Archive of Our Own

They had met as people in stories do. On a warm sunny day, engulfed in gentle breezes and knotted grass, scraped knees and peanut butter sandwiches. By coincidences so fortuitous that they couldn't have actually been coincidences. Someone had to have orchestrated their entire afternoons so that their paths would cross at just the right time. 2:30 PM on a Sunday. An elaborate prank with no punchline.

Or a very drawn out punchline that isn’t all that funny.

What had brought them together was a dead raccoon. Neither of them had killed the thing, it had just been dead. Dead for long enough to become tackboard on the side of the road, tanned and sweet with flies.

Owen had been biking, he'd been doing a lot of biking at the time in an attempt to fully map out his new neighborhood. His family hadn't moved far, but fifteen minutes stretched the reaches of his topographical knowledge and the boundaries of his school district. That had been terrifying. New school. And not just any new school but a new high school. At least a friend had lived here in his primary ages, so there existed a barebones layout in his head even if a few trees had since been sawed down and a few houses put up.

He had been biking so long beneath the glare of the sun that he himself was stiff as a board and tanned, and so he was walking his bike up the hill when that blond kid with unfortunate babyface waved him down. Actually swung his hand high above his head like a cartoon and from a distance yelled Dude, come here. Come look at this.

"Look, isn't that nasty?" He had drawn when Owen parked his bike across from him so that Owen's bike and the Blond Kid's bike formed a perfect shelter around the roadkill. The kid, armed with a long stick, prodded the raccoon’s butterflied innards once, twice. "Wait, wait, it did it when I poked harder. Look."

With another cloying jab, the carcass crunched and then gave way to black liquid. Oozing up from beneath crusted fur, it smelled of utter death and was crawling with rice-like specks of white.

"Oh, ew. It's infested with maggots!”

“Wicked, right?”

“Why would you show me that? That's fucking gross. I don’t wanna see that."

"I don't know," the kid snorted, before wrinkling his nose and wiping the stick across the asphalt. It was after he looked up at him for the first time–squinting out the fever of summer–that Owen realized he wasn't actually as babyfaced as previously assumed. He could even be his age. "I thought you looked kinda lonely, and this thing is pretty gross, eh? Might as well get a freak out of someone else with it."

There was a shocking honesty to it in a way that only a stranger could be honest; they have no means with which to protect your feelings or enough care to protect your feelings. So, a quick punch. Right where Owen didn't have the armor for it. And, to add injury, he had been fourteen. At fourteen everything matters so much more than at subsequent or prior ages. At fourteen your whole world could be held in the hands of that Blond neighbor Kid with a shark-tooth smile.

The thing was that he had been lonely, the kid was right. He had been very lonely even before the move, he had been lonely since the dawn of time he believed as fourteen year olds believe. And now he was planted at a new school with people he only had a passing familiarity with, and that made him lonelier yet. If it was a loneliness race he'd have taken first place easily. Olympic gold medal winning loneliness.

Owen hadn't known what to say at the time so he ended up saying nothing at all. It only took a few seconds for the kid to crack into wistful dialogue. "Should we like? Bury it? Do raccoons need funerals?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't know either. I wouldn’t be sad about not having a funeral.” He declared. “Isn't that shit lame? Especially for the people who didn't know me. What're they supposed to do, just sit there and pretend to weep? I don't want any fake weepers at my funeral. I’m not even going to have a funeral, not with how I plan to go out." Shark-smile, stick clean swept the air with a whip-crack. “Let’s bury it.”

Having taken a step back, Owen grimaced. "You're gonna get uber-rabies if you touch that thing, pretty sure. Like some super top-secret strain of rabies."

"I'm pretty sure it got hit by a car, unless rabies is the raccoon equivalent of getting hit by an anvil. Voooom, pop." He had smacked his lips, giving the raccoon another good poke before standing up straight and chucking the stick into the woods behind him. “You know, they’re bigger than I thought they’d be, raccoons. Cartoons make them look so small, like squirrel-sized. This one is kinda fat, like cat-sized.”

“Don’t touch it! Man, do not touch that thing, I’ll vomit.”

“But what if the super-rabies gives me super powers?”

When he stared up at him again Owen noticed something new. This time, that his eyes were buggy, almost fish-like, with deep pockets lining them. And that his nose was crooked, as if once broken but never splinted so that it sat straight. That his lips were full and lipgloss-pink, almost girly. Owen blushed.

"I'm Matt, by the way." He stuck one hand out expectantly. “I promise I didn’t touch it, you baby.”

With reluctance, Owen took it, all the while trying to remember what his dad had said about good first impressions. Was it a soft touch or firm? Straight wrist? He thought too hard about it, and forgot to introduce himself back. "Owen."

"I'm making a movie right now. Not about the raccoon. And I need someone to read for the other character. I always play all my own characters," he stated with a point of pride, puffing his chest out, "but if you're, you know, free."

Owen had snorted at the thought and even though it had been almost mean of him, the kid– Matt–hadn't faltered for even a second. "Uhh, I guess. I've never acted in anything before."

"That's fine, you don't have to know how to act. Anyways, you have an interesting voice so it'll sound cool no matter what."

"You have an interesting face."

