So...this kind of popped out of nowhere. I didn't expect it to get as long as it did but I hope you like it. First time I've written Calvin and Hobbes, so hope you like it and leave a review if you do. :)
The first time Calvin knows he's different is when he's six years old and he's spinning around the playground, staring up at the sky.
The other kids are running around, screaming, ducking, laughing and Calvin's Spaceman Spiff. He's somewhere else, stronger than they are, better than they are, dodging explosions of light and stars that streak across the sky, his heart pounding and he thinks he's never felt more alive.
"What are you doing?"
It's the voice of the girl next to him that brings him back down to earth and it's then that Calvin glances around and remembers he's not at home.
He swallows. He wants to tell Susie Derkins that he's looking for space invaders. That the fate of the universe depends on it. That she couldn't understand how important his mission is.
But then he sees the confused arch of her eyebrows and the curl of her lip and remembers that Hobbes isn't with him, and then he looks around and sees hundreds of other pairs of eyes looking at him exactly the same way.
And he swallows and feels the blood rise to his cheeks and his eyes dart to the ground as he mutters "Nothing."
The bell goes, then, a quick reprieve, and everyone turns towards the building, feet scampering over the ground, leaves crackling under shoes. Susie Derkins shoots Calvin one more curious glance before she runs off towards the school, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth, her brown hair flying behind her, catching the last of the fall breeze.
Calvin is the last to head inside, his feet dragging along the ground, his head heavy, sinking onto his chest. He keeps his eyes on his sneakers as he walks, the fall sunshine beating down on the back of his head, the skin on the back of his neck beginning to burn.
He's twelve and he's sitting in that treehouse by himself, and these days it doesn't seem to come alive the way it used to.
He's hunched over on the wooden boards and it's uncomfortably hot, and his shirt's sticking to his back. And it's a new one, not his red and black stripes that he's used to, that he's worn for the past four years, that his mom asked gently if, maybe, it was time he grew out of them?
And so he's wearing a new shirt, some black thing with short sleeves, but it doesn't make him feel any older and it doesn't make his lips any lighter.
Hobbes is leaning next to him, and looks at him. And Calvin looks back and doesn't know what to say. He knows no one else has a Hobbes and a part of him doesn't care.
He knows his parents whisper about "stuffed animals" and "imagination" and "getting too old" and he doesn't bother to hear.
But he watches Susie Derkins hang out in her front yard, with a couple of other brown-haired girls, ponytails dancing down their necks, and he wonders if they glimpse his eyes through the leaves.
Sometimes, he thinks he sees her look up at him, and her eyes catch his without her knowing and then she glances away and he wonders if it ever happened at all. There are lots of moments like that now.
Calvin glances at Hobbes. It's summer and he's supposed to love it. It's summer and he's supposed to be grinning, laughing, pelting apples in the girls' hair, leaning against Hobbes, feeling fireflies buzz inside his hands.
It's summer and all he wants to do is close his eyes.
He leans against Hobbes' shoulder and says "What do we do now?"
And when he looks up, the tiger shrugs and has no answer.
He's sixteen and the music's thumping from inside the house and he's sprawled back on the grass, staring up at the stars, away from everyone inside, counting down to the start of another year.
There are feet by his head and he looks up past never ending legs to see Susie Derkins' face looking down at him.
"What are you doing?" She gathers her legs underneath her, slumped next to him, tower of childhood by his head.
"Nothing." He looks up and sees the stars, slashed into the sky. He tries not to remember that time he was seven and he was lying on the grass outside school, trying to watch the clouds and she came and stretched out next to him and there was a time when they were lying together, watching, and her arm was brushing his and her skin was hot against his and for a moment, the world seemed to shrink, shrink around them so it was only them, them and the sun and the sky.
He looks up at the sky and remembers that she belongs inside. Inside, with her parents and his parents and every other neighbour invited to this stupid party. The traces of snow still cling to the grass around him, still soak the tips of his hair, and his hands are raw with the cold, but he doesn't care. She belongs inside, and he belongs out here. Because no matter how he tries-and he doesn't, not any more-whenever he's in there, it's like pushing a jigsaw piece into the wrong place. And no matter how much you twist and turn, it doesn't fit, not properly.
Susie's hand touches his skin and he tries not to shudder. Because it shouldn't be this. It shouldn't be her and him.
Her head is lying next to his now and he can't look at those dark eyes watching his face, chocolate-colour, freckles dotting her skin, little drops of cinnamon he could brush his fingers across if he wanted. But he stares up at the sky instead.
He wants to see space invaders and aliens and him and Hobbes zooming around the moon. Instead, he just sees stars. Stars and a sky stretching out and he wonders how everything can feel so huge and so small at once.
Susie's looking at him and her voice is a soft breath. "How was Christmas?"
He opened presents and he shovelled down turkey and he hugged his parents and he smiled so hard his face ached but something was still missing. And he doesn't know what it is. All he knows is that night he lay slumped in bed next to Hobbes and wondered why he wasn't flying off the walls. It was Christmas and it didn't fit.
