non progredi est regredi
Salem, Oregon
2760, A.U.C.
Connie Springer had the normalest of early childhoods. No, really. He had a mom and a dad, and a bunch of siblings, and a house in the suburbs that was cozy, but not too small, and there was nothing strange— his mother wasn't murdered on his birthday, he wasn't from the future, he didn't have a clone or an evil twin, and he was pretty damn sure he wasn't Magneto's son.
So, like, when he was a toddler, he went to daycare one day and became friends with Sasha Braus. He couldn't remember how. He couldn't remember if it was before or after she'd stolen his cracker jacks box and guzzled the entirety of it, leaving only the toy. He couldn't remember if she had pushed him off the swing because she'd been teasing him, or because she hated his guts at the time and wanted that fucking swing to herself, and he couldn't remember when or how they'd gotten to the point where they were racing every day on the playground (he always won), or throwing rocks at the busted windows of old buildings to see who could make 'em shatter (she always won).
His and Sasha's was the kind of friendship that didn't really have a beginning or end. They lived their lives circulating around each other, never considering the fact that they were totally dependent on one-another for survival in the great wide world. Not that they couldn't survive without each other— Sasha could probably survive a nuclear apocalypse, honestly— but Connie found that he was very unhappy when Sasha wasn't around. He'd turn to tell a joke, and there was nothing but an empty space. He hated that feeling. It made him feel like something bad had happened.
When they'd been six, Connie had been invited over to Sasha's house for the first time. Sasha had lived a little farther out at the time, near a little forest where her father had taken her and Connie. That was the first time Connie had ever seen Sasha's archery at work, and he would never not be impressed by her concentration and precision. She was a total klutz when it came to, well, everything— but hunting was different. Sasha could hunt with her eyes closed.
Anyway, the moral of that story is basically never take Connie Springer hunting, because he will cry. And run away. And when you serve him your most recent kill for dinner that night, he'll cry even more, and you'll have to pat his back awkwardly as he hiccups and tries not to puke. After the first three times, Sasha became mindful of Connie's sensitivity to the death of animals, and whenever he came over the meat was store bought, and there was lots and lots of vegetables and fruit for him to gnaw at.
When they'd been seven, Sasha had moved away.
That had hurt.
Seven-year-old Connie Springer was loud. He was sociable. He made fart jokes and pretended he was bigger than he really was and got beat up on the playground, but mostly because he was begging for someone to beat him up so he could come home and grin up at his mom when she asked what had happened, and say, "Momma, I punched a guy in the face!" She got sick of that after awhile, but eventually Connie started getting a reputation for being a reckless, mindless ball of energy, and once just about everyone had a go at him, no one really wanted to fight him anymore.
So, when Sasha had moved away, Connie had been hit unlike he'd ever been hit before. The universe had given Connie its best right hook, and Connie had gone flying. He'd lost teeth. He'd torn his lips on the asphalt of fate. He'd sat up, bloodied and bold and breathing heavy. And then, he'd washed his face with his tears.
Sasha didn't move very far. It was almost an hour by car. Just far enough that she had to go to another school. Just far enough that it would be too far to run, by anyone's calculations. Too arduous to ride a bike. Too much effort to keep a friendship going. It was like everyone expected Connie and Sasha to just quit right then and there. Their friendship was basically over. They'd never last. They were just two really dumb kids who made each other feel smart. They made each other laugh. That was all their friendship was really based on.
Against all expectations, though, Connie didn't quit. He figured out a route from his house to Sasha's house. It took him about two hours to run there. He got really good at it, the running. He figured, if he had to be good at something it might as well be the one thing he really needed, right? Right? Well, he thought so, at least. He actually ended up winning a few awards for it in the year post-Sasha's move. He'd been so surprised that his parents had praised him on something that it made him want to run more and more. It took him about an hour and a half to run to her house by the time Connie was eight, and barely an hour when he rode his bike.
He rode his bike one dark, damp, humid summer day, his wheels splashing puddles into the air, and his pedals squeaking miserably against the rust and the rain. He'd almost decided not to go to Sasha's today, but they were supposed to go wading in the creek near her house, and he didn't want to pass up the chance to dunk her. It'd just be a waste of a perfectly good, perfectly rainy day.
Connie had no real concept of safety at eight. He saw that there was a path he could take to Sasha's house. He took it. He didn't think twice. His mother never stopped him, his siblings never noticed his absence. In truth, he felt a little like a nobody in his own home. At least in the Braus house his presence was made aware by the fact that there was meat from Price Chopper on the table, and not from the Cold Room (the creepiest room in the entire house, with dank, wet walls, and a temperature low enough to allow you to walk into a wall of cold air upon entrance, where the frigid atmosphere rose up from beneath the cold, stained concrete floor and flooded the body with chilled terror as one stared upon all the strung up meat). So nobody gave a fuck where he was, really, since they already knew, and he was always back by nine.
He'd been taking this path every day for about a year. He had been running every day for the past month or so, and his little sister, Eliza, had left his bike out for weeks, allowing rust to gather at its chain and pedals. Connie had yelled at her for it, but she had simply stuck out her tongue, and taunted him with one of her Barbies. He was pretty sure she'd cursed him, or something, because she'd gotten her hands on an Esmeralda doll from the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and apparently she was the Fearsome Witch of Salem, Elizabeth of Spring. Connie had been convinced, because of his dumb little sister, that the Salem Witch Trials had happened in his good ol' home town for years. No one had corrected him. What assholes.