That had definitely been mean but again, not a bristle. Not even a momentary pause to collect himself from the tease and Owen at the time had thought I'd be the world's lamest bully. "Don't I? That's why I gotta make movies. All the best actors have interesting faces. Like Willem Dafoe, and Steve Buscemi. Those are some ugly fucks, right? But they get roles, pretty good roles. You know, not any love interest hero-types, but good roles. Villains and monsters and shit. And I bet ‘cause they’re famous they still get lots of beauties, eh?"

This time the snort turned into a full on belly laugh. And the full-on-belly-laugh turned into a mutual belly laugh. And there they stood in the middle of the road, mutual belly laughing and shaking hands over a dead raccoon.

The rest was history.

"There we go, just breathe. Remember our exercise, it’s the rule of fours. Four second inhale, hold it for four seconds, four second exhale. Can you do that for me, Owen? Come on, four seconds in- hold- out, very good."

Owen blinks. His eyes hurt. He doesn't know why his eyes hurt. Developing super-sight, maybe? A voice tells him. That's Matt. No, he's been crying, duh says a different voice. That must be Chrissy. He counts again at Ms. Gilligan’s instructions. One-two-three-four, he races a bit faster then she’d like but he's bad at keeping tempo. He's breathing at least. For a second he had forgotten how to breathe. It was kinda funny, sitting there gulping like a fish, wringing his neck with one hand and clenching a chaise throwpillow with the other.

"Very good, here," she hands him a tissue. She takes the tissue away. She hands him a paper cup, she takes away the paper cup. "Do you want more water?"

He shakes his head, and then remembers what she had said about using his words. Communication is key! reads a poster on her wall. You are never alone, reads another. Keep calm and CBT on, reads the worst of them all. Matt would have a blast with that one, the joke laid out right there for him. Lay-up, score. "No, thanks."

"Would you like to talk about it?" She approaches gently, offering another paper cup. Owen chugs it. "That came on very suddenly, did something resonate with you? We had been talking about...  reaching towards acceptance after a major loss."

"I- uh," to be totally honest, he had no idea why he started crying. He had been thinking something but his brain had swept it away too fast for him to hold a solid grasp on it. Sensations remain, being sweaty and bearing the sun, blond hair. "Yeah, I guess so. That I can't, like, live my life in denial?"

"Correct. And one of the steps we use in talk therapy is embracing the natural forms of our emotions instead of rejecting them for more 'pleasing' approaches to grief. Grief looks different for everyone, and it can be difficult when we have complex feelings about the person we're missing, or a lot of baggage with them," she pauses, as if to let him digest but there's nothing there that hasn't been said before. He must have hurt you, that's why you didn't say anything? was the court assumption. Per his lawyer, the less you say the better. She marches on: "Even if those natural emotional forms are ugly, if we pursue them we can accept them." 

Owen thinks that if his emotions had a natural form they'd be some kind of boulder on his chest or tumor in his brain that's slowly and very horrifically killing him. Day by day. But the alternative is taking his Prozac.

“We can achieve that through our positive coping mechanisms. That’s why I think journaling will be very helpful for you, you could even write scripts.” She offers it the way one would offer a dog a spoon of peanut butter with a pill stuck in it and Owen has half a mind to bark I never wrote a single script for us. "It looks like we're running out of time, do you need anything before we say goodbye today?"

There's always a part of him that wants to fight her. He assumes that's partially Matt-Voice and partially the Owen that upon hearing he was going to be required to see a shrink weekly as part of his outpatient program was filled with equal parts dread and anger. The anger has faded into mostly weekly dread, when every Thursday he troops straight from school to her office. He's thankful, at least, about not having a social worker like they had threatened.

It’s when he’s at her door and she takes his hand in a firm shake, does he remember why he’d burst into tears like a big baby. You baby, that’s what Matt had said. "I uhh, I had just- um- been thinking about how me and Matt met. When I started crying"

"For next time, Owen, I’m sorry. And don't forget that homework I gave you."

"Yeah I guess, sorry. Thanks, thank you Ms. Gilligan. Bye."

"See you next week."

She waves him off, and now he's standing in the lobby. Mom is there, a book split on her thigh while she buries her nose in her phone. She’s been busy keeping up with Grandma again, and he suspects it's partially because Grandma is bankrolling the therapy-medication-psychiatry appointments. Because why else would Mom ever talk to Grandma. He prods her on the arm, whispers I'm done, and their semi-silent Thursday routine chugs onwards and to the front desk. And there Owen putters while the adults talk about insurance and payment plans. The boring stuff, heaped onto the pile of steaming-hot boring stuff.

In the car, Mom turns the radio on low. It's some chicky station that plays country even though they don't live anywhere near the country. To the tune of 9 to 5, he taps, but he's out of rhythm and eventually Mom changes lanes, changes stations. Asks:

"How was therapy?"

Owen has to clear his throat, which for some reason needs to be cleared. Maybe he should've accepted a third cup of water. "Fine, good. We talked about the stages of grief today, or something. She said um... actually, can we stop at the store? I need to get some stuff."

“Right now? I have to go back to work, I’m on triage tonight, hun.” Mom’s hands go tight on the steering wheel, all kung fu white knuckles, like she’s about to punch her dashboard in the face. Or Owen’s imagining it, because she sighs. “Is it for therapy?”

"Yeah, she wants me to keep, like, a dream journal."

