When Matt and Foggy first became roommates, one of the first things that made Matt like Foggy were the dinosaurs. Tiny dinosaurs made of a hard oily plastic with an odour that reminded Matt of the bucket of misshapen green army men that a kindly older neighbor had bequeathed to him like treasure just before he had passed away when Matt was eight. In Matt's imagination, the dinosaurs were also green, but he couldn't really be sure.
He first noticed the dinosaurs the morning after he moved into their dorm room, when he woke up to the sound of Foggy unpacking his few boxes. They were one of the first things Foggy had unpacked, and Foggy was talking to them.
"Hmmmm..." he heard Foggy murmur. "How do you guys feel about your new home? I guess I should really put my books there, but you look so comfy already that I feel bad moving you. I can just pile these, right?" he asked. "Yeah, I can pile them," he decided, carefully shifting a stack of books underneath the bed.
"Who are you talking to?" Matt asked sleepily. He knew there was nobody there.
"Oh, just my dinos," Foggy told him.
"...He says, without context," Matt continued sarcastically.
Foggy laughed. "Right, sorry. They're these toy dinosaurs my parents gave me. I keep them on my desk for luck."
"You know, a lot of parents just give their kids a copy of Oh the Places You'll Go," Matt said.
Matt wondered what he had said because suddenly Foggy's entire demeanor seemed to change, and his heartbeat began to race.
"Yeah, well..." Foggy said, clearly uncomfortable. "Not mine. I've just got dinosaurs."
Matt realized that maybe Foggy wasn't sure whether or not to bring up his parents given that he obviously knew Matt's story. Sometimes Matt knew that his life made people feel guilty complaining or talking about their own.
"I've got a trunk of my dad's old boxing stuff," Matt said, in an attempt to make Foggy feel more comfortable. "I didn't bring it. It's in storage. But sometimes I go and open it and just breathe in. Run my fingers over it. It makes me feel closer to him. Sometimes you need that. To have a piece of family with you."
Foggy sighed wistfully. "Yeah," he said. "Sometimes."
Later, Matt would wonder why Foggy sounded so wistful and had a need for a reminder of his family in their dorm room. Foggy's family seemed to be a constant presence in their lives.
Foggy's Uncle Jack regularly picked Foggy up in the evenings so that Foggy could help him roof houses for extra money. Sometimes his cousin Leo would be in the truck, and on those nights Jack would drop Leo off with Foggy and they would all play cards on the dorm room floor, sharing a pizza and case of beer. Matt learned that Leo had inherited Foggy's boisterous sense of humour and love of Funyons from his dad's side of the family.
Foggy's 96 year old Great-Aunt Myrtle would call him weekly to spend hours on the phone complaining about his cousins' many misadventures being (according to her) unemployed and ungrateful for the spare beds she provided them to sleep on when their spouses kicked them out. Matt asked Foggy once why he put up with it.
"Meh," Foggy said. "Nobody else in the family can put up with her for as long as I can, and I stayed with her once too so I owe her. Plus, she knits these really soft sweaters for me at Christmas and slips me money whenever she can."
When their illicit hot plate broke, it was Myrtle who sent Foggy the money to replace it, along with instructions to "Feed that Murdock boy. Laurie tells me she saw him the last time she was there and he's too skinny."
And Foggy loved to tell stories about his family. Matt heard endless tales of the Nelson clan, a large working class group of misfits, petty criminals and schemers. And when those ran dry, there were still more stories to tell about the O'Malley family on his mother's side, fourth generation Irish Catholics whose family tree supposedly encompassed gangsters and bootleggers going all the way back to the days of Five Points.
In fact, Matt heard so much about Foggy's family that it took him longer than it should have to realize that he knew more about Aunt Christina and her rich third husband than he did about Foggy's parents.
In their first few months of living together, Matt also learned that the tiny dinosaurs were a big part of Foggy's life.
Foggy continued to talk to them. "Good morning, Steggy," he would say to one that Matt assumed to be a stegosaurus, as he passed by it on his way out the door to class. "Marty," Matt would hear him mutter, confused as he hunted around the room and checked underneath the mess on his desk, "Where did you get to today?" He stroked their tails for extra luck before he started every paper, and sometimes he played with them like a child would, making them stomp around the desk and roar at each other.