So, there he was. Dim, dark summer afternoon. Connie Springer, with his tiny blue bike, and hair still on his head, and a pale green zip-up that wasn't even his, it was his sister's (an older one, Mari), and it had some dumb band written on the back that he couldn't really read so he just didn't. You'd think someone would be able to see that sweatshirt, because the rain wasn't heavy, not really, it was just a faint drizzle that misted across the bottom of the hill, and Connie went down it like he usually did. Fast as lightning, no turning back. The roads were slippery, and there was no traction for the tires to work with. Connie realized before he got to the foot of the hill that there was something wrong, so he backpedaled. The breaks didn't work. The chain was too rusted.
Later, in the hospital, Connie would say that he couldn't remember being hit, but that was a lie. He remembered it with the sort of clarity that he'd carry with him for the rest of his life. He woke up to the sound of a horn blaring. The majority of his body reacted whenever something metal crashed to the floor. He felt the terror of being thrown from his bike and rolled over the hood of a car whenever he closed his eyes, but he tried to smile it off, because he wanted to pretend it had never happened, that he hadn't lain across the slick black road, blood pooling around him, his limbs bent awkwardly and painfully, that he hadn't been staring up at the sky for minutes, minutes, minutes as a young man knelt beside him and apologized profusely for everything, he was so sorry, so sorry, but Connie had no idea who he was, and he hadn't seen his face, and he would never know now, would he?
At the time, Connie only knew death like he knew Europe. Europe was a place. It existed. People talked about it a lot with respect, and Connie figured he'd probably go there someday, even though it sounded a bit like a mythical paradise. That was death to him. Just a place he'd inevitably visit. There was no real comprehension there, there was no weight. There was no shock in the idea that someone went away and never came back. Connie's childhood was the normalest of childhoods. Nobody died. He was not an adopted Kryptionian baby. There was no concept of tragedy to him, unless Sasha's abrupt move to the fucking boondocks counted.
So laying on the very cold, very damp pavement, unable to move, unable to breathe, pained and paralyzed, Connie had not been thinking about his imminent death. He'd been thinking about Sasha. He'd been thinking about how she'd be waiting on her porch for him, and he'd still be lying there like an idiot because he couldn't feel his legs, and he didn't know why.
He had no clue how exactly he'd gotten to the hospital, but he'd woken up about a day after he'd been hit, and he remembered thinking he could really just go for Mrs. Braus's chicken salad. It didn't occur to him that he was in a hospital. He'd thought he was in his room for about five minutes after waking before he noticed the needle stuck inside his arm.
"You'll never walk again."
That's not the type of thing you wanna wake up to, especially when you're eight years old, the last thing you remember is the taste of your own blood filling your mouth, you realize your bike is trashed, and you won't be getting your fucking chicken salad.
Luckily Sasha had come bearing food, and she'd only eaten a quarter of it. It meant a lot, actually, coming from Sasha. She'd been incredibly cheerful throughout her entire visit, avoiding the topic of his accident and running, just babbling senselessly about nothing, and he couldn't help but laugh and smile with her, because even though he felt a little shattered on the inside, she had the ability to solidify him, if not for just a little while.
The funny thing about being crippled was that suddenly everyone was acutely aware of your presence. Connie Springer, who had been utterly invisible previous to the accident, was suddenly being watched wherever he went. He felt their eyes on his back, felt them with their pity and their caution, as though he was some poor, suffering animal left on the side of the road that they didn't want to approach, but couldn't look away from. Everyone handled him as though he was something fragile, something tender and teetering on the edge of complete destruction. His parents talked to him as though he was four years younger than he really was. Marigold avoided him, and once when he'd tried to give her back the green sweater he'd stolen from her that day, she'd gotten very upset.
"Why would I want it now?" she asked with her dark face pinched in disgust. Or, possibly pain. "It's all dirty. See, there's mud all over it." Connie sat in his wheelchair, green zip-up in his lap, and he looked down at it. He knew it wasn't mud.
Marigold was ten, and because she was the oldest she thought she knew everything, and she could do anything, and it really pissed Connie off because she was only two years older than him, and she wasn't any better at anything, really, except being a royal whiner. She looked a little like Connie, with her round, dark face, and acutely turned up eyebrows. But her nose was rather pointy, while Connie's was round like a button, and she had a trace of freckles along the bridge of her nose.
"Well I don't want it," Connie said. "Take it back."
"No," Mari said, taking a step back as he rolled into her room. "What are you doing? Get out."
"No," Connie said, his arms aching from the strain of pushing himself around everywhere. The lady at the clinic told him it'd get easier, but he thought she was lying. "Take it. I don't wanna look at it."
"Well, neither do I!" Mari shouted, her dark eyes flying wide. "It's— it's gross, okay, just get out of here!"
"What do you want me to do," Connie said thickly, his tiny fingers resting against the wheels of his chair. "Just throw it away?"
"Yeah, actually," Mari said, whirling away from him and flopping onto her bed. She shared a room with Eliza, so the area was very cramped, and there was very little space for Connie to maneuver his chair around. It was a problem, he noticed, that he would find everywhere. There were no wheelchair friendly places. Only haphazard attempts to be inclusive. "Chuck it. I don't want it, you don't want it— God, Connie, why did you even keep it in the first place?"
