The next morning, Sean and his brother get up at 6:00 AM. Sean wants to get on the road, and Claire and Stephen want to make their morning church service, but Claire insists that the boys can't leave without breakfast. So while she is griddling pancakes, Sean takes a quick shower but ends up putting on the clothes he wore yesterday; he spent months on the run wearing the same thing, so it's hard to see why he should pack more than a few changes of socks and underwear for this trip. Old habits, and all that.
Once he and Daniel have been stuffed with way too many pancakes, they say their goodbyes to Claire and Stephen at the door. Sean assures them that they will keep in touch, and maybe he could visit them next time he's in the Pacific Northwest? Daniel hugs both of his grandparents, but Claire says she has something for him and disappears back into the house.
She comes back holding a small envelope.
Inside is a birthday card. "When did you get this?" Daniel asks.
"I have my ways," Claire says slyly.
Inside the card is twenty dollars. "I can't take this," Daniel says.
"Nonsense," Claire says. "It's your birthday, and I missed all of them. I only wish it could be more."
"Thanks," Daniel says, and he hugs his grandmother tightly. "Thanks for everything."
"Remember what I made you say last night," Claire says.
"I will," Daniel says. Sean isn't sure what they are talking about. However, Daniel smiles, and that is good to see.
It still takes them another ten minutes of goodbyes and hugs just to get to the front step, and it feels like they are finally about to get away when Sean glances over at the Eriksens' house. Whenever he's been near a window, he's kept an eye out, hoping for some sign of a teenage Chris. In that other life, Charles was talking about sending Chris to live with other relatives. Maybe that's all that has happened here.
Sean should walk away from this. He should get in the car, continue the road trip, and not ask the question on his mind.
But he has to know the consequences he has chosen to live with.
"Hey, random question . . . " Sean says, carefully choosing how to phrase this. "We saw your neighbor yesterday, and he looked pretty rough. I can't really get him out of my head. Is there something up with him?"
Stephen shakes his head and clicks his tongue.
Claire clutches her hands to her chest.
Not great signs that they're going to say everything is good with Charles Eriksen.
"That's Charles," Claire says. "That poor, poor man is a walking tragedy. He lost his wife a few years ago. That's when he and his son Chris moved in next door."
"Cute kid," Stephen says. "Used to run around pretending he was some kind of superhero. I helped him build that tree house out in their backyard since his dad was too much of a drunk to do it."
"We knew Charles was in a bad place. I always suspected, and I wish I had called Child Services, especially after Chris broke his arm that one winter," Claire says.
"So," Sean says over the knot in his throat, "did something happen to Chris?"
"Chris and Charles got into some kind of an argument," Claire says.
"Friend of mine who works at the police station said both of them were drunk," Stephen adds.
"And Chris stormed off on his bicycle. He wasn't watching where he was going and got hit by a truck. He held on for a few days before he passed," Claire says.
"Only fourteen years old, too," Stephen adds. "Such a shame."
Sean isn't sure how he gets to the car. He doesn't remember putting the key into the ignition. Or leaving Beaver Creek.
The only thing he knows is the steady drum beat in his head, that someone he and his brother care about is dead.
And
this
is
his
fault.
# # #
Two Weeks Ago
Sean, Olivia, and Pete's Apartment
Savannah, Georgia
Sean sits at his drafting table in only his boxer shorts. A thin layer of sweat has dried on his bare shoulders, and his bedroom has a musky post-sex smell to it. He's muttering swear words as he works on a storyboard for class that just isn't coming out right.
His bedroom door opens, and Toby walks in, water droplets clinging to his short mohawk, a towel wrapped around his waist. He smells strongly of Sean's bodywash. Toby stays the night a lot and has his own drawer in Sean's dresser, but they still aren't "dating" for whatever reason.
Sean sneaks a glance at Toby's bare butt before it's covered by a pair of trunks, then he goes back to his storyboard, pretending that he wasn't looking, but Toby totally knows. He feels Toby's arms drape over his shoulders, and Toby kisses his neck. Toby's fingers play with the sparse bit of chest hair that Sarah used to play with before Sean broke up with her.
"What are you working on?" Toby asks.
"Storyboard for class," Sean says.
"Obviously. What's it about?"
Sean gestures to the image. It's a teenage boy and girl smoking on a porch that looks like his dad's back in Seattle. "It's based on this girl I was friends with in high school named Lyla."
