(TW major character death.)
"Where's Sunny?" Kel asked.
"It's Wednesday, idi—" Aubrey grit her teeth. "It's Wednesday, he can't come until Saturday."
"Why?"
"Because he needs to go to school every day. He has a lot of catching up to do if he wants to graduate next year." He stared at her, obviously not getting it. "He doesn't go to Faraway High anymore," she said, enunciating her words. "He lives in Harrisburg now, that's two hours away."
"What?" Kel could hardly believe it. Two hours was basically an eternity!
"Yeah, and he still makes the trip every weekend. Sunshine must really care about you."
He didn't know what the sun had to do with Sunny—oh. Her nickname for him. That was cute! Kel laughed, which drew a big smile from Aubrey.
Basil rushed into the room, two bags in hand. "I got the stuff," he huffed, slightly out of breath.
"Oh, sick, they had it!" Aubrey took one of the bags. "Those assholes always run out of these so fast!"
She pulled out what appeared to be a giant cinnamon roll.
It took about two days in the ICU for everyone to lose their reservations about eating around him, an attitude that persisted into hospice. It was fine by Kel. No one needed to hold back for his sake, seeing as he'd lost his appetite months ago. But something about Aubrey's pastry—it's bready mounds, it's flakey insides, the thick helmet of ganache coating it—made Kel's mouth water.
"So like I was saying, we're in the attorney's office and I'm telling him, look, my mom has depression." She held up her hand as if expecting Basil to call bullshit. "Which she does, it's just, like, booze-related, but he doesn't need to know that! I'm trying to explain this is why we haven't gotten to the mortgage—"
Kel patted Aubrey's shoulder, pointing to the pastry.
They both froze. "You… you're hungry. You're hungry!" Basil shot out of his seat. "I can go get you something! What do you want?" He dug around in his bag, pulling out a pamphlet. "Here's the menu, take a look at it."
He loved how earnest Basil was, how eager to please. He pointed again at Aubrey's pastry. He expected her to get annoyed at him for stealing her snack, but she was just as excited as Basil.
"Yeah, yeah, you can have as much as you want! You're gonna love this, the shop down the street is known for their cinnamon rolls."
She gave him a little less than half. He hadn't attempted to eat anything since coming to hospice the night before, having been on a feeding tube in the ICU. It was the most scrumptious thing he'd had in weeks, but his mouth was so dry. It took forever to chew.
"Did you try asking your dad for help?"
"No, he's all caught up with his new family."
Kel tried to swallow—tried. After three attempts he finally managed to get it down his throat, only for the ball of dough to lodge in his chest.
"Not gonna lie, I wish I could wash my hands of this whole thing."
Kel tried to gasp, cough. He needed water! He shook her shoulder again, as hard as he could. Aubrey help me help me help me Aubrey please.
"What's wrong?!"
Basil ran out of the room to get help. She quickly bent Kel over and slapped his back once, twice, three times, his world shaking with each blow. The third prompted him to vomit on his lap, chunks of what he'd eaten swimming in a pool of inky black sludge.
Whether or not to put the feeding tube back in was entirely Kel's decision. They all knew that was the point of hospice: to prioritize his comfort, what he desired.
Kel declined to have the tube re-administered.
Unable to swallow and without a feeding tube, they were told it was a matter of days.
What they were about to do had not been approved by the school administration.
Not that they cared what those dusty old farts thought. With the help of the hospital staff, Aubrey, Basil, and the Hooligans bundled Kel up and took him to the third-floor balcony. Wearing their middle school graduation gowns over their bubble coats, Hero gave a small speech commending them all for their achievements (in particular: Aubrey for a record number of suspensions, Basil for somehow making it to senior year despite barely attending class, and Kel for holding the distinction of being the first varsity basketball player to lose his leg at the end of the season). He then handed them their rolled blank sheets of paper and reminded them there was more to this world than just high school.
They moved their tassels to the left. As he would have done regardless, Basil took a thousand and one pictures of their high school graduation.