And he suspected Foggy had them in a specific order because occasionally when they would get knocked over by books being slammed down, or a laptop screen pulled too far back, or an owner simply too drunk to realize they were there, he would hear Foggy hum as he considered the proper place to return them to.
It amused Matt, but he never asked about it. After all, Foggy never asked him about his dad after that first time it came up. And Foggy never asked him where he was going when he left for Fogwell's gym for hours. That was fine with Matt. Foggy not asking meant that he didn't have to feel as bad about all of his secrets. And so he would leave Foggy his.
One day, a package arrived for Foggy. Matt could smell the oats and flour the moment he stepped into their dorm room, tucked away between layers of paper and twine and amidst the distinctive scents of toiletries and clean underwear.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he heard Foggy say into his cell phone. "Thank you for the cookies. They were great." He resisted the urge to listen in to the other side of the conversation. "Of course," Foggy continued. "Alright. You too. Bye."
Foggy offered Matt a cookie, and he smiled as he bit into one. They were homemade and delicious. "Care package from your parents?" he asked. and there was that shift again in his demeanor, imperceptible to others but not to Matt.
"No," Foggy replied, "Just a friend. Her name is Bess."
"Oh?" Matt asked. "A girlfriend?"
"What? Eww, no," Foggy replied, laughing. "She's 48, dude. I knew her growing up."
"A friend of the family then?" Matt asked again, curious.
"Sort of," Foggy said. "She took me in after..." Foggy trailed off, before deciding on a new train of thought. "She worries about me, that's all. She also put a toothbrush and some deodorant in here, so apparently I smelled bad the last time I visited." Matt heard Foggy sniff himself.
"Well, you're good now," Matt told him, even though he knew Foggy hadn't showered the day before.
"Thanks, man," Foggy said, laughing, and he grabbed another cookie from the box.
With that, Foggy seemed fine, and so Matt decided to drop it. Whatever had upset Foggy about his question was none of his business. It was possible Foggy just felt weird about admitting to Matt that he had female friends more than 30 years his senior who sent him homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. Foggy really could make friends with anyone, Matt reflected, and it was why he enjoyed his company so much. Why risk things by asking?
As the holidays approached, Matt assumed that Foggy would be going home. He kept waiting for the moment when Foggy's parents called to make arrangements, or when Foggy described holidays at his family home to him excitedly. But it never happened. Even the Aunts and Uncles all seemed to have their own plans that didn't include Foggy.
"So," Matt finally broke down and asked on their second to last day of classes before Thanksgiving. "You must be looking forward to the holidays."
And there was that almost imperceptible shift in Foggy's demeanor again, that quickening of his heartbeat.
"Nope," Foggy replied. "Not really. Unless you wanted to do something. But I figured you'd be, I don't know, going to the orphanage to help the nuns or something."
"Oh," said Matt, completely thrown.
"Oh?" Foggy asked. "Oh," he continued, "You thought I was leaving. I see. Sorry. I probably should have told you."
"No!" Matt said, wanting to reassure him. "I mean, I did think I'd be alone. But only because I figured that you'd be going home and spending the holiday with your family."
Foggy was quiet for a moment, and Matt got the sense that he was steeling himself for something, but he wasn't sure what it was. In the end, he could almost tell the moment Foggy changed his mind about it.
"Well, yeah," Foggy said. "They're there. Christina throws this big snooty holiday party, and my Uncle Al's family always invite me and I know I'm welcome if I wanna see them. But I don't know..." Foggy sounded sad as he continued, "Everyone all at once? It's a bit much. I prefer to spend the holidays just reflecting on things myself."
Matt wasn't sure if he was supposed to ask Foggy for more details or if it would make things awkward, and so he decided to leave it alone unless Foggy wanted to share. "Me too," he said instead.
"We could cook dinner if you wanted, though," Foggy said. "I mean, I don't think I'm capable of a turkey. But we could figure something out. Do something festive, you know?"
"I can cook," Matt said.
"Seriously?" Foggy said, disbelieving, and then followed up with a "sorry," in case Matt was offended.
