma attack. Desperately trying to keep her eyes open, having been awake for more than 24 hours at this point, Ladybug gave them the gist of it. 

Hawkmoth had decided Volpina would be a better bet than Prism, forcing his akuma to change hosts. The duo had to wait for the reporters to quiet down before continuing when they revealed that Penknight had managed to throw off Hawkmoth’s control and was currently a free agent. They left out the details of how that had happened, saying only that Penknight was still active, but without his partner had been regulated to ‘lesser threat’ and Viperion was keeping an eye on him for now. They warned the citizens of Paris about Volpina’s illusions, and to be wary of anything unusual they saw until she was cured.

“Unusual like letting not one, but two akuma run free?” A reporter called from the back. Ladybug rubbed at her eyes. Please let this day be over soon, she groaned internally.

“Volpina’s illusions can be dispelled with a touch. If need be, Chatnoir and I are willing to let someone, shake our hands or something, to prove we’re real. As for Penknight the situation is...complicated. Volpina blames his partner, Prism, for humiliating her on live tv and has targeted him. Since Prism has been cured, he is vulnerable to her and having thrown off Hawkmoth’s control Penknight’s only interest seems to be protecting him. Viperion is going to be sticking to him like glue until Chatnoir and I deal with Volpina.” She locked eyes with a short man in a baseball cap and a hawaiian shirt at the back of the room. Seeing he had gotten her attention, the man slowly made his way to the side exit. Well, that was convenient. Now to ditch the reporters.

“That’s all the time we have for now, thank you!” Ladybug said, dragging away Chatnoir who was tolerating various reporters poking him to see if he was real. She lead him out the main doors, taking a wide circle back to the alley between the news station and another building. Before leaping down to talk with Fu, Ladybug turned to Chatnoir.

“Chat...we need to talk before seeing the master. About your miraculous.” Chatnoir looked as tired as she felt. She couldn’t imagine how much stress this whole thing was placing him under.

“My Lady...You don’t need to say anything. I know what’s right. If it was only you and Viperion, I might protest, but Hawkmoth knowing is inexcusable. Just now...when he started talking about how I could get my mom back if I joined him? I was really, really tempted. I know she would hate me for doing it but...I miss her so much, you know?” The cat hero sagged, looking like he had aged a decade in an instant. She had been uncertain about what to do before now, but seeing Chatnoir, seeing Adrien, look so defeated and hopeless gave her determination. Rules be damned. Chat Noir was more than just her crush, he was her partner. 

“I’m not letting the master take your miraculous.” Ladybug said firmly. “I might not be thinking as straight as I could right now due to sleep loss, but I know in my heart that there could never be a better cat miraculous wielder than you. I know you don’t remember some of it due to the miraculous ladybug, but I would have been dead a dozen times over without you. Not defeated, dead.” 

She pulled him into a hug, just as much for her comfort as his. She thought back to a blinding white world, the moon in pieces and Paris under water. She knew there were consequences to what she was about to do. Possible consequences. If her encounters with Bunnix and the miraculous in general had taught her anything, it was that the future was never set stone and that hope was so much stronger than fear.

“I’ve never agreed with how we’re supposed to keep our identities secret from each other. Especially knowing what I know now, I can see so many situations that could have ended better or we could have avoided completely if we knew who each other was. I don’t think the other heroes should know but us? We’re a team, and we’re not at full strength if we’re keeping secrets from each other.” Chat clung to her like a lifeline. It hurt her heart to pry him away, but she needed to see him for this next part.

“Adrien Agreste, my name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I’ve had the biggest crush on you since the day you lent me your umbrella, and I am not letting you go just because some old man who would rather force a pair of teenagers to be responsible for all of Paris instead of shouldering the burden himself thinks we should.” Oh dear god, she had said it. She had finally said it. She confessed to Adrien. She had always thought it would be more romantic than this. Not half crazy from sleep loss and smelling like cheap coffee.

“Marinette?” Chatnoir whispered the word like it was something fragile, precious. “No, that’s not possible. I saw Marinette and you at the same time when Marinette was Multimouse.” Ladybug sighed.

“That is exactly the kind of situation I’m talking about where not knowing our identities makes things harder than it needs to be. Kwami Buster almost had us because we had to avoid each other. At that time, I used the fox miraculous alongside the mouse to create an illusion so you would leave before my time ran out. Also so you didn’t discover who I was. That entire mess could have ended very badly and been easily avoided if we had only known.” Chatnoir took a moment to process this. As he came to terms with Ladybug and Marinette being the same person, his eyes lit up like stars.

“Marinette is Ladybug.” He laughed. “This had to be some weird dream because I can not be that lucky.” Ladybug blushed and looked away.

“Contemplating your state of cosmic karma will have to wait kitty. We’re going to need to have a much longer talk about...all of this later but for now if we keep Master Fu waiting any longer he’s going to be suspicious.” Chat grabbed her hand as she prepared to jump down.

“Ladybug wait, what are we going to tell him about my miraculous?”

“If that luck of yours holds out? Absolutely nothing. I meant what I said. I’m done with letting someone who shoulders none of the responsibility make all of the decisions.”

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Chatnoir’s luck held out just fine in the end. Ladybug had had to slowly count the bricks in the alley wall to keep her cool as Master Fu gently scolded them over not only having failed to cure either akuma after so long, but also for letting Viperion keep his miraculous unsupervised. She could tell from the tightness around Chatnoir’s eyes he was having a similar problem. Their talk on the roof had really driven home just how unequal the balance of duties were between the two heroes and the miraculous guardian. 

As Fu lectured, Ladybug thought about all the ways he made life difficult for them. They ranged from forcing Ladybug and Chatnoir to remain secret from each other to his new vagrant life that made obtaining allies tedious, if not impossible at some points. In her exhausted mind she wondered if he even wanted them to defeat Hawkmoth. If protecting the miraculous was so important a wielder had to give theirs up when their identity was discovered, why did Fu get to keep an entire box full of them when Hawkmoth knew who he was?

The errant thought sent a jolt of alertness down Ladybug’s spine. That was actually a really good question. Not only was Fu in custody of every miraculous except hers and Chat’s, he knew the identity of every wielder save Hawkmoth and Mayura. If anyone was a security risk, it was Master Fu. Ladybug knew logically SOMEONE had to be in charge of the miraculous, but in her tired, fed up state she was only angry at how strictly the guardian held them to rules he himself flaunted.

“Master,” Ladybug began as politely as she could manage, “We know leaving the miraculous unattended can be dangerous, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask for one more.” Fu gave her a disapproving look, but she plowed onwards. “Our enemies have proven they’re capable of making long term plans, but they’re not the only ones. I have an idea but I need the bee miraculous for it to work.”

“The bee miraculous, Ladybug?” The old man sounded disappointed in her. She kept her nerve. Ladybug was done caring about what he thought about her. For now at least. After some sleep she might change her mind, but for now? She was exhausted. “I hope you know the right person to give it to.”

“Don’t worry Master Fu, I know exactly who deserves this miraculous.”

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Bee miraculous tucked safely away in her yo-yo, it was time to check in on Viperion and Penknight. She talked her plan over with Chatnoir as they made their way to the address Viperion had texted them, trying very hard to focus on the matter at hand and not let her mind wander over how one might text with a lyre. She’d expected him to be hesitant at who she wanted to give the bee miraculous to, but was surprised when he was in full support of her idea. She only hoped her candidate felt the same, especially since they were essentially dumping an akuma on top of them.

Arriving at the hospital, Ladybug and Chatnoir were ushered in by relieved looking medical staff. As they neared the room Marc was staying in she could see why. The two heroes probably would have been able to find the room without directions just by following the shouting.

“Oh thank heavens.” A harassed looking doctor said as she caught sight of the two heroes. The graying woman was standing between two groups of people, and her expression said she wasn’t pleased with either of them. On one side was Viperion and Penknight, the snake hero very firmly holding the fuming akuma in place. On the other was Alya Cesaire, recording the incident with her phone no doubt for the Ladyblog, and a man in an official looking suit. Alya was slightly off to the side, looking only slightly less angry with the suited man than Penknight did. Ladybug felt a headache coming on. Why did things need to be more complicated than they already were?

“Please convince at least one of these parties to leave. I don’t care if it’s the akuma or Mr. Berger but one of them has got to go. This is a place of healing and that means quiet.” The doctor ordered more than asked.

“The akuma OR me? Insinuating this demon has more right than a member of the Office of Akuma Affairs to be here?” The suited man, Mr. Berger, sneered. Oh boy, the Wah Wah were here. The official abbreviation was OAA but Ladybug and Chatnoir referred to them as the Wah Wah, because without fail they showed up after an Akuma attack to go ‘waaah waaah’.

“Your party is NOT officially recognized by the Parisian government, making you essentially a civilian. The akuma was behaving himself until you came in and started stomping around, making accusations and demands for confidential patient information.” The doctor snapped at him.

“Ladybug, this guy has been running his mouth something awful. Viperion has been doing a great job of keeping Penknight in check, but I think I know who is behind that door and if this starched monkey makes one more insinuation about their virtue Penknight won't have to deck him because I will.” Alya steamed. “I’ve been turning a blind eye to people bad mouthing my friends for too long to let this one go.”

“So you admit to being friends with one of these demons? Not surprising that the writer for the trash rag you call the ‘Ladyblog’ is friendly with the enemy. You vomit praises for these masked terrorists so easily it’s not a surprise at all to find you supporting another one.” Mr.Berger harrumphed.

Among the demands of the Wah-Wah were that akuma identities should be public record, alongside that of heroes. Of course, they didn’t believe the miraculous wielders were heroes at all, but rather part of Hawkmoth’s scheme to terrorize the city. Their biggest talking point on this was how Ladybug and Chatnoir had conveniently showed up the same day Hawkmoth did, and how easily they seemed to defeat his minions. The two parties must be staging the fights, claimed the Office of Akuma Affairs. Even the akuma were paid actors, and the part about them losing their memories after being cured was a lie. How could someone not remember becoming a super villain and rampaging through the city? They asked.

The Wah-Wah demanded that the heroes be held accountable for the destruction of the city on a regular basis (as if Ladybug’s magic didn’t fix everything good as new) and for the lasting psychological trauma the akuma wrought. That second demand...Ladybug felt guilty for how many people got hurt in some of their worse battles. Sometimes people who were hurt, or even died, were revived good as new without their memories of the incident. Sometimes they remembered every second. After Syren, various support and therapy groups had popped up in the city to help those who remembered drowning, or watching loved ones suffer. Those groups grew in number and membership as time went on and akumas toppled buildings and destroyed bridges full of people. Ladybug thought back to the destroyed Paris of the future. Had her miraculous ladybug revived everyone? Did they remember dying? Was there an alternate future somewhere where Chatnoir was hated even more than Hawkmoth for destroying the world? Ladybug glanced at her partner, who had stepped over to help Viperion with Penknight. That was one future that would never happen, she vowed.

“Mr. Berger, we’re not even sure if Penknight still counts as an akuma right now. His situation is one we haven’t encountered before. What I can tell you is that as long as you are not a threat to...the person he’s protecting, he’s not a threat to you.” Chatnoir tried in a diplomatic tone.

“Unique situation?” Alya chimed in, perking up at potential spicy news for her blog.

“Hawkmoth doesn’t control me anymore.” Penknight huffed. “That doesn’t mean I’m suddenly on the side of angels. You say one more thing about my treasure and I’m throwing you off the roof.” He growled. 

“Dude what is it with you and chucking people off rooftops?” Chatnoir wondered aloud.

“I’ll say whatever I want about that whore you’re hiding-!” Mr. Berger didn’t get to finish his sentence as Penknight screeched and lunged at him, only the combined efforts of Viperion and Chatnoir keeping the maybe akuma from swatting the man’s head off with supernatural strength. 

“Oh that’s it” Alya growled, putting her phone down and pushing up a sleeve. Ladybug jerked her back on her way to get between the two parties.

“You stay there.” She said to Alya. “You calm down!” She shoved a finger in Penknight’s face “And you shut up before I toss you off the roof!” She hissed at Mr. Berger. “Whatever your personal feelings on the matter are, people who have been akumatized currently have the right to remain anonymous, especially minors!”

“So the little harlot is a minor, hmm? I bet I know exactly which school she goes to as well. College Dupont seems to be a breeding ground for filth.” The idiot in a suit smirked looking smug.

“He’s not a girl!” Penknight snapped, still struggling against the two heroes. Ladybug winced, she knew Marc was sensitive about his feminine appearance, but Penknight had just unwittingly given the man more ammunition. 

“That thing was a boy?” Berger hissed in disgust. “A demon and a fa-” a sharp smack cut the man off before he could finish that last syllable. The woman doctor raised her hand again as the suited man turned to her with his mouth open.

“That. Is. Enough.” The woman gritted out. “You will leave my hospital of your own free will, or I will have security THROW you out.” Said security guards shifted nervously in the background. “Ladybug, I’m sorry, but I really will have to ask your party to leave as well. The patient has received all the care we can give him at this point and should really go home and rest. The only reason he has a room is because Mr.Penknight bullied my staff into giving him one. Leave. Please.”

“Of course doctor, that was our intention from the start. Volpina is still after m-uh, “Prism”, and we have a safer location in mind.” She said to Penknight when he looked like he was going to protest. “Do the windows on this floor open?” She asked the doctor.

“How dare you you vile-” Mr. Berger began to spit, but the doctor wasn’t having it. 

“Security!” She called over his rant, stepping aside to let the two nervous looking men in uniform attempt to push the raging man towards the elevator. “No Ladybug, they do not. No windows in patient rooms do, it’s a jump\fall hazard.”

“That’s not a problem. I can just erase and replace the window.” Penknight offered, looking calmer already as the Wah-Wah man was forced away.

