T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (15 page)

But I can’t do any of that. I can’t cut them out, because Otter can’t. They are a part of him and, by proxy, a part of me. So naturally, I started thinking of ways to fix it. And if history is any judge of the future, then I’ll probably just end up making things worse.

I
T
’
S
two days before I have my first class and three days before the Kid

makes the move to the fifth grade with the awesome David Trent. Otter’s at the studio for the morning, getting reacquainted with the daily grind after having had a four-month vacation. He’d climbed over me when the alarm had gone off, nuzzling against my ear before heading off for the shower. I’d have joined him, but it was way too early, especially since he’d decided to hit the gym before going into work. I did my own workout by pulling the covers back over my head and sinking back down into the warmth. By the time I wake up again, he’s gone, but there’s a cooling cup of coffee on the nightstand next to me with a note that says some stuff I won’t bother repeating. Let’s just say Otter obviously thought he was writing into
Penthouse
forums when he’d authored that lovely piece of smut. And apparently he has more faith than I do with just how far I can bend my body.

I don’t need the coffee after that, to be sure.

I hear the familiar sounds of CNN from the living room as I stretch and walk down the hallway, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, wondering just how much more I should unpack today. There’s still a shitload of boxes, and they’ve been sitting there for a while, and I know if I don’t get started now, they are still going to be there sixty years from now. I’m lazy. Sue me.

“Morning, Kid,” I say, yawning as I enter the living room. It’s empty.

The kitchen is too. There’s no note on the table, and I’d be lying if I say my heart doesn’t stutter in my chest. It’s unrealistic, I know, to expect

whatever is going through my head right now to happen, but the last time I’d lost track of the Kid, it had been a waking nightmare, one that I’m not ready to relive so quickly. It’s not that I’ve gotten complacent, but more that I’ve finally started to believe in a future that had never seemed possible.

Calm down, I tell myself. He’s around here somewhere. No need to panic over nothing.

 

“Kid?” I say louder, waiting a moment to see if I get a response. None comes. “Ty?”

I’d also be lying to myself if I said I don’t believe the world is a scary place anymore.
I’m about to walk calmly (read: run) to his bedroom when I hear his high-pitched laughter coming in through the open window in the kitchen. I look out and see him talking to someone just out of sight. He’s talking animatedly, his hands rising in the air like he’s giving another sermon on the state of the economy (don’t ask). Something about this rubs me the wrong way, not knowing who he’s talking to. If it’s one of his friends, fine, although I don’t know how many live around here. If it’s a neighbor, cool, even if I hadn’t met any myself. If it’s some guy from the Internet named BigTony225 who promised him gifts of edamame and a trip in a windowless van, then we’re going to have a big fucking problem.

I throw open the front door just in time to hear him say, “Dominic, my brother’s not going to care if you come in. He’s not
that
scary. The scary one already left this morning. Besides, you’ve got to try the Kashi cereal I have. And then I can introduce you to the wonders of CNN in the morning. It’s better then because they haven’t quite hit the stupid fluff pieces they do later on. Those make me want to shoot myself in the foot. Who
cares
about the top ten ways to land a man? There’s a
war
going on, people! Priorities!”

Dominic. I remember that name. Ty had included Dominic in his thankGod prayer over at the Thompson house. I wonder again if Ty has an imaginary friend, until I hear a gruff reply, a voice much deeper than I would expect from one of the Kid’s friends, those that he has. He has a couple of buddies that he hangs out with every now and then, but that seems to have tapered off a bit. I had asked him about it, only to have him shrug and tell me that sometimes they just weren’t on his same wavelength. I had reassured him that no one was on his wavelength.

“Well,
yeah
,” the Kid says, sounding slightly exasperated. “But they’re not home so what are they going to do? You don’t have to tell them.”

And since the Kid now sounds like he’s trying to convince someone to do something they shouldn’t, I make my presence known by closing the door behind me. The Kid doesn’t jump like he’s guilty; instead, he smiles at me and waves and then says something else and reaches out and grabs onto an arm and pulls as he walks toward me.

