The day after Christmas, it snows. Sean watches it fall from the window of his childhood bedroom as he bundles up in his Wolf Squad hoodie and a coat. He thinks about how it probably doesn't snow in Puerto Lobos, and when he steps outside, he reaches down and grabs some of it off the ground with his bare hand. The cold stings his skin. This is the first time he has touched snow` since that winter he spent at Claire and Stephen's house five years ago. He's seen it. But it's always been on the other side of a concrete wall.

He has a short walk ahead of him, but the couple of blocks seem so far away. It's a walk he's done hundreds of times, often in the dark, frequently high. He could probably do it with his eyes closed because it's as familiar as the Wolf Squad hoodie hugging his body. Even though it's been years, he'll never forget the way to Lyla Park's house.

There's a beat-up Toyota Corolla in the Parks' driveway. It looks about fifteen years old, the paint sun-faded, and way-too-crappy to be Lyla's parents'—but just crappy enough to be hers. Sean hopes this means Lyla is still home.

He goes up her front steps and knocks on the door. At first, no one answers, and he wonders if they all went out, starts to doubt if he should be here. But finally the door opens, and it takes Lyla's mom a long moment to recognize him. Then she beams. She hugs him tight around the neck, so tight he can barely breathe.

In the other timeline, Sean knows Mrs. Park hates him. Or at least, she thinks of him as "that criminal" that turned her daughter into a rabble-rouser. She probably blames him for her daughter smoking pot, even though it's totally the other way around. But here, he never got arrested, never got blamed for killing a cop. He's still that pitiful, quiet kid who grew up without his mom.

She insists that he comes inside, and he takes off his shoes without having to be told; the snow has seeped through the canvas of his skate shoes, and his socks are damp against the Parks' vinyl kitchen floor. Mrs. Park bombards him with questions. How is school? How is his father? And Daniel? Does he have a girlfriend? She mentions Lyla doesn't have a boyfriend either and tells him he can wait in the living room. She'll go get her daughter.

Sean sets his coat over the arm of the couch and sits down, and he's hit by a dump truck full of memories. How many bad movies has he watched in this living room? This very couch is where he embarrassingly sobbed after his seventh-grade girlfriend dumped him after five whole days of going out. In the backyard, he smoked pot for the first time, and this liquor cabinet gave him his first taste of whiskey; he threw up in the Parks' bathtub because Lyla was already puking in the toilet.

There was that one summer afternoon when he was fifteen that he and Lyla lay on her bed, shoulders touching, sharing a pair of earbuds to listen to the Front Bottoms, and he felt like life stretched towards infinity in all directions.

One winter when Lyla tried to be "more girly" and get into makeup, somehow she talked Sean into letting her practice putting it on him in her bathroom. I can see what I'm doing better on you than in the mirror, she insisted. But we have very different skin tones, so it's going to look different on you, he said. And she was so surprised that skin tones were a thing with makeup and that he knew about them—he didn't, it just seemed really obvious—but he turned out to be better at makeup than her. After that, on those rare times when she wanted to "girl up," he got to help her apply it.

Growing up, nobody was closer to him than Lyla. It's why he leaned on her so hard when he was crushing on Jenn. And why, in that other life, when he was on the run after that cop got killed, he called her. Twice.

Because when he was at the darkest point in his life, hers was the voice he wanted to hear the most.

He risked everything just to talk to her. And now, with no barriers between them, they just stop talking? That doesn't make any sense.

Just like it doesn't make sense that he and Daniel can be just "not close."

There has to be something he did wrong, some screw up. Because if there is something he did wrong, then that means there is something he can fix.

He hears a cough, and Lyla is at the end of the hallway, her arms crossed over the logo of her Washington State hoodie. She kind of glares at him, but she asks if he wants something to drink. When he doesn't, she says that since he's here, they can talk in the sunroom.

The Parks' sunroom clearly used to be a porch that someone built thin walls around. It's already drafty, and Lyla cracks open a window so she can light a cigarette.

She doesn't offer him one.

She doesn't say anything either as she drags the cigarette and blows the smoke towards the open window. So Sean stands there, feet wet and cold and with his hands in his pockets. Finally, he says, "Hey, so, do you remember that time we got high in here and Ellery licked all of the sugar off that entire package of Sour Patch Kids? It was like one of those one-pound bags too."

"Sean, what do you want?" she asks.

Lyla could always be blunt. But this is like sawing through bullshit with a dull razor blade. "Look, I know we aren't really close anymore," he says. "And maybe this is a dumb question, but, a lot of things have gotten kind of hazy for me lately. And I was wondering what happened between us."

