Chapter Text
Just apologize. Come home. He’ll forgive you if you apologize.
No he won’t. Of course he won’t. Why would he? I did It—the big It, the one with a capital and italics, the one that he was more afraid of than anything, the one we were all afraid of more than anything. Except, apparently, me. I must have been more afraid of something, something worse than It, because I’m the one that’s done it. It wasn’t her, it wasn’t some stranger, it was me. And I know, if I turn around and go back, I’m never walking out of that house again.
I look down as my phone pings again. Hailey, please.
I can’t take it. I can’t take my mom’s incessant begging for me to come home. She doesn’t know it was me, she doesn’t know what I’ve done. He doesn’t either, I suppose. It was all anonymous, wasn’t it? No, she thinks that if I apologize for snapping at him, for “talking back,” as he keeps putting it, that he’ll forgive me. He’ll forgive my words. But my actions…
The actions he can’t ever, not for a second, know about. At least, not until after I have a house of my own, and I get all my possessions back. Then I’ll tell him, from my undisclosed location. But I won’t apologize.
My phone pings one more time. I’d throw it if I wasn’t desperate for it to charge. I could get on Tumblr, on Twitter. I could watch YouTube videos, or listen to music. For just a fleeting moment, this hell I’d gotten myself into could be ignored.
But it’s not my mom texting me this time. It’s my brother.
Don’t listen to them don’t apologize you said what needed to be said you were right don’t listen to her you did the right thing
The good brother. The one not responsible for all this. The one that agrees with me, the one that feels just as unsafe with him there as I do. And he’s right. He’s absolutely, one hundred percent, right. I’m right. I’m not sorry, and I don’t need to feel guilty. I did the right thing.
I look down at my bus ticket and consider it. Graham knows I’m right. Graham is my ally in this. But the real question is: would that still be true if he knew exactly what it is I’ve done?
Another ping.
It was you wasn’t it
My breath catches. Lie, I tell myself. Lie. Feign ignorance. Something. Anything.
I can’t lose him. My one ally in this newly declared war. The one person fighting beside me, the only one who agrees with me.
It’s okay, if you did. I stare at the new text, unsure of how to respond. Graham’s using punctuation. He never does that, not unless he’s serious. He must be serious. I was about to do it myself.
Oh. I wasn’t expecting that.
How is he?
I almost shut my phone off. I hadn’t thought before sending it. And now that I had, I didn’t want to see the answer. I was afraid.
Dustin’s pissed. Don’t think Tristan actually knows what’s happening.
Good. Don’t tell him. He’s only three, he’d be terrified if he found out.
I look up. The bus is boarding. I stand and move to where my bag’s sitting, holding my place in the line.
It’s not running away, I tell myself. You’re not a runaway, because you’re twenty-one. It’s not running away, it’s moving out.
As I walk outside and climb onto the bus, I start to wonder if I’ll ever believe it.
Chicago. It’s the farthest they had available, but it’s not far enough. I’ll stay a couple days, then I need to move again. Maybe California. That’d be good.
It’s kind of sad, I realize, clambering off the final bus. It was interrupted, and on a bus, but that was unarguably the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a ridiculously long time. Although “night’s” sleep is probably the wrong word for it—I slept over twenty-four hours on that bus. But that makes sense, since I’ve been sleeping in hidden corners of Walmarts and Kmarts and Targets and whatever other stores I can find, during the day, walking and moving at night, when it’s slightly cooler. I’ve spent the week with a shitty sleep schedule and even shittier sleeping places.
I look around the station. Chicago. I’ve never been here before, truth be told. I’m a little scared, and that’s not even counting all the fear for my family, fear of my family. I’m so scared of everything and it’s all hitting me now, the fear that’s been hiding dormant this past week, the fear that almost surfaced back in Raleigh. The fear that Dustin will find out, the fear that Tristan will figure out what’s going on, one day, even if it’s years in the future, because he’ll figure out soon that his life’s been ruined, and if he ever finds out that it was me he’ll resent me, and I can’t have that. I can’t have him resent me, and I sure as hell can’t have him forget me, but I suppose I’ll have to pick one. I stop, take a deep breath, and start walking again. I need to keep it together, at least until I find someplace to stay.
And I almost make it. I do. But as I’m walking down the street, panic filling me up because I have no clue where I am, and I have no clue where I’m going, and all of a sudden there’s an adorable little kid standing in front of me. A little kid, that’s literally Tristan’s age. And he looks nothing like Tristan, really, he doesn’t, but god I miss Tristan and I’m looking at this three-year-old and that’s it.
I don’t know how I manage to hide my panic, but it must have something to do with the tear tracks running down this kid’s cheeks. I kneel down so I’m eye-level and ask, in a far more level voice than I thought myself capable of maintaining, “What’s wrong, lil dude?”
He sniffles, and tells me, in this heartbreakingly pathetic voice, “I lost my mommy.”
Shit, I’m not prepared for this. I’m lost. I am this little kid, lost in the streets of Chicago with no clue what the fuck I’m doing next, or where I’m going next, and now I’m expected to help this boy with blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and frankly he looks a bit familiar somehow, which is ridiculous.