The person following him is someone I haven’t seen before. He’s big, bigger than a kid his age probably should be, which I’d estimate to be fourteen or fifteen. He towers over Tyson, his dark eyes watching me warily under bushy eyebrows, but still allowing himself to be pulled toward me, like he’s resigned to whatever is about to happen. His dark hair is shaggy around his face, spilling onto his neck, above the neckline of a stretched and worn shirt. His jeans have the knees blown out and his right shoe is untied, the laces frazzled and dirty as they drag behind his shuffling feet. Who the hell is this and why is Tyson grinning like that?

As soon as they reach me, the Kid lets Dominic go and jumps up into my arms, his hands immediately going to my hair as he babbles away about something or another. I hear him, halfheartedly, my eyes drawn to the new guy in front of us, who has stopped a few feet away and is looking down at his feet, kicking at a rock, his arms behind his back like he’s at parade rest.

“… and I think he might be my best friend in the whole wide world so you have to be nice to him,” I hear the Kid say as I tune back in. “He’s awesome, but really quiet, and I try to get him to talk more, and he’s starting to, but I think he’s really shy, and mostly he just sits there and listens to me, so that makes him my favorite kind of person, and I think you should let him come in and have breakfast with us, but you can’t be mean and do that whole ‘I’m Bear. I’m an adult, so you have to do whatever I say’ thing that you
always
do because sometimes, Papa Bear? Honestly? You gotta just let me be
me
.”

I can’t help it as I chuckle quietly. “Take a breath, Kid,” I tell him as I set him down. He looks up at me and grins as he holds onto my hand. “And I
always
let you be you,” I remind him as he jerks my arm toward the other boy, who is now looking nervous, chewing on his bottom lip as we approach. “Anyone else would have put you up for adoption by now.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “Too soon, Bear. I’m still emotionally scarred and that was in poor taste. It probably just set me back at least another couple of years. Hey, at least it’s more fodder for my
therapist
.”

“Uh-huh. Keep the act up, Kid. I’ll take you down to open-mic night if you think you’re that good.”
He scowls at me, if only for a moment, before a wide grin splits his face almost in half as he looks back at his friend. “Dominic, I’d like you to meet my big brother. Don’t let what you just heard fool you; he can actually be almost funny. Sometimes. Bear, this is Dominic. He lives a couple of houses down.”

The other kid in front me glances up at me quickly and sees me watching him expectantly and drops his gaze back toward the ground, mumbling something under his breath.

“Sorry?” I say gently. “Didn’t quite get that.”

The Kid sighs. “He said it’s nice to meet you, and he likes the Green Monstrosity because it’s the color of sea foam, and that’s one of his favorite things to look at because it’s always shifting.”

I know he actually didn’t say all of that, not unless I got trapped in a time vortex and lost six seconds while standing in my front yard (weirder things have happened), but I can’t help catch the quick look he shoots the Kid, the small smile that quirks one side of his mouth, how one eyebrow arches quietly before his forehead smooths out again and he looks back down at his shoes.

Huh. Odd.
I hold out my hand, and it sits there for a moment before the Kid whispers something to Dominic, who sighs and reaches up and grabs my

hand, pumping it up and down just once, his grip warm and calloused, his huge hand engulfing my own. He lets go and hazards another glance at the Kid, who nods at him and laughs like it was the funniest thing he’s ever seen.

“So, Dominic,” I say as the Kid quiets. “Haven’t had a chance to meet any neighbors yet. Have you lived here long?”
He mumbles something I can’t make out.

The Kid starts to translate, but I shake my head. “Couldn’t catch that, Dominic. You’ll have to speak up. I’m an old guy, hard of hearing, wouldn’t you know.”

“For a while, yeah,” he says, a little louder, his voice sounding gruff, as if just the act of those four words is more force than it’s exerted in a very long time. This is almost a foreign concept to me, as I never shut up, not even if I want to. The Kid looks expectantly between us, the grin still on his face like this is the greatest thing he’s ever experienced. I wonder, if only for a moment, why the hell I haven’t met Dominic yet, why I really haven’t even
heard
of him aside from the brief mention at the Most Awkward Dinner Ever, especially if he’s got the Kid grinning the way that he is, a smile almost solely reserved for those that know him best. Jesus Christ, who the hell is this kid and how did he knock down
my
Kid’s walls so quickly?

