“Kid, stop upsetting your brother,” Otter warns. “Bear, calm down. Corey, you….”
“Yes, Oliver?” Corey asks, batting his eyelashes.
“You stay classy,” Otter says with a wink.
Corey sighs dreamily.
“Gross,” Bear and I say at the same time.
“Now go away, both of you,” Corey says to the front seat. “We’re gossiping.” He leans his head toward mine. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“What?”
“Are you excited about being home? You’ve never come back before. Even when Derrick and Oliver made trips back, you always stayed in New Hampshire. Surely you’ve missed this place.”
It’s inevitable, a voice whispers in my head.
“I guess,” I say.
“I would think something called the Green Monstrosity beckons constantly. I know it would to me. You should know I am expecting something grotesquely palatial.”
“Boy, are you going to be disappointed, then. It’s nothing grand.” That’s a lie, though I don’t know why I say that. I’ve missed that house more than a person should probably miss a house. It’s weird. “It’s not too bad.”
Not too bad? it echoes. It’s where you met D—
No. Not that name. That name stays far away from me.
Oh? it whispers. Because actively not thinking about something always works. Say it. Say his name.
I push it away.
“It’s… quaint,” Corey says as we pass by houses along the beach. “It’s not Tucson, that’s for sure.”
“I’m pretty sure there are a few differences where we grew up,” I say dryly.
He flashes that liquid smile at me. It’s cunning, like he knows something I don’t. “Undoubtedly. There’s nothing else?”
“What else could there be?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Something. Anything.”
“No.”
He nods and looks back out the window. “I’ll miss you, you know. When I’m gone.” He reaches across the seat and takes hold of my hand. Our fingers intertwine, and it’s familiar. It’s comforting. It’s almost like home.
Almost.
“It won’t be for forever,” I tell him. “You know it won’t. You’ll come see me, and I’ll come visit you, and the next four years will go by so fast until we’re side by side every day again… I’ll work for the Environmental Protection Agency as a toxicologist or whatever else I decide to do. You’ll be an overworked victim’s rights activist. Then I’ll become a billionaire and I’ll buy PETA and make it not crazy again. And then we’ll get a house. You and me. You’ll become a lady of leisure, and I’ll stop the whaling ships along the coast of Japan. Those savages.”
“All that, huh?”
“All that.” It’ll happen. I know it will because I can do it all. I’ve got everything in front of me here. My entire fucking life. I just have to get through this summer, and then real life can begin and I can pick up the pieces and become who I’m supposed to be. It’s that easy. It has to be.
He squeezes my hand. “I’m going to hold you to that, Thompson.”
“I promise.” I allow myself a moment of weakness and pull his hand up to my lips and kiss it gently. He squeezes my hand in acknowledgement, but nothing more.
I turn back to the window. I shouldn’t have come back here, I think. Should have stayed in New Hampshire…. I don’t know why I said yes.
Sure you do, it says, voice full of cheer. You aren’t that stupid.
Go away. Just… go away.
It laughs.
Soon, we pass a familiar sign:
WELCOME TO SEAFARE!
“I’m home,” I whisper to the rain.
IT HITS a few minutes later. Not quite panic. Not quite suffocation. I almost can’t name it, but as we drive farther and farther into Seafare, it becomes more palpable.
It’s queer, really. It’s a sensation that I can only describe as doubling. In the four years I’ve been gone, Seafare has expanded drastically. What were once empty, lonely stretches of beach are now brightly lit shops selling glued-together seashells, ice cream, and postcards. Gas stations. A CVS on almost every corner. Starbucks on almost every corner. A Walmart.
There are people everywhere, even in the rain. They walk on what is ostensibly now a boardwalk. Some have umbrellas. Others have parkas. Some don’t seem to care at all. They walk their dogs. They ride their rental bikes. They eat their food under gaudy awnings. It’s alive and vibrant and garish.
This isn’t the Seafare I remember. But then I’m not the same person who left all those years before. I’m worn and battle-weary. Shit happens. Things change. I know that now more than ever.