"I thought you'd want it back," Connie said, his voice rising in frustration. "Well, oops, then, sorry I tried to be nice!"
"Just get out," Mari said.
"Why are you being so weird?" Connie asked. His eyes were wide, and he watched his sister lay on her bed, her dark legs dangling off the sides, and her chin tilted toward the ceiling. "I'm not even bothering you."
"Yeah, you are," Mari said, bolting up straight. "'Cause you won't leave me alone. Just leave."
"Are you mad that I got blood and stuff on your shirt?" Connie asked. He saw his sister freeze, her eyebrows shooting upward and her mouth dropping open. She looked as though someone had slapped her hard across the cheek, and Connie kinda wished he'd done it himself, because she was being a terror to deal with today.
"Connie!" Mari shouted, as though he'd uttered some foul curse.
He sunk back into his chair, his eyes widening in disbelief. "What?" He rolled closer to her bed, and she jumped to her feet. "What is it? Why are you acting so stupid?"
"Get out," Mari said, her arm jutting out toward the door. "Jesus, Connie, you're so annoying!"
"And you're stupid!" Connie cried. He plucked the stained green sweater from his lap and hurled it as hard as he could at her. It landed on her head, and she cried out in alarm, stumbling backwards as she tore it from her face and shrieked, flicking it away from her as though it'd give her cooties. Connie tried to turn himself around, but he couldn't move the wheels right, and he looked up fearfully as Mari marched up to him, fury clear in her face as she grabbed hold of the handles of his wheelchair.
"I'm so sick of you," Mari hissed under her breath. Her voice was shaking as she jerked his chair forcefully, and he yelped, clutching the sides of it desperately. She moved him outside the door with too much of her strength, and he went sliding down the hall a few feet before being spilled out of his seat. She'd already slammed the door, and Connie's lip trembled pitifully as he rolled himself onto his stomach. After a few minutes of struggling, and listening to the quiet sound of sobbing from behind Marigold's door, his father found him on the floor.
"I fell off," Connie lied thickly, his throat aching from unshed tears.
Eliza and Mark were the only people in the house who didn't treat him any differently. Mark was only four, so he didn't really understand what was going on, but Connie noticed that he liked to spin the wheels on the wheelchair, so sometimes Connie would roll up to him and let the toddler make soft vroom-vroom noises as he flicked at the wheels that were just about his size. Eliza was an equally good sport about it, taking to moving aside the furniture in the living room so she could push Connie around and around and around until they both got dizzy. Sometimes he'd let her climb on his lap, and he'd spin them both around until she was giggling hysterically, and declaring them adventurers, and it made Connie feel like maybe he could live with this after all, because it made Eliza happy, and that was something that didn't happen often.
The worst thing about it, though, was that Connie never saw Sasha anymore. Sometimes she'd show up at his house, claiming she'd snuck out and taken the path that he always took, but she couldn't do it often. Her father caught her almost every time, and she wasn't allowed to run from her house to his because it was too dangerous. They made the most of the time they had, but it was very little.
"Can I try?" Sasha asked one spring day. He'd grown used to the wheelchair, but he felt utterly powerless in it. And he missed running. He missed being invisible. He missed being able to move through his own house without everyone getting all antsy and worried, their expressions crumpling.
He was plucking dandelions from his front lawn, popping off their heads with his thumb. "What do you mean?" he asked, tossing aside the dewy, decapitated remains of the weed.
"Your chair," Sasha said. "Can I ride in it?"
"It's not a kiddy ride, Sasha," Connie said, grimacing at how eager she looked. "It's not fun."
"I don't wanna have fun," Sasha said, grabbing both his armrests and staring into his eyes with her great big brown ones. "I wanna know what it's like."
"Not fun," Connie said, smacking her cheek gently with the back of his hand so she'd back off.
"Well, yeah," Sasha groaned, throwing her head back. "Yeah, I know, but I wanna try. To see if I could do it. If, you know, our places were switched, and stuff."
"You're dumb," Connie informed her. He began to adjust his grip on the chair anyway. The thing about being wheelchair bound? Your upper body strength improves a lot. He easily pushed himself from the chair, and slid into the patch of dandelions.
"Nuh uh," Sasha said, tossing her body into the chair. "You're dumb."
"There is no way I'm dumber than you, it's not even possible," Connie declared, adjusting his legs in the grass so they didn't just sit awkwardly, uselessly…
"Too late, buddy boy." Sasha grinned, and she attempted to maneuver the chair out of the grass. "Crap, how does this thing work?"
"Figure it out yourself," Connie said, flopping onto his back in the soft, slightly overgrown grass. He closed his eyes as the wind whistled softly through the cluster of dandelions. He listened to Sasha grunt and hiss in irritation as she tried to push Connie's wheelchair onto the sidewalk. This is nice, Connie thought, blades of grass tickling his dark cheeks. If he lay there long enough, his entire body might fall numb, and then he wouldn't even notice that he couldn't move his legs. It's dumb that it's not always like this. Connie didn't like to complain about his disability. There was no point. There was no rectifying it. There was only acceptance, and he dealt with that with all the blissful ignorance of a nine year old.