Sunny made a point of coming Friday evening, a bouquet of red roses clenched tight in his trembling hand. He sat beside Kel, his normally placid expression shattered into a thousand fragments.
"I get it if you can't forgive me," he said, words measured. "And I understand if you don't want to see me. But, you know I'm selfish. I just needed to talk to you one more time." His voice shook. "I never… thanked you, for saving my life."
Save Sunny's life? It was in danger? Who would want to hurt him? Sunny placed his hand over Kel's, his slim cold fingers wrapping around his bruised wrist. "Remember back then? You knocked on my door, and I came out for the first time in four years. I locked myself away because I felt I didn't deserve friends, or warmth, or happiness."
Two hours was an eternity; four years was no longer comprehensible. Sunny might as well have been sad since the first patch of dry land bloomed up from the ocean floor, since the first plant broke out of the dirt to kiss the sun, since the first sentient creature clamored for the air of this world. How had he survived that way for so long?
"Anyone else would have given up on me—but not you. You never stopped extending your hand."
Asking his friend to come out and play didn't sound like such a big deal, but apparently it was. Sunny tried to hide his tears by pinching the bridge of his nose and spreading his fingers out.
"I would've killed myself, one way or another, if you hadn't knocked on my door. The rest of my life is thanks to you."
Oh, no. After everything that happened, this was what made Kel cry? He kissed Sunny's hand. "Good."
Sunny gaped at him, so damn darling caught off guard. "So, do you… think you could forgive me—someday, sometime?"
"Today!"
He practically melted. "Then no one is as lucky as me." He wrapped his arms around Kel's shoulders, gingerly kissing his cheek. "I love you so much."
Sometimes, knowing was as good as having. This was one of those times.
Hero stood alone with him Saturday night. Once they were settled in for bed, Kel reached out for his hand.
He knew it didn't mean anything dire. Since arriving in hospice, Kel simply insisted on holding someone's hand while he slept.
(Cute—or, at least, as cute as his ball-of-energy, jock of a brother could be.)
Kel closed his eyes.
"It doesn't bother you that things have turned out this way?"
He and Mari were in what remained of The Bone Palace. The lovely ivory castle that was once his safe haven had degraded into a field of ruins. Every so often, another corroded structure would explode and collapse into a powdery heap. Kel supposed it couldn't be helped. "What do you mean?"
"Well, how should I put this?" She absently grabbed the remains of a finger bone, drawing shapes in the dust-covered ground. "When I died, I was so, so angry. Not only over how it happened, but for all the things I would never get to do." She drew a heart, spelling M+H in the center. "I would never go to college, or play professionally, or marry Hero, or have a baby. So much potential, gone in an instant." She sighed. "Maybe I shouldn't be asking this while you're still on Earth..."
"It's okay. Sure, I thought about it, but I can't miss what I never had."
"But doesn't the loss of opportunity bother you?"
"Nah, all that adult stuff never felt real to begin with. What's real are the people in front of me. If anything sucks, it's watching them suffer over what I'm going through. Even now I wish I could tell them to, like… forget about me, you know? Just leave me and move on with your lives."
"Says the boy who's always asking where everyone is."
"Well, duh, I would miss them! But they're wasting their time hanging around a goner like me."
"Interesting." Mari kicked her doodle, destroying it. "Would you still feel that way if, say, Hero was the one who got sick?"
How could she ask him something so horrible? Hero was different. His existence alone made the world a better place.
"And you think yours doesn't?"
"I'm gonna need you to stop reading my mind like that."
"Sorry, it's just too easy!" She looked up at the sky, a case study for abnormal growth. "I promise, there are worse things you can be than loved. You're going to learn there are a lot of lost souls on the Other Side of Life, empty and confused because they feel like their lives didn't mean anything."
"But how do I know if my life meant something?"
"I'm not an authority on it, but to me, it's whether or not you're remembered by the people you knew on Earth. How does the saying go? …you die twice, the second being the last time your name is spoken." Mari winked. "I think we've got at least a few decades left on that front."