“A dream journal?”

Flushing, Owen stares hard at the trees zipping past outside. He imagines them bending like arrows in the window before snapping. He cuts his hand across the window, as if he could chop a whole row down with his mind. What movie had Matt shown him last year? The one with the psychic blond psycho who killed Michael B. Jordan? “She said it would help with the nightmares if I kept track of everything and like- wrote stuff down.”

It's painful to admit out loud. Asking for any kind of help has been painful to admit out loud but the last eight months have consisted of doing nothing but asking for help. Asking for lots of it and from anybody, for everything. It's vulnerable, sure, but more than anything it's annoying.

Imagine for a second you're in your kitchen and there's something you want to reach very badly. So badly, in fact, that you'll stretch yourself sore even if you might not know what exactly you're stretching for. But you can reach it, you know you can reach it. You could even climb the counters, but everyone thinks you're made of glass and Elmer's glue-all so climbing the counters is out of the question. It's completely forbidden, actually. There's a whole big stink about climbing the counters, so don't even think about it. But everyone around you? They're allowed to climb the counters, they're made of stronger stuff than you. Why don't you ask them instead? And the second you do, everyone bends over and everyone goes oh of course but it's written all over their faces and you can tell; they'd rather you just climb the counters. Who cares if you fall, really?

And it's true that he's been having nightmares recently. They had started after the shooting, gone dormant, and have now begun to pop back up. Something to do with processing the trauma, Ms. Gilligan said. They're not always scary. Sometimes they're as simple as a bedroom. The basement bedroom. And nothing happens but just being there is enough to wake him up in a panic. Sometimes he's being chased, two sets of runners pounding on linoleum tile except the air is syrup and he moves in slow motion and the thing chasing him is fast. Sometimes in his dreams Chrissy is there, sometimes she's kissing him. Sometimes when he wakes up Chrissy is there, and she kisses him then too.

Sometimes it's Matt in his dreams, doing the kissing-of-him. Except it's never really Matt. It’s Matt 2.0. A different nose this time. Or, why is your hair red? Where did your ears go? Never Matt as Matt is. Matt as Matt was. He fears those dreams especially.

He hasn't been sleeping so well.

Mom sighs. She's tired too, he can tell. There are bags under her eyes and new streaks of silver in her hair. Or maybe he had never noticed those things before, because by virtue of being his mother she wasn't allowed to grow old in his mind the same way he wasn't allowed to grow old in hers. Sometimes he wonders where she's paused him, what age he is when she finds him on his blow-up in his bedroom before school, sweating straight through the sheets.

“We don’t have a lot of spending money this month, Owen.”

Sometimes, he sits at her door and listens to her conversations on the phone. Matt used to do that a lot, when there was something he was dying to know that was for some reason being kept from him. Cups turned against walls and microphones in lockers. Owen is less refined than him, without all the spy gear he just presses his ear to the crack of the threshold in hopes that she doesn’t start vacuuming. He listens to her conversations with Grandma, he listens to her conversations with Aunt Molly, he listens to her voicemails to Dad–wherever Dad is this time–and even when she's not saying much he still aches some unending ache.

Mom sighs again, and then turns onto a different offramp than the one they take home from Ms. Gilligan's office.

Last night he dreamt about the quarry lake. He's had dreams of the lake before. When he was in the hospital for a few days he hadn't dreamt much because it's hard to sleep when someone is peering through your door every twenty minutes, but when he did it was of the lake. Still as glass, blue as blue could be. Across the water, two people had been setting off bottle rockets. Disturbing that bluest of blues with purples, reds, shimmering hues that Owen had never seen before. They had been laughing. They had been arguing. They had been inventing new colours.

In this dream, Matt was there. But he hadn't said anything which means that once again it wasn't really Matt. Because Matt was always saying something, there was always something on his mind. In this dream, Matt had been holding his hand. Owen had noticed that before the lake, actually, but he didn't want to write it down because then it becomes coveted, somehow important. Matt had been holding his hand, so what? He's held his hand before. When they were running down a steep hill, and didn't want to fall. When they were pushing through a crowd, and didn't want to lose each other. Once when Matt thought Owen was asleep, and didn't want to disturb him. Well you did disturb me, Idiot. I was awake the whole time. It was too hot in the basement to sleep next to each other, and your palm was really sweaty.

Owen grips his brand new gel pen, and then rips the page out to start over from scratch. Last night, I dreamt about the lake... 

"So, how's the dream journal going?"

Ms. Gilligan sits with one leg crossed over the other, kitten heel bouncing in the air. Sometimes Owen’s worried it's gonna slip off and rocket right into his face with the way she moves. Rapid, rabbit-like. When she was first assigned to him in the hospital she had seemed much more serious and deeply worried, had looked like a widow. Decked in all black, head to toe, with very harsh lines etched into her face. Owen thought she would always look like that–in mourning–but it rolled over into colorful tartans and striped socks the same way the shooting rolled over in the minds of the public. Mississauga is a big place and tragedies happen all the time, everywhere. Everyone knows about the major ones: Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech. The ones that haunt the news for years. The ones that become examples. But there were hundreds every year. In schools, in malls, in grocery stores. Churches, mosques, kindergartens and colleges. And with each hundred shootings were hundreds of people's lives shaken apart.

