One day he asked his social worker, Georgia, for the ketchup, only because he didn’t have any, not because of any dire need. But she’d smiled at him so wide that he thought maybe he should try talking more. At least with her.
And he did.
He still spent much of his life mute. It was easier. If you didn’t speak, people left you alone. Yeah, they thought he was weird, and it probably didn’t help that he was the son of that guy who had murdered his wife. It definitely didn’t help that he was so big. But it didn’t matter. He had nothing to say to anyone.
That changed one day. He was outside, wandering the neighborhood of his current foster home. He didn’t think that i
t was anything more than it was. Patty and Bert were good, as far as fosters went, but they were fosters, and he thought Bert did it for the money. But they didn’t raise hand or voice to him, and they were just fine without him talking, so it was as good as it’d been.
But everything changed.
Because of Helmholtz Watson. And the little boy with all the words. The little boy demanding friendship and promising books about brave new worlds and a brother named Bear and a partner named Otter in a place known as the Green Monstrosity.
And for the first time since his mother had been covered in paint on the floor, he found himself curious. He found himself talking. He found himself answering questions.
He found himself hopeful.
And it grew. It grew and grew until he had a family once again, and one day, he sat in an audience and watched the boy who had become his brother announce to the world that he was gay and proud to be, and didn’t it start then? Didn’t something tickle in the back of his mind as his jaw dropped, as he heard his family around him gasp? Didn’t he think it was inevitable? That from the beginning, it was all so inevitable?
He did. Though what was inevitable he pushed away because it wasn’t something someone his age should be thinking about someone else so very young.
Then there was a party. To say good-bye. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life. Every part of him wanted to scream, Stay, please stay, don’t ever leave me, but that wasn’t fair. That wasn’t who he was. But he thought it.
He thought it with his whole heart.
I LOOK away and out the window into the dark as he clears his throat and sighs. “I remember it,” I tell him. “The party.” The smile he gave her. That pretty little laugh of hers. His hand in her hair. I know it’s not the same, but it’s all jumbled in my head. I can’t think straight.
“That’s when I knew for sure.”
“Knew what?”
“This. You and me. That’s when I knew you were more than my brother.”
“How?” I ask weakly.
“The look you gave me,” he says quietly. He sounds so sad. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone look at me like that before. That anger. That betrayal. You were fifteen years old and so impossibly young, but the look you gave me was the same look you got when you talked about your mother. The look someone your age should never have. Of seeing something that so completely breaks your heart that you don’t know if you can ever put it back together again. Or if it’s even possible. You looked at me that way, and I understood so much more than I’d ever thought.”
“I couldn’t breathe,” I tell him quietly. “I thought I was breaking.”
“I know,” he says.
“It wasn’t fair.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It wasn’t fair that I did that to you. I was just some kid—hell, the Kid—nursing a crush. I was hurt and this stupid thing wouldn’t let me breathe. This stupid thing in my head, and then the earthquake hit, and I couldn’t breathe and I had to run. I didn’t know it then, not completely, but I had to run. I wanted you to ask me to stay, and what happened convinced me to go.”
The rest stop is ahead. He signals and pulls in. Semitrucks, dark and hulking, line the parking spots. He parks away from them all and turns off the car. The only other sound I hear is the thunderous beat of my heart.
“I never wanted you to leave,” he rumbles at me. “I wanted for you to stay so bad.”
“But you knew I had to go.”
He nods. “There would have been nothing for you here.”
“Except for you. I would have stayed for you.”
He looks pained. “That wasn’t a good enough reason. You deserved more. You still do.”