Hero woke up the next morning just as the sun was rising.
He went to the bathroom and did what was routine: brushed his teeth, splashed water on his face, shaved off whatever stubble his dull razor would edge off. It was Sunday, his turn to buy dinner. Maybe they could order from that diner two blocks down again? Their meatloaf was pretty good.
Their parents were due to come later that morning, and their friends in the afternoon. Sunny was bringing the photo album, too, which they hadn't parsed through since the weekend he moved away. Hero knew seeing those pictures would be a treat for his brother. Kel loved it when they told him stories about their sweet childhood spent running the streets of Faraway, back when they believed things would always be simple and easy. Theirs had been a friendship of foreheads pressed together, of intertwined fingers, of hushed tones and incredible violence—but even the bitter times were made softer by the haze of nostalgia. Even Hero could look at Mari's pictures and still smell her jasmine perfume.
When he came out of the bathroom, his brother still had his eyes closed. He sunk limp and small into the background like a piece of throw furniture, the sort of thing briefly prized and quickly forgotten.
Kel wasn't breathing.
His lung tumors had made breathing a strenuous activity, the strained rise and fall of his chest noticeable to anyone paying half a mind to him. But now, perhaps for the very first time, his brother was completely still. Hero was also frozen, staring at him wide-eyed from across the room, the grey-blue light filtering in from the morning's overcast softening the contours of Kel's emaciated face.
Kel suddenly took a deep, labored intake of air, chest rising to an unnatural height. As if his heart were trying to escape his body.
Hero crossed the room in big strides, grabbing his brother's hand. Perhaps if he hadn't forced himself into med school, he would have been relieved. But Hero knew what he knew, and Kel was still alive—but he wouldn't be for much longer.
This was it. (This was it?) "It's okay," he said instinctively, using the same tone he'd take when they were kids and his brother's greatest fear was the monster hiding beneath his bed. "There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm here. You're safe."
Death was solitary in nature, but Kel couldn't well leave without someone to see him off. Hero placed his other hand over Kel's heart. His breathing stopped again—the longest thirty seconds of Hero's life—before resuming.
"You fought so hard, and I'm so, so proud of you." He smiled, thinking of how adorably flustered Kel had been the first time he said that, just a few weeks ago. "I love you, and mom and dad love you, and all our friends love you. You made our lives so much better."
And I don't know what I'm going to do without you, but Hero knew better than to leave his brother on that note. Another stop and start.
"Thank you for coming to Earth. Thank you for being my brother."
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
Kel died seven minutes later.
If Hero thought he heard his mother scream before—
His parents arrived half an hour after his death was called. They were all allowed to spend time with him before he was taken down to the morgue.
Their mother cradled Kel's face, kissing it over and over—her baby, her baby. Their father cried openly for the first time since it all began, apologizing for not doing enough, not being enough. Hero only approached when his parents were done, after an aide gently reminded them that they were closing in on three hours with the body.
(The body. Corpse. Kel was a thing now.)
They tied a strip of cloth around his face to keep his mouth from dropping open in rigor mortis.
His hands were already cold.
His hair was as soft as ever. Hero snipped some of it off before his parents arrived, folding it in his wallet.
He looked hard at Kel's face—at a nose that would never again crinkle in laughter, at a mouth that had smiled for the last time. Soon his brother would be underground, where his eyes would pop open and his lips would peel back and his body would bloat and his skin would bloom into a garden of hellish colors. Generations of blind, limbless creatures would happily devour the person he loved above all others.
And that was what rest looked like.
At least one of them was finally free.
Things to do:
Call the funeral home. Check.
Notify the school. Monday, seven sharp.
Let extended family know (those people couldn't be assed to visit Kel when he was sick and dying, but sure, they could make time for a funeral). Check.
Gather the pictures for the corkboard (already set aside, he couldn't bear to look at them now). Check.
Tell—
His phone rang. Sunny. "Hey. We're at the bakery, gonna head up in a sec. Want a coffee or something?"