Connie's eyes snapped open. The sound of grinding metal filled his ears, and he was unable to fully comprehend what that meant. Connie was a simple kid, he didn't need much to keep himself going. He didn't think anything could break him, because he was already broken, and he'd lost all sense of faith in the people around him and even himself. He'd gotten into the habit of not caring, not wanting to be cared for, and just relinquishing all his emotions to a grand abyss.
"Sasha?" Connie called. A bumblebee darted past overhead. Its buzzing left an echo in Connie's ears, and the wind rustled through the dandelions, and his heart thudded in his chest as he perched himself onto his elbows, his head lifting ever so slightly to the road that was only three yards away. Connie spotted his wheelchair, overturned on the sidewalk, one wheel still spinning, and the entire world screeched to a halt around him. "Sasha!"
He found himself on his stomach, his fingernails digging into the rain-softened dirt, pulling up grass by its roots as he dragged himself frantically, hopelessly toward the vacant wheelchair. He clawed and crawled, hefted his body forward and listening to his own ragged breath as he over-exerted himself, and by the time he pressed his blackened fingers to the glittering sidewalk, he was heaving and gasping and shaking so terribly that he thought he was gonna puke.
"Sa—" He pulled his body, all his weight, and he felt tears sting his eyes. "Sasha…!"
He yelped as Sasha jumped right over the overturned wheelchair, landing before Connie in a crouch, and grinning broadly down at him as she rested one arm on her bloody knee. It'd been skinned finely, and the front of her leg was streaked crimson and black.
"Boo!" she cried, throwing her head back and laughing. "Got you good, huh, Connie?"
He stared at her. He couldn't understand why she would do something so cruel to him. "What…?" Connie choked on his tears as they flooded his eyes, effectively blinding Sasha from him. "What the heck, Sasha?!"
"What…?" Sasha sounded so oblivious, and he wanted to smack her. "Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself, or somethin'? Should I go get your mom? Connie, look at me. Hey, Connie. Con. Conster. Conman…" Connie had folded his arms out in front of him, and buried his face in them. He was shaking so badly, and he wanted to scream at her for being so damn stupid, stupid fucking Sasha, and her stupid fucking jokes. "Connie, come on, please look at me and tell me you're okay. Connie." She poked his shoulder. "Hey." She prodded his arm. "Connie, Connie, Connie, Connie— Constantino, you big dummy, stop moping and look—" She shook him, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and rattling him desperately. "Connie!"
"Why…" Connie's shoulders hunched as he tried to hold the tears back. But he couldn't. "Why would you… I don't get it, why would you do that, why would you pretend to…?"
"It was just a joke, Connie…"
"It was terrible!" Connie's voice shook as tears glimmered onto his cheeks. "You're terrible! You… you…!"
"I'm sorry…" Sasha gasped, kneeling down in spite of her bloody knee. "I… I didn't mean to… I only wanted to make you laugh, that's all, Connie, please… please don't cry…"
Connie couldn't help it. He'd been trying so hard to keep himself together, but he didn't know how, he didn't understand, and it was unbearable. The world was unbearable. He was living in a world that was moving in fast forward, a breathless blur of color and sound, and he was stuck, trapped, and dying to get free just so he could run and join the rapid movement.
"Hey…" Sasha reached out, her fingers resting on his shoulders. He jerked away from her, smacking her arms away as he struggled to regain his breath. He looked up at her, all gangly limbs and scrapes and toothy smiles, and he just wanted her to look away for two damn seconds, just long enough for Connie to stop crying, because he felt like such a baby, and he couldn't stand that Sasha was tougher than him. "Can I… can I help you back up on your chair?"
Connie didn't trust himself to speak. He looked at her, and he shook his head furiously, wiping at his eyes with dirt caked fingers. Sasha looked at him disbelievingly, and she stood up, giving Connie a nice view of her bloody knee. As she attempted to straighten out the wheelchair, Connie heard the screen door slam from behind him.
"Connie?" It was Mari's voice that drifted from the porch, curious and cautious. At the sound of her voice Connie's eyes filled with fresh tears, and he wanted to scream and run around and kick something, anything, just to get the rage out, but he couldn't. "What…? Oh my god, Connie!"
Mari's frantic footsteps were enough for him to know that she was angry. She bent down beside him, grabbing him by the arms and lifting him up ever so slightly to look at his face. He twisted away from her, grimacing in frustration. "What're you doing?" Connie grumbled, swatting at his elder sister in hopes that she'd release him. "Lemme go."
"Connie, look at your hands…" Mari gasped, clutching his dirty, scraped up fingers very tightly. "What are you even doing out here by yourself? You know you're not allowed!"
"Shut up!" Connie yanked feebly at his arms, wishing for the umpteenth time that he had use of his legs. "Go away!"
Mari looked up, and she seemed to notice Sasha for the first time. Now, it wasn't the first time Sasha had visited, but it was the first time Mari had the chance to be alone with her. And there was clear disdain in Mari's eyes as she looked upon the amber-eyed girl. Connie twisted, and he fought, but Mari was stronger than him by a bunch, and he just couldn't slip her grasp.