So he settles for a shrug and because it's expected, asks her how her Christmas was.
She tells him it was nice, she got the books she wanted, that new cardigan, that Walkman-and his mind tails off but he's still listening.
He drags himself upright, so he's sitting next to her. She looks at him. "Why are you out here?"
He opens his mouth to say "I don't know" when it occurs to him just how much of his life he spends saying that. So, he settles for a shrug instead.
And she nods. And then her eyes are looking into his and he can't move and this is wrong, this is so wrong and so messed-up because this is something that just shouldn't be.
And then she's tilted her head and her mouth is pressing into his and her lips are warm and soft and his own open and for a moment, the world seems to stop.
And his own mouth moves and there's a second where he's kissing her, kissing her back while the stars shine and brand the sky overhead and there's a second where they're together, mouths hot and open and kissing together, and then he pulls away. His head shakes.
Her eyes widen and she stares at him. "What?"
He tries to tell her, tries to tell her all the reasons this shouldn't be happening, but his lips move and all that comes out is the word "No."
She blinks. "I'm sorry-"
His hand reaches out for a moment, because he wants to tell her that's the last thing she should be, that she's the last person who should be sorry, that it's not her fault that kissing her felt good and bad and wrong and screwed-up all at the same time, that it's not her fault that he can't make himself fit into it, like every other guy his age could. That it's not her fault he's him and she's her.
But all he can say is "No."
She stares at him. "Calvin-"
And then he pushes himself upright and his feet slip on the grass and he turns away from her and he thinks he says something like "I can't" or "No" again but then he's walking away from her, walking back towards the house, his hands shoved into his pockets, his eyes on the ground.
And he waits and for a moment he thinks she is going to come after him, he thinks she is going to follow, her hand is going to touch his shoulder, her voice might sound in his ear, and he doesn't know if he'll turn or not.
And then he turns and she's just sitting on the grass. She's staring at her hands, her hair falling over her face, and her eyes are wide and wet and broken.
And he looks for a moment and then walks away.
Inside, he's hit by a wave of music and sound and hearts and excitement, and he keeps his head down and pushes his way through it, pushes his way through the crowded living room to the bottom of the stairs, where he scrambles up them like they're a ladder out of fire.
He reaches his bedroom and closes the door and throws himself on his bed and lets himself stare into the muffled darkness.
Hobbes is beside him on the pillow. He looks at Hobbes and opens his mouth but he can't say a thing.
He hears the countdown begin, and his heart beats in time with the words. He thinks of Susie, on the grass outside, and wonders if she moved or if she's still there, still sitting there on the ground, still looking at her hands with those eyes.
He thinks and wonders and tries to know why he can't cram himself in, why he can't make himself fit. Why he can't make himself want to. Why he can't reach inside himself and rip out this thing that makes him push back, that puts a circle around him, that leaves him, arms wrapped around himself, alone.
As the explosions of a new beginning and cheers and excitement fill the world downstairs, Calvin stares up at his bedroom ceiling and feels almost absolutely nothing.
Calvin's eighteen when he gets college letters and some have rejected and he wonders if it really matters at all.
He's sitting there, hunched on the grass, feet brushing the sidewalk, the same way they used to do years ago. His parents have been asking him, very gently, if he's thought about what he wants to do next year at all. If he's thought about what he wants to do in five years, in ten years. If he's thought at all.
Calvin doesn't know how to answer them.
He tilts his head and stares up at the sky and he sees a red cape flying, and a small boy with a stuffed tiger running and his fists clench as he tries to hold the details between his fingers like running water.
Susie Derkins walks up the sidewalk, her skirt swaying, and perches herself next to him. She keeps a careful few inches between them. Ever since the New Year's Eve of two years ago, they've nodded at each other in school corridors, exchanged glances while leaning over essays, said polite hellos to each other whenever necessary. They've talked, occasionally. Small exchanges about life.
Neither of them's ever mentioned that night two years ago.
Calvin asks where she got into college, and she gives a few of the predictable names. She then asks him.
He shrugs, and reels off his list.
She shrugs. "Where are you going to go?"
Calvin shakes his head. Where can he go?
Susie is watching him and her eyes are narrowed and her head is tilted. "What is it?"
Calvin doesn't look at her.
"Why don't you talk to me, anymore?"
He looks at her then, quickly, and she shakes her head. "It's not about that New Year's Eve." The blood rises to her cheeks as she speaks, but she keeps going. "It's not about that. You were like this, before that. What happened to you?"
Her eyes meet his and Calvin knows she's remembering a six-year-old hand throwing water balloons at her hair, droplets soaking into her fringe. She's remembering screaming insults across backyard fences, snowballs crushed against skin, and constant whispers, shouts and promises of revenge.
"What happened?" she says again, and he doesn't know what she's asking anymore.
His lips move of their own accord. "Change."
When he gets up and moves to his gate, she walks with him, their arms touching. Her bare skin brushes against his.
She looks up at him and says "It's going to be OK."