“Let’s do that. Leaving from the lobby seems like a bad idea.” Ladybug sighed rubbing a hand over her face.

“Ladybug, one moment! Do you have anything to say for the Ladyblog?” Alya asked, not about to let a potential scoop go by.

“Is this live?” Ladybug asked as Viperion followed Penknight into the hospital room they had been guarding. Chatnoir lingered outside, waiting for her. 

“No, I try to avoid live streams now days just in case something…sensitive needs to be edited out.” Maybe there was a brain in her friend’s head after all, Ladybug thought to herself. She leaned in close to whisper the next part, not wanting to be overheard.

“Then go home and keep an eye open. This is shaping up to be a huge mess and we might need all hands on deck later.” Ladybug certainly hoped not, but she knew the words would keep the girl safe at home and out of the line of fire.

“Ah, right! Of course Ladybug! Maybe I can get that interview some other time.” The red head said, putting her phone away.  Ladybug forced a smile and went to join the others in Marc’s hospital room.

“Did you mean that My Lady? Do you think we’re really going to need everyone later?” Chatnoir asked as he closed the door behind her, miraculous enhanced hearing easily having caught the exchange.

“I hope not kitty, but it was the first thing that came to mind to get her out of here.” Penknight had generously allowed Viperion to hold Marc (who was fast asleep. At least someone was getting some rest) as he erased the window. That didn’t stop the akuma from hovering like a mother hen the entire time.

“Relax, I’ve got him. He won't even feel a bump.” Viperion soothed. He left out that Marc might not have felt anything even if he were awake due to the pain medication the hospital staff had given him. Ladybug was once again very, very glad that calm, level headed Luka was who Master Fu has sent to help and not one of the other heroes. Maybe he could do some things right, though most likely Luka had been the only one he could find during school hours. Oh god, school. Marinette and Adrien had just left in the middle of the day, though since Alya had been here just moments ago perhaps they had been released early. Or maybe the reporter had ditched to get a scoop. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Don’t go too far.” Penknight warned, stepping out behind the snake hero to balance on the small ledge running along the side of the building.

“Just to the next rooftop.” Viperion promised, before making the jump. Penknight leaned after him like he wanted to follow, but pulled himself back. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get out.” The akuma huffed at the remaining heroes. Neither Ladybug nor Chatnoir argued, jumping after Viperion and waiting with him on the next rooftop for Penknight.

“How is he?” Chatnoir asked, gesturing to Marc.

“Better than he could have been if Penknight hadn’t managed to get Volpina off him in time, and keep her off. Only his leg is broken and it was a clean break.” The shadowed look on Viperion’s face said he had seen a future where that hadn’t been true. Chatnoir winced in sympathy, and Ladybug abruptly recalled his (not so) brief time as Aspik, who had spent months of second chances essentially watching her die. Suddenly the over protective attitude Chatnoir had had recently made more sense. At first it had annoyed her, but with this new context she felt devastated. The two of them really, really needed to sit down for a long talk and maybe spa day.

“Alight where are we going?” Penknight cut Ladybug from her thoughts, landing next to the heroes and holding out his arms in a clear demand for Viperion’s precious cargo. Viperion gently transferred the sleeping boy to the akuma without a word. Marc sighed and buried his face in the akuma’s chest without waking up, causing Penknight to give him the dopiest grin. Ladybug had to face it, Penknight’s devotion to his friend (maybe more?) was downright adorable. It was a shame he wasn’t going to remember any of this when she finally cured him.

“Ah, My lady, that could be us but you playin’” Chatnoir teased. Ladybug rolled her eyes good naturedly. 

“I thought you liked games kitty.” She teased back, booping him on the nose. Viperion cleared his throat, looking amused and...a little sad? Maybe he was feeling left out.

“Right. Our destination. I honestly never thought I would say this, but there’s only one person qualified to keep Volpina away from Marc while Chatnoir and I get some rest. Mostly because Volpina would never think to look there.”

“Rest?” Penknight interrupted “With Volpina after Marc?” The akuma looked mutinous. 

“ ‘Knight, the two of us have been awake over 24 hours at this point and transformed most of the time. I know we make this whole superhero thing look easy, but being transformed does take energy. Volpina seems to be laying low for now, and we’re crossing our fingers she’ll stay that way for at least a few hours...unless you’re saying you don’t think you could handle her if she finds you?” Chatnoir challenged the akuma.

“Of course I can handle her.” Penknight huffed. “Which is a good thing seeing as I might have to. Tomorrow’s a school day and the two of you probably can’t afford to miss much more. Besides, someone is going to get suspicious after a while if the two of you keep vanishing the same time Ladybug and Chatnoir appear.” Ladybug did not like the implications of that.

“What do you mean? Ladybug doesn’t go to our school.” Chatnoir chuckled nervously.

“Save it. There might be some sort of weird magic that keeps people from recognizing you when you’re transformed, but it stops working when someone figures out your identities. Some pretty good magic, seeing as Ladybug didn’t even bother to change her hair style. Put in a little effort Mari-”

“OK ENOUGH OF THAT.” Ladybug frantically cut him off. “I need sleep and I need every scrap of energy I have left to deal with Chole.”

“Chole?!”  

#miraculous ladybug #nathaniel kurtzberg #marc anciel #Ladybug #Chatnoir #Viperion

[mushroommouth]

The Good Mourning Part III

A/N: Haha, guess who’s not dead? 

Anyway, happy we’re-done-with-January! Sorry this chapter is somewhat dialogue-heavy. There was a lot of resolution that had to be done and not much action to go along with it. 

Additionally, there are some scenes missing/ things that weren’t addressed quite just yet. Some of them were removed for for flow purposes, and others. Well. We’ll get there when we get there. 

Regardless, I hope you enjoy the finale of TGM! 

-Skye (👻)

-

“Easy, easy—”

Aaron laughed and nudged his boss’s hand off his arm.

“I’m burned not busted. Besides, you’re the one a billion years old.” Aaron smirked and readjusted the icing bag. “I should be worrying over you, if anything.”

 “Very funny. I’ll fire you any day now, I swear.” Aaron’s boss rolled his eyes and leaned on the counter. “Besides, you got burned on your dominant hand. Look at this frosting work. It’s- actually, It’s fine. But you’ve certainly done a lot better.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just kind of hard to get a good grip. I’ll get the hang of it.”

“And your leg?”

“Again, I said I’m fine. What the hell is your problem? It’s been almost three months.” Aaron rolled his shoulder and sighed before setting down the icing bag. “Also, I can’t work when you’re looking at me like that. Just…really. What is going on with you, Stanley?”

 Stanley sighed and rubbed his face before nervously scratching at his beard.

“I…I don’t know. I guess I never really had a family and–  c’mon, you little shit. Don’t make me say it.”

“Aww, boss. You never told me you had a heart deep beneath that gross crusty old man act.” Aaron laughed.

“Yeah, yeah. Real cute. See if I sign your check next time, much less open up.” Stanley stormed across the kitchen to wash his hands. “You’re real charming, kid.”

“Oh don’t be like that.” Aaron picked up the icing bag and started gently swirling frosting onto each cupcake. “You know what I mean. When I was out, there’s no one else I woulda trusted to watch Tom ‘n the kittens…’n…I don’t know. If I could have my cat in here, with you guys and baking and all… I don’t think I’d ever leave.” 

Aaron smiled slightly.

“Besides, you were there for me when I had no one and you hired me as a cashier, and then you gave me the chance at…this.”

Aaron froze before bursting out in laughter.  

“Stan, are you-are you crying?”

“I’m just thinking about how terrible of a cashier you were.” Stanley sniffled and wiped at his eyes in the crook of his elbow. “You were friggin terrible. Got to me is all.”

He put gloves on and walked to stand next to Aaron. 

“We lost almost as much money from you doing math bad as when you were out.” Stan grabbed a tray of red velvet and got started icing them. “We needed ya here. We were hit pretty hard without you. I…should have really kept my promise and made the big guy pay for it.” 

“You mean Dan? I mean, they were hit pretty hard, too.” Aaron sighed. “I mean, literally, sure. He’s been in and out of the hospital since. I can’t imagine what his copay is, and if he didn’t step in front of it for me, I’d been finished for, I’m sure. But also… I dunno. I don’t really have a family either, but when I do it’s this.”

“You’re a good guy, Aaron.”

Aaron snorted. “You’re just saying that to make me feel good about myself.” 

“Yeah, you’re kind of a jackass.”

Aaron laughed. “Yeah. No worries about losing the money though. People have been trailing in here non-stop because they thought we closed for a bit because something happened to you. Y’know, in your fragile, elderly state.”

“Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s a shame the fire didn’t burn your hair off. You look like a frickin’ hippy.”

Aaron laughed harder. “Maybe for your birthday. You’ve only got so many left, after all.”

“Shame it didn’t burn your mouth off, too.”

They iced in silence for a moment before Stanley spoke up again.

“Hey, once we’re in the clear again and have enough money saved up, I think you gave me an idea for our next spot, Aaron.”

—

Cody cautiously opened the door.

“Hey Milo?” He asked. “Dad and Miranda want to know if you would rather have sparkling red grape juice or sparkling…red grape juice?”

Milo looked up from his project.

“…What?” 

“We’re out of white, but the red are different brands.” Cody said. 

“I… got that. I meant why, I guess.” 

“Oh! Dad and Miranda, uh. Do this dinner thing on special occasions. They get Italian takeout and wine, light a bunch of candles and pretend it’s all fancy. They started getting the grape juice, so I feel included and junk.”

“Huh.” Milo picked up the duck tape. “Sorry, I…uh. Does this look right to you?”

Cody stepped into the room and flicked on the light.

“It looks like…holy cow, are you done?”

Milo held Jake’s guitar close, fidgeting with the neck. 

“Almost, I think! The top part needs a little more tape and junk.” Milo set the guitar down gently on the bed. “How does it look?”

 The guitar was, truthfully, an amalgamation of glue and tape, but it was the first time Cody had seen it in one piece in months. All the strings were fixed, the paint that could be reapplied was, and it seemed finally whole. Cody walked up and smiled, taking in the details of the guitar.

As soon as he looked up, though, the smile fell in an instant.

“Milo?” 

“Hmm?” 

“When was the last time you slept?”

“Last night.”

 “For more than two hours?”

 “…That’s not fair.” Milo rubbed his eyes as if trying to wipe away the bags. “’Sides, look how far I got!”

“Milo, that’s cool and all, but—”

“Cody, you know this is important to me.” 

“Yes, but at our age we need ten-to-twelve hours of sleep.” Cody sighed. “Milo…I’m worried about you. You’re all pale, and…you look like you’re starting to get sick. Sleep is–”

“I can’t sleep, okay?!” Milo balled his fists. “I tried. I really, really tried. I know it’s important. I just…can’t.”

 Cody grabbed some tissues and sat down on the other side of the bed, trying not to jostle the guitar.  He reached over and handed a tissue to Milo, who immediately began wiping away the rapidly-beading tears. 

“Not like I can tell Dad, right?” Milo laughed dryly. 

Cody forced a smile. 

“Well, you can soon, right? That’s what we’re celebrating. Dan is finally getting his wires out. He’ll be able to eat for real soon and his teeth were all fixed and the surgery went well-he’s in the clear! It’s your last night with us with Dan hurt. Everything’s going back to normal.” 

“‘Cept it won’t.” Milo muttered. “One of my dads is still gone and hasn’t made even a little bit of a sign to say he’s out there. And I saw the other- Cody, I don’t ever want to see Dan like that again. I…” 

“Daniel Fuller, sit down!” 

Dan whipped his head around from beside his hospital bed, looking dazedly at the IVs he ripped out and back up at Reese. 

“Whhh…” Dan’s mouth felt like it was full of cotton. That felt correct given the circumstances, but he couldn’t remember exactly why. 

Reese sighed and began walking across the room to guide him back to the hospital bed. 

She forced a slight smile as he sat on the edge of the bed. 

“…Welcome back to the world of the living.” 

Finally, it clicked as Reese began putting back in the IVs. If Reese was here, then he was at the hospital. And if he was at the hospital… 

“Whirrrrrr…is Ja’e?” Dan asked. “Mi’o?” 

Reese frowned and looked to the other member of the room. Milo was looking back at Dan with wide, puffy eyes. His cheeks were streaked and stained with tears. He was holding something up with his sweatshirt, keeping it tight to his chest. 

Milo stood up, taking a step toward Dan, wanting nothing more than to lunge at his dad and cry for hours. However, the movement seemed to remind Milo about what he was holding onto and he tensed up again. 

Dan looked at Milo worriedly. He moved to to get up again, but Reese gave him a stern look. 

“That’s enough, Mr. Fuller.” She watched him as he hesitantly scooted back into the bed. “You were concussed something fierce, not to mention the broken jaw and fractured cheekbone. You are going to stay still until at least the swelling goes down so we can do surgery.”

That was right. He and Aaron went to Donna’s old house. The rest was kind of  fuzzy, but Dan was pretty sure Jake ended up being there. Milo was left with Cody. And now Dan and Milo were both at the hospital. 

“It’s weird treating you and not Milo. You’re usually the safe one,” Reese forced a faint smile. She looked at Milo for a moment and back to Dan. “I have to go do rounds, but I’ll be right back. Just- please. Stay still. There’s the call button if you need me.”

Dan absentmindedly touched the bandage around his face while looking over Milo carefully. Milo seemed beyond upset, but not physically hurt. Dan sighed in relief and sank back into the hospital bed. He closed his eyes without realizing it, and jerked back awake from the movement on the other side of the room. 

“Dad.” Milo sniffled, holding on to what was in his sweatshirt in one hand and wiping tears and snot off his face with the other. “Dad, Dad, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t-“ 

Milo was cut off by Dan wordlessly cupping a hand (the free one, the other was resting with the IVs) on the side of his face, silently wiping some of Milo’s tears away. 