Otter must sense something off with me. “Revitalization project,” he says. “Bunch of taxpayer money funneled into restoring the tourist traps.”
“It looks so fake,” I mutter. Because it does. It’s all flash but no substance, all lights and fake smiles and shiny, happy people who want nothing more than to be out in the rain.
We move through the town toward the Green Monstrosity. I start to see familiar sights, things that pull my heart in a billion different directions, warring with the fact that I hate it. That I love it. That this is my home. That this place is a stranger to me.
Here’s the high school I graduated from, only a few years before, complete with a new building sprouting up near the football field.
Here’s the street I’d walk down almost every day off the bus.
Here’s the library that had become my shelter in my teen years when I realized that I was so very different than everyone else, and not necessarily in a good way.
And then. Oh, and then comes the memories, those damn memories that choke me, that throttle me. Here we are! they shout at me. This is your life, Tyson Thompson, Tyson McKenna that was. The Kid. Here’s your Greatest Hits all the way to your Greatest Shits. Because weren’t some of these things just awful? Aren’t they just terrible? Surprise! We’ve been waiting for you all this time.
Here’s the store where my brother worked to keep our heads above water.
Here’s the hospital where I lost Mrs. P, and almost lost Otter.
Here’s the cemetery where her marker lies next to her husband, the woman taken from me so unfairly. Her body lies as dust in the ocean. I’m sorry, I think as we pass. I’m so fucking sorry.
And here. Here. The apartments. Those fucking apartments. Those shabby brick apartments with cracked gutters and rusty metal stairs. With shitty cars in the parking lot. With people who look like they’re barely scraping by. Barely living. Barely breathing. We drive by them, and I swear time slows and almost stops, and my breathing must be heavy because Corey squeezes my hand and murmurs something quietly to me that I can’t quite make out. This fucking place. This horrible fucking place.
“It’s not us anymore,” Bear says. I look up at him. He’s staring at the apartments through the window. There’s an expression on his face that I can’t quite make out. It almost looks like fear. And hatred. “You know? Whatever we were, whatever it was to us, it’s not us anymore.” His voice is low and his words only for me.
I say nothing because all I can think about is hearing someone knock on the front door to that apartment. All I can hear is Mrs. Paquinn cackling at something on the TV. All I can do is jump up and say, I’ll get it, I’ll get it, I’ll get it, thinking all the while that maybe Bear’s come home early, or maybe it’s Otter coming over to hey, and I’ll reply with hey, yourself, because isn’t that what we do? Isn’t that who we are?
I open that door. I open that fucking door and it’s not Bear. It’s not Otter. It’s not Creed or Anna or even Dom (He wasn’t there then, I think wildly. He wasn’t even alive to me yet). No. It’s a woman, a woman standing there with a strange little smile that’s not quite a smile. Cheap dress. Cheap shoes. Tired hair and face and eyes. She is beaten, she is broken, but that smile that is not quite a smile widens and she says, Hi, baby. Hi, darling. Hi, Tyso
n. It’s me. It’s your mommy. I’m home. I’ve come back. How are you? Look how big you are! I’ve missed you.
I stare at her. For so fucking long. And all I can think is Bear, Bear, Bear, but he’s not here. He’s not here, and this is my life, my Greatest Hits, my Greatest Shits. And then? Oh, and then? I run. I run from her so quickly. I run and hide and don’t stop shaking until my brother holds me in his arms, until I know that she is nothing but a ghost from the past rising up and rearing her head because everything had been fine. Everything had been swell.
“Fuck you,” I whisper to those apartments even as my throat constricts. “Fuck you.”
We stop at a light. A Seafare Police Department cruiser pulls up next to us. It’s going to be him, I think. It’s going to be him, and he’ll see me and I will split in half. I’ll just fucking break. I hang my head as my breath rattles around in my throat.
Welcome home, Kid, it chuckles. Sure, you ran away once. But we all knew you’d come back eventually. Welcome the fuck home.