And then she hesitates, as if she's about to reach up for a moment, and then lets her hand brush his cheek, instead.
"Let me know how you are."
He can't speak but he nods.
She turns away, back down the road, and he watches the sun shine on her chestnut hair, the gentle waves around her face.
And he has no idea whether to believe her or not.
How can things be OK, if you can't even know what the problem is?
"Why are things different now, Hobbes?" Things whispered in the dead of night, in the shadows of sleep, stay secret sometimes.
"They just are." The tiger's looking at him and Calvin can't look back. He can only stare out his bedroom window. Through the glass, into the stars. They seemed near a moment ago, but now they seem so far away, out there. It aches in his chest, how far they are.
"But why does it happen?" Calvin's mother says he's an ever-lasting dreamer. And he doesn't tell her this, but he hopes he can hang onto it. He doesn't know if he believes in God or heaven or anything, but every night, he prays and begs and pleads that he can hold onto it. That it won't slip away through his fingers.
"Things change. Everything does. It always has."
Calvin listens to Hobbes' words and tries to hold onto the last part. But his mind feels like it's failed to grasp something, like it's free-falling through the air with no one and nothing to catch it.
He tries to pretend that the dull heaviness settling slowly in his chest is tiredness and not the slow, creeping, fear that seems to hover over his head.
He tries to pretend that Hobbes can be wrong, that some things can stay the same forever, even when the universe ends, even when they're nothing but memories, floating in the night, leaving burning trails like shooting stars.
He tries to pretend, period.
Calvin goes to college and he takes Hobbes and he lies in a dorm room and he writes essays, and things pile up and up and up in his head until he thinks he's going to explode one day, until his fingers knot in his hair, until he feels as though he's going to scream, until he wonders if he could rip himself in half just by staying quiet.
Sometimes, he looks at Hobbes and he opens his mouth to say something and then he shuts it again. Sometimes, he stares up at the ceiling and follows the cracks with his eyes. Sometimes, he closes his eyes and tries to breathe as slowly and evenly as possible, and it's still not enough.
Sometimes, he looks through his dorm window and finds the stars in the sky and they look further away than they ever have before.
Two days after Calvin's nineteenth birthday, he chooses to go missing for the first time.
It's an arbitrary decision and one he's not even sure he makes consciously. But he's walking through the streets and somehow, he just doesn't go back.
He just walks with his head down through the night.
He eats in McDonalds' and watches some homeless guy get in a fight with some guy in a suit who takes his shoes. The homeless guy loses, and sits down with his hands covering his face. Calvin takes another bite of his burger and watches. Hobbes looks at him but doesn't say anything, even though no one else would hear.
Calvin walks outside and dumps his leftover fries into the homeless guy's lap. The guy thanks him and stares up at him and Calvin nods. He tucks Hobbes under his arm and makes his way down the street.
His footsteps echo on the ground, raps against the ice, but it never cracks. It's sometimes as though he's never been there at all.
"What do you think happens when we fall asleep?"
The tiger looks at the boy curled up beside him. "Everything stays the same?"
Calvin shakes his head. "What if things changed?" he asks, his voice a whisper.
Hobbes tilts his head to the side. "Everything changes." That's life, after all.
Calvin shakes his head. "I mean, what if we didn't notice?"
Hobbes stares at him and says "What do you mean?" But he knows. Even though the words fall out of his mouth, he knows, knows it deep down inside his chest, the way he knows other things, like the fact Calvin hangs onto him tighter when he has nightmares, like the way Calvin secretly likes to watch the way Susie's hair shines in the sunlight. He knows and he also knows Calvin won't say it.
And Calvin shrugs and looks away. "Doesn't matter."
Hobbes watches him a second more before he turns over. He wants to touch Calvin's shoulder but knows he'll get no more out of him tonight.
And Calvin turns and stares through the gap of his curtains at the stars, that seem so far away, and tries to reach with his mind, to stretch with his thoughts, to reach out and touch one, grasp it in his hand before it fades away forever.
When it gets dark, Calvin sinks down against a wall and wraps his arms around his knees. He leans his head back against the stones and feels himself shiver all over, but he doesn't move.
Hobbes leans against him, like he always does.
Calvin looks at him and wants to say something but can't. He wants Hobbes to tell him things will be OK. He wants Hobbes to tell him why they're here, because Calvin doesn't know anymore.
Calvin can't say anything so he just holds onto Hobbes' fur and stares up and shrinks away, against the wall, as if he can crawl away from the world.
Calvin has no idea why he's here or why he's not there, or where he's going or where he doesn't want to head. He doesn't know and he doesn't know why. He doesn't know, and he's tired of saying it.
Calvin tilts his head back and stares into the sky. He counts vaguely in his head, the way he used to do when he waited for his mother to walk downstairs, so he could yank the best pillow away from Hobbes. One...two...three...
The numbers brush the sides of his skull, fading away into nothingness.
Calvin stares up at the stars. They're faint here, clouded by neon lights, the glare of the streets that promise to light up the world but really just conceal it instead.
