1 Year and 7 Months Ago
It's exactly 4 pm, five minutes after the Mitchells arrive home from Jurassic World. Zach immediately abandons his family and rushes up to his room, slamming the door behind him.
Gray does the same and sinks down to his knees in the middle of his bedroom, tears rolling down his cheeks. He raises his face from his chest and slowly gazes around his room. His eyes widen.
Dinosaurs. Everywhere. Bobble heads. Posters. Books.
He jumps up and grabs ahold of the corners of two posters, each presenting the bones and muscles of a T-Rex. He quickly rips them off and moves around his room until there is a mess of crumpled papers littering his floor. Gray snatches up each and every book and throws them all into a box, tightly concealing the sides with black duct tape. Once those are disposed of, he grasps the four bobble heads and tosses them into another box. And finally, he stares at the huge Lego scale model of a pterodactyl.
He had built it just the day before they left. He was so proud of it, so satisfied. But now, he gapes at it, debating whether or not to get rid of it.
Finally, Gray makes his decision. He carefully lifts it up and examines the detail of every little block. Before he knows what he's doing, he chucks it across his almost bare room.
It crashes into the wall—making a huge sort of racket—and falls to the ground, no longer a model of a dinosaur, but the mere remains of one. The pieces spill to the floor and embed themselves in the carpet, nearly out of sight.
Karen and Scott hear the commotion and quickly dash up to Gray's room. They find him curled up in a ball, just about buried beneath the many layers of clutter. "Oh my goodness, honey! Are you okay?" Karen rushes over to him and gently cradles his face in her hands.
"Get it out," is all Gray manages to whisper as Karen glances up to Scott.
"Go grab the trash bags," she breathes, "Quickly."
As Scott walks out to grab the bags, Zach pokes his head in the doorway. He examines the scene; everything, all the way down to his little brother sitting in the middle of the room, paralyzed with fear. "Gray," Zach inhales faintly. "Is he okay?" he asks, looking at Karen; the question is more directed toward her.
"No. No, Zach," she cries almost incoherently, "He's not okay." She nearly breaks down herself as she cradles her youngest son in her lap. "He's not okay at all."
Scott returns with the trash bags and begins to pluck the tiny Lego pieces out of the carpet strings. "Hey, Karen? Can you help me?" He nods towards the seemingly endless pile of blocks on the floor.
Karen gazes down at Gray, then back up at Scott, who stares at her earnestly. "Zach? Will you take your brother? Get him out of here, please. Distract him."
Zach pulls his hands out of his pockets and kneels down next to Karen, who gently passes Gray over to him. He brushes the sweat-matted sandy blonde bangs off Gray's forehead and raises up, his little brother's head resting lightly on his shoulder. "Let's get you out of here," he mumbles softly as he carries him towards his own room.
Zach carefully lays Gray down on his bed and helps him sit up. "Hey, look. I know you're upset and you probably want to just go to bed, but you can't be comfortable in those old clothes." He points to Gray's hoodie that's caked with mud, dirt, and blood that had rubbed off of his skin when he failed to take a shower on the ferry. "Stay here," he instructs as he raises up and walks to his brother's room. He slips past his parents and begins to open Gray's drawers.
He doesn't do his laundry—or even his own—so he doesn't know where his pajamas would be. He opens drawer after drawer after drawer, only to find each one empty. Finally, he discovers one that contains ratty large shirts and flannel pants. He shrugs carelessly and grabs a white shirt and a navy blue pair of sweatpants.
Zach quietly shuts the drawer and, once again, slips past his parents into his room. He closes his bedroom door behind him and finds Gray sound asleep on his bed. "No. No, Gray, buddy. Wake up." He shakes him. No response. "Gray! Hey! Wake up!" he exclaims anxiously, patting his brother on the shoulder until he groans and groggily rubs his eyes. "I know you're tired but let's get you out of those clothes."
Gray slowly sits up and loosens the drawstrings around his neck, and Zach helps him pull it off. He raises his arms up as his older brother slides the freshly cleaned shirt over his head. He shakily stands and tugs his denim jeans off, dropping them on the floor.
Zach holds the sweats open, and Gray steps his shivering legs into each of the openings. He pulls the pants up, and the elastic clings tightly onto Gray's pelvis. After, he slowly helps his brother lie back down and covers him up with a heavy blanket. Gray instantly melts into the mattress, his dirty hair falling back over his eyes.
A tiny smile tugs at the corners of Zach's mouth as he grabs his own pajamas and quickly rips his clothes off, slipping into the comfortable PJs. He walks out into the hall and pauses in Gray's doorway. "Hey, Mom, Dad. Gray's already asleep, but if you need anything, I'll be in my room. Probably sleeping also."
Both Karen and Scott nod as he turns back around and trudges in his own room, being sure to shut the door behind him. He silently falls face first into his bed and pulls the sheets up to his chin, instantly sinking into the foam-like topper his parents put on it for him. "Sleep well, Gray," he whispers softly.
Gray slightly stirs, his hands tucked away under his own body. Zach slings his arm over Gray and pulls him closer, gently stroking his back. And soon, he joins his brother in a much-needed deep sleep as his parents continue to dispose of anything dinosaur related in Gray's room—and the whole house for that matter.
A few hours later, Zach wakes up to find Gray gone. He instantly soars into panic mode as he jumps up and softly calls his name out, his mind throwing every possible worst-case scenario at him. "Gray? Gray? Gray, are you in here?"
"Zach?" Gray stands in the doorway. "Are you calling my name?"
Zach sighs softly in relief. "Yeah. Yeah, I was. I didn't know where you were, and it started to worry me." He slowly walks around the bed and plops down on the edge of it, the springs creaking restlessly. "Why'd you get up? Did something happen?"