It’s not him. It doesn’t even look like him.
“Ty?” Corey asks me worriedly. “Tyson?”
“Stop,” I croak, though I should be so far beyond this. It’s not fucking fair. “Stop.”
“Kid?” Otter asks.
“Stop the car. Please.”
“Pull over,” Bear says. “Now.” He reaches back and squeezes my knee. “Breathe,” he tells me. “Just breathe. You got this, Kid. You know this. In and out. In and out.”
“I can’t,” I tell him. “It hurts.”
I claw at the door as soon as the car stops. I open it and am hit with a wave of sea air, salty and sharp. The rain has lessened—now more mist than anything else. But I can’t see, it’s like I’m blind. I push away from the car, and the only thing I hear aside from the ocean is Bear saying, “Stay here,” and then he’s lost to the waves.
No. I am not like this. I am better than this. I am more than this.
Panic disorder, it says, sounding eerily like Eddie, my former therapist. An anxiety disorder characterized by recurring severe panic attacks. In other words, you’re fucking crazy.
I stumble down a hill, clumps of sand sticking to my pants. Wind blows through the sea grass, a sound so familiar from my childhood that I almost scream.
I am better than this.
Think, Tyson. Think. You know this.
I can’t.
You can.
No. There’s an earthquake.
There is no earthquake.
The ocean. It’s here. It’s angry.
It’s not.
It is. It is.
It’s not. It’s calm. The tide is out. The waves are low. The saltwater brushes against your feet. Everything is right. The ground does not move.
It will shift apart. It will pull me down.
No, it won’t. It tugs on your toes, that’s it. You take in a deep breath. What do you smell?
Salt. Seaweed. Brine.
What do you hear?
Rain. Birds. Fucking seagulls.
That’s right. Fucking seagulls. What do you feel?
Rain. Sand. Water.
And me. Do you feel me?
“Yes,” I whisper. “Your arm.”
“Where?” Bear asks, his voice breaking through the haze.
“On my shoulder.”
“Because I’m here.”
“Yeah.”
“What do we do?”
“Breathe.”
“Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah.”
“Do it, then.”
I do. I take in a breath and my throat whistles and my lungs fill with Seafare, Oregon, a smell I promised myself I would never experience again. My lungs fill, and it’s like muscle memory. I can taste the air on my tongue, and all I remember is Bear, Bear, Bear, and Kid, Kid, Kid. I’m not the Kid anymore, though Bear and Otter still call me that. I’m beyond that. I’m Tyson. I’m Ty. I’m not some fucking Kid anymore.
It’s this place. It’s Seafare. The ocean.
My throat opens slightly, and I’m able to suck in a deeper breath.
“Good,” Bear says. “Hold it.”
I do.
“Let it out.”
I do.”
“Again.”
I do.
Eventually, my vision clears. I’m not surprised to see the stretch of beach we’re standing on is the one where Bear and Otter were married, where Mrs. P’s ashes were spread.
“S-she was thrown,” I say. “R-remember? Back into our f-f-faces.” I’m really cold.
“I remember,” Bear said. “Her last bit of fun, I think.”
“You think so? Y-you think that was her?”
Bear sighs. “I do. I don’t know why, but it just seems like something Mrs. Paquinn would have done, you know? To tell us to not be so sad over her.”
“Yeah.”
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not… I’m not right. You know.”
His arm tightens around my shoulder. “You’re more right than you could possibly know, Ty.”
“I thought I was over this.”
“It has been a while, huh?”
“Months. At least.” That he knows of.
“It’s a lot, I know.”
“What?”
“Coming back here. For all the shit we’ve been through, I know it’s a lot.”
“I didn’t think it’d hit me this hard.”
“We can leave,” he says. “Say the word, Kid. Say the word and we get back in that car and I swear to you that you’ll never have to come here for as long as you live.”
