Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing (12 page)

So, think of that the next time you have your dark and monstrous cravings. Think about how you are taking part in a long line of murder. It has to stop. And it can stop with us.

So, rise up with me, brothers! Rise up and—

“You would think,” Bear says from the front passenger seat of the car, “that after living with him for almost twenty years, I’d be used to hearing these things by now. It’s sad to learn I’m not. You just
had
to wait until we already ate, didn’t you?”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “That’s what you get for stopping for fast food. Think of all the cancer you probably have now. Not to mention the back fat.”

“
Back
fat?” he all but howls.

“The worst kind,” I say gravely.

“There was nowhere else to go! And they had salads.”

“Covered with chicken,” I say indignantly. “Do I
need
to tell you the story of Jermaine the rooster and his love, Lupita? It’s positively
riveting.
”

“Twenty more miles,” Bear groans. “We’ve come three thousand miles, and I’m going to commit murder in the last twenty.”

“You already killed Carl. What’s another one?”

“Jermaine?” Otter asks from the driver’s seat. “Sounds delicious.”

“Do
not
egg him on,” Bear says. “You know what happens when he gets going. I told you getting fast food was a bad idea.”

“I’d rather listen to his cow murder love stories than hear you complaining about being hungry,” Otter says. “At least with him, I know he’s eventually going to stop talking at some point.”

“Oh, burn,” Corey says. Well,
today
he’s Corey. Sometimes he’s Kori, but that’s a story I’ll tell you in a bit. Just know he’s my very best friend in all the world. And my ex-boyfriend. And ex-girlfriend. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, I promise. Or maybe it is. Whatever. “He’s pretty much got you there, Derrick.”

“You just think that because you like his muscles,” Bear accuses him.

“They are pretty dreamy,” Corey agrees. His voice is soft and wispy, a bit deeper now that he’s Corey. It reminds me of the flutter of bird wings. Everything about him does, actually. He’s taller than me (damn him), but slight. He told me once his father was black and his mom was Hispanic, though how he knew, I don’t know. One of the first things I learned about Corey when I met him years ago was that he was raised in foster care and never knew his parents. He doesn’t talk much about those days. Foster kids tend not to. This I know for a fact. “You best be careful, Derrick, lest I swoop in and steal your man.”

“You can have him,” Bear grumbles. “He’s a big fat jerk.”

Otter winks at Corey in the rearview mirror and flexes his bicep. It’s a big arm, but he’s essentially my father, so of course I think it’s gross. Otter doesn’t look that much different, even though he’s approaching forty. Sure, there are a few more lines around his eyes and mouth, and maybe his hair is thinning a bit on top, but he still looks like I’ve always remembered him: bigger than almost everyone I’ve ever known and twice as tough.

Okay, and maybe I’m just a tad bit jealous. But only because I’m still as scrawny as I’ve ever been. And short. And not the object of Corey’s pseudo affections. Not that I really want to be or anything. It doesn’t matter. Fuck it, I’m not jealous.

Sort of.

Blah.

“Is this your hometown?” Corey asks, looking out the window into the rain. The Pacific Ocean looks as dark and choppy as ever. It’s so different from the Atlantic. I don’t know why I never saw it before.

“Not quite,” Bear says. “Give it a few more minutes.” He says something else to Otter in a low voice. Otter laughs and reaches over to grab Bear’s hand.

“You excited?” Corey asks me. He flashes me a quiet smile, and even though I try not to let it, my heart does a little flip in my chest. He’s gorgeous, that one is.

“About?”

He rolls his eyes. “Being home for the summer. One last little adventure before the rest of your life starts.”

“It’s not the rest of my life. It’s more school. Or, at least I hope it’ll be.” If they take me back, that is. I think the words were “academic suspension.”

“You’ll be okay,” he says, patting my hand.

“It’s no big deal.” It actually is, but I don’t even want to think about it right now. Now is supposed to be a time of calm and healing and some other esoteric bullshit. “Let’s not talk about bad stuff, okay? I don’t want Bear to start crying again.” Trying to keep it light.

“I heard that,” Bear says. “I’m a man! Men don’t cry.”