Matt just laughed. "I can! I'm actually pretty good. I'm not sure if we can or should cook a turkey in a our dorm microwave or toaster oven, but chicken, maybe? Some of that boxed stuffing you can buy on the side? A little gravy and mashed potatoes. All possible."
"Don't take this the wrong way, buddy, but I have to see that now," Foggy told him. "And help. It sounds amazing."
Matt grinned. "Yeah," he told Foggy, "It really does."
Over the Christmas break, Foggy and Matt both stayed on campus, but at Foggy's insistence they continued to try to be as festive as possible. Matt put his foot down on trying to fit a real pine tree into their room, but was happy to listen to Foggy describe the Christmas lights he strung around their room and feel the stocking Foggy bought for him underneath his fingertips as he hung it on the wall.
"Who exactly are you expecting to fill this for me, Foggy?" Matt asked.
"Ummmm... Santa?" Foggy asked like it was obvious.
Matt took a breath in. "So I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but..."
Foggy covered his ears before Matt could say another word and began singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas loudly until Matt stopped, laughing to himself.
"So how exactly do you expect Santa to get in here? We don't have a chimney," Matt pointed out.
"Okay, okay. I'm not a total idiot, Matthew," Foggy told him. "I know that Santa isn't a real guy who drives around the world in one night in a sleigh. He lives in all of us. In this case, in me."
"So you're going to fill it for me?" Matt asked.
"Exactly. And you can do mine!" Foggy told him, like Matt should have assumed that the entire time. "And then we'll do gifts too. Although I can't afford more than one, just so you don't expect anything crazy."
Matt fell back onto the bed from his position hanging the stocking, floored. Since his dad died, the only Christmas gifts he'd received were the ones the nuns pulled out of the charity bin for him each Christmas, and they were never picked out with him specifically in mind.
"Well," he said, trying to hide the emotion in his voice. "I'm sure I can find something you'll like. Although don't be insulted if it's not really wrapped well."
Foggy laughed. "At least you have an excuse for that. I'm just all thumbs."
"Did you want to come to mass with me?" Matt asked.
The air shifted as Foggy shrugged. "Yeah, sure," he replied. "I haven't been in years, but I assume it'll be like riding a bike and come back to me. You don't like Christmas TV do you? Sometimes I watch Rudolph and the Grinch and A Charlie Brown Christmas leading up to the day. I can describe them to you?"
"Yeah," Matt said, grinning. "Great!"
It was great. Foggy received several care packages from his extended family that he shared with Matt, including one particularly bad fruitcake that they used as a doorstop when it proved to be inedible. Aunt Myrtle sent sweaters for both of them, and Foggy was right about how soft they were. The sweater became the softest thing Matt owned - he guessed it to be ultrafine merino wool, although he'd never felt anything else like it to know for sure. They drank eggnog, and Foggy even convinced Matt to go caroling one night when they got a little too drunk. All in all, it was the best Christmas Matt remembered having since his dad died.
Then, on Christmas morning, Matt woke up before Foggy and crept over to fill his stocking and place his gift before starting breakfast. He was unsurprised when, a few minutes later as he flipped pancakes on their hotplate, he heard a squeal of "Presents!"
They both waited until they were stuffed full of food before turning their stockings upside down and exploring the contents of them on their beds.
Matt smiled as he sniffed a small box and inhaled the scent of a chocolate orange, his favourite, and ran his fingers over the slightly curved lenses of a new pair of sunglasses. He was so absorbed in exploring his own gifts that it took him longer than it should have to hear a wet sniffle coming from Foggy's bed and smell the salt of tears in the air.
"What's wrong?" Matt asked, unsure what had upset him. He moved over to sit on Foggy's bed to make sure his friend was okay.
"Nothing," Foggy said quickly, and Matt heard the distinctive noises of him wiping snot away from his face. "I'm not sad, I just..."
"You don't like my gifts?" Matt asked, worried. "I'm sorry. I know they're not much, and yours are so thoughtful."
"No!" Foggy said firmly. "Dude, these are tears of happiness. I love them. So much. Thank you..." Foggy's voice seemed to have left him and he sniffled again. "... for the dinosaurs. They're great."