“Mi’o.” Dan said again, this time quieter but equally as desperate. He looked at his son intensely, desperate to say more and comfort him but not about to test the waters with Reese any further. 

They looked at each other for a moment before Milo ripped his gaze away. Without another word, he dumped the splinters of Jake’s guitar onto Dan’s bed. 

To Dan’s credit, he didn’t scream or wail like Milo feared he might—or like what Milo felt like doing. In fact, other than a faint gasp,  Dan was so quiet that Milo had to force himself to turn around from the comfort of looking at the wall. 

Dan was holding part of the neck, eyes wide. Tears were pooling up and spilling down his cheeks, but he didn’t seem to realize it. He gently nudged one of the pieces aside, looking at the scope of the damage. 

The only response from the anchor- the thing keeping Jake with them- was a pitiful and faint cyan glow before fading out entirely. 

Dan tightened his grip on the piece he was holding and began to tremble. 

He didn’t scream or wail. Instead he cried quietly, holding the remaining pieces of his best friend. Milo wasn’t sure how long he watched Dan cry. Milo cried too, sure, but it felt strange. Dan, Dan Milo’s father, Dan the strong, Dan the one who had to keep it together so long for both Jake and Milo. 

Neither talked much except occasional choked off apologies or reassurances. After awhile, it seemed to wear Dan out significantly. He fell asleep holding Milo’s hand in one hand and the same piece of the guitar in the other. Milo gathered up most of the pieces with his free hand, trying not to wake Dan up. 

And when Reese came back, she didn’t comment on the broken guitar in the bed or report Milo staying past visiting hours, sleeping by Dan’s side. 

And when Milo woke up with an additional blanket on his shoulders, his father fast and deep asleep still from painkillers, he didn’t say anything, either. But neither forgot. 

“-ilo? Milo?” 

“Hm?” Milo shook his head of the memory, trying to clear it like an Etch-a-sketch. 

“I lost you for a second.” Cody offered more tissues, and Milo was shocked to realize how many tears were streaming down his cheeks. 

“Sorry, I thought I was done with…all this.” Milo scrubbed at his eyes and wiped his nose

They sat in silence for a moment. The only sounds were Milo’s stifled sniffling and the gentle hum of the heater. 

“It’s…okay to be upset. It was scary.” Cody sighed. “But you can always talk about it, ya know? It’s been fun with you being here more– though the situation isn’t great– and I just wish… I don’t know.” 

Cody scratched the back of his neck and looked away. 

“Make sure to take care of yourself too, Milo.”   

Milo was silent for a moment before picking up the tape again and pulling the guitar into his lap. He ripped off a piece of duck tape and firmly wrapped it around the neck of the guitar. 

“I know.” He finally responded quietly. “‘Sides, even if I didn’t, I think you would- I don’t know.” 

“Post a ‘Milo cringe compilation everyday until Milo eats like a human?’” 

“I dunno, I’d have to be embarrassed first for it to be cringe.” Milo laughed. “I wasn’t eating like a human before, anyway.” 

“What about a ‘Cody snitches and tells Tegan, who won’t leave it alone’ kind of thing?’”

Milo gasped dramatically. “You wouldn’t dare.” 

“Nah, that’d be low. Even for me.” Cody leaned back before grinning. “Maybe…summoning an ancient god to hex you for your hubris until you get a full night’s sleep?” 

“Actually, that’s your closest yet.” Milo smiled back. “But where’ll you get the tome?”

“Ah. Rats.” Cody snapped his fingers. “You got me there. For now.” 

“You’ll find a way.” Milo yawned. “Always do.” 

“Heh.” 

The two sat in quiet for a moment as Cody watched Milo tinker with the guitar.

“I…think it’s finally sturdy.”

Milo gently handed the guitar for Cody to look over. Cody ran his fingers along the cracks and seems, before holding it as if to play. He then looked at it again before beaming at Milo. 

“Milo, you did it!” Cody handed it back. “It looks great.” 

“Thanks!” He took the guitar back and began gently picking at a piece of glue that obtruded above the crack it fixed. “All that’s left is tuning it, I think. I think.”

“Now would be a good time to take a break.” Cody got up from the bed. “Dinner’s been here and ready. I just came up here to ask about the grape juice.” 

“I…either’s fine? I guess?” 

“Does that mean you’ll come down?”

Milo looked away and held the guitar close. 

“Milo-“

“I just need to tune it. I already found tutorials online.” Milo smiled tiredly. “I’ll come down when I’m done, okay? And that’s it.” 

“…Promise?” 

“I promise.” 

Cody sighed and stood up. He hugged Milo briefly before heading to the door. 

“…Your plate will be in the fridge.” 

Cody stepped out of the room and headed to the kitchen. Cody couldn’t bring himself to meet Dom’s hopeful eyes. 

“Milo’s not coming.” 

  —-

“-Then let’s hear how it sounds all together! If you don’t have a pick, for a gentler sound, strum your guitar using your thumb like this!” The grainy figure adjusted their camera slightly before demonstrating a simple thumb. “My dad taught me this trick when I was-“ 

“Yeuch.” Milo shut his phone off before the tutorial could finish and flopped back onto the bed. 

He rubbed his eyes, wishing he shut the light back off when Cody left. He lay like that for a moment and counting his breath, hands gently pressed into his eyes until he saw the slightest bursts of stars. 

Finally, Milo shot up and began flapping his arm nervously, trying to calm down. 

“Okay, okay. Okay.” He took a deep breath and grabbed the guitar. “Dad, I dunno if you can hear me, but if this doesn’t work- if this doesn’t work, I’m going to take a break for a bit, okay? I’ll come back, but I’m beginning to think Cody’s right, and- okay.” 

Milo held the guitar like how he saw in the video and took deep breaths in and out. 

“Okay. On the count of three.” 

“One-“ Milo lifted his hand shakily and held it just above the chords. 

“Two.” He took a quick shallow breath, meaning to do the exact opposite. 

“Three.” 

Milo strummed the guitar. There was the sound of glass breaking and a bright cyan light engulfed his vision. 

  —-

  The guitar was ripped away before Milo could realize what was happening. 

It floated to the middle of the room, where it hovered before a figure formed around it. The figure, entirely blank other than vaguely humanoid, hesitated before quickly taking on their features. First was a neat burial suit, followed by tired eyes and a shock of blonde hair. 

  In a matter of seconds, there was Jake. 

  Jake collapsed to the floor, holding on to the guitar strapped to his chest like a lifeline, and took a deep and unnecessary breath. His hand moved from the guitar to grab at his unmoving chest. He gasped again before starting to get up. 

“Dad?” Milo tried to blink some of the blotches out of his eyes. 

“Milo-“ Jake started, but Milo had already jumped off the bed and bounded toward him. 

Jake instinctively raised his arms to hold Milo in the embrace, but they phased right through Milo. The guitar stopped Milo from going through him entirely, which caused Milo to gently lay a hand on it as be began breathing faster and faster. 

“Sorry,” Jake started. He cringed slightly at the echo effect of his voice. “I don’t think I’m all the way back yet-“ 

“Dad, I’m so sorry for fighting with you and saying you’re not my dad, and for making you feel like you can’t tell me stuff, and I’m sorry for taking so long to fix this and for the haunted house and for talking back to you and-“ 

“Breathe.” Jake smiled softly and got as close as he could to wrapping his arms around Milo. Milo shuddered for a second at the cold sensation rather than the feeling of touch. “Milo, you did so, so great.” 

“But I- but I…” Milo trailed off and burst into tears. 

The two stood in the mock hug for a moment, Milo’s hand not leaving the guitar. Jake waited until Milo’s breathing evened out somewhat into a quiet hiccup. 

“You brought me back.” Jake reached up and held his hand as if he were cupping Milo’s cheek. “You put back together the guitar—that’s incredible! You’re incredible, Milo.” 

“Yeah.” Milo sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah! Take that, Cody! Sleep is for the weak!” 

Jake chuckled. 

“I don’t know about that.“ He cleared his throat. “Im fact, I think sleep might be up there in the whole ‘human needs’ thing. When’s the last time you slept?” 

He sighed in relief as the echo effect dissipated, pulling back slightly to take in Milo’s expression. 

“Boo, not you too.” Milo pouted. “Cody and Dad have been getting on my case nonstop already.” 

“Well, they’re right. I…” Jake looked away. “How…is Dan doing, by the way?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Is he okay?” 

“He’s getting his stitches out today!” Milo smiled for a moment before his expression fell into confusion. “That’s why I’m at Cody’s. Uh, here at Cody’s. I guess.” 

“Uh-“ Jake blinked in surprise. 

“Did…you really were gone, huh?” 

Jake scratched the back of his neck and looked at the floor, still somewhat surprised by the realization he wasn’t in their house. 

“Not gone. It was like-“ He shook his head. “I don’t know how to describe it, but not gone. And just now, Milo, you made the door to bring me back here.”

Jake held up the guitar and smiled. 

“I could feel you, though. Whenever you touched this, Milo, I knew it was you. And Cody sometimes. But Dan…” He trailed off and the smile vanished entirely.

“I think he’s been having trouble.” 

“Oh.” 

“He missed you a lot.”  

Jake laughed dryly and looked away again. 

“Well, I missed him too. I missed all of you so much.” 

Overcome with the need to ease the tension to the point he was nearly vibrating, Milo quickly replied. 

“Not as much as Cody’s gonna miss his window!” 

“What? Oh- oh my god.” 

Jake stood up quickly to get a better look at the blown-out window.  

“Did I do that? Or did you do that?”

“Definitely you. You know, this time.” Milo followed suit and peered around Jake to take in the scene. “You exploded before you came back. There was a bright light and boom, you knocked out the window. It’s…weird no one came up to check on the noise.” 

“I will definitely make sure that gets fixed.” Jake walked over to sit on the bed. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair before absentmindedly fiddling with the tuning pegs of the guitar. 

Milo hesitated before sitting on the bed beside him. 

“…Was I close to doing it right?” 

“You were really close. It just needs a little more tweaking, but I can’t say it enough-the fact you fixed this without me teaching you about the parts of a guitar, the way you fixed all the pieces together- you’re incredible, Milo. And I’m so, so proud of you.” 

“Thanks.” Milo yawned. “I think it’s dumb that you can sit on furniture but you can’t hug me after being gone for like three months.” 

“It has to do with affecting the environment versus affecting a person.” 

“Hmm.” 

“Environment comes first.” 

“You sound a lot like Cody.” Milo scooted back so his back was to the wall. 

“He taught me everything I know. Which is pretty ironic if you think about it.” Jake stopped tuning and looked out of the corner of his eye at Milo. “You never answered my question. When’s the last time you slept?” 

“Last night, technically.” 

“I can’t say it enough how proud I am of you for this and being brave,” Jake fully turned to get a better look at his son. Milo turned away. “But that’s not the answer I was hoping to hear.” 

“I know. I just haven’t been able to with, you know, everything going on.” 

They sat quietly before Jake grinned.

“When you were little-really little, you’d fall asleep right away if I played for you.” Jake turned his gaze back to the guitar. “You’d always sneak out of bed and say you were going to get a snack, or use the bathroom, or get a glass of water, but instead you’d go play with your toys.” 

Jake looked around the room and locked eyes with a video game ghost plush in the corner. “Now, you sneak out of bed and come here if you can’t sleep.” 

“What can I say? I’m a sucker for tradition.” 

Jake laughed and Milo cracked a tired grin back. 

“You should play.” Milo said. “If you want.” 

Jake hesitated before adjusting the guitar slightly as if to play it. He got his fingers over the chord and before stopping jerkily. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Milo quickly added. 

Jake nodded and played a few chords, expression falling to that of focus as he tried to get the feel again. After some more nitpicking with the tuning pegs, he began to tentatively pluck out more notes. 

He looked back over at Milo and the bags under his eyes. 

“You’re sure it’s not going to make you fall asleep?” 

“I promise it’s not. I’m fourteen, remember?” 

Jake’s grin came back with full force. 

“Oh, of course.”

Without another word, he began plucking out a lullaby from a decade prior. The room was silent save for the gentle music, the house almost seeming to have emptied itself to make room for the sound itself. 

Learning an effective lullaby after the much louder and angrier Problem Sons was tricky. However, it was nowhere as tricky as an energetic toddler—or, beyond that, losing Milo Sr. 

Once Jake was comfortable enough repeating the chords of the chorus, he began to sing. His voice soft and hoarse from disuse and his eyes never left the guitar as the melody played. 

By the time he was finished, he took a breath and turned slightly to gauge Milo’s reaction. 

Of course, it was an unnecessary measure. Jake chuckled and stood up, slinging the guitar around to his back. 

“You shouldn’t make promises you don’t think you can keep.” Jake whispered to Milo’s sleeping form.

He gently brushed the hair out of Milo’s face and kissed his forehead. 

  “Goodnight, Milo.” 

  __

  The young woman shuffled in the room holding two mugs, still shaking slightly from the events that unfolded months prior. She offered a cup to her guest and took the other before sitting on the couch. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to call,” she said. She took a long drink from the coffee and took a deep breath. 

“You’re quite alright.” The guest fiddled with an unlit cigar. “You’ve been such a help for us. I’d love to return the favor any way I can, though I can’t say the same for your husband.” 

“I know, but you’ll do it for me, right?” The woman looked up hopefully, holding her breath for the response. 

“Ghosts are typically not something the Church helps with. Demons, sure-but ghosts?”

The priest set down the coffee mug and stood up, walking around the room and looking at the pictures that hung the walls. He stopped at the painted portrait of the Virgin Mary and sighed. 

“Even if it was something we normally helped with, it’s been months.”

“I know.” The woman sniffled and set down her coffee mug to grab a fistful of tissues. “It’s just- I haven’t been able to sleep. I’m still scared of it coming back-it used this fire, and while it didn’t burn anything inside, it still was bright blue and real and- did you know the house that used to be here burned down? What if it was the ghost? We can’t afford to move again-what if it comes after us this time?” 