That's what Ms. Gilligan reasoned to him, when he expressed the feeling of being alone in this. She misunderstood: people were shaken, yes, but Owen had known and done nothing. He was the one to do the shaking.

She waits on him, combing fingers through her hair. Wild brown hair streaked with grey. It makes her look like a nutjob which is the exact opposite of how he thought therapists were supposed to look. Owen always assumed they were supposed to look like Jennifer Melfi, or scientists in a test lab. Business women with hair slicked back into shiny buns, or otherwise donning sleek white coats and always writing on a clipboard. Observing you, a specimen beneath the microscope. A cryptozoological phenomenon that no one has yet to crack.

"Owen?"

"Sorry."

"Is there anything in particular on your mind today? Anything about your dream journal you want to talk about while we’re getting finished up here? You had also mentioned something at the end of the last session that we didn’t have time for."

"Uh, not really. I've been um..." Now he's racing against the clock. Quick time event. He could tell the truth; he hasn't written in the dream journal since the first night. Maybe he could let her read the one entry he furiously scribbled out, and that would make up for it. Or he could lie- no, step around the question. He could even say nothing and let her decide for himself. Every option feels like the wrong option but he has mere seconds before she begins approaching him like one would approach a feral animal about to snap its jaws at anything that moves. He's not a wild animal. Matt was the wild animal, Matt was the toothy one. "Not really, my dreams have been kinda, like, boring recently. Really boring."

"What kind of boring? Even boring dreams can mean something to you."

"Like... doing homework. Or just sitting somewhere."

"Where do you usually sit in your dreams? Or is it different every time?"

He's starting to get hot in this sweater, even though her office is usually frigid. Thus, the sweater. "Sometimes I'm at the lake. Usually, it's the lake. Sometimes just nowhere, like… a white void."

"Hm,” she scribbles something down, “is there significance to the lake?"

"No." He says it without thinking, squeezing one hand in the other so tight he's afraid for a second that the muscles are gonna burst and his hand will deflate like a sad hand-shaped-balloon.

“Is there anything else you want to discuss with your dreams? Even if they’re ‘boring’, Owen, it’s important. You never know what can hide in a dream.” She smiles at him, almost a little serene, before tapping her pen on her notebook. Owen’s always wondered, ever since she first made the notebook an obvious piece of the sessions, what she was writing down in there. “There’s a whole field of psychology dedicated to studying dreams and the effects of sleep on our brain, I find it very fascinating. Any other notable dreams, do they repeat often?”

“Not really. Like I said, they’re boring.” He hopes that kills it, because he’s really tired of having to talk about his dreams. Especially when they’re Matt-related.

“Alright, then.” Another pen click. “There was actually something I wanted to discuss with you before you go, in regards to your therapy. I specialize in cognitive behavioral therapy and grief counseling but there’s another type of therapy I think may be of benefit to you. It’s called EMDR, it utilizes sensory inputs like eye movement and sound to help your brain sort of- reboot.”

“Reboot your brain?” He sits up a bit, catching her gaze for once. She has remarkably kind eyes. “That sounds kinda like hypnotism.”

“That’s what many people think when first hearing about it, but it's a scientifically proven memory recall technique. And, well, you went through something very traumatic. And from what we’ve talked about in the past with your mother and your rough home life-”

“My home life isn’t rough.” Owen is pin straight now, tucking his hands between his knees. She gives him this look, this look he can’t describe but it makes something in him set ablaze, firecracker in a pan. That’s been happening more recently. He never used to get angry like that. “My home life is fine. I love my mom.”

It’s as if they’ve swapped places for a second and he’s the one with the notebook and the pen and the microscope observing her. Observing the way she squirms, leaps to correct. “My apologies, the way you described certain experiences with your family- I’m very sorry.”

She should be, what a cunt, assuming things about you. There goes Matt-Voice again, this time in the Australian accent he liked to use when they were improvising the parts of his script he hadn’t written out yet. Shut up returns Chrissy-Voice. She’s just trying to help.

“My home life is fine.” He asserts, pinching his palms between his knees even harder.

“It’s my place to assume sometimes, Owen, but I guess- I got ahead of myself. What I was getting at is; EMDR is very useful for people who are still processing very traumatic, very vivid moments in their life. Like I said, it’s like rebooting a computer when something isn’t working right. You’re given the ability to reprocess traumas and make them less vivid. And with what you went through, it could take years of talk therapy to help you heal, with EMDR we could see significant progress in only months. That doesn’t-” she cuts him off when he perks up- “mean you’re done with talk therapy. EMDR and CBT go hand in hand, and often talk therapy is required when considering EMDR.”

It’s a lot and all at once and Owen can’t help but feel as if the scientists have decided that now they’re going to put their little specimen in a test tube and drip acids on it ‘til he dissolves or transforms or dies. More than anything, his head hurts. There’s a flash, like lightning, and he thinks back to that classroom. It’s me. A steady mantra, the hum of fluorescents.

“Um, I don’t know. It sounds like, experimental.”

“It’s not, there’s been tens of studies on the effects of EMDR and they all point towards positive outcomes. It’s something to consider, Owen. Especially if you’re getting tired of seeing me every week. But the biggest thing with EMDR is that it requires acceptance. You have to be fully prepared for everything that it entails or it won’t work.” He could chew his lip down to a blood nub right about now. The pointed stare she gives him feels targeted and it’s not- it’s not like he’s not trying. “Just give it a thought. Any questions?”