"What, is this your quarter-life crisis?"

"No, I just want to know why we stopped being besties."

"Sean," Lyla sighs, "you run from hard conversations, so why do you want to go through this now?"

"I just need to know. What did I do to make you mad at me? What can I do to make things right? "

"Dude, I'm not mad at you."

"But we aren't friends anymore."

"But nothing happened." Lyla's cigarette has burned down, so she pulls another one out of the pack she keeps in her pocket. This time, she holds the pack out to him, but he hesitates. "We're adults now, man. We don't have to hide it anymore."

He has a recollection of Sarah hiding a pack of cigarettes from him. "I think my ex-girlfriend made me quit."

"You think? Classic non-commitment, Sean," she chuckles, placing the pack back into her pocket. She lights up, and a cloud of smoke billows from her mouth. "Nothing bad happened between us, dude. You can't make things right because there's nothing to make right. We just grew apart. You went off to Savannah and got busy. We texted a bunch at first. But then it took you longer to reply. Then you would forget to call even when we scheduled it. Eventually, I got tired of hearing your voice mail. Sure, it sucked at first because you were my bestie. But I get it. You went after your dream, and you're making it work. And there's probably things I could have done better too. But I made new friends. I moved on. It happens. It's cool. So it goes, you know?'

"Is it cool, though?" Sean says. "I just remember years ago, us worried about growing apart if we went to different colleges." And Sean stumbles over his own tongue because there's so much he can't say. I called you when things were at their worst. You stood up for me when everyone wrote me off as a criminal. You are the only one of our friends who visits me in jail. "We promised nothing would tear us apart. It makes me sad that something did. Doesn't that, I dunno, make you sad?"

"It did." Her cigarette has burned down, and she puts it out in an ashtray. "But not anymore."

A sigh rocks Sean's body, and he collapses into the wicker chair that Adam once tackled Ellery into. He sets his face in his hands. It doesn't make any sense. How can the people closest to him suddenly not want anything to do with him if nothing happened? These people stuck by him through the hardest shit, when it was actually fucking difficult, yet here, with nothing in the way, their relationships have just evaporated like ice on a lake at the turn of spring.

And not only that, but things are still hard here. Like, they are obviously a million times better than the life where he is in prison, but he still has shit to work through. And he wakes up in the middle of the night from nightmares, memories from that old life.

He still needs someone.

But all those people he has relied on for the past few years . . . they're all gone.

Some he never met.

And some he let slip away.

"Sean?" Lyla says. "Hey, you still with me, buddy?"

"I don't get it. Things are bad with my brother too. How can things just be bad between us if I didn't do anything to make them bad?"

"Well, dude, you were always kind of a dick to Daniel. He was, like, the sweetest little kid, and he looked up to you like you were his fucking hero. And you acted like you never wanted to be around him. The fact that you are just now noticing things are bad with your brother is probably exactly why they are bad. Relationships are like plants, you know? You don't have to do anything to kill them. You just have to get too busy to water them."

Sean sighs and presses his fists against his temples. He thinks back to what Toby said in Savannah, that people think he's self-centered. That he bails when things get hard.

He thinks about what he did to Sarah, breaking up with her by not breaking up with her.

And he remembers what Daniel has said this week. That it's impossible for him to think of someone other than himself. That Daniel should have expected his older brother would let him down. That they just aren't the type of brothers that get matching tattoos.

And then he thinks, really thinks, about who he was before his dad died in the other timeline. And that version of Sean was . . . he was a real shithead. And, sure, he was sixteen, and all sixteen-year-olds are kind of shitheads. But losing his father and his home and having to take care of Daniel forced him to grow up.

And apparently, here, he never had to.

Or at least, he didn't grow into the man that he wants to be.

The people he loves the most, they don't know that he loves them. He's never had to be there for them. He's never had to show them that he needs them too.

And, so, they all just think he's some unreliable shithead.

Because that, apparently, is what he is.

"Sean?" Lyla says waving a hand in front of his face. "Dude, you really don't look good. Are you okay?"

He stands up from the chair. "I should go. It wasn't cool of me, just showing up here after all this time."

"Uh, you got kind of weird," Lyla says.

She follows him to the kitchen where Sean pulls on his skate shoes. They're sopping wet now that the snow has melted off them.

"Are you sure you're okay to get home?" Lyla asks. "I could drive you or . . . "

"I'm good," he lies.

And it's a good thing he has done the walk back from Lyla's house a million times because he does it this time with his vision blurred.