“Calm down. Take a deep breath. I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it.” 

The woman obeyed, taking in a lungful of air and holding it until the priest spoke again. 

“Your family has been in our church for decades. I cannot emphasize this enough- this is not something we can normally do. But-“ He sighed and scratched at the stubble on his cheek. “I will do it for you, just for you, and just because it’s you.” 

“Oh, thank you-“

The priest interrupted. 

“I fully believe the ghost is no longer within this building. However, for your ease of mind, I promise I will track it down if it’s still on this plane and send it to its rightful place.”

 He stuck the cigar in his mouth, chewing a bit at the mouthpiece while thinking. “Therefore, we need to know more about it. You said this place burned down before?”

“Yes. It was completely destroyed. The owner sold the property immediately after. We bought it from her and built the new house.” 

“She might know something; I’d be happy to reach out to her and get this started. Do you happen to have her name?”

“I took out the house information as soon as I heard you were coming.” The woman responded.

 She went to the dining room before returning with a handful of papers. She dug through them before coming across the deed. 

“Oh! Here we go. That’s right.” She looked up and smiled at the priest, waving the sheet of paper. 

“It was Ms. Donna Pierly.”

#ASJFKLSDHFLSADHGLSADKFLKSDAHGASBFKDSAKLFHSITESABFJLVFSSAIUFALSBJFKLSAJFHSDAHFLSDFJsd #ITS HERE #ITS HERE AND MY HEART HURTS NOW THANK U SO MUCH #I LOVE THIS AND I LOVE YOU AND I M SCREAMIN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #WHAT A GOOD STORY DUDE LIKE...SERIOUSLY #but also how dare you end it like that you MONSTER #friend art #fics #ghost jake #submission

[sonicrainicorn]

Brotherly Love

Part of the Berry Done AU!

Words: 2153 Desc.: Logan and Thomas don’t always see eye-to-eye. Luckily, Roman and Virgil understand that better than anyone. TW: Argument, yelling

I noticed there actually wasn’t a lot of stories with the twins despite this AU also being about them. So I decided to change that :)

///

Roman and Virgil were in their room. Virgil on his bed, Roman on the ground with a school project laid out in front of him. Technically, Virgil should have been doing it too, but it wasn’t due for a few days. Besides, he had a knack for getting Daddy to do most of the work. Right now he put all his attention on the book in his hands. He hated reading. The words were hard to follow and sometimes they didn’t make any sense. He much preferred when someone else read to him -- like Daddy. The stories were nicer that way. But the teacher wouldn’t like that someone else had been reading to him. He needed to read on his own.

Eventually, the letters started swimming around on the page so he decided to stop. He fell to the side so that his head hung upside down off the bed. Roman didn’t pay any mind to the sudden presence of his brother’s face. Their actions had long since become predictable to each other.

“Didya finish yet?” Virgil asked.

“Um…” Roman ran a glue stick over one area repeatedly then slapped down a piece of paper. “Yes.” He held up his masterpiece to see it in its full glory. “I’m so good at this.”

Virgil rolled his eyes -- a trait he ended up learning from his daddy, much to his dad’s dismay. Roman did it too, but he never did it as much as Virgil. “You say that about everything you do.”

“And it’s always true.” Roman grinned at Virgil’s frown. “Dad says that I can be good at anything I want.”

“Well, Daddy says that you’re a brat.”

“Daddy calls everyone a brat.”

Yeah, that was true. It was more an affectionate nickname for the twins rather than an insult. He even called Dad a brat a few times.

“Fine. But I’ll win next time.” Virgil stuck out his tongue before returning back to the bed. They often made their arguments into games. Anything they disagreed on turned into who could convince the other or get him to drop the subject first. Whoever won the round would get a sense of accomplishment and a point. As of right now, they were evenly matched with Virgil holding onto the lead by half a point.

The room went back to its comfortable silence.

The one thing that could be heard was their daddy’s voice from the living room. He had been talking to Uncle Thomas on the phone for a bit. Background chatter that the twins were quick to ignore. They were talking over grown-up things. Yet the once peaceful conversation sprung into something bigger. Daddy’s voice rose a bit, and with every pause, he seemed to sound angrier.

Roman and Virgil shared a confused look. Daddy never got mad at Uncle Thomas. They were like best friends. Like how Roman and Virgil are. Sometimes Daddy would scold Uncle Thomas for something, but he never got mad.

“I am not a child, Thomas,” Daddy snapped. His tone was harsher than the twins had ever heard it before. He never sounded like that. “You can’t keep acting like I’m sixteen and the world is out to get me -- I know how to handle myself.”

They didn’t know what that could mean. 

“You're the one being unreasonable here. You need to let me handle my life my own way… Shut up, I'm fine. I won't combust just because I'm yelling at you. I'm not as fragile as you continue to think I am.” Despite this, his voice shook. Like he couldn't handle speaking at a louder volume than normal. “You know what? Fine. If you’re not going to listen to me, then I’m done.”

Silence.

The twins gave each other tentative looks. They weren’t sure what to make of that whole interaction. Daddy never got that angry. He had a reserved, almost fragile anger that often went away as soon as it came. Rarely did he ever yell. They could tell that something serious had taken place.

“D’you think we should go look?” Roman asked, voice low as if speaking any volume above a whisper would shatter something.

Virgil shrugged his shoulders. He stared out their door in worry. “Dad won’t be home for a while… so maybe?” He turned his attention to Roman, who had the same worry across his features. “That’s something Dad would do, right?”

“I think so.” He picked himself off the floor. “He’d want us to make sure that Daddy’s okay.”

Virgil nodded in agreement and slipped off the bed.

Together, they walked out the door to brave the unknown. The living room was awfully quiet despite their daddy sitting in it. He leaned forward with his hand covering his eyes. He didn’t even notice that they walked in. He always noticed. It made him impossible to sneak up on.

“Daddy?” Roman called out tentatively.

This caused him to stiffen. He lowered his hand, allowing the twins to see that his glasses weren’t there. They always saw him with glasses. Not only that but… they had never seen him cry before. Seeing it made them want to start crying, too. What could have caused their daddy to cry?

“I’m sorry,” he hastily wiped his tears, “did I end up disturbing you, boys? I should have done better to keep my voice down.”

Virgil shook his head.

“Are you okay?” Roman asked.

“Oh, yes, I’m fine.” He pressed his palms to his eyes. “Just finished having an adult conversation with your uncle. Nothing to worry about.”

Despite this, they both felt very worried. They had never seen him this way before. He was always the calm one. No matter how many movies had sad parts in them, he never cried. Not like how Dad would. So then something sadder than a movie must have happened.

“You're not very good at lying,” Virgil mumbled.

Daddy laughed a bit, but it didn't sound like a normal one. “I suppose I'm not.” He lowered his hands to look at the two boys. The rims of his eyes were already red. It still looked like he would start crying at any second. “But this isn't anything that you two should be worried about, I promise.”

“It still feels like you’re lying,” Roman matched Virgil’s tone.

“Do you think you should be worried about it?”

They both shrugged. “You just seem upset,” Roman spoke for them. “And Dad would want to make sure you’re okay.”

A small smile tugged at his lips. “I think you’re right.”

The two decided to join him on the couch. One on each side. “So what made you sad?” Roman continued. Dad always knew how to do this kind of stuff. He was good at it.

“Your uncle and I just had a bit of… a disagreement.” He frowned. “We think a little differently about the same things, and sometimes that makes us mad at each other.”

“So you’re sad that you got mad?”

“It’s a little bit like that, yes.”

That seemed kinda silly, but Roman realized he could feel like that too. If he ever said something that wasn’t very nice to Virgil, he immediately wanted to take it back. Because he didn’t mean it. Then they’d both be upset over what he said. Feelings were weird. “Maybe he’s sad, too.”

“I don’t think Daddy wants to talk about it anymore,” Virgil mumbled.

Roman peeked over to see Virgil hugging Daddy’s arm. Maybe he should listen. Virgil was smart about these things. “Okay, um,” Roman kicked his feet to help him think, “we should do something else, then. Like, um…” He looked around the room.

“Play a game?”

He beamed. “Yeah!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Daddy used his available hand to wipe away his remaining tears. “You two are free to play what you want, you don’t need to include me.”

Virgil hugged his arm tighter. “No, we gotta,” Roman insisted. “We can find something that you wanna play too. O-or we can do something else like watch a movie, or -- hey! I got it.” He slipped off the couch. “Wait right here, I gotta find it first.” He dashed off to the room.

Virgil's first instinct was to follow after him, but he managed to stay put. He had to make sure Daddy didn't go anywhere or that he didn't get sadder. Sometimes Virgil got sadder if someone wasn't there for him. And if there was anything Virgil didn't want to do, it was make his daddy sadder than he already was. “Everything turns out fine,” he whispered. Dad always said nice things like that, and sometimes they helped. Maybe it would help Daddy. “It’s always fine in the end. That’s how brothers work.”

What he didn’t see was his daddy’s eyes welling up with more tears.

“Okay, I’m back.” Roman ran in with his arms full. He dumped everything on the coffee table and smiled up at his audience. There were two puzzle boxes and an old I Spy book. “Which one do you wanna do first?”

Daddy smiled a bit. “I think I’ll leave that decision up to you two.”

The twins unanimously decided to do the space puzzle first. They knew how much their daddy liked space and figured that would be the best place to start. They all moved to the floor to put it together.

As they worked on it, Roman and Virgil did their best to not get mad at each other. They had different styles of puzzle-completing-tactics that clashed, but they held off on any arguments. They were trying to help their daddy feel better, not make him worse. If they argued then he would get upset again. And then they’d disappoint their dad for not being able to help. So they worked together. By the time it was completed, they figured out how to combine each of their tactics.

The next one went even better.

After both puzzles were completed, they moved back to the couch for I Spy. Daddy held the book so all three of them could search for the items. He was very quick at finding most of them, but sometimes he needed one to be pointed out to him. They only got through a few pages before a soft knock came from the front door.

Roman and Virgil looked at it in confusion. Daddy frowned. He closed the book and set it on the coffee table, trading it off for his glasses. The twins remained seated as he opened it. Like he knew who was on the other side already.

There were a few beats of silence before the distinct voice of Uncle Thomas said, “Can I come in?”

So Daddy let him in.

He gave a brief smile to the twins before turning back to their daddy. He looked sad, too. Maybe Roman was right. “Logan, about earlier --”

Daddy sighed. “Thomas --”

“You were right.”

That didn’t appear to be the words he was expecting. “What?”

“You were right.” Uncle Thomas shrugged. “I, I need to stop thinking of you as a kid. You’re your own man now, with your own life, and your own family,” his eyes flicked over to the twins, “I can’t keep acting like you need me at your side all the time.”

Daddy just blinked. “That’s, uh…” He cleared his throat. “I suppose I was a bit, uh, harsh in how I worded things.”

“Well, it got me to actually think about how I treat you, so I’d say mission accomplished.” He gave a faint smile which quickly slipped off his face. “It’s just -- it’s hard to see you as anything other than that little boy who always needed my help. You’re my baby brother, Logan. I helped raise you -- I was literally your legal guardian for a while. I just, I care about you. I always have.”

“I know. I never said you had to stop.” He paused to think of his next words. “But perhaps tone it down? A little bit.”

A puff of laughter escaped Uncle Thomas. “Yeah, I can be a tad overprotective, can’t I? I promise I’ll try to control that from now on.”

“Maybe that’s something we can work on together. Set boundaries that we’re both comfortable with so it won’t be as hard or awkward for either of us.”

Uncle Thomas grinned. “And that is why I have the smartest brother in the whole world.”

Daddy rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” But he failed to hide his smile.

“Hugs!” Roman leaped off the couch and ran over to the other two. He pushed them into prime hugging position, but his arms were too short to completely wrap around both of them.

Virgil got there in his own pace. He leaned into the group without making any actual effort to move his arms. “I told you everything turns out fine,” he murmured.

And he was right.

#this has been sitting in my drafts #since february #you have no idea how satisfying it was to finally complete it #writing from the twins' perspective was actually fun #i should do it again #sanders sides #virgil sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #thomas sanders #berry done au

[whatmyheartsaw]

What My Heart Did Chapter 5, Episode 3

Thawing from Below

Present Writing always seems to get harder for a time once I uncover a new element of deeply embedded truth. Since all the discoveries about my grandfather’s murder trial and how that trauma has passed down through the generations, I’ve been numb to the stories that until now have been so important to recovery. Nearly a year has passed. My mother died in January, and my father is in a nursing home. It’s almost as if my mind and body have needed to put all the facts of my ancestry aside and place any realizations into hibernation or a dormant state until I am able to adjust and understand.

Spring is slowly unfolding again in the Shenandoah Valley. As I watch the bulbs burst from the ground and the leaves and blossoms timidly emerge from the barren limbs of flowering trees and oaks, I think back to winter’s rough hand. How do trees and plants weather ice storms, snow cover, and frozen ground to faithfully reemerge each spring? What is their defense against the difficulties they are handed each and every season?  

So, like any curious gardener or naturalist would do, I looked it up. I wanted to remind myself of the process I probably learned in 7th grade, and maybe glean some insight into how we as humans can be more resilient. I found an explanation by Gary Watson, head researcher from The Morton Arboretum in Illinois that struck me.

“Plants from climates with cold winters have evolved to survive winter by going dormant. That means not just dropping leaves and slowing or stopping growth, but also reducing the amount of water in branch and root tissues. The lowered concentration of water in a plant's tissue acts like a natural antifreeze: It means it takes deeper cold to form ice inside them.”

"There's always warmth in the earth," Watson says. "The soil may be freezing from the surface, but it's always thawing from below."