The stars are there, pinpoints of light in the middle of the dark and tonight, they seem the furthest away they've ever been.
It's three days before the police find him.
Calvin's kind of surprised they were even worried-he's nineteen, surely the police have got younger kids to be looking for-but it turns out his parents called them when Calvin didn't answer his phone for two days, and it turned out that that was enough to get them worried.
Calvin's surprised the police didn't tell his parents to wait a few days but apparently, they thought it a good enough case to check out, with the result that they found him sitting on the sidewalk, with his arms wrapped around his knees and his eyes watching straight ahead, staring at absolutely nothing.
He went with them, when they asked, and told them who he was, because what else was he supposed to do?
He got put in a hospital bed and checked over and had an IV put in his arm, and told he was physically OK, just dehydrated, just a little malnourished. With some vitamins and meals, he'd be back to normal.
Calvin would have asked what they meant by normal, but he suspected they wouldn't have an answer.
His parents stood at the end of his bed. His mother's head had been leaning on his father's shoulder and the tears had been running from her eyes. No sound, just silent tears. As if she didn't even know they were there.
Her hair had been tangled, a mess of knots and criss-crossed strands and his father had pushed his hand across his eyes, and his shoulders had been shaking. Calvin hadn't been able to take his eyes off them, hadn't been able to look away. He'd stared at his father's shoulders and said nothing.
It's been days, now. Five days and they're letting him home. They want him to see someone. To talk to someone. To tell them why.
They've asked why over and over and he's never answered. He hasn't spoken at all.
In the back of his parents' car, he leans his head against the glass, and stares up at the sky. He sees a little boy with yellow spiked hair, clinging to the edges of a flying carpet, fingers pressed into orange and black fur, his blood seeming to sing, the air slapping him in the face, his eyes stretched open so as never to miss anything.
He slumps down in the backseat and doesn't blink when they drive him home instead of back to college.
He gets out of the car and looks up at his old house and thinks about the tree house in the back yard. The tree house where there are a couple of newspaper hats scattered in the corner, with bottle caps littering the floor beside them. He hasn't touched them in years, but he can recall the sensation on his hair perfectly, the feel of the token he'd award himself, the feeling of Hobbes' paw in his.
He makes his way up the steps and into the house. Hobbes is tucked under his arm, like always.
He gets into his old bed and lies still and stares up at the window before he sits up and draws the curtains closed. There are no stars to see.
His mother brings him a bowl of chocolate cereal in bed and he lies there and shoves the spoon into his mouth over and over and swallows it down and makes her smile and he doesn't even taste it.
He lies there and she smiles and he stares past her at the curtains. She asks what he wants to do and he doesn't know, and he doesn't know why.
When she leaves the room, he turns over and stares at the wall. He closes his eyes and behind his lids, he sees spaceships and a cardboard box that flew through the sky to Mars, and snowmen with glaring eyes, reaching out to grab whoever ran nearest.
He turns over and buries his face in his pillow.
Hobbes watches, but there is nothing to say.
It's when Susie arrives that Calvin knows people are worried.
She sits on the end of his bed and looks at him. She doesn't talk, just looks. Her face is thinner than he remembers, paler and her eyes look darker and after a few moments, he has to look away.
"What happened?" Her voice is the softest he has ever heard it.
He shakes his head. He wishes he could explain that he keeps trying to speak, he just can't make the words come to his lips. That it's difficult to say what's wrong when you don't know yourself.
She sighs and moves further up the bed. "What's going on with you?"
Calvin wishes he could put it into words. He wishes he could tell her about spaceships he can't see anymore and red capes that no longer fit. He wishes he could tell her about a mouth that doesn't work, and things that slip through your fingers no matter how hard you try to clench your fists.
Susie watches him and his eyes meet hers'. His mouth opens but he makes no sound at all.
She leans closer. "Why can't you say it?"
And he can only shrug to that as well.
He turns away from her and stares at the wall and waits for her to give up and leave.
Instead, she lies back on the bed so she's watching him. He tries to look away but his eyes keep finding hers' again.
She reaches out and her hand brushes his arm and the whole of Calvin's body goes still.
"Talk to me" she says and she means it.
Calvin looks at her and his mouth opens once or twice but his head shakes back and forth and he has to look away to stare out the window as he waits for her to go.
But she doesn't. Instead, she curls up at the foot of the bed by his feet and lies there with him. Her eyes meet his and she doesn't look away first.
They end up spending the afternoon like that, both of them together, the sun shining through the curtains, their skin slightly warmer, even if they barely notice.
It's three days before Calvin gets dressed and makes his way down to the kitchen for breakfast.
His mother's sitting at the table, drinking a cup of tea and when he says "Hi, Mom" she almost chokes. Calvin watches and bites his lip. For the first time in a while, he has to fight not to laugh. He'd forgotten what it felt like.
She stares at him. "Calvin?"
He nods. "I just-" He points at the bowl and waits a moment before she nods. "Go ahead." He can sense the quiver in her voice, the determination to sound normal, everyday, even though this is anything but.