Matt smiled at that. He had specifically picked out ones he knew Foggy didn't have already, careful to examine each one on Foggy's desk for its various bumps and curves to know which ones to avoid in the dollar store. He'd purchased two. A tiny brontosaurus and a T-Rex to go with Foggy's stegosaurus, triceratops and pterodactyls. The sales clerk had told him they were primary colours.
"Really?" Matt said. "That's good. I thought you'd like them."
"I love them," Foggy told him sincerely, "You have no idea." Matt found himself being pulled into a hug. "Merry Christmas, Matt," Foggy told him.
"Merry Christmas, Foggy," Matt told him back.
As they hugged, Matt thought of all the pathetic Christmases that he spent being angry at Stick and missing his dad. Foggy was one of the first people in a long time to go out of his way to make Matt feel less alone in the world. And he realized for the first time that as much as Foggy seemed to be constantly surrounded by people, Foggy felt as alone as he did. He mused on how lucky it was that they found each other.
"Hey Foggy," Matt whispered gently as he laid with his head on Foggy's stomach, somewhere between way too drunk and just drunk enough for New Year's Eve.
"Yeah, buddy," Foggy asked, distracted from watching the ball drop in Times Square on their shitty dorm room TV.
"Can I ask..." Matt sighed. He wasn't sure how to ask the question. "Ummm..."
"What's up?" Foggy asked, his eyes drooping sleepily.
"Never mind," Matt said, chickening out.
As their new semester began, Matt decided to pay more attention to Foggy, like a puzzle that needed figuring out. He knew that Foggy's parents weren't a part of his life, and that there had to be a reason for that. But he didn't want to just confront Foggy with it or force him to talk about anything he was uncomfortable with. If he did that, then he'd be a hypocrite for keeping his own secrets, or feel obligated to share parts of himself that he wasn't ready to share. He couldn't let it go, though. Foggy was his friend.
He started listening more carefully when Foggy talked about his family. He asked more questions, and probed more deeply. If an opportunity came up to ask about his parents, Matt took it. And he noted the fact that each time he did it made Foggy anxious and upset, and how well-practiced Foggy was at changing the subject.
Several times, Matt did manage to get something out of Foggy about his parents. But it didn't make him feel any better about what he was doing.
Once, when fixing a bookshelf that had collapsed under the weight of too many thick braille textbooks, Foggy proclaimed that fixing things was in his blood.
"Oh?" Matt asked, trying to smile so Foggy didn't clue in how nervous he was about asking his follow-up question. "Was your dad a carpenter?"
"Almost," Foggy said as he used wood glue to reconnect broken shelf pieces, "He and my mom owned a hardware store."
"A hardware store?" Matt asked, making note of the past tense of the word owned.
"That's right!" Foggy said. "I was once nearly the heir to a glorious tool empire, Matthew. Nails and washers as far as the eye could see."
Matt laughed anxiously. "What happened?"
"The store closed," Foggy told him seriously, but Matt could tell that there was more to the story than that.
Matt started to catalog every small piece of information Foggy let slip. Foggy's mother's name was Mary. She was more Catholic than his father was, but neither of them ever forced Foggy to go to church or were regular churchgoers. Foggy was the only child, although his parents hadn't wanted it to be that way. Neither of Foggy's parents, in fact nobody in his family, had ever graduated from college, although Foggy was currently in competition with a cousin on his father's side who might just beat him to the title of first by one semester.
And Matt started to notice the way that the tenses never changed. Foggy's parents WANTED to have another child. Matt wondered why they didn't. Foggy's parents WERE Catholic. They weren't anymore.
Because, Matt slowly realized, Foggy's parents were dead. And Matt felt like an asshole. But it also made him angry. Because if Foggy was an orphan, why didn't he think that Matt would understand that?
The months continued to pass, and Matt stopped pushing Foggy to talk about his parents. He still didn't know what Foggy's problem with talking about it was but he accepted that, for whatever reason, his roommate didn't want to confide in him.