Throughout the winter, he says, plants are adapting constantly to the changes. The biggest danger to plants is a sudden deep freeze. "As long as they have time to adjust, they're OK," he says. "It's when change happens suddenly that it can cause trouble."

As I let that description of how plants adapt to the challenges of winter sink in, the correlation to my own life emerges. “There’s always warmth in the earth,” throbs in my heart like a drumbeat.  

2014-2017 Dismantling my “busyness” took some time to settle into. First it required shutting down one business, stepping down from a non-profit board, and figuring out how to be more present with a family that was 750 miles away. The road was a bit bumpy to say the least. I considered moving closer to my family, but given my business was just starting to earn me a decent living, I didn’t think about that long. So instead I traveled and tried to keep up with the work on the road. I quickly saw that if I was going to eventually relocate, I would need to reposition my business in the new town. And while I wasn’t technically opening a “new” business, the expansion to a new market wasn’t much different. For two years I shuttled back and forth between Virginia and Florida, networking, teaching classes, and taking on new clients in both locations. Busyness took on a whole new meaning. But I rationalized the effort was “focused.”

Soon there was a second grandchild on the way. As rewarding as it was to spend time with my new granddaughter and anticipate the arrival of #2, the trips were exhausting and expensive for someone chronically ill and financially strapped. Despite my efforts towards self-care, in addition to the bouts of fibromyalgia and gastrointestinal maladies, I caught more bugs that lasted longer and had less and less energy for other parts of my life.  Friends and social activities were infrequent, and I dragged myself from task to task with a gritty determination that held my fractured pieces together like glue drizzled over a pile of straw. I knew I was hanging by a thread, but the realizations of how family trauma is passed on and my intuition about how to stop the cycle kept me driving forward. I couldn’t undo what had happened to me, but I might be able to contribute to greater understanding, support, and love in subsequent generations. Quitting wasn’t an option.

What I didn’t realize was how fragile my recovery still was. Spring and summer turned to fall, and the stones I thought I was turning to reveal a saner life just uncovered another cloudy puddle of fear. Being part of the more animated, vocal family that my son married into set off all kinds of triggers. I had to practice boundary setting again and again in order to keep myself from splitting apart, and I wasn’t sure anyone understood my challeges. More intimate contact with other people’s unhappiness and passionate disagreements reminded me just how ill-equipped I was to be a grounding force within a family. Despite how far I’d come, I had a long way to go.

By early 2017 I found myself dismantling again, but in a much more dramatic way. During a trip the previous fall where I met with multiple clients, did the whole family fall activities thing, and tried to fit a visit with a friend from high school into the mix, I literally went blind. I was fighting off yet another cold, and prior to an early flight out, had booked a room at a small lake resort near the airport hoping to get some much needed recovery time. When I arrived at the hotel, I noticed my eyes were tired and cloudy, but went about having dinner and enjoying some time by the water watching the sun set. By the time I went to bed, my eyes were quite bloodshot and red, but I passed it off as fatigue and decided a good night’s rest would help.

In the morning my eyes were glued completely shut. Somewhere I had contracted a nasty case of conjunctivitis. How was I going to get my rental car back to the airport and catch my flight? I felt my way to the sink to bathe my eyes. Warm water helped, but I looked a fright and there was no time to make other arrangements. So, like every other time in my life when the going got tough, I went. Donned my sunglasses, loaded up my bags, and got safely to the airport, on the plane, and home from the airport without incident, all the while conscious of not spreading the horrific eye crud to anyone else. 

But the pink eye did me in. Despite my careful attempts to manage the infection, it moved from one eye to the other and back. Even with treatment, I was unable to see for several weeks, and stumbled through limited work. Three eye doctors and several months later, I was left with a twitch and a clue that perhaps I wasn’t seeing my life clearly. By May I had shut down the Florida business operation and was regrouping once again, wondering if I would ever find my way out of the fog of trauma. The frustration of never quite finding the path to healing was driving me mad.  

Present Today I woke to a cool spring morning, Easter in fact, and the metaphor of resurrection isn’t lost on me. I noticed the oak tree that groaned and shattered so violently during the winter’s first ice storm has, in spite of its scarred limbs, begun to rise to spring’s call with a splash of brilliant green.  

I feel as though I’ve risen from the dead more times than most people could fathom, but these old trees give me pause. The season has turned again, and I’m cautiously optimistic that I can too.

Holidays bring mostly painful memories for me – but this Easter I’m focused on the fun parts that did and do exist. The waking to eggs hidden in the house. An Easter basket and a new dress or shoes for church. A new tradition of funny bunny ear photos. 

And as I relive and enjoy the good parts, I see that the legacy of childhood abuse and how it passes down through generations is a lot like the hardness of winter. Just when we think we’ve recovered and created eternal summer in our hearts - just when we think the storm has passed - winter comes around again in a blinding snowstorm or coating of ice, freezing the soil and forcing us into hibernation. And each time the winter of our pain recurs, it’s easy to despair and believe the ravages of those traumas will never heal. But remembering there’s always warmth in the earth, thawing us from below, can help us keep going. Accepting we may never “heal,” just like accepting that winter will come again, is a sweet surrender to a truth that can settle the restless heart of a trauma survivor.  Somehow, even through generations of all kinds of human trauma and pain, just like plants, we too can wake from difficulties of winter and rise again to a new season. And perhaps that’s all the healing we really need. 

Read previous episodes of What My Heart Did HERE.     

[frangipanidownunder]

The right me for you

Written for @leiascully‘s XFWritingChallenge: Forgiveness

Angsty post Ep for Founder’s Mutation

It must have been the guttural roar of the wind through the trees that masked the sound of the car arriving. It must have been the flickering of the candles on the bench top that hid the flash of the headlights. It must have been the time of the day that left Mulder’s mind smudgy and billowing so that he didn’t register the knocking at the door.

It was 2 o’clock in the morning. A time when he often braved the depths of his memories, dug a trench around the black and white of the clear cut and allowed the murkiness to leach out to entertain the greyness of possibility. It was usually a time for reflection, a time for admonishment. A time for forgiveness.

           It was most definitely not a time that Scully called.

She stood at the screen door, hugging herself. She would have hated his initial reaction – that she looked fragile, but that’s the word his brain supplied. He ushered her through, his heart pulsing as she walked to the living room and sat on the couch. Over their years together, he’d collected these moments in his mind, where she let herself be seen without her armour. He was humbled each and every time. Perhaps especially more so now. Now that she was no longer here every day. Now that she had plenty of time to reconstruct the walls.

           ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She picked at a thread on the cushion on her lap. She was looking at the small table that held a lamp, an old watch he’d found in a suit pocket, a pile of coins, a sticky coffee ring. There used to be photo frames. Miniature ones. Faces captured in bad lights.

           He sat in the chair opposite. ‘The last case, Scully. It was hard.’

           ‘It’s not the case, Mulder.’ She looked up briefly and he saw the dark circles under her eyes. He could see the mole above her lip in the glow of the lamplight. He loved that mole. He loved that she hid it for so long, but that she knew that he knew about it. It was a part of her armour. He understood that the foundation and the powder that covered it were as necessary as the heels and the suits and the badge and the weapon.

           ‘It’s never the case,’ she said, rubbing her forehead. Her voice was sluggish, cracked. ‘It’s just me, my…’

           He leant forward, elbows on knees. ‘Your what?’

           She opened her mouth, but only let out a frustrated sigh. ‘What were you doing awake, Mulder? It’s 2.30 in the morning and I didn’t wake you.’

           He shrugged. ‘Those kids, Scully. Where are they? The casual disregard that Goldman had for the consequences of the work he was doing. Agnes and her baby, her desperation. It was a tough case. I just can’t unwind like I used to.’

           ‘You never could, Mulder. You were always wired on a case.’

           ‘But you used to be able to sleep anywhere, Scully. You would be able to file away the bad stuff along with your reports and get on with the next case. I’ve never met anyone with the ability to compartmentalise quite as well as you. It’s like your super power.’

           She chuffed out a tired snort of laughter. ‘Maybe my super powers need a reboost. I haven’t been sleeping well since we started back on the job. Maybe they put something in the ID these days, some kind of upper to keep the older agents going.’

           ‘Are you sure about this? About your decision?’

           ‘I said there was no choice, Mulder. I meant it.’

           ‘But this case, those children. William…’

           She tucked her legs under her to one side, pulling the hem of her skirt down and hugging the cushion to her middle. She picked up the watch, running the strap through her fingers. ‘We pulled the thread. It’s still unravelling.’

           ‘Should we have left it tangled, Scully?’

           When she looked at him her eyes were wet. The tip of her nose pink. Her lips trembling as she licked them. ‘No.’ She shook her head so that her hair flew, catching across her face. She straightened it, tucked it behind her ear. Cleared her throat. ‘No, no. It’s something we needed to do.’

           ‘You know what I think, Scully? I think that we started pulling the thread a long time before this case. A long time before we rejoined the FBI. I think it was unravelling since he was born.’

           She nodded. ‘And what happens when the thread is straight? When there’s nothing left to unspool? Do we get our answers, Mulder?’

           His laugh was as bitter as her words. ‘I don’t think it works that way.’

           The noise of the watch against the surface of the table seemed to hang between them so that when she spoke again her voice seemed disconnected, almost ethereal.

‘You said you had to put William behind you, when I asked you if you thought about him. How do you do that? How do you not carry him with you everywhere, every day? You say I compartmentalise better than anyone you know, but you have no idea how envious I am of your capacity to do that, Mulder.’

She let out a small sob.

He moved to sit next to her. She sunk against him, shuddering with the weight of her grief. ‘I’m sorry, Scully. I know it hurts. I saw you in that hospital with Mrs Goldman. I saw how what she said cut into you. I wish I could do something more, to take away the pain. But I think you need it. It’s a reminder. A way of making sure you don’t forget. It stabs you in the guts if you don’t nurture it for too long.’ He dropped a kiss on top of her head. ‘I think you need the pain. I know I do.’

The wind lifted the rafters with a series of rattling gusts. The window frames shook. A low howl filled the roof space. Mulder had woken earlier, surprised to find Scully still next to him, her face twisted against his chest. She stirred, rubbed her nose, pushed herself upright and groaned as her neck clunked with each sideways movement.

           ‘Coffee?’

           ‘Please.’

           She took a quick shower and surprised him again when she returned to the kitchen wearing his bath robe.

           ‘I put your linen away, Scully.’

           ‘I know.’

           ‘You look good in mine, though.’

           She looked down at herself and chuckled.

           ‘That’s another of your super powers, Scully. The ability to look better in my clothes than I do.’

           ‘I don’t think I could do your Armani suits justice, Mulder. You fill them out pretty good.’

           ‘Thank you,’ he laughed. ‘You wearing my shirts, though.’

           She sipped on her coffee and he enjoyed watching her blush.

           ‘Are you feeling better, Scully?’

           She shook her head. ‘No. But I think you’re right, Mulder. I think if I lose the pain, I lose too much. I’m afraid to not remember him, I’m afraid to not dream about him. I’m afraid that if I erase too much of him that I’ll erase myself too.’

           ‘When I said I’ve put it behind me, I didn’t mean that I’ve forgotten. I just meant that I’d put the guilt behind me. I’ve learned to accept the past and I’ve learned to accept that I can’t change it. You made me do that, Scully. When you left. You set me on that path.’ He put down his mug and gestured for her to come forward. She put her head on his chest. ‘I think you need to forgive yourself, Scully. I think it’s time.’

           ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for that.’

           He kissed the side of her face. ‘Do you imagine being a family? With William?’

           ‘When I dare myself.’

           ‘In mine, we watch movies and eat popcorn, we climb trees and construct cubby houses out of blankets and build rocket ships, we talk about girls, we shave together.’

           She pulled back and threaded her fingers through his. ‘In mine, I take him to school and I patch up his cuts and ice his bruises and I read him classic novels and I teach him the periodic table and the bones of the human body and how to make pancakes.’

           ‘In my dreams, you are always there too, Scully. Close by. Your presence makes everything whole. I can’t dream without you.’

           She blinked back tears. ‘And you’re always in mine, Mulder. You’re the backbone, the rock, the tether. You hold it all together.’

           ‘Then let me be that for you now I’ll be here to hold it together. Always. Forgive yourself.’

           ‘Oh, Mulder,’ she said, her voice croaking. ‘I’m not ready yet. I’m just not ready.’

           He rubbed her back through the towelling. ‘Okay. But when you are, I’ll be here.’

           ‘I know you will. You told me ’

           ‘Being the rock, the anchor, the glue?’

           She chuffed. ‘No, just being the you that I need.’

           ‘Is that my super power? Being the right me for you?’

           ‘I think that’s more than a super power, Mulder. I think you deserve a sainthood, an altar for worshippers.’

           ‘Halos and deities aside, Scully. I want you to promise me that you will work towards forgiveness. William is out there and we have to believe that he is happy and safe. If we can’t give him that, we fail him.’

           Nodding, she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. She picked her coffee mug up and headed back to the couch. She sat down and put the mug on the table, lining it up with the coffee stain. ‘Where did you put the photo frames, Mulder?’

           ‘In the closet, in a box with your linen and your tea cup and a bottle of shampoo you never used and an earring I found on the floor of the bedroom and a pen you used to carry inside your suit jacket and two old lipstick tubes, Midnight Promise and Burnished Bronze, and an old wallet containing nearly thirty dollars and the pieces of you that you left behind.’

           She gave him a tight, sad smile. ‘In my dreams our house is filled with photos of him, of us, of our family.’

           ‘I’ll get them out again, Scully. If that’s what you want.’

           She shook her head. ‘This is your house now, Mulder. I can’t tell you what to do here.’

           ‘I’m just trying to be the right me for you, Scully.’

           ‘When you say it like that it sounds so needy, so precious. And that’s not what I meant.’