"Um…" Sasha said with a weak smile. "Hi?" She pushed Connie's wheelchair toward Mari gently, and Mari stared at her for a long time. Then she plucked Connie from the ground like it was nothing, and no matter how much he screamed at her, she got him back upright in his chair. Sasha stood awkwardly behind it, kicking a rock around the sidewalk until and fell into the road. "Sorry, Marigold, but, y'know, me and Connie wanted to play, so—"
"Look, I don't really care," Mari said. She straightened up, and Connie sat in his chair and stared up at her with his face expressing all his shock and anger. Tears were still glistening on his cheeks.
"Mari!" Connie cried, his voice breaking miserably.
Mari ignored him, and she stepped behind his wheelchair and grasped the handles. As she began to push him, Sasha followed fast, all but bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Well, I just thought you oughta know, because it's not Connie's fault or anything, I just wanted to try out the chair—"
Mari stopped. Connie gripped the armrests of his wheelchair in absolute terror, and he felt his sister's rage as she whipped around to face Sasha. "Connie," she said. "Go inside."
"What?" Connie squeaked. "No way!"
"Just do it."
"No!" He wheeled his chair around so he was watching Mari, whose nostrils flared in frustration.
"Fine," Mari snapped at him. She turned her attention to Sasha, who merely stood on the sidewalk, looking a little bewildered. "You need to stop hanging around my brother, got it?"
"What?" Sasha stared at Mari, blinking rapidly. And then she burst into laughter. Connie merely sat, stunned and speechless. "Ha ha, wowie, Mar', that was pretty funny. Gosh, you're face is so serious and everything."
"Do honestly think I'm joking?" Mari's voice heightened so much in pitch that Connie winced. "Oh my god, are you dumb? Don't you get it? You're not helping! You just make everything so much worse, and— and—!" Mari huffed in exasperation, and she shook her head in utter incredulity. "Just stop, okay?"
"You stop!" Connie cried.
"Connie, didn't I say to go inside?"
"You can't tell me what to do," Connie said. "You're not any more grown up than me, you know, so you should stop actin' all high and mighty. And stop picking on Sasha!"
"I'm just telling her the truth," Marigold said coolly. Her dark face turned to Connie's, and she raised her chin high. "Mom and dad think so too. They say it's all her fault, you know, and they just don't want to tell you because the situation is delicate."
I'm delicate, you mean, Connie thought, his eyes widening in shock. He didn't dare look at Sasha. He couldn't handle her reaction right now. "Shut up."
"Is that all you can say?" Mari rounded on him, and Connie flinched. Immediately upon seeing Connie's face, Mari's harsh demeanor seemed to melt. "I don't want to talk about this to you, Connie. Please, just go inside."
"I'm not gonna let you talk to Sasha like that," Connie said, even though he'd been angry at his friend only five minutes previous. "It's not her fault. None of this has to do with her at all, just— why would you even…? Just shut up, Mari, you load of crap, you don't know anything, you—!"
"Connie…" Sasha said. Connie had to force himself to look at her. And for someone who had just been completely chewed out for things she wasn't remotely responsible for, she was doing pretty good. Or at least, at first glance. She smiled at him weakly. "It's okay. I need to head home anyways, so…" Sasha took a step back onto the road. "Bye, then, Connie. Bye, Mari."
Connie shouted after her as she ran off, and he sat in his wheelchair, completely struck to silence. Mari stared after Sasha, and she was frowning. She looked down at Connie with a sad, desperate gaze. "Connie…"
"Don't talk to me," Connie told her, wheeling himself around. "You're so stupid, and I hate you."
"What?" Mari sounded so shocked, and Connie glared ahead of him. "You're the stupid one, Connie!"
"I said don't talk to me!" Connie cried, wheeling himself up the ramp leading to his porch.
After that, it got harder and harder to reach Sasha. She didn't come over anymore. They barely even spoke, and Connie blamed stupid Marigold for being so stupid and nosy, like what a bitch. Connie was left to… well, nothing. He couldn't even stand to look at Mari, who was so self-righteous and stupid, and he didn't want to talk to his parents, who clearly had no understanding of him since they thought that Sasha was the biggest problem in his life. Sasha! Literally the only person in the world who effortlessly got him, like no questions asked, just an easy friendship. Sure, they fought, because Sasha could be insensitive, and Connie could be a brat, but otherwise their friendship was absolutely flawless, and he didn't get why his parents would try to break that up. Why they were succeeding.
All he had now were Eliza and Mark, and even they got bored of him. Mark told him that his chair wasn't as fun as the spinny chair in daddy's office, and Eliza didn't want to sit on his lap anymore, she just wanted to play with her dolls. Connie was getting to the point where he didn't trust himself not to say awful things in front of his parents and older sister, so he just avoided them altogether.
One sunny day at the beginning of that summer, Connie decided that he wanted to figure something out. He couldn't run anymore. He couldn't ride a bike. But he could wheel himself pretty well. So, when nobody was keeping tabs on him one humid summer afternoon, Connie set off on the familiar path to Sasha's house. It'd been forever since he'd taken it, and at first he thought he completely forgot it, but eventually he got back into the groove of his surroundings. Not much had changed in a year, and he was pretty glad for that.
Half an hour into his amazing journey, Connie began to notice the clouds shifting over the sun. His arms had started cramping about a mile back, but he was still going, still carefully following the road, keeping his eyes straight ahead. He had a mantra he thought to himself every time a car whistled past. No one will hit a boy in a wheelchair, no one will hit a boy in a wheelchair, no one will, no one will…
It began raining after an hour. The tires of his wheels were too slick to grip properly, and his hands kept slipping, getting painfully caught between the armrest and the wheel. Connie was amazed. His luck. It was the shittiest. There was no doubt about it. He could not believe that the world had turned against him so viciously, so suddenly, so hopelessly.