Gray shakes his head. "No. I just wanted to see if Mom and Dad were done getting rid of all my...stuff."
"Oh," Zach replies flatly, gazing down towards the floor. He looks back up to Gray. "So, have they? Gotten rid of it all?"
"No. I don't think so," he starts unsurely. "But I didn't really stay long enough to tell. I couldn't look at it too long before- Well- Y'know."
"Yeah." Zach nods his head and places his hand on Gray's shoulder. "I know, Gray. So what made you get up? Did you have like a nightmare? Or did you just wake up and start wondering about your stuff?"
"I don't know. It was kind've a mix of both, I guess," Gray sniffs quietly, staring down to the ground.
"Whaddya mean? What happened?"
"Well, it was kinda weird. I was like in this, I don't know, in-between state. I was awake but still asleep at the same time," he starts, voice trembling. "I was awake enough to control what I was doing in the dream, and I still made the stupidest mistakes. Finally, I just woke up."
"You just woke up?" Zach asks reproachfully. "That's it? Do you even remember what the dream was about?"
Gray shakes his head. "Nope. I woke up in a panic, searched around your room for a while—I'm not quite sure what I was looking for—and then I just went out in the hallway to check on my stuff. After I calmed down, it was as if nothing ever even happened."
"Huh," Zach replies flatly. "Strange."
There's a long-gated moment of awkward silence.
"Soooo," Gray starts nervously. "What now?"
"I don't know. What do you wanna do now?" Zach asks curiously, staring back at Gray.
He shrugs. "I dunno. I guess I'll go check on Mom and Dad again."
"Alright, I'll go with you," Zach says quietly as he raises up, following Gray out the bedroom door and across the hall. They pause in the doorway as Zach quickly slaps his hand over his mouth.
"What's wrong?" Gray gazes up at him with a perplexed expression.
"It's so- so empty," Zach laments softly, his eyes slowly widening with every bare wall. And it's now that the oldest son realizes just how different things are going to be from now on. How different his little brother is. How different he himself is.
"Yeah, I know. All that's left is my diagram of the solar system and its annual rotations," Gray replies flatly as he walks over to a medium sized blackboard with all nine planets on it—eight if you don't count Pluto.
Zach nods slowly and follows Gray into the almost bare room. The walls no longer seem to pop out with random splashes of bright colors or ridiculous amounts of posters lining the light brown trim. "It's weird."
Gray turns around, his brow furrowed. "Do you not like it? I knew they should've left Pluto off. It's technically a dwarf planet. I tried to tell Mom that when she bought it, but-"
"No. Not the diagram. Your room. It's so...weird," Zach cuts Gray off once he starts to go on one of his debatably obnoxious rambles.
"Oh." Gray gazes down slowly. "I know. I don't exactly care for dinosaurs much anymore."
Zach feels a choked sob rise up his throat. His brother is so different. It makes him wonder how much different he, as the older child, is. "You don't like them at all?"
Gray simply shrugs. "I- I don't know. Not really."
"So what animal are you going to move onto loving now?" Zach asks curiously as he plops down on Gray's completely stripped bed.
"I don't know that either. Maybe I just won't love anything for a while," Gray replies softly, anxiously twirling his foot around in the cream-colored carpet.
"What about me?" Zach sheepishly grins as he stares at Gray, who—despite the fact that it's a joke—takes it very seriously.
"Okay, I'll love one thing."
"What about Mom and Dad?"
"Three things."
"What about yourself?"
Gray gazes down slowly. "Still three things. It's kind've my fault. All of this. We wouldn't even have gone to that island if I-"
"Hey, stop," Zach says firmly, placing one of his hands on Gray's shoulder and the other in the small of his back. "I don't wanna ever hear you beat yourself up for something like this again. Got it? It wasn't your fault."
Gray glances up at him. "How can I believe you?"
Zach hesitates momentarily. "Well, I s'pose you don't have to. But you should. Because trust me when I say this, it would've happened whether we were there or not. It had absolutely nothing to do with us, Gray. In fact, we didn't even know that animal existed—let alone that it got loose— until we were put face to face with it."
"Yeah," Gray sighs softly. "But we wouldn't have been put face to face with it if I wouldn't have wanted to go there so bad."
Zach's eyes fall to the floor in disappointment. "Gray, look. I've already told you all I can. And, you still don't believe me. What else am I supposed to say? It's not your fault, okay? That's it. Final. Nothing is on you here."
Gray slightly leans into Zach's side, and the 16-year-old grins. "Zach?"
"Mm-hmm?"
"We're gonna be okay, right? We're gonna live through this? And everything's going to go back to normal?"
Zach hesitates momentarily. He wants to say yes. He wants to say yes so bad. But he can't. He can't lie to his brother like that. Gray's too smart to believe any of that rainbow and unicorn bullshit. "I- uh- I dunno, Gray. I dunno."
Gray's lips part from a fine line as he prepares to speak, but, before he can get a single word out of his mouth, Karen stands at the bottom of the stairwell, calling his name.
"Gray! Someone's here to see you!" she shouts anxiously as Gray's gaze darts restlessly between Zach and his partially closed bedroom door.
Zach shrugs carelessly, watching his younger brother dart out into the hall and down the stairs. He listens intently in an attempt to decipher whose voice he is hearing, but it doesn't take long for him to figure out when Gray yells, "Dakota!". A small grin spreads across the 16-year-old's face as he slowly trudges down each step to catch sight of Gray in a tight embrace with the girl—his best friend. And it's now that he realizes, no matter how much their parents fade away from their lives, his little brother will always have two people to fall back on. He and Dakota, his lifelines.