“Uh-” What if it scrambles my brain? Is most prominent. Second to that, what if I forget everything about Matt? “Not really.”

“Is there anything else you want to discuss? We still have about five more minutes before we’re finished up here.” Thanks, clock watcher. He was trying his hardest not to do his own clock watching. “What about Chrissy? Is everything good between you and Chrissy, are you guys still doing your-” she wiggles her fingers at him- “weird little thing?”

By weird little thing she means their not-dating. Owen had self-described it as a weird thing but he had really meant was that everyone else seems to think it's weird but for him it's a sigh of relief. Matt had always wanted them to be things, have roles, slap a name on it even if it was just their names. A new iteration of Matt Johnson and Owen Williams. Noir detectives, bully-killing mercenaries, NASA scientists. It's a change of pace, something different and easy. And Chrissy is cool with it so he's cool with it. Besides, he isn't much of a boyfriend. Even on the nights when he's sleeping in her bed, even when they're kissing horizontally and he starts to get hot all over. She's a friend, a really good friend. Not his girlfriend.

It was kind of her idea, kind of his idea. They met in the middle on it. Dedication felt like too much at the time with everything going on, and it kinda just stuck. Owen has no idea how and why couples got married right before wartime, the idea feels completely alien to him; there would be too much going on in the world for him to think about things like love.

"We've been good. She's been um, helping me a lot? Like she's always there for me, when I need her." It's difficult to put into words what she means to him. How do you describe the feeling of sudden lightness? Like the sun has come out after weeks of rain? Like a warm day in the middle of winter? Like a pocket of air in space? His spacesuit? "She says things are, like, going back to how it was before. At school. Like everything's been cleaned out and the memorials have been- they're not gone, she said... scaled down? And everyone's on break right now."

"But not you, yeah? Still sticking to your year-round program? What about the memorials, have you visited them all? Does it invoke any specific emotions, reactions? Even if it's negative, remember what I said about the natural forms of your emotions. You have to let them live."

Instinct is to curl in on himself. Shrink down to a speck and float away. Truth is, he hasn't visited the memorials. Not once. Even when Chrissy near-begged him to go with her. He had said no, it just- it felt, in a sense, like betraying Matt. But he couldn't tell her that, so he had tried to explain to her how they had bullied him, and that seemed to work. She had let it go after he explained the rock and showed her the scar. Mostly.

He forgets sometimes that she had known Jackman since kindergarten. He wasn't that bad, Owen, you just didn't know anything about him. He had a difficult childhood, his brother went to rehab, etc. On and on, excuses for people who wouldn't have made the same case for him.

That's unfair to Chrissy, and he feels bad immediately for even beginning to think that. She tries her hardest, she really does, to see the good in people. Most people see the good in her. Owen just forgets, mistakes it for other, worse attributes. If it was him who got gunned down, she would be telling people the same things. You didn't know Owen at all he was... he didn't have a difficult childhood, his brother didn't go to rehab. He honestly doesn't know what he would be posthumously or what he is now. No one's told him yet, and Matt isn't around to clue him in anymore.

"Do you need a tissue? Water?"

Is he crying again? That's her go-to trick when he starts crying again, which happens more and more now, without him even realizing it. When he sniffs, his nose is clogged and his eyes well.

"I'm fine, thanks. Thank you. I um, haven't visited the memorials in awhile." Sometimes when she asks him questions like that it feels more like a police interrogation. They hadn't drilled him so hard, it’s not like they would've been able to. He had been basically a corpse. Stiff and pale, hollowed inside. It was like the end of everything in his life all at once but he had to keep on living somehow. Somehow. "I wish I was on break, too. Like, so me and Chrissy could go somewhere or something. She just got her license and the year-round thing kinda makes it feel like I'm never gonna go on break again."

With a smile, considerate: "That would be good for you two, a nice little vacation somewhere. Everyone needs a break sometimes, this is a difficult time for a lot of people.

"I wish people would stop saying that," he snaps. That wasn't supposed to come out like that, that wasn't supposed to come out at all. And suddenly he's blushing, staring at a spot of mud on his shoes. The continuation is hot on his tongue. He chews it, decides to taste it out. None of you guys understand, this isn't hard for 'a lot of people' the way it is for me. He was my friend, my best friend. He was my best friend and a good person and no one took him seriously. And now three people are dead, and if I hadn't been so fucking stupid then no one would be dead. They might as well put me on death row. He was a good person. “I- um, sorry. Sorry, I didn’t um, mean to say that. That wasn’t what I meant.”

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

He kicks one foot out so that his heel grinds against the carpet. Again and again, a nervous shhk shhk until he kicks up so much static that he feels completely electrified by it. 

"Are you sure the dreams have gone away? You know," she purses her lips and squints, "I can always prescribe you something for sleep, if the Prozac isn't doing enough. Loss of sleep and nightmares can be affecting your mood and memory, it's very common in people suffering from PTSD."