He didn't respond, words lying dead in his throat.
"Hero? You there?"
He took a deep breath, a heavy sigh that carried over to the other end of the line.
"What's wrong?"
"He's…"
Sunny didn't respond right away. "When did it happen?"
"7:29 AM."
Call ended.
That night Hero laid in bed, listening to his mother's muffled sobbing. It would die down every few minutes only to start up again, stronger than before. (Likely her remembering that her bubbly, energetic son was gone forever, and all that remained of him was an emaciated corpse filled with wayward organs and deformed bones.)
Hero picked out a middle-of-the-road coffin, metal painted woody brown with a cushioned interior. Even as he was paying he thought it was absurd—as if Kel could still see and judge his surroundings, as if he needed to be insulated from harm in case the hearse hit a snag in the road. Still, the plain wooden coffin also felt wrong, like he didn't care enough to put his little brother somewhere nice.
He would be buried at the local cemetery behind the church, at their mother's insistence (she wanted to keep her baby close). Hero chose his spot—on the right near the entrance, beneath the shade of one of the oaks emblematic of Faraway Town. (He always did hate being out in the sun for too long.)
Earlier, Hero transferred Kel's hair to a clear zip bag. It was on his dresser now, the sole thing of importance on the side of the room filled with trophies and awards.
Nine months was the length of a healthy pregnancy. From diagnosis to death, Kel survived just shy of nine months. If Hero were a character in a story, he would flag that as a bit of pretentious symbolism.
It was warm for February. Maybe Kel did the right thing by cutting out early and avoiding the oncoming climate catastrophe. (No, but he—he had many miles to go yet—)
Hero would do anything to cheer on one of Kel's games again, to make him his favorite sandwich, to watch a movie with him or go take a walk in the park. Who was going to kill the spiders now? Who was going to remind the Hooligans to do the right thing? Who was going to talk to Sally like she was a big girl? Who was going to keep him from getting lost on the highway who was going to knock on Sunny's door who was going to fight six thugs at once who was going to unironically like Orange Joe or reread their old comics or beat his Tetris high score or carry Basil's plants in from the car or wake him up from this nightmare Kel had to be allowed to die, didn't he? Hadn't he suffered enough? Or maybe he would still be here if Hero hadn't—did he do this?
Something was wrong. Dread flowed over him in thick waves, his mother's howls of despair compounding his terror. Sally screamed her feed me change me baby screech. His father, as per usual, was gone and useless.
Hero wobbled to his parent's room. His mother laid curled in the center of the bed, beige blanket pulled over her head such that only a tuft of her brown hair was visible. A passing thought: she looked like fly larva. He shambled past her cocoon of misery and lifted Sally out of her crib, world still draining away from him.
He made it three steps out of the room before she slipped out of his grasp. She tumbled shortly but he caught her by the arm, her chubby legs kicking in the air as she continued to scream.
"Stand," he pleaded. She didn't acknowledge him, wet face twisted in anguish. Damnit—her bottles and diapers were in the kitchen. He couldn't trust himself to walk down the stairs alone right now, never mind while carrying her. He didn't have the strength to put her back in her crib, either. Should he just leave her on the floor? … no. Idiot!
"Okay, okay, fine. You win." He slid down to the floor with her, and she hit him again and again for being such a bad brother. FEED ME CHANGE ME!
He hugged her, squeezed her. She struggled in his grasp. Feed me, change me!
Poor dear, trapped in such a shattered-glass family. Feed me? Change me?
After a while of staring off into space, he noticed that she was no longer crying. She'd gone limp in his arms.
"Oh, no." He gently shook her arm. "No, Sally-baby, please wake up, please," he begged. He'd drop dead if he killed both of his siblings on the same day.
She jolted awake, her angry grumbling the loveliest sound in the world. It would be another half hour before he chanced inching down the stairs with her.
They held a viewing before the burial.