He pours his cereal and looks at her. "So-" It shouldn't feel this awkward to make conversation with one's own mother, but it does. "How are you?"
In all his life, Calvin doesn't think he's ever once inquired about his own mother's health.
She nods. "I'm fine." But she's coming towards him now, smoothing her hand over his forehead. "What about you, honey?"
He wants to say the same but he can't, so he looks away and shrugs, instead.
She sighs. "Honey-" She swallows. "Your father and I-we talked to the college. You don't have to go back just yet." She looks at him. "Do you need some time?"
Time. Time. The word echoes inside his brain, reverberating and filling up his skull until he feels as though he might burst with it, have it fill the whole room with its' sound.
But instead, he just nods. Time is something he needs, just not in the way she means.
He sits in his old armchair and watches cartoons. The noise fills the room but instead of carrying him away to his own world, the voices grate on his ears and the colours are too bright and eventually, he reaches over and turns the set off.
The silence is louder.
He looks at Hobbes and says "What do we do now?"
Hobbes looks back at him and Calvin knows the tiger doesn't know how to answer.
After a few days, Calvin's had enough of turning the TV off. So, one morning, he pushes open the back door and steps into the yard, Hobbes beside him.
It feels strange to be outside again, unfamiliar to have the warm air on his face. He keeps his head down as he walks through the grass, though he glances towards Susie's yard. Then he remembers she's away.
It's only then that it registers she must have come home to visit him, but the thought only flickers in his head for a moment.
He stands at the foot of the tree and looks up. It's a lot shorter than he remembers but he pulls himself up anyway. Hobbes follows behind him for once and doesn't force him to recite a seven-verse password.
Sitting up in the tree house, Calvin realises how very small it is. He shifts back and forth and his hands grasp his elbows. He wonders how he was ever small enough to think this was huge.
As it is, he leans his head on Hobbes' shoulder. "What do I do?"
The tiger merely shrugs. Calvin's eyes flicker. "A fat lot of use you are."
Hobbes turns to look at him and Calvin braces himself for a pouncing tiger. But instead, the striped arms slide around him and Calvin's head falls onto Hobbes' shoulder.
He doesn't cry but he stares through the leaves. He scuffs his feet along the floor and one of them bumps into something. He bends down, letting his fingers close around something.
An old newspaper hat.
He picks it up and rests it on top of his head. "G.R.O.S.S" he says, testing the word out. It tastes old in his mouth, something that's worn out its' welcome. He lifts the hat from his head and leaves it on the floor. It doesn't fit anymore.
He stays in the tree house the whole day, the hours dragging by, until his father appears beneath him in the yard. So far, Calvin's been in bed by the time he gets home. In fact, he doesn't remember speaking to his father since the drive home from the hospital.
"Calvin?" His father's voice is uncertain and shakes a little and Calvin can't stand to hear him speak more so he steps out onto the tree house balcony. "I'm here."
His father blinks at the sight of his son climbing down the rope with a stuffed tiger over his shoulders. "I just wanted to check-" His voice trails off as Calvin stands awkwardly in front of him.
His father looks away, then back at him again. "Well. Your mother made dinner."
Calvin doesn't say anything, but he heads inside after his father.
It's the first time he's eaten dinner at the table with his parents for months, and he eats in silence. He glances at his father under his eyelids, remembering dinner time battles, live food.
It builds character, he hears, and he smirks to himself.
It's a quiet meal but there are three smiles.
A week and a half goes by and Calvin helps with the dinner, cleans, goes out to buy groceries. He's stepping outside again. He's living, a little, and that's enough for his parents for now.
It's one afternoon when he decides to clean out his old closet. He finds comic books spilling over his hands, dust making him cough. He finds an old, tattered, red cape, that feels like it might rip when he lifts it. He finds a helmet that survived half the way to the Yukon and back.
It's when he finds a cardboard box, with three words scrawled out on the side in childish handwriting, that he stops and stares.
He remembers flying through the sky, stuffed tiger's head leant against his back, the stars flashing past, burning into the back of his mind, the trails of light emblazoned behind his eyes. He remembers the feeling of soaring through the air, he remembers the world around him dissolving into a landscape of alien planets, of rocks and Martians and last-minute escapes, and of the feeling of the wind in his hair and being completely, utterly free.
His mother finds him lying on his back on the bedroom floor a few hours later, staring up at the ceiling. She watches him for a moment and he waits for her to ask him something, for her to go and get his father, for her to cry.
Instead, she simply steps forward and lies down next to him. He turns to look at her, and her gaze rests on his face.
"Yeah" she says simply. "Sometimes, I have days like that too."
Calvin looks at her, wants to say something-but instead, he simply nods. He nods and then he turns to look back at the ceiling.
They stay like that for a while, watching the ceiling, eyes tracking cracks and marks worn over years, years of this being Calvin's bedroom. Somehow, that's enough for a while.
It's that night that he sneaks out of the house. His sneakers brush the grass as he makes his way to the treehouse, as he climbs up again.