“Alright, well…What does your mommy look like?” I ask him, with no actual physical hesitation at all. I’m impressed with myself.
“She’s pretty,” the boy tells me. “Like you.”
And oh, boy. That was unhelpful, and also extremely flattering, and even more extremely wrong. I’m not pretty. I looked in the mirror at the bus station. I’ve got the pinched look of someone who lost too much weight too quickly, of someone who’s starving, and my hair is choppy from cutting it with the skinning knife in my bag. My clothes are too baggy and my skin is an unflattering combination of extremely suntan and red from sunburn and just flat out heat.
“Do you remember where you were going?” Again, no physical hesitation. I am a truly phenomenal actor. Maybe I could go to Hollywood, audition for something there. That’d be cool.
“We were go-going to the—the record store,” the boy tells me, stammering through his tears. “To get a surprise for daddy.”
Well, that’s just great, because I have absolutely no clue where the fuck that is. Or where the fuck I am, for that matter. But hey, I’ve got a cell phone, and that’s got a map feature, so I can use that and find out where to go from here.
“We’ll find her, okay?” I assure him, even though I have absolutely no way of knowing that. I do, however, know what it’s like to lose your kid (even though Tristan’s not mine and it’s my fault I’m losing him in the first place).
He sniffles again and nods. I stand and take his hand, trying not to think about Tristan until I’ve found this kid’s mother and I find somewhere to hide out for the night.
I pull out my phone and start searching for record stores near my GPS location (which I was terrified to turn on because they can find me I’ll have to leave soon really soon. There’s one a couple blocks away, and I’m reasonably sure that’s where he and his mom were going.
“So what’s your name?” I ask, gently as possible.
“Declan,” he mumbles, looking around anxiously. He’s probably searching for his mother, sifting through the crowds to find that one familiar face.
I nod, part of me wanting to help him look, but the logical part of me knowing that it won’t mean anything because I don’t know what to look for. I get an idea.
“Hey,” I say, kneeling back down. “Betcha you could see better if you were sitting on my shoulders.” His face lights up and he nods, and it was a good idea. I stand up, then lift him so that he’s situated comfortably, grabbing his ankles as he grabs my hair. Obviously, he’s done this before.
The walk to the record store is short, and as soon as I walk through the doors I realize that I really wish I had a home, and my record player, and more money, because I want to buy pretty much all of these.
“Mommy!” Declan shouts from on top of my shoulders, and an anxious looking woman turns around to face us. Her expression floods with relief, and I’m glad we found her, because I’m losing Tristan by choice and with warning, but she lost Declan with neither of those things, so if I’m scared, she must have been absolutely petrified.
“Declan,” she exclaims, crossing the store quickly and helping him down from his perch and holding him tight. I think about making some pathetic excuse, but realize I could probably just back away and she wouldn’t notice until I was gone. I make it two steps before she looks up at me with a broad grin. “Thank you so much,” she says sincerely.
“It was…It was no problem,” I assure her, even though it kind of was, because my throat’s been slowly closing up this whole time, and now it’s so tight it’s constricting. It’s a wonder I even got the words out.
“No, please,” she insists, seeing straight through the lie. “Please, let me make it up to you.” She held out a hand. “I’m Elisa.”
Elisa. Declan. Chicago. Record store. Oh. Oh.
If someone had told me that I would run away move out, go to Chicago, and help Patrick Stump’s son find Patrick Stump’s wife a week ago, I’d have laughed in their face and asked to read the story when they finished writing it.
“It…Seriously, it wasn’t…That’s not…” I’m tripping over words, and now it seems my voice has finally caught on to the fact that I can’t breathe throat too tight can’t breathe can’t breathe. “Thanks but…”
“Please,” Elisa says again. She’s so insistent, so sincere, so fucking genuine, and she doesn’t know me, doesn’t know what I’ve done. “I can’t even begin to explain how grateful I am to you. You found my son, that’s not something I can just let go.” Her eyes are wide and earnest. Declan rushes to hug my legs, looking up at me with his wide blue eyes (Patrick Stump’s eyes, I remind myself). “He seems to like you,” Elisa continues. “You must be great with kids.”
And that’s it. That clinches it. This is Patrick Stump’s wife, and she’s going to tell Patrick Stump about this girl she met, this woman who helped their son, and how this woman was a good person, helping Declan without asking for anything in return. And I’m not. I’m a monster, I tore apart a family, I tore apart my family, and I’m so terrified that if I stay too long she’ll figure it out, she’ll know, she’ll see it on my face. I’m afraid that what I’ve done is written on my body, my appearance from the last week some obscure language, and if I stay she’ll learn it. And I won’t be the woman who helped their son. I’ll be the bitch who ruined everything, and is just looking for redemption and repentance, using their innocent little boy to get it.
“I…I’m in a hurry, I’ve got to go…” Go do what? I just got here, I don’t have job, or a home. I have a Batman bookbag that’s falling apart stuffed with stolen granola bars and Pop-Tarts, a hoodie, and a skinning knife that Graham gave me before I left. “Stuff, you know?”