“You cry,” Otter says. “All the time. Like full-on snot-face, puffy-cheeked, gross crying.” He raises his voice to high-pitched hysterics. “I’m gay and I want to tell everyone at dinner and make things superawkward for everyone and then snot all over Otter’s shirt!”

“You worry about the weirdest things, Papa Bear,” I tell him.

“
I didn’t say it like that!
” Bear shouts, his voice going into high-pitched hysterics. He scowls. When he speaks again, his voice is at least two octaves lower than his normal speaking voice. “I was calm, cool, and collected, and everyone had a lovely evening.”

“Bullshit,” Otter and I say at the same time.

“You guys are assholes,” Bear mutters.

“You’d think I’d be used to you guys by now,” Corey says. “Those moments I find out I’m not are very strange.”

“
You’re
strange,” Bear retorts.

“Bear’s just emotionally stunted,” I tell Corey. “He’s been that way since I can remember.”

“I’ll show
you
emotionally stunted, you little shi—”

“I think that’s something that runs in the family,” Corey says.

“Kid, stop upsetting your brother,” Otter warns. “Bear, calm down. Corey, you….”

“Yes, Oliver?” Corey asks, batting his eyelashes.

“You stay classy,” Otter says with a wink.

Corey sighs dreamily.

“Gross,” Bear and I say at the same time.

“Now go away, both of you,” Corey says to the front seat. “We’re gossiping.” He leans his head toward mine. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What?”

“Are you excited about being home? You’ve never come back before. Even when Derrick and Oliver made trips back, you always stayed in New Hampshire. Surely you’ve missed this place.”

It’s inevitable,
a voice whispers in my head
.

“I guess,” I say.

“I would think something called the Green Monstrosity beckons constantly. I know it would to me. You should know I am expecting something grotesquely palatial.”

“Boy, are you going to be disappointed, then. It’s nothing grand.” That’s a lie, though I don’t know why I say that. I’ve missed that house more than a person should probably miss a house. It’s weird. “It’s not too bad.”

Not too bad?
it echoes.
It’s where you met D—

No. Not that name. That name stays far away from me.

Oh?
it whispers.
Because actively
not
thinking about something always works. Say it. Say his name.

I push it away.

“It’s… quaint,” Corey says as we pass by houses along the beach. “It’s not Tucson, that’s for sure.”

“I’m pretty sure there are a few differences where we grew up,” I say dryly.

He flashes that liquid smile at me. It’s cunning, like he knows something I don’t. “Undoubtedly. There’s nothing else?”

“What else could there be?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Something. Anything.”

“No.”

He nods and looks back out the window. “I’ll miss you, you know. When I’m gone.” He reaches across the seat and takes hold of my hand. Our fingers intertwine, and it’s familiar. It’s comforting. It’s almost like home.

Almost.

“It won’t be for forever,” I tell him. “You know it won’t. You’ll come see me, and I’ll come visit you, and the next four years will go by so fast until we’re side by side every day again… I’ll work for the Environmental Protection Agency as a toxicologist or whatever else I decide to do. You’ll be an overworked victim’s rights activist. Then I’ll become a billionaire and I’ll buy PETA and make it not crazy again. And then we’ll get a house. You and me. You’ll become a lady of leisure, and I’ll stop the whaling ships along the coast of Japan. Those savages.”

“All that, huh?”

“All that.” It’ll happen. I know it will because I can do it all. I’ve got everything in front of me here. My entire fucking life. I just have to get through this summer, and then real life can begin and I can pick up the pieces and become who I’m supposed to be. It’s that easy. It has to be.

He squeezes my hand. “I’m going to hold you to that, Thompson.”

“I promise.” I allow myself a moment of weakness and pull his hand up to my lips and kiss it gently. He squeezes my hand in acknowledgement, but nothing more.

I turn back to the window.
I shouldn’t have come back here,
I think.
Should have stayed in New Hampshire…. I don’t know why I said yes.

Sure you do
, it says, voice full of cheer.
You aren’t
that
stupid.

Go away. Just… go away.

It laughs.

Soon, we pass a familiar sign:

WELCOME TO SEAFARE!

“I’m home,” I whisper to the rain.