Hobbes sits beside him silently, as Calvin peers through the leaves at the stars.
Hobbes watches him and thinks quietly and rests a paw on Calvin's shoulder, but he doesn't speak. It's better to stay quiet than to have nothing to say.
Eventually, it's Calvin who speaks, says something about, far away, and Hobbes leans forward. "What?"
Slowly, Calvin turns to look at him. "The stars" he says. "They're kinda far away."
He sounds like he used to, like a kid again. Sounds like someone he used to be.
Hobbes watches him. "So?" he says. "You used to say you'd go there."
Calvin's lip twitches in a smile, but not a happy one. "I know."
Hobbes looks at him. "So-"
Calvin shakes his head. "I used to say a lot of stuff."
Hobbes shakes his head now, because that's not how Calvin is, how Calvin used to be. "You always said-"
But Calvin doesn't say anything and he just looks out into the night and Hobbes presses his lips together because he knows that there's no point continuing.
"Where would you go?" he says, after a long moment. "If you could go anywhere?"
Calvin doesn't answer, but Hobbes hears the unspoken word as clearly as if Calvin had spoken it and he doesn't question why. "Back."
Calvin doesn't know how long it is before he hears footsteps below and then he looks down, expecting to see either his mother or his father but instead it's Susie Derkins' eyes he sees peering up at him.
"Hey" she says, after a moment.
Calvin watches for a second then, begins to lower himself down the ladder towards her.
"I'll come up-"
"No, I'll come down."
Susie doesn't argue, but she stays still as Calvin descends the ladder, with Hobbes behind him. She takes a look at the tiger but keeps her eyes fixed on Calvin.
"What are you doing?"
Calvin shrugs. "What are you doing?"
Susie watches him. "I was reading" she says quietly. "I looked out the window and saw you in the treehouse."
Calvin's eyebrow arches. "It's three in the morning."
"Exactly."
Calvin shrugs and looks away. Susie doesn't. If anything, she steps closer.
"What's wrong, Calvin?"
Calvin tries to say nothing, but he doesn't know how to, anymore.
He looks away and a mumbled sound comes out of his mouth that sounds like "Go back."
"What?"
"How do you go back?" he says and the words are torn from his mouth, from his throat, and his eyes lock with hers' and suddenly he's gasping for breath. "How do you go back?"
Susie looks at him. And she doesn't shake her head or roll her eyes or walk away. She looks at him and then she steps forward and lets her hand brush his cheek, light as a feather.
"You can't" she says simply and the words seem to graze his skin, to break him, and yet they have the touch of the lightest feather, a breath, a snowflake.
He leans his head against hers' without knowing he's doing it and he's breathing hard and then his head falls onto her shoulder, and her arms slide around him.
He doesn't cry. He doesn't cry because he hasn't cried for years now, and he can't remember the last time he cried. But he closes his eyes and shakes and his teeth dig into his lip and he buries his face in her shoulder and she holds onto him and doesn't let him go.
He pulls back his face and puts his hand to his lip. It's damp and comes away, smeared with blood.
"I'm sorry-" he starts as she puts her hand to the patch on her neck, where his blood stains her skin.
"It's OK" she says, and with her, he knows it is. "It's fine, Calvin."
He nods and glances away. "How do you get back?"
She shakes her head. "You can't. People don't go back."
"But what if-" What if that's all there is?
She shakes her head again and this time, a smile tugs gently at the corners of her mouth. "Just because you can't go back doesn't mean you have to forget everything."
Calvin stares at her.
It's her who steps forward again and leans her head against his shoulder. "It's OK" she says and her arms wind around his waist this time. "It's OK."
Calvin's shaking again now, and he leans into her. Calvin's always known he was different. He's always known it and he's always wanted to go back, to rewind the years, to run through the grass again, to leap into the red wagon and fly off a cliff and never think about what will happen when he hits the ground.
But he tightens his hold on Susie's shoulders and for a moment, he pulls back and looks at her.
"You remember New Year's Eve?" he asks her and they both know which one he's referring to.
"Yeah" she nods and then she leans her head against his shoulder. "Yeah, I remember."
He nods. He doesn't say anything else and he doesn't need to.
He doesn't lean into her and her lips are close to his and they don't quite reach but they stay close to each other. His hands on her shoulders, their mouths close together, breathing, just breathing quietly in the dark.
The next three days, Calvin clears out his closet.
He puts away old comics, tidies away his old cape. He climbs up into the treehouse and places his old newspaper hats on top of the pile. He's about to take the old bottle caps, too, but-
"Leave them" a voice that sounds like Hobbes whispers in his ear, and Calvin places them both on top of the cardboard box that always functioned as a table for them to lean on, fight over, host medals of valour. He guesses they look fine there, and he turns them over in his hands, before he places them back, and leaves them there, with only a quick glance back over his shoulder.
