Kieren was not moving and it felt better that way.
He was laying in his bed, in his room, in his parent's house, perfectly still. The covers rested on his chest, folded just so that they brushed his chin, and his eyes were alternately locked on the ceiling and squeezed tight.
The summer afternoon seemed to hum. Down the block, a boring neighbor was revving their lawnmower, and the low grumble blended with the buzz of bees outside his window screen. He examined the imperfections in the ceiling.
A breeze drifted over him, bothering the watercolor papers tacked to the wall, the only movement in the dim room.
The sun was setting slowly and he felt like he could've been cold. Neighboring children were running around in the lawn in bare feet. Kieren could smell the grass, feel the dirt as clearly as he felt the breeze and the blanket on his chest, hear their excited shrieking as they tackled each other. He remembered running around and playing.
It was a week since Kieren had watched a man shovel dirt over Rick's immaculate coffin. He had a clear image of him all bunched up in that coffin, just big enough for him, his hands crossed on his chest. The noise of dirt hitting the oak top followed him for days and he felt like he heard it faintly when it got too quiet.
Night fell soon after and Kieren was in a hopeless trance. His parents gave him enough privacy not to call for dinner.
He was still motionless aside from the occasional sigh and scratch, but the exterior didn't portray how fast his brain was working, what his heart was doing, what hoops his senses were jumping through.
The week had been a blur. He remembered that normal- living- people had jobs and responsibilities. He lay in bed, pretended to eat, reminisced, cried the best he could, dry-heaved and didn't sleep. He went on walks. He tried to draw.
This went on for a few weeks. His parents assumed a hands-off demeanor that they pushed was respectful, but he knew they just didn't want to deal with it. It wasn't new. He didn't have the strength to ask for help or to seek companionship out. He stayed away from the world and lay in bed.
Slowly, his days got longer, and the endless ebb and sigh of sadness ate at him. It lost its appeal. He started to feel nervous, just being here, so slow-moving. He started to think about Amy. Where was she? Could he write her?
This was his second lease on life. This was a chance to start over – totally, completely, forever. Thoughts crawled into his mind for a few days and started picking at the darkness there, like a human with a scab, or a door – you have to open it, it's there, and if you bug it, progress happens.
He got up one day with sudden inspiration, flung the covers off with conviction, stood up and put his cover up and contacts on with more dedication that he had been able to muster in weeks. The force of his actions frightened him at first – and then they felt freeing. He could move. What else could he do?
There was no Rick, but that wasn't the only thing that had changed. He had a new appreciation for life and everything that came with it. He lost exactly what he had lost before. He couldn't act like the feeling was new.
He couldn't hide forever. If anything, Rick would want him moving on.
So he'd move on as best he could, he figured. There was no way to tell if it would work unless he put on those shoes and that hoodie and strode out of that house towards a goal. Maybe he could write Amy.
This helped. It felt like waking up.
(AN: Hello, my darlings! What you just read is the brand-spanking-new revision of chapter 1 in honor of my views hitting over 2,000! I added content and polished it quite a bit. Enjoy and review, doves!)