I look at him with a new appreciation, knowing that if he’s got the Kid’s loyalty somehow already, then he is someone I have to make sure I watch closely. It’s strange, though, and it causes me a slight unease that Dominic is obviously far older than Tyson, yet the Kid is making proclamations about best friends like he’s known the guy for years. So maybe Dominic is a loner, but why the hell would he want to hang out with a nine-year-old? I assume even loners have some kind of social status they are worried about. I can’t say it’ll do much for his popularity if he’s hanging out with a kid who doesn’t shut up about anything and is surrounded by people older and bigger than he is.

Then I catch another of those sneaking glances aimed at the Kid, who has decided to fill in the silence with a running diatribe of our family history. I hear Ty say, “And then she came back and said she was going to take me away with her, but Bear was like ‘oh,
hell
no’, and we got an attorney named Erica who is soooo awesome,” and I notice the way the area around Dominic’s eyes tighten, the way his mouth flattens out to a thin line as soon as he heard about our mother’s actions. It takes me a second before I can really understand what I’m seeing on his face, but then it’s gone, and he stares at the Kid, nodding every now and then. I swear what I saw was anger. Like he was angry at our mother, not so much of her abandoning us to begin with, but the fact that she came back and tried to take Ty.

Strange guy, this one is.
“… and now Bear is trying to adopt me, but he’s still going to be my brother, not my dad,” the Kid continues. “I don’t have a dad. Okay, well I

do
have a dad; I’m not, like, Jesus or anything. I just don’t know who he is, but that’s okay, ’cause I’ve got Bear and Otter and now you, so who needs anything else?”

Dominic mumbles something I can’t quite hear, his eyes again going hard.

“No, I don’t think so,” the Kid says quietly.
“What did he ask?” I say.

The Kid looks up at me. “He asked if there was a chance that Mom could get custody of me.”

 

I snort. “Like hell. There’s no fucking way that’s going to happen. You’ve got my word on that, Kid. I’d die before I let that happen.”

The Kid grins at me in that adoring way he has sometimes, and I have to remind myself that I can’t cry in front of strangers and that I need to stop my eyes from leaking so much as it is and that I
would
die before I let Julie McKenna know any part of Tyson. She might have given him life but she has nothing to do with who he will become. She is not his mother. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t need one. He’s got me. And Otter… and now apparently some random kid named Dominic, who again has just said something that I couldn’t hear. If this guy is going to be around, we are going to have to have a little talk about what it means to be audible.

“Yeah, we know how it sounds,” the Kid replies, glancing at me. “We don’t understand why she came back either. Maybe we’ll never know. But there’s no point in worrying about it now, right? If you worry too much about what
could
happen, you’re never ready for what
does
happen.”

“Jesus, Kid, you sound
way
too much like me,” I tell him. “That can’t possibly be healthy.” But he’s right, of course, right about so many things. It’s been weeks since our mother came back, and for the life of me, I still can’t understand the whys and the hows of what had happened, what her intentions were. Why had she come back? How had she known about Otter being in San Diego? What was her end game? When we’d met with the attorney for the first time, she’d asked us if we’d seen anyone around that we hadn’t seen before, someone that could have been following us, checking into our lives. That thought had chilled me like no other, the thought of someone following us around, digging into our lives, trying to stir things up that are better left dead and buried. We have too much on our plates already to be worried about looking over our shoulders or finding someone digging through our trash. The unfortunate side effect of all of this is I’m convinced that every new person I meet is her spy (my imagination tends to be overactive, in case you haven’t noticed), and if I could have my way, the Kid would be locked in his room until the custody situation was resolved. Or maybe until he turned eighteen.

This, of course, leads to horrific thoughts of the Kid at age eighteen, realizing that by having him skip a grade, we’ve now put him on a track to graduate
before
he turns eighteen, which means he’ll go to
college
before he’s eighteen, and oh my
God
, what if he gets to skip another grade? What if he graduates high school when he’s only
twelve
and then gets accepted to Harvard or Yale and he has to move across the fucking country? There’s no way in
hell
he’s going to go by himself because I will be sitting there with him in
every
fucking class he’s taking, glaring at the blonde busty coed named Tiffani who flirts with him and invites him to the first big kegger of the year at Phi Beta Gamma, asking him if he’s ever tried a shot called a blowjob. She’ll lick her lips when she says it, running her tongue over her bubblegum lip gloss because she’s in college and has no inhibitions because she no longer has to listen to daddy (which means she’s a
whore
).