'Suffering from', what a phrase, eh? Go away Matt-Voice. I don't need Matt-Voice right now. Nibbling on the inside of his cheek, Owen keeps kicking the rug. Actually I haven't taken it since you prescribed it to me, and I've been doing just fine, he could say. Or maybe: it did nothing for me but make everything worse, I thought this whole thing was about making me better? Isn't that your job? Fixing me? But he’s a big fat coward. So he hangs his head, looks up at her through bleary eyes. "It's been working well. Like I said, my dreams are all boring again."

"You still need to write down the boring dreams, don't forget about that. Keeping up with journaling will help you process what you're feeling, even if you don't think the dreams mean anything. This is all part of the recovery process. What you went through isn't easy for anyone, even people my age, to grapple with. Nightmares are normal, and if the nightmares come back, that's normal too."

"You said every morning?"

"As soon as you wake up, so you don't forget them. Do you want to be done a few minutes early today?"

There’s absolute, total, complete relief. He jumps to his feet. "Yes, yeah. Thanks."

"I'll see you next week, and why don't you bring your journal in with you."

It's been eight months since the shooting and the details have yet to fade. Gilligan had said in the long run–in the full scope of his life–that eight months is a speck of dust. Eight months only feels so massive because he's standing just on the tail end of it. Eventually eight years will be a speck of dust, and he'll realize just how much growing he's done. 

Owen doesn't fully believe her; he hasn't grown at all.

It happens when he's at the grocery store with his mom, when he's attending his two required classes, when he's doing homework on the computer. Flashes. Gunshots, Matt's shoes slapping against tile, the doorknob rattling. What're you doing? It's me! Days of questioning, days in the hospital, days in the courtroom. Now he comes home, does schoolwork, tries to read a book, tries to make things up for the journal, tries to play a video game and then realizes all the video games Mike has require shooting something. Always shooting something. Play the guitar, strike a sour note, toss it into closet and slam door. Sit at desk, do more homework. There's no more homework to do. He has straight A's now, and he might graduate early. He's never had straight A's before.

Maybe Matt did some good after all.

"Do you think you're gonna go to the funeral?" Chrissy scoots closer to him on the park bench.

They were out on a walk when the wind blew them towards the duck pond, clenching each other's hands tight for warmth as they tramped through the mud and to their favorite bench. It’s their favorite because it has a height advantage on the other benches surrounding the duck pond, so that when they look out across the mire they're at a pigeon's-eye view and can more easily people watch. Chrissy loves to people watch, Owen's learned. She'll even make up stories about the ones they see often–their regulars. There goes the Motley Crue, walking their ugly dog. Or there goes the swingers, off to make love in the woods. I wonder whose wife is whose?

She sighs, her breath clouding. "I think I'll go, if you go."

Owen digs the toe of his runner into mud, kicking up a clod of wet dirt. Rolling it around, he forms it into a ball of wet dirt, and then mashes it beneath his shoe. His head has been hurting, probably changes in the atmosphere from all the  autumnal thunderstorms they've been getting. But the weather is fair today and still, he aches.

"I don't know why they're even having a funeral. He's already buried." The inside of his hoodie seems to shrivel when he scowls at it. Chrissy must notice, judging by the softness of her eyes, ready to flood over much like the duck pond. Drowned, awash with rainwater. This is where they recorded the intro to The Dirties but he doesn't let her know about that fun fact. She probably wouldn't find it all that fun. "Is there anyone else going?"

"Um, I mean, not really. Mrs. Johnson personally invited me, and I don't think my dad appreciated it very much. He doesn't- he likes you, but he only knows what the news told him and I don't think he looked into that very much. Like, the less he knows the better? Kind of?" Her stare burns a hole into Owen's cheek, expectant. She sighs, "You can tell she's trying, right? Really hard? I don't think she like- knows what to do with herself. I wouldn't either. I mean... remember Home Ec? With the egg project? I cried when I dropped mine outside Ms. Manillo's class, and that was just an egg."

There are big red hieroglyphics etched into Owen's skull and while he can't decipher them he can still guess what they're saying. Maybe, run away. Maybe, you should be angrier at her for comparing Matt to an egg. Maybe, she's right. 

"Yeah, he was her son. I get it."

"Owen, don't get like that. You can't be the only person affected by this, you know? She was his mom." She's getting choked up, so Owen squeezes her hand tighter. Once, twice. It's become their way of saying I'm here, we're here, together when words are an insurmountable task made for stronger men.

When he and Matt were filming, when they had spied on her, Matt had called her stupid. At the time Owen agreed but the longer they stay together, the more he realizes Matt had been wrong. She was smart, a lot smarter than he was sometimes, and ambitious too.

Something about the shooting had changed her in the way it changed everyone. We have only so little life, who knows when it'll be taken away from us? She had told him one night when they had snuck his step-brother’s weed and gone on a walk. And what had the guidance counselor said? Acts like these ripple across communities? Well it rippled her, and suddenly she was applying to colleges in faraway places like Baltimore and Durham and New York.

Reluctantly, he closes the remaining gap and allows her head to fall atop his shoulder. Ripple.

"Yeah, I guess," he bristles a bit when she squeezes back. Once, twice. Rain has begun to peck down from the skies, disturbing the water's surface as it patters. "I just don't get it. No one's gonna be there anyways, its not like he had any friends, he was just-"

"He had you."