           ‘I’m teasing, Scully. But if there’s a way to bring you back here, I’m going to find it.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘I miss you. I miss you more now that I see you more often. I know that doesn’t make sense.’

           ‘It does. Believe me, it does. And I want nothing more than to walk back through that door for good. But I’m not the right me for you, Mulder. Not yet, anyway.’ She picked up the watch and smiled slowly at him. ‘I’ll get this fixed for you. Bring it back next week.’

It must have been the guttural roar of the wind through the trees that masked the sound of the car arriving. It must have been the flickering of the candles on the bench top that hid the flash of the headlights. It must have been the time of the day that left Mulder’s mind smudgy and billowing so that he didn’t register the knocking at the door.

It was 2 o’clock in the morning. A time when he often braved the depths of his memories, dug a trench around the black and white of the clear cut and allowed the murkiness to leach out to entertain the greyness of possibility. It was usually a time for reflection, a time for admonishment. A time for forgiveness.

           And now it was a time that Scully called.

#xfwritingchallenge #xfwc prompt: forgiveness #txf fanfic #my fanfiction #msr fanfic

[sandriinehebert]

Date: July 1st 2014 Location: Adamo Lombardi’s apartment in Boston. Trigger Warning: Super short mentions of death/grief, Adamo being a decent person (!!!). Notes: This is kinda from her brother’s point of view? Ish? I really wanted to dig deeper in their good moments, so have some pointless fluff between these little pieces of maple syrup taffy. You can click on the song titles to listen to them if you want! Also, this got super long but that’s my brand and everyone knows that by now. ily all <3

“I invited you to move out with me, not to make my ears bleed, you tiny monster.”

Sandrine’s head appeared from the mountain of boxes piled up around her. Her glare was icy and she could swear she almost noticed lasers coming out of her eyes. “How dare you insult Lana Del Rey? She’s is the best thing that happened to the music industry since Britney Spears.”

“Go back to your country!” Adamo threatened playfully as his sister repeated Fucked My Way Up to The Top for the hundredth time on the tiny radio she insisted on squeezing somewhere in her luggages. She insisted on bringing this and her entire collection of CDs, although he promised he’d show her how to use iTunes. He gave up when she could not even spot which app it was on her phone.

“Don’t pretend like I didn’t see you shake your booty to West Coast earlier.” She poked her tongue out.

“Why do you even like her? You’re not dating rich grandpas and you’ve never done weed. You can’t relate to her music at all.”

“I relate to the esthétique.”

“Aesthetic. Geez, you gotta work on your accent. How are you supposed to learn Bostonian slang if you can’t even speak English?”

They called for a truce when she threw him a scrunched up ball of newspaper she used to stuff the boxes, reaching her target easily. They decided to switch the music to Young the Giant’s latest album as they unpacked the rest of their belongings. They did not miss their chance of screaming Mind Over Matter at the top of their lungs either. Adamo had only gotten his hands on the beautiful loft. It was located downtown, in a young and hip area of Boston. It was quite the ride from the arena the Bruins used to practice and train, but he enjoyed to be in the middle of the action. It almost reminded him of Montréal. The loft was gigantic for a single man. Everything was white or stainless silver. It lacked of personality. It was lifeless, much like his previous apartment when his parents or his sister did not visit him.

When she talked to him about her plans to visit Massachussetts on her own, an idea popped in his mind. She had been wasting her money over all of these crappy hotel rooms for way too long, and he happened to need help unpacking and settling down in his new home. He killed two birds with one stone and offered Alessandra to be his roommate. When they were younger, they dreamed of moving in together. They had their whole thing set up: they would buy the house right next to their parents’ and live like adults, unless it was dinner time or they had laundry to do. Then, they would only have to travel back to mom’s and dad’s and not deal with any boring responsabilities. Their dream died the day he got his offer to join Boston’s hockey team, and, although he hated to admit it, he regretted breaking Sandrine’s heart and illusion of their perfect roommate life.

Soon enough, everything was set into place. The only thing missing was the furniture. All they had was a big mattress, a television, an oven and a fridge. The rest was supposed to be delivered the next day. And that was because Alessandra noticed Adamo confused the delivery dates and argued with the representants until they agreed to fix the situation. She did not fail to remind him how essential she was to his existence. To which he agreed.

God knew how much he loved his sister — worse, how much he needed her. When he moved out of Canada, he felt empty inside. It was like someone stole a piece of his heart and never put it back. He had no one to pour cereal for in the morning, even though he bought several boxes of her favorite ones just by habit. He had no one to comfort during a thunderstorm, knowing how terrified it made her and that she only fell asleep if he held her close. He had no one to cook with at two in the morning when he craved cupcakes, as she made the best ones he ever tasted. He had no one to go to when girls broke his heart, no one to cheer him up, no one to cheer up either. He no longer saw her skate, or helped her for that matter. He ignored what she was up to while they were so used to sneaking some little notes into class in High School just to make sure everything was fine. He had no one to go out with, as none of his new friends compared to Sandrine. She was lively, bubbly, she was filled with kindness and naivety. She understood him better than everyone else. Alessandra was his other half, his much, much better half.

Losing his sister was one of the worst moments of his life. It happened so many years ago and still, the pain was still sharp. And the guilt? Even more hurtful. She did not want to let go of him at the airport when their parents drove him there. She made a whole scene, to the point security guards had to pull them apart. She was crying and kicking and fighting to run back to him, and she escaped from the guards’ grip enough times that Christian, their father, had to pull her by the arm and force her back to the car. She was so feisty, she could win any fights on the ice like those stupid players who pretended they were Rocky Balboa. He tried to be the most mature one, to act tough and pretend he would be finally liberated without his little annoying sister, but he could not fight the tears as he got on the plane.

And there she was again. The soulmates were back together, but something felt so different. There was a distance between them, both emotional and physical. She went to University, she grew up as an individual, her dreams changed. But she remained the same flawless human being he protected all his life. And him? Sometimes he did not even know who he was anymore. Since he refused to let her sleep directly on the floor and gave her the mattress, which he put in the bedroom, they were on both ends of the loft. Instead, he used his old camping sleeping bag and stared at the moon through the window. Yet, he could still hear her roll over on the mattress. He heard the sound of choked sobbing.

Adam could not support it. It was like the dagger piercing through his heart came back around and tore him apart. He stood up to look through the open boxes and found a pink stuffed bunny. He remembered when he bought it at Toys R Us, twenty something years ago when his parents announced him they were expecting a little baby. He named her Rosie, because his sister reminded him of a rose. She was fragile like the petals, yet strong and resistant like the thorns.

“I cried so much when I moved here the first time, I had to put my pillow in the dryer every night... For three months.” Adam confessed with a small grin, as he leaned on the doorframe of the room Sandrine was sleeping in. He kept the bunny in his hands, watching it closely. She kept it in pristine condition. It looked the same as when his stupid three years-old self chose it in the store.

She sniffed soundly, hiding her head under her old Barbie themed bed sheets that she brought, knowing very well he forgot to buy her a set. “Yeah, right. The only thing you cried for was when you thought Marie-Mai was dating the singer of Simple Plan in that music video and not you.”

“Ouch, that’s a tough throwback for my ego.”

He heard a timid wave of laughter coming from the coccoon. He decided to kneel beside her, waving the stuffed animal near her until she dared to give a look outside.

“I’m such a child — .”

“No.” Adam cut her off before she started her routine of insults and guilt. He hated when she did that, when she did not believe she was worth all the treasures in the world. “You are the most mature person I have ever met.” A pair of suspicious eyebrows appeared from under the covers. “Tu m’as manquée.”

She did not recall the last time he told her he missed her. He stopped opening up about his feelings to be more like his hockey teammates, stupid, douchey and gross. And ever since that moment, she felt as if she was blood related to a complete stranger.

“Come on, get up on your short legs. I’ll make you some chocolat chaud.”

She could not resist his offer and followed him, hugging him from behind and struggling to keep up with his wide steps. She teasingly wiped her eyes on his shirt and stained it, knowing he hated when she used to do that. “I feel so alone.”

“Me too.”

“Mamie left us...” Even though she tried her very hardest, she still could not get over her grandmother passing away. Corinna was the glue to their family, and nobody knew where they would be today if it was not of this lady who sacrificed so much for her loved ones. “And then you left me.” She let the warmth of the cup of warm milk and cocoa powder dry her tears, well, metaphorically speaking. “I have nobody. I am lonely.”

He wrapped her in his arms, resting his head on top of hers. He almost forgot how small she was, yet, she was stronger and stood above everybody else. Her heart was bigger than every Bostonian citizens’ combined. He hated himself for being the one who broke it that day in the airport.

“You’re not lonely anymore.” He said the words, almost like a promise. It was a dangerous promise, one he already knew he could not keep. “We’ll get through this.” Adamo spoke softly into her ear. “Together.”

“Together, forever.”

@devinstonerpg

#devinstone.task #devinstone.task003 #tasks. #biography.

[ecotone99]

[RF] Lovebug

LOVEBUG by Brandon Haffner

I’d been huffing model airplane glue for two years before I met Beef Gilbert, but he was the first person to make me feel stupid for it. The few friends I had couldn’t be counted on to look out for me; they could hardly look out for themselves. Those poor teachers at Woodland Acres Middle had bigger messes to clean up. And Mama—she was clueless. Too busy watching Golden Girls or The Price is Right or The Twilight Zone—didn’t matter what it was as long as it buzzed bright on that box of hers—and I couldn’t blame her, because Pops died in a freak accident when I was six, so she was all alone with me. This was another thing drew me and Beef together. His pops was dead, too.

By all accounts, Beef Gilbert was a maniac. He showed up at our school in August of 1987 and soon became known as “the kid who cut that cow open.” Like, if you were to see him for the first time, from afar, you might nudge the person next to you and ask: “Hey—is that the kid who cut that cow open?” Hence the name: Beef.

Around school he roamed the halls alone. Ate lunch by himself at one of those corner tables by the stage where the lighting wasn’t very good. He liked to remind people, loudly and half-grinning, that his mom worked at Wal-Mart and that he lived in a trailer park south of Jacinto City. Word spread that you could get him to do almost anything if you paid him enough.

I was on my second detention when I met him. Early September, the last breaths of stinky, sweltering Texas summer pouring in through broken window seals and cracked concrete. The air conditioning couldn’t keep up. During every lesson—x and y and z axes, power paragraphs, Ulysses S. Grant—we were melting.

I was fourteen and the only girl in detention that day. He was fifteen—he’d been held back a year at his old Houston school—tall for his age, slick blond hair, sweaty, and fat. His breath was a gargling wheeze. His too-big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt sagged off him. His square, thick-rimmed glasses were the kind you’d find on a ninety-year-old man.

He sat surrounded by empty seats. The other kids huddled in the corners to sleep or draw or read comics. Beef was flipping through a porno mag. No effort to disguise the naked woman on the cover. I glanced at our detention monitor, Mr. Briggs, who was young and nervous, and my guess was, being a fresh fish, he didn’t want to bother with this notorious big boy.

If you asked me back then why I, a somewhat self-respecting girl standing on a fragile reputation built from hard-edged coolness and occasional witty jabs, sat next to Beef Gilbert that day, I would have shrugged and said I was bored out of my skull. Which wouldn’t have been a lie—I thought, as eighth graders do, I’d seen the whole world.

“Heard you cut up a cow or something, over the summer,” I said. “Why’d you do it?”

He put down his porno mag and glared at me. He wore dirty gray sweatpants and I saw under the desk he had a little hard-on.

“Me and that cow had a political disagreement,” he said.

I laughed. Then he laughed.

“Poor cow,” I said, joking now. “Was it still alive when you did it?”

“Check this out,” he said. He flipped the magazine around so I could see. On the page was a naked Asian woman on her hands and knees.

“I see the appeal,” I said.

“I doubt it,” he said. “They even got smut where you’re from?”

“Where I’m from? I live four blocks from City Hall,” I said. “I’m not some rich girl.” I thought about my bedroom the size of a janitor’s closet. Mama’s rusty Cavalier I could hear coming three blocks away. Frozen corn dogs, frozen fish sticks, canned noodle soup—our dinner rotation. Bedroom air conditioner that rattled and hummed all night.

But secretly I was flattered. All any fourteen-year-old girl stuck wearing off-brand clothes and cheap hand-me-down jewelry can hope for is that her sweet style and perfect makeup fool someone into thinking she doesn’t live in a run-down duplex.

Flatly, quickly, as if he’d said it before, he said: “Yeah, you’re not rich, and I’m not a lard-ass.”

I don’t know what it was like at other schools, but at Woodland Acres, teachers used detention on kids the same way I use duct tape to fix broken stuff around my apartment. Skipped a class? Detention. Late to school? Detention. Broke into a locker, tore down a poster, stole a kid’s pack of gum? Detention. Made fun of or disagreed with a teacher? Hit a girl, kissed a boy, spit a spitball, made a paper airplane out of a math test? Brought booze or weed or the wrong kind of glue to school? Didn’t stand up during the Pledge of Allegiance? Detention. Hell, if your parents called enough times to whine about your grades, you could go to detention for getting a D. Which meant some kids, God bless them, got detention just for being dumb.

With Beef and all his strangeness waiting for me, detention became something I looked forward to. Like the bell ringing at 3:15 every day, I could count on him being in that room when I got there. Same porno mag, same circle of empty chairs around him, the other kids keeping clear of his body odor.

“What’re you in for?” we started to ask each other, like new cellmates.

And he’d tell me the story, usually something like, “I threw my apple core at Miss Gracie. Ryan Bishop gave me fifty cents to do it.”

And when he asked what I was in for, I’d say, “Same as always.”

And he’d shake his head and say, “Stuff’ll fry your brain,” followed by, “Check out these titties.”

And I’d say, “You know I see titties every day. In the mirror.”