I’m embarrassed now. God, what he’s had to put up with. On top of everything else he’s gone through. The late nights spent in the bathtub all the way up until only a couple of years ago. The behavior and cognitive therapy, which led to the diagnosis. Followed by the antidepressants that I didn’t want nor thought I needed and that only ended up making things worse. The antianxiety drugs that made me a drone. Benzodiazepines that I began to crave. The craving that turned into something so much more. All of which I finally dropped because I am Tyson Fucking Thompson. I have an IQ of 158. I became a member of MENSA at the age of thirteen. I graduated high school at fifteen. I don’t need this. I am not fucking crazy. I am better. I am bigger. I am stronger.
“No,” I say, trying to steady my voice. “No. I wanted to come back. I told you I did. I can do this. It was just… overwhelming.”
“Ty….”
“Bear.”
“You’ll tell me if it gets worse.” It’s not said as a request.
“Even if I don’t, you always know,” I mutter.
“Damn fucking right I do. I’ll be damned if I’ll let you slide backward, Kid. You need something, you ask me. You got me?”
“I got you.” Only because there’s no other choice.
“And you can stop now.”
“Stop what?” Even though we both know what he’s talking about.
“Thinking about if it’s going to hit again. It might. It might not. If it does, we’ll face it.”
Anticipatory attacks. A big part of panic disorder. After a panic attack, there’s times when my thoughts are completely occupied with when the next attack will hit. Sometimes, it goes on. And on. For days.
“Sometimes I think you know me way too well,” I tell him.
He laughs quietly. “You could say that. You need to talk to someone?”
“More therapy?” I groan. “I’m not crazy, Bear.”
“No one ever said you were. It might help. It helped me, you know.”
“That’s because you were crazy,” I assure him.
He waits.
I give in. Sort of. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Eddie’s still here.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, because that’s a good idea.”
“He’s family.”
“We’re so weird.”
“That we are,” he agrees.
We’re quiet, for a time. Then, “Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to fix this. My head.”
“It’s not broken, Kid. It just needs to right itself.”
“That’s absurdly profound.”
“I try.”
“Everyone’s probably waiting for us, huh?”
“At the Green Monstrosity? Probably. But they can wait as long as you need.”
I shake my head. “Nah. I’m okay.” The rolling panic has been pushed away.
For now, it whispers.
Bear slides his arm off my shoulders, and I turn to head back up the beach. Corey and Otter stand at the top of the hill in the rain, watching us.
“Ty,” Bear says from behind me. I turn back. He’s watching the ocean.
“What?”
“You don’t have to see him while we’re here. You know that, right?”
Damn you, Bear. “Oh?” I ask innocently. “He still lives here?” Like I didn’t know that already.
Bear’s not fooled, but he lets it slide. Say what you will about him, but he’s grown into something extraordinary. “Sure, Kid. Still lives here. Still a cop.”
“Good for him.” I walk away, back toward the car.
It doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on from something that was never there to begin with. That’s one of the dire things about escaping from childhood. Eventually you grow up and realize the things you wanted when you were young weren’t really yours to ask for.
I know that now.
The sun peeks through the clouds above as I reach the car, and for better or worse, I have come home.
7. Where Tyson Gives a History Lesson
I KNOW, I know.
Tyson, you’re thinking. What in the blue fuck is going on? What’s with all the angst? The crazy voice in your head? The cliché standing in the rain on the beach and having a meltdown? Who do you think you are? Your brother?
The irony isn’t lost on me, trust me. As much as I told myself that things would be different for me, essentially I’ve turned into the former Bear McKenna.
Hysterical, I know. It’s like the people who say they’ll never be their parents and then wake up one morning thirty years later saddled with an upside-down mortgage, a rebellious teenager who alternates between hot and cold and says things like “You don’t know what it’s like to be me,” middle-aged, fat, and with thinning hair who wonder why there seem to be more and more empty wine bottles in the house because they didn’t drink that much wine with dinner last night, a cubicle job that is essentially a soul-sucking concubine thinly veiled as a necessary livelihood, and a sex life labeled as “do not resuscitate.”