There's a current in him, like a shiver, like a live wire. Usually, as in his entire life as of eight months ago, it lies dormant. Occasionally it will tangle but he had always untangled it himself just fine, or Matt was there to untangle it for him. But now the cover has been shucked off by wire strippers and he's been left to spark, to flare out and start fires that water can't douse. He short-circuits, feels his eyelids well and bulge like the pond's embankment.

But then she's leaning into him, and she's kissing him sweet and chaste the way she does when that insurmountable task becomes once again insurmountable. When she pulls away it’s like a small piece of himself has pulled away too.

"I don't think I'm gonna go," he decides.

"You should, you really should. At least for Mrs. Johnson, do you remember how she was when she found out?"

He does. She had screamed herself quiet. Or maybe she just hadn't wanted to do much talking. She didn't talk for weeks. Every news report--which Owen read against everyone's best advice--quoted Mr. Johnson, or Emily Johnson, or Eric Johnson. Even Cousin Nelson, but he's in jail now. Just for a brief stint. They had to blame someone in the aftermath, blood making people bloodthirsty. The jurors couldn't just throw their hands up and surrender to Matt’s master plan. Someone had to be put behind bars, someone had to pay if Matt couldn't pay. So why not the guy he got the guns from? Even though they had been pilfered. That fact didn't shock Owen, it almost made him laugh. Of course Matt would steal the guns, he didn't like doing anything if he couldn't do it for basically free.

He's seen Mrs. Johnson around a handful of times. There's a newfound gauntness to her, as if someone went and sucked her soul out of her mouth and then spit it out the car window like a handful of sunflower seeds. It’s terrifying, she scares him, and he hasn’t talked to her since before Matt up and left them to pick up his pieces.

"What do you want me to do about it? It's not like I can just say something to her and she'll magically get over her own son." He doesn’t intend everything to come out so harsh, but there’s a part of him that revels in her broken face. He doesn’t mean that. "I can't like- I can't bring him back and I can't make it better. What good is going to a funeral? He's already buried, he's literally buried in the ground and there's nothing I can do about it-"

In an instant it’s as if he's been reverted back to some original state he didn't know he had come from. He's warm. Wrapped entirely in her arms, her face pressed into his wet neck. No, her wet face pressed into his formerly dry, now wet, neck. 

Into his shoulder, she whispers: "Please don't get mad at me, I didn't do anything. I just- all I want is for you to be ok. I’ll stop talking about it."

Her hair is sticking to his cheek. Some even migrates into his mouth and it's remarkable how her warmth seeps into the way she tastes. Cinnamon and pear and ivory soap. An all encompassing blanket beneath which nothing can reach them. And then it catches up to him; she's sobbing. Oh my god, she's sobbing.

With care he wraps his arms around her and returns the favor just as she's backing away. She's red all over and glossy.

"Say something, please."

Owen is watching himself watch her through the mirror of her glassy eyes.

"Maybe I should just leave. Like, run away. You know?" He grins crookedly.

Cracking the world's saddest, smallest smile, she returns: "Where would we go?"

And it's wonderful, really, that this fictional journey he was about to take is no longer a party of one. That's why they've stayed together even if their together is different from everyone else's together. Owen doesn't think she can begin to understand the ocean he's found his ship in, steering against brutal winds. But she's right there with him, even if she thinks it's just a kiddie pool they're floating atop of.

"Somewhere far. Really far away and cold. Like Alaska."

Giggling, "Alaska? Really? Why not somewhere hot and nice with a ton of beaches, we're already somewhere cold. Like- ooo why don't we go to the tropics? Like the Caribbean, or Argentina or something like that."

"We can't go to Argentina. That's where the Nazis fled, we'd be no better than them if we ran away to Argentina." Owen grimaces when she bursts out laughing, tilting her head. "Sorry, Matt used to um- he used to talk about that a lot. I think he thought it was really funny like... not that Nazis were funny, just that- the fact that the Jews and the Nazis had the same ideas on where to flee to. He said it was like Tom & Jerry, or whack-a-mole."

She exhales through her nostrils. Not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. Just somewhere in-between. Lukewarm. Owen knows it's hard to hear him talk about Matt but he has no idea what else there's even to talk about these days.

Sucking in a breath he prepares to put a bandaid on over the bandaid but then: "Well, we can't go there, I guess. Maybe... you know where they have really nice beaches? Italy. My cousin visited a couple weeks ago and it looked really nice. Are there any Nazi covens in Italy or is that safe."

And now it's his turn to burst out laughing, still grasping her while she grasps him. "Are you doing good in history class? Maybe I should- maybe we could do your homework together."

"Don't be mean to me!"

But she's breaking out into fits of giggles and falling into his chest. A solid anchor on which he can cling to, keeping him from going adrift. Around them the storm picks up, cutting through the duck pond and blowing leaves into their hair. Neither of them notice, however, in their own boat on the high seas.

"Would you ever want to make movies again?"

"That was more of Matt's thing." In response, a pencil scritch-scratches. Ideally, he would never watch another movie again. He doubts anything new will be as good as what Matt has already shown him, and everything he's already seen has memories tied to it. So no more movies, no more televisions, maybe even no more music. With rules like those, he could become a monk. Slough off all his worldly possessions and pilgrim to a monastery somewhere. And the monks would know jackshit about him, so he'd truly be free. No more weird stares in public, no more courthouses. "He um- he wrote all the scripts and stuff, and did most of the editing. I was just an actor. He called me, uh, he called me his Phillip Seymour Hoffman."