And he’d peer down at my chest, and when Mr. Briggs wasn’t looking I’d pull my shirt up to my collarbone, just for half a second, to show off how good they looked in my pink bra.

This, more or less, became our routine.

One afternoon in detention, I wrote Beef a note. Mr. Briggs had silenced our conversation with an urgent, pleading glance, and in the silence I stared at my notebook. Usually I would have drawn some crazy thing—a dragon with broken wings, an upside-down truck on fire—but that afternoon I was feeling chatty.

I wrote down some jokes about Mr. Briggs. Scratched some doodles of Mr. Briggs with various classroom objects up his asshole. I added, as a P.S., a suggestion that if Beef were to wear some clothes that fit him, clothes that maybe had been washed recently, he might look better. Not good, not handsome. Just better.

I passed it to him, and he gave me this look: anxious, embarrassed, confused. He seemed more shocked by this piece of paper than by my bra flashes. As he stuffed my neatly folded note into his sweatpants pocket, he coughed and asked, “You going to Ghoulish?”

The Ghoulish Gathering was the Woodland Acres Halloween Dance, the kind of mid-year, low-budget, cafeteria event that attracted only the school’s most desperate and dorky.

“No way in hell,” I said.

“Me neither,” he said.

I continued to write Beef little notes and to receive little notes from him. When he started calling me Lovebug—never in person, only on paper—I returned the affection.

“Dear Lovebug,” we’d start off.

His drawings were faceless stick figures with enormous penises, or terribly drawn motorcycles, or symbols of sports teams. Sometimes he’d draw abstractions, lines and curves and dark spots that had me searching for some deeper meaning. His letters were short and disjointed.

Dear Lovebug, one of them read. I ate like no food this week and am still fat. The universe is unfair. Please stop sniffing glue. It’s gross. One of these days you got to tell me how your dad died.

That was it. No sign off.

About a year before I met Beef, my best friend Mia—who was the type of girl who said “fuck” for no reason and dyed her hair a wacky new color each month and wore rings on all her fingers—walked me over to the gas station one afternoon to buy me my first tube. It felt weird in my hand, hard like a rock, only I could push the sides in a little. Testors brand. “Works the fastest,” Mia said. That same summer she showed me how to stuff tissues into my bra in a way that didn’t look lumpy and I showed her how to cut little slits into the front of her jeans to show off some thigh. “You bad little tease,” I said when she put the jeans back on.

At school I huffed straight from the tube. But at home I used the bag. To get the best high, you squeeze half an inch into the bottom. Place the bag over your mouth and nose. Inhale, exhale. Repeat, repeat, repeat, each breath deeper than the last, and soon you’re riding an escalator up a grassy, flowery hill, above the clouds, and if you’re lucky, it’ll be sunny up there, and if you’re luckier still, you’ll meet Jesus Christ. Boredom was never so beautiful.

Beautiful for about twenty good minutes anyway, and then I’d start finding myself in the bathroom wiping blood from my nose with toilet paper. I started buying tissues at the gas station every time I reloaded my supply.

I started looking for Beef in the halls between classes. One time, I stopped by his locker and asked him about the pictures taped to his door. Mostly cutouts of women in bikinis. A few photos of his Rottweiler.

“His name’s Ass Wipe,” Beef told me.

“Fitting,” I said. “He looks like shit.”

“And this one’s my dead dad.” He pointed to a young-looking, physically fit bald man wearing a collared shirt, clean white dress pants, and shiny dress shoes. He was sitting in a rocking chair, smiling at the camera.

“How’d he die?” I asked.

“Overdose,” Beef said, laughing and wheezing, then coughing. He looked at the photo and pressed his index finger against his dad’s head. “Yeah. He was a dumb bastard.”

And another time by his locker we were playing rock-paper-scissors to see who’d get the last piece of gum in the pack we’d pooled money to buy from Patrick Hutchins last detention. Beef threw paper and I threw rock, so he covered my little fist with his big hand, then said, “I don’t want it,” and handed me the last piece.

“Thanks Beef,” I said, popping the blue stick in my mouth. “What’s your real name anyway?” I asked.

“Dennis,” he said. I’d expected a war to draw it out of him, but he didn’t hesitate. “Dad used to call me Denny.”

“Denny? Like that breakfast place?”

“I told you he was a dumb bastard.”

I was only trying to play along when I said, “Well at least someone’s continuing his legacy.” I even elbowed him in the shoulder and winked big and hard to exaggerate the sarcasm, but I knew as soon as I said it I’d cut some place in him that was dark and bruised.

“Whatever. At least I don’t wear kiddie clothes and a gazillion layers of makeup,” he said, punching his locker shut. “You look like one of those creepy five-year-old pageant girls.”

Normally his lines about my dress weren’t so vicious. More like failed attempts at flattery. This particular year I wore a lot of pink. Pink fingernails, pink T-shirts, pink bobby pins, pink shorts. I even owned a pink watch. I didn’t wear all this at once, of course. Tasteful pink. “Your highlighter shorts are blinding me,” he’d say, or “My little cousin has a Barbie in that same outfit.” He’d gurgle and wheeze and laugh at his own joke and I’d roll my eyes.

But when he crossed the line—“I bet you got a whole dresser full of pretty pink panties,” for instance—I’d make a point, in front of whoever was watching, to demean him.

I’d say, loudly enough for a few bystanders to hear, “Give you two bucks to fall down these stairs,” or “Give you a buck fifty to slap Mr. Briggs on the ass,” or “How about you full-on sprint to each of your classes today, Beef? A quarter per class.”

Sometimes Mia was with us. She would help me find loose change to give him.

“He’s hilarious,” she’d say. “He’s something else.”

He’d do whatever I asked. Every time. Didn’t matter how many people were around to laugh at him, or how much detention it landed him, or how bad his coughing got afterward. He took the money up front. Usually he smiled about it, his dorky sad smile beneath those gigantic glasses. The kid was a walking cartoon character and he knew it. A clown. Almost everyone seemed amused by his act.

Sure, I stood and watched with the rest as he performed. But if anyone had glanced in my direction, they’d have seen how I felt. More than once I caught myself pressing my hands together and shifting my weight from foot to foot, hoping to God the poor idiot didn’t hurt himself.

Now that I think back, it wasn’t nervousness or even guilt. It was much more. It was that sick, stabbing pain in my gut, almost how you feel when your lover betrays you. Disgust. Disbelief. It was that he’d truly do anything. It was that, after a long day of shit grades and nasty looks from teachers and throbbing glue headaches, sometimes all I wanted was detention, his big dorky eyes looking at me and his sweaty notes making me laugh. It was fear that this poor fat boy loved me. It was fear that I could love him.

Tuesday after Labor Day I sat on one of those concrete benches overlooking the school’s brown front lawn, waiting for Mama to pick me up. She was late as always.

I pulled out my notepad and drew gargoyles and princesses. When detention got out, Beef walked through the glass doors and sat next to me.

“You got any pot?” I asked. “I been thinking about trying pot.”

“You know I don’t do any of that shit,” he said. He shook his head for emphasis.

“Just fooling with you,” I said. “Grump.”

We sat. An airplane ripped the sky open. Someone far away pumped some life into a lawnmower.

“When I first heard about you I thought you’d be some tough guy,” I said. “Some brute. A name like Beef. Beef who killed a cow. But I bet you’ve never even seen a cow in your life.”

No response.

“Sorry I missed you today,” I said. “What were you in for this time?”

“Wasn’t my fault. Just some assholes being assholes,” he said. “Like always.”

“You gonna beat them up?”

“Shut up, Emma.”

“I bet you never hurt anything ever.”

“How much?” he asked.

I looked at him.

“How much you want to bet I’ve never hurt a thing? For real,” he said. He was wheezing again.

“You should see a doctor about that chest problem you got,” I said. “Because that shit ain’t normal.”

“How much?” he asked.

“A buck,” I said. “Show me what you got.”

We went behind the school and into the woods, down a long hill on a foot-worn pathway, over a wooden bridge, and across a creek littered with beer cans and cigarette butts and candy wrappers. I’d never been back here before. After twenty minutes, the woods opened up into a green-yellow pasture, a few sun rays spotlighting the place, including, in the distance, an old blue farm house and its grey barn, and, just beyond the barn, the highway coming into the city.

Beef grabbed hold of the low wooden fence in front of us. Just a few feet away, like a joke, was a “No Trespassing” sign, accompanied by a bigger, handwritten sign that read, “I Will Shoot You.”

“Seems taller than it was before,” Beef said, running his hand along the fence. He lifted a heavy pale leg over the wood, made a grunting noise, and landed clumsily on the other side.

Then I climbed over. He watched me.

“Even I’ve got more grace than you,” he said.

I punched his arm. He pretended it hurt.

I followed him away from the house and down near an algae-covered pond. Mosquitoes swarmed.

“Here it is,” he said, pointing down at our feet.

It was so much a part of the earth it was hardly noticeable. But yes, indeed, there was a dead cow, or a pile of dried-up cow parts I should say, in fact not recognizable as a cow at all, except that I knew what I was looking for. There were no flies because the flesh was gone. Just a few bones, dead grass, and a big dark-colored spot on the ground.

“Tell me the truth, Beef,” I said. “You did this?”

“Fuck yeah, I did,” he said. “I’m a murderous cow-killing machine.”

“A true psychopath,” I said.

“A raging psychopath,” he corrected.

“Twenty bucks says you found this cow dead of natural causes.”

He kicked the small pile of fragile bones. Dirt and bone fragments everywhere. The mosquitoes were giving us both hell, and he swatted at them crazily, like each bite was a surprise.

“I like this dance you’re rocking,” I said.

Then he grabbed my wrist hard and he pulled me away from the bones. He led me back to the fence. My wrist started to hurt and my fingers were going numb, so I yanked my arm away.

“What’s your problem?” I asked.

“You don’t have to insult me every second, you know,” he said.

We walked through the woods without talking. The crunching leaves. His labored breathing.

When we got back, Mama’s brown station wagon was waiting for me.

“Want Mama to give you a ride home?” I asked him.

But he ignored me. He sat on the bench, took his glasses off, and set his chin in his hands as we drove away and left him there to wait for whoever.

I spent a lot of time in my room that year. I listened to Blondie and The Clash. I drew two-headed unicorns and tornadoes uprooting neighborhoods and man-eating plants. I threw darts at an old dartboard I’d found in a Pizza Hut trash bin when Mia and me were wandering around town one night looking for stuff to do.

And I talked to Beef on the phone. He was sometimes funny, sometimes stupid, sometimes sweet. But always surprising.

I’d ask, “What are you doing right now?”

And he’d say, “Taking a dump,” or “Training for the Olympics,” or “Waiting for you to come over one of these days so I don’t have to play checkers by myself anymore.”

And I’d make suggestions for the future, like the time I said, “Once you get your license we should go to the Cinemark. You like horror movies?”

“Nah,” he said. “My life’s a horror movie.”

I laughed. One morning later that week, though, I got the sense of what he meant. I found a note in my locker he must have slipped through the little vent:

Dear Lovebug,

Chase who is my asshole step-brother and me and my cousins went to that pond last summer and they gave me a knife and said stab that cow. They didn’t pay me so I said no way. But they got this syringe and stuck me with it. They pushed me down so I wouldn’t get away. They are doing all sorts of drugs all the time with my stepdad so I might have gotten some drugs in me. They said stab that cow or we’ll keep on sticking you. I didn’t do it on purpose.

It could have been my imagination, but that note changed us. I mean, we never spoke about it. I made sure of that. In fact I made sure the word “cow” didn’t even come up in conversation. But this secret, twisted story had an effect. We joked less. Maybe we were nicer to each other. At least until those miserable weeks after Ghoulish.

One late night on the phone, after Mama’d gone to bed, I told Beef how Pops died in a factory fire, and that I hardly had any memory of him, just a flash here or there from some tiny corner of my brain, his image fading more each year.

Beef asked, “Was your dad nice to your mom?”

I was on my knees on my bedroom floor and prepping a huffing bag. I brought the bag to my face and breathed in, breathed out, in, out, in, out.

“Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember what you’re doing?”

“If Pops was nice to Mama. Too young I guess.”

Sometimes our conversations went so deep into the night we’d start to nod off, phones pressed to our ears. One of those nights, I was in bed with my eyes closed and the lights off. A long stretch of silence went by. Beef was breathing slowly, loudly.

“You awake?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Me neither.” I said.

The rumbling air conditioner switched off. The crickets in the yard hissed and pulsed. A streetlamp buzzed.

“Why don’t you like your mom?” he asked. “I want to meet her. Decide for myself.”

“She’s lazy. Sits around the house all day. Gets her welfare check and goes straight to happy hour. And she hates me,” I said. “She hates everything. She’ll hate you too.”

“Well your taste in music is pretty terrible. And your drawings. If I were your mom I’d be disturbed by those drawings.”

“I don’t even think she knows I draw.”

“I’d send you to an institution.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if she did. Get me out of the house.”

“You should show her. Draw something not so gross. I’m being serious. You know, guilt her into putting it on the fridge and shit.”

“It’s a little late for the fridge. I’m not six years old.”

My ear was getting hot, so I switched the phone to the other side.

“She a druggie?” he asked.

I almost laughed. “Mama’s not cool enough to do drugs.”

A long silence.

“Did your pops?”

“Did Pops what?”

“Do drugs,” he said. “You know. Crack. Pills. Meth. Weed. Glue.”

“He drank a little,” I said. “I don’t know.”