When he gets back to his house, his dad is at work, and the little brother who barely talks to him is playing video games in the living room. So Sean goes to his room, pulls the old sketchbook from his bag, flips through it, and feels like he is wrapped in the weight of everything.

# # #

Daniel hears Sean come home, but he doesn't think much about his brother going to his room without a word. The story mode of Festival de Lucha Libre is much harder than he thought it would be. Like, no matter what he does, LA Park and Psycho Clown keep cheating in the Lucha de Apuestas. Maybe it's the frustration or the assault of colors that flash on the screen with each loss, but he starts to feel a dull pain between his eyes. It gets pretty bad, and he gets up to get some Tylenol from the kitchen.

But when he does, he hears whimpering. It gets louder as he walks towards Sean's bedroom door, which isn't closed all the way. Then he hears a shout. So Daniel pushes the door open, and his older brother is lying face down on the bed, fully clothed, even wearing his coat and shoes, like he just passed out after coming home. He's asleep. And he twitches.

Every once in a while, he whimpers. Like a dog being kicked.

Daniel hovers by the door, unsure if he should wake his brother. Clearly, Sean is having an intense bad dream. But Daniel also has flashbacks to being a kid, and always getting screamed at for being in his older brother's room. But the nightmare seems pretty intense, so Daniel cautiously approaches the bed.

Sean's hand hangs off the side, and near his fingertips on the floor is one of his sketchbooks. On the page is a drawing of a boy, with energy and debris swirling around him like a character from Akira.

Daniel loves his brother's art. When he was little, he would sneak into Sean's room and read through his sketchbooks. Now, Daniel gets how shitty that was. Sean uses them like his diary. It's not cool to invade the guy's privacy like that.

But something about the boy in the picture catches Daniel's eye. And it's that the boy looks like him. When he was little. And then he catches his name written to the side.

Sean's still twitching, still asleep. So Daniel picks up the sketchbook and reads:

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

What's happening to Daniel…

What is he?

And Daniel's heart drops. His first thought is Sean knows. There's no way Sean can know, but he is observant. Maybe Daniel slipped up or something, and now Sean knows and he thinks Daniel is some kind of a freak.

But then Daniel flips through the pages before the drawing, and he realizes that Sean doesn't know anything.

A lot of it is vague, but it looks like Sean is sketching out some kind of story. It's about the two of them, when they were younger. They're homeless. They're on the run. It seems like their dad is dead.

Why would Sean be writing something like this?

Suddenly, Sean screams. It startles Daniel enough that he almost drops the sketchbook.

Most of the sounds Sean makes aren't words, just scared, desperate pleading. But a few words come out: Merrill. Gun. Stop! And then Sean's muttering "Don't! Don't! Don't!" and then he shouts "Daniel!" and he's shaking like it's an earthquake, and he is unable to wake up, like Freddy Krueger is murdering him in his sleep.

"Hey! Hey, Sean!" Daniel says, shaking his brother. His voice cracks. "Wake up, man. Come on. Please, man. Please wake up. Please, hermano, wake up."

Sean sits up so suddenly that his skull almost cracks Daniel in the face. Daniel stares into Sean's eyes, and they look hazy, and puzzled. Like they don't recognize him.

But then Sean says, "Daniel, you're okay," and catches Daniel in a hug so tight he can't breathe. "Where are we?"

"Dude, we're in Seattle," Daniel says, gently pushing his way out of the hug. "We're in your room. Sean, are you alright? You're—you're kind of scaring me here, bro."

"Yeah," Sean sighs, shaking his head. "I'm fine, Daniel. Don't worry. It was just . . . a bad dream. One of those ones that seem too real." Then Sean's eyes fall on the sketchbook still in Daniel's hand. "What are you doing with that?"

"Nothing! It was on the ground, and I—"

"Did you read it? Give it to me."

"I didn't—"

"Stay the fuck away from my stuff, Daniel!" Sean shouts, and Daniel feels the sketchbook jerked out of his hand so hard that his fingers seem to go with it.

"Okay! Fine! Jesus, you're such a dick!" Daniel stomps out of his brother's room, like he has countless other times before. He should have known. He always gets yelled at. And he goes back to playing his videogame, trying to wrap his head around why his brother has to be such a dick.

But even as he keeps taking chairshots and tope suicidas from LA Park, Daniel can't help wondering—why is Sean sketching a story where their dad died and his little brother has super powers?

He's frustrated at his game and pissed at his brother and confused by the sketchbook, and all of it is making his headache worse.