The rain got heavier and heavier, and it got very hard to see. And Connie, who had gotten pretty good at wheeling himself around, caught another bout of misfortune by running over a particularly grand pothole that he hadn't seen due to the haze of rain, and the mist surrounding him. And, of course, his wheelchair spat him out like something nasty that just couldn't be washed down. Connie spilt out onto the ground, half in a puddle, half on the street, and he was at a loss now. Because he was an hour and a half away from home, without any means of contacting his family, with cramping arms and crippled legs, and nothing, nothing, nothing but rain and a mantra that didn't even apply, because he was certainly not in a wheelchair anymore.
It was a pitiful sight, a nine year old boy lying immobile in a great tarn of a puddle, his clothes soaking the water right up, and tears bleeding into rain as he began to sob softly, senselessly, choking on dirty rainwater and emptiness. Nothing, nothing, nothing. This was not what Connie wanted, and this was not what Connie had imagined for himself. He wanted to run races. He wanted to ride bikes. He wanted to get beaten up, but be able to fight back, because it was only fair, and he wanted to just be himself without any of this… this utter fucking bullshit that was his life.
He didn't know how long he laid on the side of the road. He could have tried to crawl back to his wheelchair, but he wouldn't be able to turn it upright. He knew that. He decided that it was easier to just curl up and cry than try to fix things. He was tired, and the world around him was too fast and too ugly for him to dare to look at.
Being found was a relief that he didn't remember all too well. Neither was being taken to the hospital. He must have passed out, because when he woke up, he was suddenly in a hospital bed, and it was much warmer, and he was wearing different clothes, and there was a stupid needle in his arm again. Great, he thought, resting his head back against his pillow and frowning to himself. What was I doing again…?
A woman was standing at the foot of his bed. Connie stared at her, his eyes widening, and he looked around for a doctor, or for his mother, but no. It was just a woman. Not even a woman, really, she looked kinda young, like she was still in school, and shouldn't be working yet. She was skinny, with a pretty, round face and large brown eyes, and sun-kissed skin that glowed naturally without any help from the luminescent bulbs that hung overhead. She had a nose like a button, a bit like Connie's, and so many freckles that Connie found himself trying to count them. They clustered particularly around her nose and flush of her cheeks, but they were plentiful all across her skin in star-like patterns, splotchy and strangely perfect.
"Hello, Connie," the woman said gently. She was wearing that odd, papery blue color that Connie was very used to by now. So she had to be a nurse. "You just don't stop getting into trouble, huh?"
"Um…" Connie shifted uncomfortably beneath the scratchy hospital blanket. "I guess… Who are you?"
The woman blinked at him, and her smile widened. She tilted her head, and her short brown hair slid into her warm eyes. "You can call me Ilse," she said, resting her hands on the footboard of Connie's bed. "I'm here to make you better."
"I feel fine," Connie croaked. Ilse's eyebrows rose curiously, and he flushed. "Well, I mean, as fine as I can be. Um, Nurse Ilse, is my mom…?"
"She'll be here soon," she said soothingly. Connie slumped in his bed, and he felt his throat constrict painfully, because what he really needed right now was another good sob. "Your grandfather is here, though."
"My…?" Connie hadn't spoken to his grandfather in years. He knew that he was in the hospital, but Connie had never thought he'd end up in the same one as him. "Oh. Okay, then…"
Ilse smiled. She had an infectious smile, and Connie couldn't help but smile back, confused and cautious as he was. There was something weird about her. Something off, as if she was an image projected on a movie screen— too perfect and too serene, and yet, she was standing right in front of Connie without fail.
"If you don't mind me asking," she said softly, straightening up, "what exactly were you trying to accomplish?"
Connie bristled. "Well," he said, "I was trying to get to my friend's house. How was I supposed to know it'd rain?"
Ilse shrugged. She looked around the room, as though the off-white walls somehow interested her, as though she could be captivated by the simplest of surroundings, and Connie bit his lip miserably, trying very hard not to cry, because he didn't want the nurse to see him so upset. He wanted his mother, that was all, and this lady wasn't helping him any by just standing there.
"How old are you, Connie?" Ilse asked. Her chin was raised up, and her warm brown eyes were following the walls, as though she could see something in the pallor of the paint that Connie could not.
"Nine," he said. He plucked at the itchy blanket, scowling as strings of gray wool unraveled between his thumb and forefinger. "How old are you?"
Ilse looked at him suddenly, and he could tell that he'd surprised her. She laughed, her eyes brightening in a stunned, excited awe. "Oh," she said, running her fingers through her closely cropped hair. "That's a good question. How old do I look?"
Connie gave her a look, something like a sneer twisting on his lips as he glanced at her. "If I knew," he said irritably, "I wouldn't be asking."
"True," Ilse said. She smiled down at him, and Connie blinked rapidly. This nurse was weird. "But I'm really curious!" She flew out her arms and spun swiftly as though to give Connie a better look at her. "How old do I look?"
"Like… I dunno…?" Connie frowned as Ilse turned back to him, wide-eyed and curious, with freckles of youth dancing on her splotchy skin. "Nineteen…?"