Matt tried to tell himself that it didn't bother him. He tried not to listen in on Foggy's conversations with his aunts or Bess and think about his own life. He didn't have any family at all. He didn't have a Bess, whatever that relationship was. Of the two of them, he always figured he was the one who was silent and stoic and had a reason to be. In every other way, Foggy was outgoing and honest and open. Maybe he and Foggy weren't as close as he had assumed. Maybe it was his fault for having secrets of his own.
It was these thoughts that caused Matt to be surprised when Foggy casually mentioned to him that he'd been looking at apartment listings for the summer.
"I mean, it's not like we can afford anything much bigger than what we have here," Foggy explained. "But we get along. Between us, we could totally afford a one bedroom. And if we rent it now we're ahead of the curve for next year! It's not like either of us are going home, right?"
"Why do you think that?" Matt asked.
Foggy seemed surprised by the question. "What do you mean? Do you have somewhere else to go this summer?"
"No," Matt said sharply. "But maybe you shouldn't just assume you know me and what I want, Foggy. I don't assume I know everything about your life and your plans."
"What the hell does that mean?" Foggy asked.
"Nothing," Matt said, "Forget I said anything."
But he couldn't just take it back. And Foggy didn't bring up getting an apartment together again.
Matt smelled smoke. But not cigarette smoke. This smoke meant fire. It was mixed with the smell of burnt fabric and plastic, of the sprinklers having been on and soaked through bedding and clothing.
And it was coming from his dorm. Along with the sound of hundreds of students mingling on the lawn outside, driven out by the sound of the alarm bell that initially drew his attention to that area of the campus.
It made Matt sit up straight in his chair and diverted his thoughts from the political science lecture happening at the front of the classroom. He knew that Foggy didn't have class and would have been in the room. He wondered what had happened.
When class finally, thankfully, ended, Matt darted from the room as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. He had to remind himself to slow down and make sure his cane actually touched the floor as though he needed it to navigate. Finally, he reached the crowd of students still waiting to return to their rooms.
It didn't take him long to find Foggy, sitting miserable under a tree and sniffling to himself.
"What happened?" Matt asked.
Foggy looked up, startled to find Matt there. He sighed.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Sorry?" Matt asked. He focused for a moment, trying to pinpoint where the firefighters were congregated inside the building. "Wait... was the fire in our room?"
"It was that damned hotplate," Foggy explained. "I guess I wasn't paying attention and the grease in my bacon overheated and went up, and then the flames caught the curtains. Good thing we're out of here in a month or so anyway or we'd probably get kicked out. What if they make us pay for damages? Shit." He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
"How far did it spread? Do you know?" Matt asked, thinking about his stacks of expensive braille textbooks and quickly calculating what it would cost if he had to replace his belongings.
"I don't know," Foggy replied. "I booked it out of there when I realized I couldn't put it out and hit the alarm. But I don't know if the sprinklers put it out or just made it worse."
Matt sunk down next to him and they sat together, waiting for news.
Finally, the firemen indicated that everyone could return to their rooms.
In the end, it was better than Matt expected, even if they definitely wouldn't be able to stay in the room. He coughed and choked on the thick smell of toxic chemicals and ash.
Foggy narrated it to him as they entered, letting him know that the fire appeared to have been contained to the curtains, the hotplate and a few melted appliances, and a section of Foggy's desk and bookshelf. Foggy had remembered to grab his backpack with his laptop as he'd left the room, which was good because everything electronic was water damaged. However, their clothing and bedding could at least be salvaged.
Matt ran his fingers over the collection of sopping wet textbooks on his own bookshelf. "I've never been so happy that braille books aren't written in ink. Do you think I'll get into trouble if I lay them out on the lawn to dry?" This didn't get a response from Foggy, and Matt realized it was because his friend had sunk down onto the wet bed sobbing.
"I know it seems bad," Matt said, moving to sit next to him. "But like you said, we were out of here soon anyway. And it didn't spread far. Nobody was hurt."
Instead of comforting Foggy, this seemed to make things worse, and Foggy began to genuinely wail. Matt didn't know what to do. He reached down to take Foggy's hand on instinct, only to find a fist clutched around hard oily plastic. A dinosaur. Or, what used to be one, and now must just be a melted lump.
"I'm sorry," Foggy told him. "I'm sorry." Matt wasn't sure what he was apologizing for.