I
T
HITS
a few minutes later. Not quite panic. Not quite suffocation. I almost can’t name it, but as we drive farther and farther into Seafare, it becomes more palpable.

It’s queer, really. It’s a sensation that I can only describe as
doubling
. In the four years I’ve been gone, Seafare has expanded drastically. What were once empty, lonely stretches of beach are now brightly lit shops selling glued-together seashells, ice cream, and postcards. Gas stations. A CVS on almost every corner. Starbucks on almost every corner. A Walmart.

There are people everywhere, even in the rain. They walk on what is ostensibly now a boardwalk. Some have umbrellas. Others have parkas. Some don’t seem to care at all. They walk their dogs. They ride their rental bikes. They eat their food under gaudy awnings. It’s alive and vibrant and garish.

This isn’t the Seafare I remember. But then I’m not the same person who left all those years before. I’m worn and battle-weary. Shit happens. Things change. I know that now more than ever.

Otter must sense something off with me. “Revitalization project,” he says. “Bunch of taxpayer money funneled into restoring the tourist traps.”

“It looks so fake,” I mutter. Because it does. It’s all flash but no substance, all lights and fake smiles and shiny, happy people who want nothing more than to be out in the rain.

We move through the town toward the Green Monstrosity. I start to see familiar sights, things that pull my heart in a billion different directions, warring with the fact that I hate it. That I love it. That this is my home. That this place is a stranger to me.

Here’s
the high school I graduated from, only a few years before, complete with a new building sprouting up near the football field.

Here’s
the street I’d walk down almost every day off the bus.

Here’s
the library that had become my shelter in my teen years when I realized that I was so very different than everyone else, and not necessarily in a good way.

And then. Oh, and
then
comes the memories, those damn memories that choke me, that throttle me.
Here we are!
they shout at me.
This is
your
life, Tyson Thompson, Tyson McKenna that was. The Kid. Here’s your Greatest Hits all the way to your Greatest Shits. Because weren’t some of these things just
awful
? Aren’t they just
terrible
? Surprise! We’ve been waiting for you all this time.

Here’s
the store where my brother worked to keep our heads above water.

Here’s
the hospital where I lost Mrs. P, and almost lost Otter
.

Here’s
the cemetery where her marker lies next to her husband, the woman taken from me so unfairly. Her body lies as dust in the ocean.
I’m sorry,
I think as we pass.
I’m so fucking sorry.

And
here.
Here. The apartments. Those fucking apartments. Those shabby brick apartments with cracked gutters and rusty metal stairs. With shitty cars in the parking lot. With people who look like they’re barely scraping by. Barely living. Barely breathing. We drive by them, and I swear time slows and almost stops, and my breathing must be heavy because Corey squeezes my hand and murmurs something quietly to me that I can’t quite make out. This fucking place. This horrible fucking place.

“It’s not us anymore,” Bear says. I look up at him. He’s staring at the apartments through the window. There’s an expression on his face that I can’t quite make out. It almost looks like fear. And hatred. “You know? Whatever we were, whatever it was to us, it’s not us anymore.” His voice is low and his words only for me.

I say nothing because all I can think about is hearing someone knock on the front door to that apartment. All I can hear is Mrs. Paquinn cackling at something on the TV. All I can do is jump up and say,
I’ll get it, I’ll get it, I’ll get it
, thinking all the while that maybe Bear’s come home early, or maybe it’s Otter coming over to
hey
, and I’ll reply with
hey, yourself
, because isn’t that what we do? Isn’t
that
who we are?

I open that door. I open that fucking door and it’s
not
Bear. It’s
not
Otter. It’s not Creed or Anna or even Dom (
He wasn’t there then,
I think wildly.
He wasn’t even alive to me yet
). No. It’s a woman, a woman standing there with a strange little smile that’s not quite a smile. Cheap dress. Cheap shoes. Tired hair and face and eyes. She is
beaten
, she is
broken
, but that smile that is not quite a smile widens and she says,
Hi, baby. Hi, darling. Hi, Tyson. It’s me. It’s your mommy. I’m home. I’ve come back. How are you? Look how big you are! I’ve missed you.