"Oh?" Ilse pressed her hand to her cheek, her smile growing tight. "Not a bad guess. But no, not quite."
"Well, I don't know," he said stiffly. He flushed from embarrassment. He rested his head back, and stared up at the ceiling glumly. "You said my mom's coming, right…?"
"Don't worry," Ilse said gently. She strode over to his bedside, and he twisted his head to look up at her. "I'm going to give you something, alright? It might sting a bit." Connie blinked dazedly at the tiny bottle and syringe that had materialized in her bony, freckled hands. She watched him with a smile as she drained the bottle of its colorless liquid by plunging the syringe into its lid. "I'm impressed, you know. You have a lot of determination, in spite of everything that's happened to you. I think you're a lot stronger than everyone else around here thinks."
Connie perked up a little at the praise, and he stared up at the nurse with widening eyes. "Really?" he blurted, straightening up. His arm ached mildly from the needle, but he ignored it. "You think so?"
"Of course!" Ilse beamed down at him, testing the syringe momentarily, and beginning to babble senselessly, her voice very soft and very strained, as though she was holding something crucial back, like a rasp or a lisp or a completely different tone all together, like she was forcing herself to speak this way so not to scare him, but it only made her appear less and less real to Connie, who couldn't help but wonder if he was simply imagining the nurse. "I've always admired people who make up for their physical lack of strength through their perseverance. I think it's because I was very focused on being strong when I was younger, but I was never really strong enough, and that came back to haunt me a little." She took hold of his intravenous drip, but he did not notice. He was completely enthralled in what she was saying, though he couldn't say why. "I should tell you this now, Connie, that though you're very strong, and you're very stubborn, you shouldn't put yourself in situations where it's inevitable for you to lose. You have nothing left to prove, so please don't act so reckless. Especially now."
Connie wasn't sure what she meant. Especially now, Connie thought, because I'm handicapped? He blinked as he saw her turn away, empty syringe in hand. He hadn't even noticed she'd injected him, honestly, and now that he thought about it, his arm was beginning to sear a bit around the area where the IV was stuck inside his dermis. He gave an audible hiss, and squirmed a little in his dumb cot of a bed, that supported his back but never allowed him any real rest, and he looked up at Ilse with wide eyes.
"W-what medicine is this?" he stammered, his tiny fingers resting on his steadily throbbing forearm, and then fisting at the blankets around him. Ilse stood with her back to him, her head bowed, and Connie stared at her, and he kept staring until tears gathered in his eyes, obscuring her skinny frame from his sight. His entire arm was trembling, throbbing, taking in pain without any consideration for his poor nerves, his poor, blazing nervous system that felt electrified very suddenly. Tears poured over his cheeks, but he could not feel them. He could only feel fire, and lightning, and the shock of a distant car colliding with his scrawny body, and he couldn't hold back the breathless, tearful, agonized scream that ripped heavily from his throat and echoed through the vacant room as his skin tore apart and knitted back together, his bones snapping and stretching and burning and charring up and smoldering in a heap before reassembling and sparking up once again, a chain of chemical reactions rapidly performed and unraveling and redone in a cyclical motion of a god's precious hand stitching him from life to death to life to death to a divine in-between to a lifeless, hopeless, heartless nothing, to a critical mass of writhing, screeching, unbearable pain.
The doctors had come swarming in, and they were all talking, and Ilse was just standing there, holding her syringe with both hands and never looking straight at Connie, though he could sense her there, sense her unnerving presence in the flaky stream of colors and bright movements that was the flame-encompassed world around him.
His teeth cracked together, his heart speeding too fast, too fast, too fast, way too fast, slow down, Connie, slow down, slow down, slow down, or you'll kill yourself, Connie, slow down, slow down, just try to slow down, just kick the brakes, it's fine, it's fine, everything is fine, I'm fine, it's fine, please, slow down, or else you'll kill me, and I don't wanna die, not this fast, so please somebody just slow it all down…
So. A nine-year-old boy lies in a hospital bed. He flatlines.
And there is an amazing, breathless moment of silence that comes with that awful fact, like the beauty of lightning dancing through the sky, and all the knowledge of its deadly nature, but wanting to touch it somehow anyway— to reach up, and graze your fingers across the fissures of luminosity, shadowing the crags in the clouds, and take a prong to heart.
In a way, Connie did.
He bolted upright, his heart thundering back into life from a beautiful, terrible shock.
The chattering of doctors was nothing but a dull thrum of voices, too low and too slow for him to comprehend. Everything was going slow, all the arms moving around him, supporting him as he sucked greedily at the air, tear tracks licking his cheeks, and he stared straight ahead of him as Ilse stood at his headboard, smiling at him sadly. No one was even sparing her a glance. She, who had done this to him, she who had nearly killed him—!
"I'm sorry," Ilse said in her honey-like voice, with her warm eyes glowing with sympathy, and her skinny, freckled fingers touched her neck, which was darkened by a shadow of a ring, angry, madder, madder red. Connie wanted to lunge at her, to yell and thrash and cry until something made some sense. "I'm so sorry for everything, Connie. I'm so sorry…"
I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, so sorry for everything…
And, just like the enigmatic driver that had shattered Connie's life a year before, Ilse then disappeared without warning. And Connie was left numb and breathless, trying to understand what had just transpired, because he couldn't have really just died, right? There was no way.