"Oh," Toby says, and suddenly his body droops against Sean's. He goes over and sits on Sean's bed.
"Is something wrong?" Sean asks.
"It's nothing, it's just . . . ever since you went home for Christmas, something has been up with you. You're bringing up high school friends. You try to reconnect with your old girlfriend. You get, like, really upset that she doesn't want to be friends, which is definitely something the guy you're hooking up with loves hearing about. You're also blowing off that same guy and your best friends to go on a road trip with your brother."
"You said you were cool with me missing Daytona Beach," Sean says.
"I am . . . mostly . . . " Toby says. "But when was the last time you hung out with Diego? He's, like, your best bro, and he told me he hasn't really seen you in a month."
"I'm just . . . busy."
"We're all busy, Sean. We all have anxiety and depression and jobs and too much schoolwork and student debt and internships to worry about, and it's all too much. You're not special for being busy."
"What do you want, Toby? Are you upset that I'm spending time with my little brother instead of going on spring break with you? Because, I really like you, like, a lot, but you're the one who won't agree that we're boyfriends, so I don't know that you get to pull a jealousy card on how I spend my time."
"You know, you haven't actually brought up the boyfriend conversation lately so—" Toby shakes his head, and he walks back over to Sean. Sean feels Toby's lips on his forehead, Toby's hands on his shoulder. It's all gentle. And soft. Too understanding for someone who is 'just hooking up' with him. "Sean, I care a lot about you, too. I don't know if you're freaked out about graduation or if something happened while you were back home, but you're doing a lot of staring at the past."
"I'm not 'staring at the past'," Sean says. "I just . . . I realized there are some things I took for granted. And I'm trying to be better."
"I worry about you," Toby says, taking Sean by the hand. "Sometimes things are in the past, and it's, like, they are part of another life. And, even if it's hard, you have to leave those things in that old life behind otherwise you miss out on all of the good things going on in the life you have right now. You have a lot of good things going on in your life right now, handsome."
"I hear you," Sean says, eying his storyboard where he's drawn the best friend he doesn't talk to anymore, the way he remembers her, the way they used to be.
The way they should still be.
# # #
Daniel stares at his older brother's face as they drive through southern Oregon. Finally, Sean's eyelids close for an instant, and Daniel says, "Six."
"Dude, why are you counting?" Sean asks.
"I'm keeping track of the number of times you blink."
"And you're only at six? How long have you been counting?"
"A long time."
"Why are you counting?"
"Because you have this vacant, wide-eyed look on your face, and I don't understand how your eyes haven't dried up like raisins. I'm not really sure you should be driving."
"I'm okay."
"You sure? You seemed weirdly upset about our grandparents' neighbor's kid dying."
"And you're not upset?"
Daniel shrugs. "It's sad, yeah. I mean, it sucks the way he died and that he was just a kid. But I didn't know him."
"He was the same age as you. You guys might have been friends."
"What makes you think he was my age?"
"Um, didn't you hear Claire mention that?"
"I guess I missed that," Daniel says. "Do you get this upset every time you hear about someone dying? If so, you would have flipped your shit when Stephen was showing me his trains. He just casually dropped that a 'couple of hippies' got hit by a train last year because they were trying to hop on it. 'Bunch of freeloaders,' he said. Went into some gorey details, too. Like, it was kind of horrifying."
Daniel means it as a joke. Just an anecdote about old people being insensitive. He thinks his impression of Stephen is pretty good, too. He's trying to lighten the mood with dark humor.
But Sean's arms go stiff. The color drains out of his face. And sweat appears in the shaved parts of his hair.
The car wobbles a bit on the road.
"Sean? Hey, buddy, you okay?"
But Sean doesn't answer. He's just staring, straight ahead. The car is only kind of staying in the right lane.
Daniel sets his hand over his brothers' on the steering wheel. "Bro, stop the car, please."
"I'm fine, Daniel. Don't worry."
"Sean. Hermano. You have bullshitted me my whole life, and I can kind of see through it. And right now, I'm concerned you're going to wreck our dad's car and hurt us both, so you need to pull over. Let's stop and get some air because you are not fine. Okay?"