Kel was dressed in his nicest suit, the one their mother picked out months back for the graduation he would never attend. The embalming fluid pumped into his body made him look and feel like a doll. After staring at him for a while, Hero also felt less human. Wobbling on legs he could hardly feel, past the corkboard crowded with old pictures of a dead child, he sat down beside his father and stared at the ground.
"He's not in pain anymore," he overheard Basil say, his arms around Aubrey as she cried. He wanted to comfort her, too; he also wanted to crawl down somewhere dark and cold where he could melt away from existence. Remaining where he was, frozen and doll-like, won out.
His mother was a limp mass of black rags who hadn't stopped crying since the morning her son died in his sleep. Her sisters buzzed around her, clucking and cooing like hens. I can't imagine, I can't imagine. My daughter won a math competition, my son is going to Europe this summer. I can't imagine how you feel right now.
Sunny arrived last, his mom trailing close behind. She weaved around his hateful aunts, folding down on her knees so she and his mother were at eye-level. The two women with children destined to love and lose each other spoke so quietly their voices did not rise above the white noise of the parlor. Mari's mom had always been lovely to look at, but grief was ground into her face like earthquake-borne fissures. Looking at her was like staring at an eclipse—but his mother looked anyway. (Who wouldn't want a glimpse into their future?)
Sunny placed his hand on Kel's chest, much as Hero did in the final moments of his life. He said something Hero couldn't make out, and then he smiled, real and unmistakable. Hero was thrown back to that awful moment when he learned the truth, and for a moment he could believe Sunny actually was a sociopath. But that was the sort of reaction his brother would have wanted, right? Hero could kick himself. He should have thrown a party, not this sad mess.
Throughout the viewing came a steady stream of people to offer their condolences. Their words were standard, expected—except for Basil. He had a request.
"I'm planning this… thing," he said quietly. "Can I have some of Kel's old pictures? I promise I'll give them back."
He nodded, still staring at the ground. Take them all, he wanted to say. Keep them forever. It would be an act of mercy.
His mother couldn't bring herself to attend the burial.
Hero wished he had followed her lead. He wished he'd known his limit. Seeing his brother slowly swallowed into the Earth brought the world up close again. It was too real.
It was a weekday. His brother should have been in school, wrapping up his senior year and making plans for the summer. It was basketball season, he should have been helping carry Faraway High's team to victory. He should have been in the middle of some half-baked daydream about the future—not here, his future ripped away not only from him but all of them.
Hero staggered off, vision shaking with each step. He needed to get out of here.
A hand briefly caught his sleeve. "Hero?"
"I'm fine," he hissed beneath his breath. Since when had Sunny become so proactive?
He only meant to find a nice tree to throw up under, but he continued on, out the cemetery and through the church and all the way home where he could just—
"When's the memorial supposed to be?" Aubrey asked a week after Kel's funeral.
They were at Basil's, sorting through his pictures. Sunny shrugged. "I have no idea. Why?"
"Kim thought it'd be a cool idea to hold, like, a party to celebrate Kel's life. But we don't wanna step on any toes."
"Why don't you call Hero and ask?"
"He isn't picking up his phone. I don't even think he's left the house since we last saw him."
Sunny paused in his sorting, staring blankly at a picture where Kel still had both his legs. "That's not good," he mumbled.
"I… I don't think it'll be like before." Even as she said it, she didn't sound sure. "He knows Kel wouldn't want him to lock himself away. Besides, it's only been a week."
And a week became a month, a month into a year, and a year into four. "We should go get him."
"They're still mourning, isn't that rude?"
Sunny got up. "I am rude."
"You—what the hell are you doing? You wanna go now?"
"Yeah. Bring the thing, too—we're basically done with it." He pounded his fist once on the bathroom door. "Basil! We're gonna go save Hero, wanna come?"
"Y-yeah! Just give me a sec!"
"Hurry up."
There hard pounding on his bedroom door. "Hero? Can we come in?"