I tried to picture Pops. Maybe it wasn’t my memory—maybe it was Mama’s complaining for years after he died that created the picture—but with my eyes closed, my brain all afloat on glue air, I could see Pops with a glass of brown liquor on ice, sitting on the orange couch in the living room, watching MAS*H. That couch was the one our old cat, Juniper, used to piss on, the one Mama and me took sledgehammers to a few years ago. Juniper—I’d almost forgotten about him. Raggedy gray hairball, always hissing at everybody but Mama. If you wanted to find him, you’d just look under that couch—two narrow yellow eyes and a low growl would be there to greet you. Mama loved that cat. Saw herself in him a little bit, I think. Not long after we tossed out the couch pieces, I came home from school to find Mama crying on the floor holding a limp, lifeless Juniper. I can’t say I was too upset about that cat’s passing, but for Mama it was almost like Pops had died all over again.

“Emma?” Beef said. I realized he’d said it several times. I was almost asleep.

“Oh,” I said.

“Goodnight.”

Two weeks before Ghoulish, a tall boy from my lunch table asked me to go with him and I said yes. In detention one afternoon I shamelessly told Beef all about him, hoping, I think, to see the hurt on his face. The boy’s name was Alfredo, he was from San Antonio, and he said corny shit like, “You’ve got a great Emma-gination,” his eyes were starry green, and his hands were that perfect blend of soft but firm on my hip in the lingering moment after a goodbye hug in the hall when he didn’t want to let go just yet.

“Sounds like an asshole,” was all Beef could muster.

But a week later Alfredo either forgot about me or changed his mind because he asked out none other than my Mia, and when I told Beef, he said, “Your Mia? Mia Mullins?” and I said, “That’s the one,” and Beef said, “What’s he thinking? She’s got more acne than you and me combined.”

As we parted ways, surprised to find my hand shaking a little, I handed him a note, which went something like this:

Dear Lovebug,

Have a hot date yet for Ghoulish? If not, want to go with? Don’t get ideas.

He handed me his response in detention that afternoon:

Dear Lovebug,

Hope you break dance cause I’m a champ.

That week on the phone, all he wanted to talk about was the dance. He said things like, “I’m going to bring a bag of sugar in case they play ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me,’” and “I bet you’ve slow danced with like a hundred guys.”

“I want to cut out like halfway through,” I said. And I told him I’d pictured the two of us talking in a corner, not dancing at all, maybe heading back to my room to listen to music and draw and talk, like Mia and me used to do.

“Your mama won’t mind?”

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve ever told you? Mama doesn’t mind anything.”

“Okay, but we gotta slow dance once,” he said.

“No promises.”

“Number one hundred and one, here I come.”

But of course we didn’t get that far.

Mama left me $20 a week. Every Monday morning there was one bill on the kitchen counter. Given that Mama had no job, I always wondered where this money came from. I found out later it came out of Pop’s life insurance. The poor man was funding my glue habit from the grave.

Back in 1987 you could buy a lot with $20. Four or five movie tickets. A new shirt. A Sony Discman. A decent dinner out. A shitload of ice cream.

Or a dozen eight-ounce tubes of Testors.

But the day before Ghoulish, when it came time to resupply, I found the Walgreens completely out. So instead I picked up some paint thinner—I thought I’d heard about one of Mia’s friends using it. Came in a plastic bottle a little taller and narrower than a soda can. I walked home and ran up to my room and stuffed the bottle under my mattress.

Then I went downstairs for dinner; I remember this dinner well. For some reason Mama’d cooked lemon pepper chicken and some type of stuffed pasta with actual dinnerware, not the plastic plates I usually took up to my room. It was the most impressive meal I’d eaten in months. Before sitting down, I asked:

“What’s the special occasion?”

I got this nasty look from her and some response like:

“Does it need to be a special occasion if I want to cook some damn chicken for us?”

“What’s up your ass?”

“If you’re gonna talk like that don’t talk at all.”

“Fine with me.”

We ate the delicious meal in dead silence, save for the smacking of our lips and the clinking of our forks against our plates. When I finished, I went upstairs, locked the door, cranked “Death or Glory,” stuck my hand under my mattress, pulled out the now-warm can, shook it, heard my liquid destiny sloshing around, and took, as they say, the plunge.

Dear Lovebug,

When I wake up to get ready for school in the morning and put my clothes on, I sometimes pretend my clothes are ancient armor. Many, many girls for hundreds or thousands of years have worn this same armor and now it’s mine. It’s all rusty and it’s got some holes because you know it’s so old, but for the most part it’s good trustworthy armor. Now that I write it down this seems dumb. But even though it’s pretend and I know I’m too old to pretend, the armor has got me through lots of mornings when I just didn’t want to go to school. You know what I mean? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Anyway I’m writing this note at the hospital so I won’t be at the Ghoulish and you’re probably not going to get this note in time but I thought I should write it anyway.

Yes, I’m in the hospital for the reason you’re thinking.

I guess that’s all.

Emma

At the bottom of that note was a drawing of my own face, frowning, a tear streaming down one cheek. The finished product—eyes way too big and wide, too many half-erased sketch lines around the edges, crazy hair, pointy nose—looked nothing like me.

As any idiot could tell you, huffing paint thinner isn’t anything like huffing Testors. Less like riding an escalator up through clouds than like riding a train that’s on fire and the cabins are full of smoke and the whole thing is sailing off the tracks down into a ravine and you know it’s just a matter of time before you hit bottom and blow up into smithereens, but until then your stomach is flipping and churning and you feel weightless and terrified at the same time as the whole world rushes past you at terminal velocity or whatever.

The instant I unscrewed the cap, my face a good foot from the bottle, the fumes filled my room. The smell swept me back to those lighter-fluid-drenched junk heaps in the woods. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. I stuck my nose into the opening and took a huge sniff, followed immediately by another huge sniff, figuring I could skip a step—the bottle acted like a bag by way of concentrating and trapping those wonderful toxic fumes.

Who knows why we do these things to ourselves?

Imagine using two mortars to mash up some glass and habanero peppers, then jamming those glass-and-habanero-caked mortars up your nostrils. Even after I yanked my face from the bottle, grabbed a tissue, and began blowing, and even after those bloody chunks started falling out of my nose more thickly and rapidly than the tissues could contain—my khaki shorts and pink carpet were soaked with red by the time I passed out—the inside of my nose burned so bad I was crying.

If my life was a movie, I’d have woken up in the hospital bed. Peaceful and rested, surrounded by “get well” balloons and some doctor giving me a solemn but hopeful look. No such luck for 14-year-old Emma. No, I woke up in the ambulance, where the pain in my nose was still intense and burning. No way my nose survives this, I was thinking. It’s gonna have to be surgically removed. I’m gonna be noseless forever and they’re gonna make fun of me worse than they make fun of Beef.

Added to my nose pain was this unbearable headache, as if I’d banged my head on the ambulance door as they stuffed me in. I couldn’t stop coughing. My heart raged against my chest like a deranged gorilla. I was surrounded by fast-talking, stressed out, overworked strangers.

Other things I remember: Real bumpy ride. Blurry vision. Lights hurt my eyes. Cold as a freezer. Why was the air conditioning up so high in there? Where was Mama? Wet blood slowly drying on my face. Tried to open my mouth to ask for a Tylenol or something, but nothing came out but another painful cough. And no eye contact with the strangers. Not the whole way to the hospital. What I can’t tell you is if I was avoiding their eyes or they were avoiding mine.

After they got me all fixed up with tubes and oxygen, Mama walked in the room. There was no window, and everything was beige. She sat in the chair next to my bed.

Mama folded her hands in her lap and said, “Emma.” She’d been crying. It was obvious. Puffy red cheeks, wet eyes, that permanent frown of hers. Her half-gray,-half-black hair was a mess.

She put her hand on my hand. I was too weak to move it away.

I expected Mama to get up and leave after an hour or so. But I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was morning, and she was still there, asleep in the chair, her head leaning awkwardly on the beige wall. Later on it would dawn on me that this was the longest stretch of time we’d been in the same room together since Pops was alive.

Mama went and got me breakfast from the hospital cafeteria and came back and we ate together in silence.

“Are you depressed?” Mama said when we finished. When our eyes met I realized she’d been spending most of breakfast working up the courage to ask.

“No, Mama.”

“Did some boy hurt you?”

I laughed, then coughed.

“Well then what?” she asked, impatient. “What is it? People don’t do this for no reason.”

“Sure they do,” I said.

The nurse came in, drew my blood, and left.

“She seems nice,” Mama said.

“I don’t like her,” I said, which was a lie.

Mama stayed with me for the next day and a half.

“It’s no trouble,” she kept saying, as if I’d told her she was outdoing herself. “I’ve got nowhere to go.”

They rolled in a TV and we watched whatever Mama wanted to watch. I went in and out of sleep. The doctor told me I was a “perfectly healthy young woman,” but that I wouldn’t be this way much longer if I kept “poisoning my body,” and “brain damage” and “heart damage” and “sudden death” and this and that, and he handed me a pamphlet with the words “FREEDOM FROM ADDICTION” written at the top in all caps, which I threw in the garbage outside the hospital, and which Mama fished out of the garbage and clutched in her lap with her non-steering hand during the drive home and then studied at the kitchen table through her reading glasses for like a gazillion billion hours.

I must have called Beef fifteen times that weekend. On Sunday night, his mama answered the phone. She told me Beef—she called him Dennis—was resting up and wouldn’t be at school for a bit. Then Ass Wipe started barking and she said she had to go.

Mia told me the story at lunch that Monday. Turns out Alfredo had showed up to Ghoulish drunk. Slurring his words, not walking straight. Beef was there searching the crowd for me in his I’m-sure-ridiculous-looking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume. He found Mia and asked her where I was, and Alfredo, who was standing right there, asked Beef how he could be so stupid as to think I’d actually dance with him. Acted like I’d set the whole thing up as a gag. So Beef plopped down at one of the tables behind the crowd and just sat there like a lonely egg. But when Mia went to the bathroom, Alfredo tracked Beef down, acted all remorseful, told Beef I wasn’t worth getting all depressed over, that I wasn’t even that good a kisser—which is a lie—then offered Beef fifty bucks to sneak behind the cafeteria stage curtain, climb the spiral staircase to the catwalk above the stage, and jump off while hollering, “Cowabunga dude!”

So he did.

The stage exploded as if Beef were a human bomb. Broke his left leg and nearly his hip. But the worst part: this little shard of wood came up and stuck Beef right in the eye. Blood was everywhere. As Mia put it, “Everyone was running around screaming like it was the end of days.”

Monday of next week I finally saw him during my break between Spanish II and study hall. He walked toward me down the hallway on crutches, a black eye patch over his left eye. If I hadn’t heard the story first, I would have figured somebody was paying him a buck or two to act like a disabled pirate. When he came close enough to hear me, I took a risk and made a joke of it. I said, “Ahoy there!” But he didn’t respond. Didn’t even crack a tiny grin. Instead, from his right eye, he shot me this wild glare, kind of like the glare a horse—or a cow—gives you when you walk too close to the fence. Like they’re scared and pissed at the same time.

Then Beef lifted the patch to reveal a mess of purple and black flesh.

“Give me a dollar,” he said, “and I’ll let you touch it.”

I stood there like a dope.

“People been handing me money all day to put their fingers in my eye socket,” he said. He reset the patch. “Some people are so disgusting. Wouldn’t you say, Lovebug?”

I didn’t agree or disagree. I dug around in my rotten brain but the words were buried too deep. And after a few awful seconds, he limped off into the crowd.

At home that evening, in my bedroom, my paint thinner was nowhere to be found. My bed was made, too. And the next Monday morning, there was no $20 bill on the kitchen counter.

Weeks went by. I wound up in detention less and less often. The sweltering summer heat was replaced by breezy windbreaker weather. Beef and I still talked sometimes, in the halls. Not like before, but little stuff, like, “Does Mr. Briggs still pretend those ladies in your magazine aren’t naked?” and “Your mama got a new boyfriend yet?” Stuff like that. Then one day he told me he was moving to Louisiana over winter break to go live with his grandpa. Set to go to some high school in Baton Rouge. He’d already been out to visit.

“Best part is, everyone’s a lard-ass out there,” he said. “Even lard-assier than me. For real. I’m gonna be the hot jock.”

“The Hot Jock Cyclops of Baton Rouge.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

His mama’d had a heart attack or something, he said. Hence the move.

Christmas Eve. In my bedroom. Beef had been gone a week. “Train in Vain” blasting on my stereo. I was wrapping a present, believe it or not, for Mama. A pencil drawing of nothing special. A river, flowing down a canyon, and in the middle of it, this big zig-zaggy tree emerging from the water, branches reaching up toward the sky. It was pretty bad even by my standards—never was much of a nature drawer. Figured I might as well give it away. Plus once I’d finished and stepped back from it, that crazy tree kind of reminded me of her. Weather-beaten and old and strange. The type of tree all the tourists would come to see and snap pictures of while asking impossible-to-answer questions like, “How the hell did it get in the middle of the river in the first place?” and “Why hasn’t it fallen down after all these years?”

When she opened it on Christmas morning she cried so many tears it was like God had opened a bottle of champagne all over our living room. She gave me a hug—our first hug in I don’t know how long—and thanked me over and over. It was a little excessive.

After presents, we sat on the couch. She held my hand while her terrible Christmas music played in the background and we sipped the lukewarm hot chocolate she’d made. As she stared out the living room window—where there was nothing but cold, frosted lawn and a deserted street—she had this odd little smile. Her face was still wet. After a few minutes I cleared my throat, and she stood up and asked if I’d like her to reheat the rest of the hot chocolate. From her eyes I understood she wanted me to say yes.

I thought of a thousand smart responses. “Sure, nothing more delicious than chocolate water garnished with powder clumps,” or “But wouldn’t reheating mean it was once heated?” But when I practiced them in my head, none of my one-liners was the clever little needle I wanted. On this quiet Christmas morning, everything I thought to say was a jackhammer, a chainsaw, a blowtorch. So I gave it up.

Inhale, exhale. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

“Sure, Mama,” I said, handing her my empty pink mug.

Published on May 9, 2019

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