Beneath Daniel's palm, Sean's knuckles are tight and cold. But finally Sean sighs, and he pulls the car to the shoulder. They're still surrounded by forest, and they haven't seen another car in a long time. Daniel goes over to the driver's side door to pop the trunk, and he grabs a bottle of water from the cooler. Sean gets out and sits on the hood with his head in his hands. He mutters "Thanks" as he sips at the water.
Daniel sits on the hood beside his brother. Sean doesn't smell like pot or anything, so Daniel doesn't think his brother's high. But something is clearly wrong, and Daniel isn't sure what to do besides sit here, close enough that their shoulders touch, giving his brother some time, just being with him.
"Do you remember that shitty movie Dad made us watch?" Sean says finally. "The Butterfly Effect?"
"Oh yeah! It had Kelso from That 70s Show in it. That movie was real bad."
"Yeah, sometimes Dad has awesome taste in movies, and sometimes it's real shit," Sean says. "Anyway, you—er, someone I care about brought it up recently. And I'm thinking about how the guy in that movie kept trying to make things better, but it turns out that everything is, like, interconnected. So if you change one thing, it ripples out and fucks up, like, ten other things."
"And this has something to do with our grandparents' neighbor?"
"I just think things could have been really different for that kid."
"You know, it's not your fault, right? Like, there's no way it could be your fault. And even if you, I dunno, somehow had done something, you didn't make them choose to get into a fight. You didn't drive the truck that hit him. Sometimes things just happen because they're coincidence. Sometimes people do things and it's not your responsibility." Daniel can't stop himself from thinking about Noah. How Noah hasn't texted him back or said anything to him in months. "Sometimes people make choices, and they suck, but they don't really have much to do with you. You know?"
Daniel feels his brother's hand on his head, messing up his hair. He wants to protest, but it's so gentle, and his brother is so—Upset? Broken?—that he doesn't say anything.
"Thanks, enano. I think I just need a minute to sit here, then I'll be good to drive."
They sit there for way longer than a minute, with the breeze rustling the trees and the birds cawing overhead.
When they get back into the car and Sean starts the engine, Daniel grabs the aux cord.
"Dude, driver gets control of the music," Sean says.
"First, not fair because you're the only one who can legally drive," Daniel says. "And, two, maybe the reason you're so sad is because you keep listening to this sad, Irish dude and his sad, Irish songs."
"They're good, though."
"One of the choruses was literally 'I can fuck up anything.' And I'm pretty sure one of these songs was about how some girl who broke up with him reminds him of cutting himself when he was a kid. The last line was something like 'my stupid, screwed-up, screwed-over, broken, stupid heart.'"
"Okay, one, you are leaving out a lot of the song's nuance, and, two, the line is 'my patched-up, patchwork, taped-up, tape-deck heart.'"
"Dude, that's way sadder than the thing I said!"
"Oh, and what are you going to put on?" Sean says. "Mumble rap? Some Instagram rapper who's named after an anxiety medication? I can see your phone screen. Your music is way more of a bummer than mine. You listened to a song literally called 'SAD!' by Triple-X Temptation on repeat all the way to Claire and Stephen's."
"Oh my god, that is not even close to how you say his name. You are so cringey. How did I ever think you were cool?" Daniel plugs the cord into his phone and scrolls through his Spotify. "Give me a sec. I am going to blow your mind with how fire a DJ I am. Here we go."
Daniel hits play.
Soundtrack: "Banquet"
by Bloc Party
Guitar jangles through the speakers, followed by a British singer.
"You remember this song?" Daniel asks. "I don't think I've heard it since I was a kid."
Sean laughs, a really genuine laugh. "Yeah, bro, I remember this song."
"We used to play it all the time on Guitar Fighter. You never could beat my high score."
"That's because you always played on easy mode."
"Whatever," Daniel says. "You're just jealous that I'm the better guitar player and I have better dance moves." He moves his shoulders side-to-side, slides his hips as far as the seatbelt will let him. And he can feel his older brother rolling his eyes, but Daniel keeps doing it.
He thrashes and moshes as much as he can, and then Sean is bobbing his head and laughing and dancing and singing along too.
And they keep on, a Diaz-brothers dance party, like neither of them have a care in the world.
a heart of stone, a smoking gun
i'm working it out
why'd you feel so underrated?
why'd you feel so negated?
turning away from the light
becoming adult
turning into my soul
. . .
and if you feel a little left behind
we will wait for you on the other side