It'd been a week—Sunny should have already gone back to Harrisburg. Hero coiled tighter in Kel's basketball-printed sheets, staring blankly at his drab side of the room. (He couldn't well sleep in his own bed and risk catching a glimpse of Kel's basketball hoop, or his fandom collectables, or his stack of video games left unbeaten. The ghost hanging above him, left side rendered to bone, was far preferable.)
The doorknob turned and opened a crack. If he had even an ounce more energy he would have shouted at them to leave; instead, he pulled the covers over his head and hoped his little friends would get the message.
"Maybe he's sleeping," he heard Basil whisper.
"Too early to sleep." Someone—Sunny, probably—flipped on the lights. He walked up and pulled the covers back.
For four years Hero had the decency to let Sunny fester in complete isolation, but he couldn't even be spared a week. Story of his life.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Aubrey wants to ask you something."
"C'mon asshole, don't say it like that." She came up to him, eyes drooping. So, she hadn't been able to sleep either. "My friends wanted to throw a party. To celebrate Kel's life, and stuff. Is that okay?"
That was all? Hero turned away from them. "Do whatever you want."
"Cool, cool. We just didn't want to, uh, schedule it over the memorial you were planning."
"That can be the memorial."
"Okay, if that's what you want."
He thought they would leave after that, forgetting for a moment the stubborn children that they were. "Do you need anything else?"
Basil inched towards him. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Oh." A pause. "Well, uh, we don't wanna interrupt your nap or anything—"
"Yes we do," Sunny interrupted.
"Stop it." It was rare for Basil to snap at any of them, least of all Sunny. "Hero has to process this in his own way. Just…" there was some shuffling, "before we go, can we give this to you? We've been preparing it for the past few days. We'd like you to have it."
Hero peered over his shoulder at them. In Basil's outstretched hand was an orange book.
The cover was covered in stickers of basketballs and dogs and food. On the front, in embossed bubble lettering, was the title: Kel's Life.
Hero knew what it was. He knew what it was, but his heart still dropped when he opened it and the first picture was himself at three years old, standing beside his pregnant mother. He had his forehead pressed against her tummy, grinning at what was inside.
He turned the page. The next one was of Kel newly born, tiny and soft, sleeping in his father's arms. He'd been so small for a full-term baby. Hero was there as well, hands over his face as if he could barely contain his excitement.
Beside it was Kel when he was two, pointing at his emerging baby teeth—he hadn't cried much over them, brave even back then. Then several shots of their first picnic together as a family, crowding around their blue basket, the very image of idyllic suburbia.
On the next page was Kel on his first day of pre-school, him and Hero walking hand-in-hand with their matching Spaceboy lunchboxes. Him and Sunny during art time in kindergarten, with a note beside it in Sunny's handwriting: I was painting a kitty I saw at the park, and Kel was drawing the dino he wanted to be when he grew up. I thought he was SUPER weird, so of course I wanted to be close to him.
As a child, Kel liked to joke that he knew who his real friends were by whether they came to Hero's dead-of-winter birthday parties; Mari and Sunny certainly fit the bill, and there was a picture of the four of them going to the movies to celebrate his twelfth. Next to that was a shot of them building a snowman together, and another of Kel in motion running through rain. That Christmas they were given a joint gift, their first video game counsel; they made a game of outdoing each other's high scores.
They met Aubrey and Basil in middle school, and here came photos Sunny donated from the original album—their beach day, hanging out in the treehouse, making flower crowns, getting caught in the rain.
And then what happened happened, and it was just Kel for a while. His middle school graduation, frozen grin doing little to hide how deeply he was still grieving. Kel and their mother at the ice cream parlor, his red-rimmed eyes telling Hero exactly why she was treating him. His first Halloween trick-or-treating alone, dressed as a t-rex wearing his favorite basketball player's jersey. At the park practicing his dribbling alone, with the basketball Hero had given him the Christmas before.
(Hero didn't like these pictures, but they had to be here. This was Kel's life.)