Elisa sighs, prying Declan off of me and looking at me again, as if she’s seeing me in a whole new light. “Have you put the pieces together yet?” she asks finally, and I stare at her, because I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. “I know I don’t get recognized often, but my name does. Especially in conjunction with him.” She nods to Declan.
I look down at the ground, scuffing my shoe against the tiled floor.
“Then you know who my husband is,” she continues, taking my silence as the affirmative it is. “More importantly, you know who my husband’s best friend is. That look on your face, I’ve seen it before. And I don’t know what’s going on, what your head is saying to you, but I do know that they’re wrong. The world is not against you, and you most certainly are not a bad person.” She’s silent for a moment. “I’m not asking you to let me help you sort through everything. I’m just asking you to come to dinner.”
I can see now why Patrick loves Elisa so much. She’s so good, she’s exactly what he deserves, exactly what he needs. But I don’t. “I really can’t,” I choke out finally.
“And I really must insist.” It’s not a question anymore. I am going to the Stump household and I am eating dinner with the Stump family, because Elisa Stump is not taking any of my bullshit.
In hindsight, I probably should have stayed in my room if all I planned on doing was moping. Dinner had been wonderful, if not a little awkward, because I felt like I really couldn’t contribute much to conversation. They didn’t even know my name, I was too scared to give it.
Patrick was amazing though, much better than I ever could have imagined. He didn’t ask any questions about what brought me to Chicago, or why my clothes looked like I’d been living in the wild (the answer, of course, being that I had been). He didn’t even ask me for my name, because he seemed to pick up on the fact that I didn’t want to give it.
What was totally unexpected, though, was the way they invited me to stay after dinner. They insisted that I stay, and I felt a bit like I was invading on something personal, something intimate, because this was a family thing. Patrick had been away, and now he was back, and I was invading upon this much needed family time, sitting curled up on their armchair and watching but not seeing Labyrinth (and discovering that yes, Patrick Stump was as obsessed with Bowie as fanfiction made him seem). And then Elisa showed me to the guest room of all things, and was it really that obvious that I was homeless?
(Of course it was; my hair was cut with a knife and my clothes were torn and dirt-stained and I smelled like I hadn’t had a proper shower in a week.)
But now I’d taken a hot shower and I had tried to sleep, I had, but my sleep schedule was so irreparably damaged that there really was nothing I could do for it, so now I’m curled up on the armchair again, chin on my knees trying to think of how exactly I managed to get myself into this mess.
I always thought that, should I find myself meeting any of the members of any of my favorite bands or casts of my favorite TV shows, I would be grateful as all hell for the choices that led me there. And yet, here I am, and I would rather have never met Patrick Stump, or even seen that half-hour Fall Out Boy set at Global Citizen 2015, than get where I am now.
Which is regretting my choice to mope in the living room instead of the guest room, because that lamp clicking on can only mean one thing.
Patrick’s hair is sleep rumpled, and his glasses are just a tiny bit askew, and I have to admit that I like his Batman pajamas and the t-shirt that’s so old I can’t even read the logo on it. And he’s cross-legged on the floor in front of me, just watching me.
“Heard you helped Declan earlier,” he says finally. “Well, yesterday, I guess.” And yeah, yesterday. It’s almost five am, definitely the next day, no matter who you ask. “So, thank you. It’s hard to find strangers in Chicago that’ll do that.”
I shrug. “Guess I’m just new to town,” I mumble, not really feeling like having the conversation that I can feel bubbling its way up.
“What’s your name?” There it is, the question I’d been waiting for someone to ask.
I can’t say Hailey. Hailey is a monster. Hailey ran away from home because she was afraid. Afraid of her older brother, afraid of the welts on her arms that came from scratching for minutes, even hours on end. The scars on her hips and the tops of her feet, scars that came into being because scratching wasn’t enough, and she had a box cutter, something thin and razor sharp that she didn’t have before. Hailey is afraid, no, terrified, for Tristan, so she called the Department of Social Services, made them see that neither of his parents deserved to have that poor child in his care. Hailey put her nephew, the boy she raised, more than either of his parents, in the system. She’s the reason he’s going to grow up, bouncing from home to home (he’ll probably be adopted but I always see the worst outcome). Hailey ran away from home, slept in woods and corporate stores and stole food from them. Hailey is starving and Hailey is dead inside. I can’t say Hailey, I can’t be Hailey.
“Kairi,” I say finally, thinking about Kingdom Hearts, and Sora’s friend. One of the game’s Princesses of Heart, she showed up on Destiny Island with no story whatsoever. I have a story, but nobody is ever going to hear it. I choose the name because maybe I can be as important to someone in real life as the Kairi in the game is to Sora.
But probably not, because this Kairi isn’t that Kairi. This Kairi is alone, and lost, and scared. I can change my name, but I can’t change the fact that I’m still starving. I’m still dead inside.
Patrick gives me a sad smile, like he can see the war in my head. “Nice to meet you, Kairi.”