Eventually, the firemen arrived at their door, and Matt knew that they wanted to question them about what had happened.
He left his spot next to Foggy and answered all of their questions, suspecting that Foggy wasn't going to be able to. And then he called Leo, who showed up in Jack's truck to take them to his place for the night. Foggy didn't say anything, which for him was very unusual. He didn't seem to be able to. Matt didn't know why. But he knew that before they left the room, Foggy had gently gathered up all the puddles of hard misshapen plastic that used to be dinosaurs and put them in the pockets of his hoodie carefully.
It wasn't until later, as they both lay together on Jack's pull-out sofa bed with metal springs jammed into their backs and unable to sleep, that Matt finally gathered up his courage and decided to talk.
"I'm sorry about your dinosaurs, Foggy," he said softly. "I know that your parents gave them to you. And I know they're not around anymore, so that makes them irreplaceable. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to the few things my dad left me."
He felt Foggy sniffle next to him.
"Matt..." Foggy said. "It's okay."
"No, it's not. I don't..." Matt started to say. "I don't know why you feel like you can't talk to me about whatever it is that happened to them. But I want you to know that I know what it's like. And I'm here."
Foggy shifted so that he was facing Matt. "Is that what you think? That it's just you I don't want to talk about it to? Matt, I don't talk to anyone about it."
"Why not?" Matt asked.
"Do you really have to ask me that?" Foggy asked him. "It's easier pretending. It keeps people from treating me any differently or asking too many questions."
Now that Foggy explained it out loud, it occurred to Matt that he should have known exactly why Foggy wasn't the most open about his parents deaths. It was harder for Matt to blend in, to pretend he was normal, and so he very rarely tried. But if he could... he considered it for a moment.
"I didn't mean to freak out today," Foggy told him. "It's just..." he sniffled. "I hate having to think about it. It's not just that my parents gave me those dinosaurs, Matt. They were the last thing they gave me. And it just figures that they would go up in flames too."
"What?" Matt asked, unsure what to make of that.
Foggy sighed. "I don't want you to... I didn't tell you because..." he seemed to be struggling to find the right words. "It was arson," he finally whispered. "I was eleven. I had asked to stay over at my grandma's that night, or I would have been there. You know what the Kitchen used to be like. My dad owned a store, he was supposed to pay protection money to the Irish. He didn't, and so they burned the store down. Only we lived above it, so my parents were on the second floor sleeping."
Matt took a deep breath. He suddenly felt like he was falling.
"Did they catch the people who did it?" he asked Foggy.
"Yeah," Foggy said, "eventually. When the FBI finally swept in and cleaned all the organized crime out, they got them too. It didn't make me feel any better though."
"Me neither," Matt said, and he meant it. He didn't add that in his case, it was because he knew that the real man responsible for his dad's death was still out there somewhere.
"If you were eleven..." Matt asked, wondering why Foggy hadn't ended up at St. Agnes too. Foggy beat him to the end of his question.
"Initially, my grandmother took me in," came the explanation, "but she fell and broke her hip and wasn't able to keep me on her own. So then I stayed with my Aunt Irene, and then Uncle Jack, and then Myrtle... you get the idea. Bess was a friend of my parents, and even she took me in when my uncle Al ended up in rehab. I always had somewhere to stay. It all worked out."
Matt reflected for a moment on the stability that St. Agnes had provided him, if not much else.
"Is that everything you wanted to know?" Foggy asked him, without anger.
"I'm sorry, Foggy," Matt told him. "I had no idea..."
"Ah, but that was my master plan, Matthew," Foggy said. "Normalcy. I'm just an average student with an average roommate living an average life."
Matt smiled to himself at Foggy calling him average. It never occurred to Matt that anyone would ever think that about him before, but of course Foggy did. "And that," Matt told him, "is what makes you extraordinary."
"Exactly," Foggy told him. "But don't tell anyone. It's a secret, okay?"
"Okay," Matt replied, patting Foggy affectionately on the shoulder and listening to him fall asleep.
The next day, they started apartment hunting in earnest. On the day they moved in, Matt's gift to Foggy was an entire tub of tiny dinosaurs.