He places the cardboard boxes in the attic, and ignores his mother's surprised look when she sees him carrying his things up the ladder. He drops down and slams the door behind him, glancing up to check it's shut properly. It's a tiny square in the ceiling, one that nobody would notice if they didn't know where to look properly.
He puts the other cardboard box, the one that he used to climb into all the time, in his closet. It belongs there. He keeps some other things in there, too-the red cape, the wagon he drags up from the garage, the issues of Chewing magazine. For everything he throws away, there's something he keeps, just out of sight.
Hobbes stays on his pillow. He looks at him for a moment but knows that's where he needs to be.
It feels better. It feels right.
But there's still something missing.
Calvin always knew he was different but tonight's the first time he's actually said it out loud.
"I'm different."
Hobbes, lying next to him, turns to look at him. "I know" he says simply, as if it's been obvious all along.
Calvin shakes his head. "No." It's not as simple as Hobbes is making it sound. "I've always been." It's not as simple as that, either.
Other people go away to college. They throw away the stuff from when they were kids. They fall in love, get married, have kids of their own. They move on. And he doesn't.
Calvin isn't other people and he knows it. He's always known it. But now he doesn't know what to hold onto. He doesn't know what comes next.
Hobbes looks at him and Calvin moves his gaze away until he's staring out of the window, so that his eyes are resting on the stars.
"I wanted to go into the sky" and he doesn't realise he's said it out loud for a moment. "I used to want to go everywhere."
Hobbes' voice is soft. "You still can."
Calvin shakes his head and then his eyes land on the stars again. Hobbes watches him for a moment and then sits up.
"Let's go outside."
It's outside, that they walk, past the tree house into the trees, a path that Calvin hasn't taken since last summer when he lay down with Hobbes beside him and stared up through the leaves into the sky and wondered how long they would be able to stay the same.
It's there, standing under the tree branches and peering up, that Hobbes points. "See, there are the stars."
Calvin looks up. Through the branches, he can see millions of stars sprinkling the sky. He remembers something he read in a book once, that stars are explosions, events that occurred years ago, but are only reaching us now.
Hobbes watches with him and Calvin tilts his head back and looks up. He drinks in the light of the stars and he lets them touch him and he stares through the tree branches and he keeps looking up, eyes stretched wide until the light seems to fill his whole mind, fill him from the inside out.
It feels as though he can reach the stars, as though he can reach out and touch them. It feels the way he felt as a kid, when he was running through the trees with Hobbes, when he was laughing and he felt as though nothing could catch them, nothing could pin him down, nothing could stop him from doing whatever he wanted.
He turns to look at Hobbes to see the tiger watching the sky, too.
Calvin steps back, so that he's peering up through the branches. He'd forgotten how close everything seemed. He'd forgotten how near the sky could be. He'd forgotten what it felt like, to have something so far away, seem closer.
He stays there for a while, drinking it all in. He never wants to forget it.
It's a while before they turn to go back and when they do, they run. Calvin had almost forgotten what it felt like to run.
Over the next week, Calvin goes out to buy groceries, occasionally does some chores, and cleans up the house when it's untidy. He eats meals with his parents and answers their questions and gets up before sunset. He sees the sunlight, filtering through the leaves and he watches it and he doesn't question it.
And the rest of the time, he walks through the woods with Hobbes, he sits in front of the TV, eating cereal and watching his old cartoons, sitting out in the yard and catching fireflies. It's a few days before he catches himself smiling again and a few days after that that he finds himself laughing at Saturday morning cartoons, flicking through his old comic books.
It's a few weeks later standing under the tree that he looks at his father and asks if he remembers when Calvin was six and he used to carry him on his back, used to listen to his pleas for him to jump the fence. His father smiles and says that he does, and for the first time in a long time, Calvin laughs with someone else.
Calvin looks up into the trees and watches the sun track across the sky.
It's that night that he sits up, fully dressed and swings his legs out of bed, heading to the door. He takes a look out of the window. The moonlight fills the room.
He reaches the door and then stops, turning back for Hobbes. "Hobbes-"
The tiger meets his eyes and then shakes his head, smiling softly.
Calvin frowns and takes a step forward. "But-"
Hobbes shakes his head again and almost by accident, glances out the window.
Calvin follows his gaze, eyes drinking in the stars. But after a moment, he turns away to look at the fence and the house two doors down and the light, still burning, in a bedroom window.
He looks back at Hobbes and for a moment, he hesitates.
But then, the tiger smiles and after a moment, so does Calvin. Hobbes points at the door.
Calvin opens his mouth and Hobbes shakes his head. He lies back on the bed, stretching out, yanking the covers up and a brief smile flickers at Calvin's mouth.
"OK." The word is a mere breath and then he turns away. He looks over his shoulder one last time and then he steps out the door, leaving Hobbes behind.
It takes two stones rattling at Susie's window before she appears at the glass. Calvin had known she was home, known she was on a break from college. He'd stood there for a few moments, gazing up at the house, wondering if she'd hear him, wondering if she'd appear.
It took two stones before her curtains drew back and her sash lifted up and she leaned out and looked down at him, and he had to stop for a moment, because even from here, he could make out her eyes, and even from here they looked brighter than the stars.