Hero re-entered the album somewhere in the middle of Kel's freshman year, and that summer they went to a water park, a rarity given how their parents often over-planned themselves into inaction. A shot of Hero at Kel's first high school basketball game, and another of the team's official portrait. They both accompanied their mother to her first ultrasound, where they marveled at the peanut-shaped entity growing inside her. Sally was born six weeks early, and they'd all been so worried for her, trapped in her little box in the NICU. The day she came home had been one of the happiest of Hero's life, and Kel's too—it showed clearly in the way he looked at her as he cradled her on the couch.
There were pictures of them visiting Basil while he recovered from his concussion. Sunny came to visit a few weeks after moving, and Kel welcomed him back wearing a pirate costume (supposedly so Sunny wouldn't feel out of place with his temporary eyepatch, but they all figured he just wanted an excuse to dress up). That Halloween he went trick or treating with Aubrey and her Hooligans, the lot of them going as a gaggle of sea witches. For his seventeenth birthday, they all threw him a surprise party at Gino's. And then… and then… and then and then and then—
A picture of Kel in his crutches, unaware that he'd be losing that leg by the end of the summer. Him at his first chemo session giving a thumbs up, hoping the camera wouldn't capture his terror. Kel gaunt and hairless, confined to the wheelchair they all hated. His eighteenth birthday, where he needed Sally's help to blow out the candles.
"I can take those out if you want," Basil offered.
Hero shook his head. This was Kel's life. He turned the page and there was the picnic where he cracked his tooth. In the lake after sunset, staring up at the stars. Christmas—they bought him a new phone. Him, Basil and Sunny taking a selfie in the backseat of Hero's car when he drove them all to the movies. Sunny napping, using Kel's right knee as a pillow. His first night in the ICU, knocked out with that horrible tube rammed down his throat.
The final page. Kel in his bigger, nicer room in hospice. Basil reading him all the cards and letters sent to him by his friends around Faraway and Senema. The giant postcard his team sent. Their rowdy 'graduation'. Their final picture together, the one his mother took of the four of them huddled around Kel. Even teetering on the precipice of death, he still managed to smile. Sweet and optimistic and selfless to the end.
And now his brother was gone his little brother was gone Kel was gone—
Hero took a deep, shuddering breath, and folded in on himself. He released the wretched wail he'd kept clenched tight like a fist within him. His friends were surrounding him now, hugging him, holding him steady. Surely, this couldn't be right—he was supposed to be the strong one, wasn't he? The one who kept it together? The eldest? But he couldn't stop sobbing, and Aubrey was rubbing his back, and Basil was wiping his tears with the back of his sleeve, and Sunny reminded him there was no use denying his feelings.
"You're allowed to never get over it. You're allowed to miss him forever and ever. I know I'm going to."
The girls threw Kel his party three months after the funeral, at their old hangout spot in the park.
They had all his favorite foods, pizza and sandwiches and pistachio ice cream. Balloons in his favorite colors. Dance music using Charlie's most powerful speakers.
The wound was still raw enough that the party had a slow start, but soon the guests they'd invited across Faraway and Senema were laughing and dancing and socializing and devouring all the food. Hero baked the cake—round with three tiers, decorated like a basketball. It was a huge hit.
He still thought about Kel every day.
They all did. His mother still cried for him when she thought no one was around to hear. When they finally took to cleaning Kel's half of the room, his father wouldn't let him throw anything away. His things were in their basement now, and the gang had asked to go down there more than once to reminisce. The last time they all gathered, Sunny admitted he still dreamt of Kel almost every night.
Hero understood. He did, too.
Basil took lots of pictures of the party, the nicest of which would be going into Kel's Life. The album was in his parent's bedroom; they needed it within arm's length, while Hero hadn't looked at it since that first night. It was too painful. Maybe he'd try again when Sally was a bit older and it was time to re-introduce her to her other sibling.
He already felt sorry for her. Having was better than knowing.
It was such a loss. They all lost. But an outsider never would have been able to guess by the looks of their party.
As Kel would have wanted. To carry on.