He struggled to speak for a few minutes, but when he did, he caught one of the doctor's by the sleeve, and he stare up into her eyes and croaked, "Where did she go?"
"What?" The doctor blinked down at him in surprise. "Who?"
"The nurse," he whispered, his tongue heavy and his throat dry and his eyes watering. "Ilse. The one who was in here just… just before…"
"There was no one in here, honey," the doctor said carefully, studying Connie with the same pitying gaze he had grown so used to over the past year.
"Wha…?" Connie's head was spinning. "N-no way. No, she was here. She was definitely here, she was in the room when—"
The look on the doctor's face caused Connie to cut himself off. She doesn't believe me, Connie thought, stunned. Either that, or Ilse wasn't… And as Connie tried to recall Ilse's face, the image became fuzzy and dull. And in the end, he had almost convinced himself that she hadn't been there. When his mother came, squishing him into a hug and chewing him out for being so stupid, Connie just accepted what the doctors told his mother, that the stress from pushing his wheelchair for miles had done a job on his heart.
Connie was a little numb all over, and so he was oblivious to the itch in his toes. He was so oblivious, in fact, that he did not notice until he awoke in the middle of the night, regaining the majority of his senses after some time to heal from whatever had attacked his nervous system earlier in the day. He was sorta like, a hundred and ten percent done with everything ever, and at that point he just wanted a good night's sleep. His mother was sleeping in the chair beside his bed, and he listened to her snoring softly. The sounds were long and slow, rumbling in the vacuous silence.
Connie grimaced, and he wiggled his toes as he curled onto his side, bringing his blanket up over his head. I wonder if Sasha knows yet, Connie thought idly as he closed his eyes.
They snapped open in shock.
He flipped onto his back and tore his blanket away, dropping it in alarm as he stared at his bent legs, his cramping knees, and his wiggling toes. Connie's mouth dropped open, his stomach lurching with unbridled excitement as he slowly, carefully pulled one leg up off the bed. It moved. It hovered in midair shakily, painfully, and Connie laughed in agonized amazement, in absolute terror and disbelief and utter joy. And then, he was struck by a sudden, furious urge that could not be ignored.
As his mother slept in the chair beside him, Connie flung his newly mobile legs over the side of the bed. He stood up on buckling knees, his laughter bubbling inside his chest as his baggy sweatpants pooled around his bouncing feet, and he felt incredible, and he felt renewed, like he'd had the life breathed back into him, and suddenly he could fly if he wanted to, because his legs were moving, his tendons were bending, and he was standing. He took a step, and he was walking.
Butterflies were batting at his innards, beating themselves to death against the walls of his churning stomach, and he felt their wings bend and crack, and despite that not even their beauty could be crippled. Connie was grinned almost madly in the darkness, and he stared down at the tube stuck to his arm. He laughed aloud, and tore the needle right out. He didn't care. He didn't care at all, and it was amazing, and he felt so, so amazing. He couldn't fight the urge anymore, the itch that had plagued him for months and months and months— a year of immobility to balance out a lifetime of ceaseless movement.
As his mother woke up with an agonizing slowness to her actions, Connie couldn't even look at her. He couldn't even care. He was too busy feeling the cold linoleum beneath his bare, wiggling toes, and laughing with incredible, breathless euphoria. He didn't hear her speak, because it was too slow for him— the world was too slow, and too beautiful to be real, and he was laughing and bouncing and spinning fast, his body a blur in the shadows, and then he realized that there was nothing tethering him to that fucking bed, and nothing grounding him any longer.
And suddenly he was giving into the urge, and he was running.
He didn't stop for a long time. Because he didn't have to. He was just a blur in the darkness, a laughing, streaking, screaming blur of pure elation flashing through the darkened Oregon streets, and he bent his knees and jumped and kicked up dirt and twirled and twirled until he was something like a tornado funnel, and he laughed at that too, unable to contain himself because he was free, and the world was not, and that made him so inexplicably happy. He felt as though he'd been unshackled, and the earth had frozen upon his release.
The adrenaline didn't wear off, not even when he reached Sasha's house. He threw rock upon rock at her window until she appeared, and she stared at him, and she laughed so hard he thought she was gonna fall right out. And then, she seemed to realize that he was standing, that he was barefoot and standing right outside, and she shrieked with excitement.
"Connie!" she screamed, all but hanging out her window. "Connie, your legs!"
It felt like she was speaking in slow motion, and Connie didn't even care. "I know!" he cried, jumping up in down in the soft, freshly trimmed grass. "I know, I know!"
She ended up leaving her room and exiting her house in such a way that immediately upon the slamming of her front door, it was as though all the lights in the house had turned on. But neither Sasha nor Connie cared, because they were both shrieking with delight as she tried to tackle him to the ground, but she was just too slow for him, and suddenly they were chasing each other, kicking and laughing and running, without even daring question the miracle they'd been given.
LAUGHS. Wow, all of the comments I got for last chapter were like, "CONNIE AND SASHA! YES, HUMOR AND FUN!" and I just laughed really nervously because this is a really fucking sad chapter. The next one is funny, and it goes back to the main plot, but I felt like Connie's story wasn't something that I could glaze over. It felt important.
Sasha and Connie are just so important, always, even if they're not always plot relevant. They deserve so much more than what they get.