"Calvin?" and her voice is confused but her lips curve in a smile.
Calvin looks up at her. "Me" he says, and he stands and looks up at her.
"What is it?"
He tells her he wants to show her something and it takes a few moments and it takes him pretending to fall to his knees and beg but she rolls her eyes and nods, and she agrees and that's all that matters.
It's a few minutes later that she's outside, with a thin denim jacket shrugged over her shoulders, and she asks where they're going with another roll of the eyes and he tells her it's a surprise which makes her shake her head and smile.
It's when they reach the edge of his back yard that she turns and asks how he is, and he nods and says he's been better. She nods and says good, she's glad, and reaches up to tug something out of his hair and the back of her hand brushes his cheek and it could have been an accident, it could have.
It's when they get into the woods that she stops, arches an eyebrow, asks where they're going and he tells her not to worry, it's fine, and even though this could mean anything coming from him, she shakes her head and follows anyway. And Calvin leads the way into the woods, and his hand brushes hers' and every nerve ending in his body seems to be on fire, and she swallows, and he can feel her skin, close to his.
She trips at one point, her foot stumbling over a branch and he reaches back and his fingers close over her wrist. She squeezes back and he doesn't pull away, even when they're walking over solid ground. If he listens hard, he thinks he can hear the beat of her heart, the whisper of her breath on the air.
It's when they reach the clearing that he tells her to close her eyes. He doesn't need to look back to know that she has, that she would, because he asked her to.
He pulls her into the middle of the clearing and tilts her head back, his hands in her hair and tells her to open her eyes.
She does, and he watches them widen as she sees the stars.
She stands still for a while and he moves to stand beside her and he looks up at the sky with her.
The stars are bright and near and they seem to fill the whole world. They are full of worlds that he dreamed of, worlds that he imagined and they are near enough to touch. He lets himself look up at them and then he turns to watch her face as she drinks them in, the light spilling through the branches to touch their skin.
She turns to watch him and says "Why did you bring me here?"
And he looks back and says "Because I wanted to."
Susie's fingers are wrapped around his, and he looks at her and says "Remember that New Year's Eve?"
She nods and says "Remember that day at school?"
He looks at her and she says "When I asked what you were doing?"
Calvin tucks her hair behind her ear and looks at her. And she looks back and he nods and says "You were the first person to."
She steps forward so that her jacket brushes his shirt. "I wanted to know."
"I wanted to tell you." Calvin looks at her and he can feel the stars behind him, can feel them on his skin.
Susie looks at him and says "You can."
He looks at her and nods and holds onto her jacket, his fingers knotted in the material, because he knows that it's true.
They stand there, under the stars, and they lean against each other and their mouths are soft and warm when they touch and his hands are in her hair and hers' are under his jacket and they're together in the dark, and the stars shine overhead and the light is so near it touches their skin, and even from the sky it seems to come from somewhere inside them.
It's a few days later that Calvin is sitting, looking out at the sunset when Susie Derkins comes and sits beside him.
"How are things?" she asks, and she leans against him because they can do that now.
He nods. "They're good." And they are. Or at least, they're better.
"Are you going back to college?"
And he thinks and then he says "I don't know." And he doesn't. "But I've been looking." And he has.
She nods. "Good" she says. "That's good."
He leans his head against hers' and says "I don't know what I'm going to do next."
And Susie, Susie who always has an answer, looks at him and says "That's OK, too."
He always thought she'd be the one to have everything together-to figure out some sort of plan. But he felt the way her fingers trembled when they slid into his in the woods and he saw the way her eyes flickered as they looked at him and sometimes, he thinks that everything he ever thought is upside-down and that he doesn't know the world at all.
But then, somehow, it doesn't bother him.
He stands up and he looks at her. "You can eat at mine, if you want."
Susie nods and stands up next to him, brushing her hair behind her ears. "I'd like that."
"And Hobbes is upstairs. You could say hi to him."
Susie laughs. She laughs because she should have known and she should have known to expect it and because Calvin has always been different. She laughs and walks down the sidewalk beside him, her arm brushing his.
Calvin has always been different and he's been recognizing it for as long as he can remember. And he's always been planning ahead, waiting for the fun to start, planning his trips, wondering where to fly among the stars, because that's where people like him belong, him and a tiger only he can see.
But now, he's walking down the street with Susie beside him and a sunset filling the sky and not much idea of what he's going to do next or where he's going to go or how he's going to get there. And he finds he doesn't mind much, at all.
The North Star is in the sky overhead and it glints in the sunset. Calvin can find it with his eyes, without much effort. He walks down the street, feet scuffing the sidewalk, Susie's arm brushing his, their skin touching and he sees the star overhead and realises it looks much nearer than it used to, as if he could reach out and touch it, do it any second now. Calvin watches the star, until it's out of sight, the sun too bright for him to see. It's gone but he knows it's still there. He knows it's still near, near enough for him to reach, whenever he wants.
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