She furrows her eyebrows, wiggling her pencil between her fingers. If it were Matt, he’d get the reference. Matt would get any reference Owen made immediately because seemingly Matt’s seen every movie ever. Matt did get it once, when Owen expressed frustration in himself for never really knowing what to do when they were on location together. He was just there, reading his lines, cracking something funny off-script every once in a while. No, man, you don’t get it. It's like PTA and PSH. We're each other's muses! which at the time he had said was gay, and Matt had agreed, and they had moved on.

Tapping his foot beneath the coffee table, Owen tries to bring the memory into full focus, but it slips away. He doesn't know what script they had been working on. When he tries to build the scene he just thinks of Matt’s-

Shuddering, Owen draws his feet into himself. Ms. Gilligan’s too busy writing, doesn’t seem to notice.

"What about the guitar? Are you still playing? You didn't mention it at all the last time we saw each other." More pencil scratches, they're actually scratching at his skull. Eroding the bone. 

"Sometimes."

"You should keep playing, music is a wonderful coping mechanism. Especially something like guitar. It keeps your mind and your hands busy." She smiles at him helpfully. “We actually offer music therapy here, if you’d ever be interested the first session is always free.”

"I don't know." He turns away from her to stare out the window behind him. They’re on the second floor overlooking a lake. One of those manufactured drainage mires where nothing grows and nothing swims. Green water with brown grass, winter waging its war on the earth as they march closer and closer to November. “Matt liked it when I played but- I don’t know.”

“I see.” Kind eyes, empty smile. “A lot of times when we lose a loved one, it can be difficult to continue hobbies that we once associated with them.” She’s doing her reasoning thing, where she tries to bargain with him as if he’s a terrorist with a bomb strapped to his chest. “It’s a natural part of grief but it’s important for you to find those positive coping mechanisms, you can’t live your life denying yourself purpose. Remember, we’re reaching towards acceptance, reclaiming our past.”

“I just don’t really… like playing? I quit lessons because-” he’s clenched up, his heart hammering away in his throat as images of Matt flash in front of him. Clairvoyant, he’s seen the past as the future. Over and over again. “I quit my lessons. But I can like, teach myself. It’s just not fun. I’d rather be doing something else.”

“What else do you like to do, Owen?”

“I- I don’t really know. I do school stuff a lot. I’ve been helping Chrissy with her homework. Like, tutoring her.” There’s a momentary pause. A certain silence that permeates even the air they breathe and the only thing Owen can hear is the white noise machine chugging away in the corner. More pencil scratches.

“Tutoring is kind of a hobby! You should still consider picking up the guitar, or another instrument or some kind of creative outlet. You have a creative mind, Owen, it would be good for you.” She purses her lips, and then slowly: “I’ve found with certain clients that it can be especially difficult to cope with the loss of hobbies when someone commits suicide-”

Owen snaps back to her. His eyes focus like Jared’s adjusted his lens, and has her in frame.

“Matt didn’t commit suicide. I saw it-”

She corrects herself as quickly as she can, a rubber band snapping or an atom splitting. "My apologies. When I was in the courtroom with you I was under the impression that- with the psychological autopsy- that's not important." She purses her lips again, trying to bargain. "Sometimes I worry you, and this is just an observation, that you're avoiding blaming Matt for what happened-"

"It's not like he was going to shoot a cop!" His throat burns, bile rising while his hair stands on end like he's just been outside in the freezing cold. "He was only there for the dirties, he literally-"

"Owen! Please, let's lower our volume, please. Why don't we breathe, four seconds in, ok?"

"He didn't commit suicide. He wouldn't commit suicide."

"Suicide comes in many forms, the court ruled that he aimed a firearm at the officer-"

“He didn’t!” It tears out of him, and suddenly he’s on his feet. Outside, wind lashes tree branches so that it sounds like a whip crack or a jet engine. Owen shakes.. “He didn’t want to die! He didn’t want to die, he was just trying to- to protect me. That was the whole point! He was trying to protect me and he- and he- and I didn’t stop him. He’s dead because I didn’t stop him. They all are. He wasn’t a bad person, he just wanted to protect us. And I didn’t take it seriously. I basically killed them, I fucking killed him and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Her face swims, the whole world swims around him. There’s a certain darkness in his brain, a chunk missing. Last year for AP Bio they went on a field trip to the Museum of Healthcare and there they had viewed a sliver of brain, mottled with a coin-sized brown spot that had killed the man it had belonged to. Something the size of a toonie had wiped a whole person of his memories, his passions, his lifehood. Owen feels as if he has a brown spot the size of a baseball in his brain, blacking out his vision until he’s tunneled in on just a way out of here. A way to be anywhere but here; stuck in this stuffy, knick-knack stuffed, baby-blue room of essential oils and whale calls.

“Sit down, Owen, please. We need to regulate right now, your anger is justified but lashing out won’t help anything. Deep breaths, if you need some space I can leave the room for a few minutes. Breathe in, breathe out. You didn’t kill anybody, Owen. Matt was-”

“You don’t know anything about Matt! You don’t know the first fucking thing about him. I was his only friend, I was his only friend. He’s gone because of me, it doesn’t matter- he didn’t commit suicide. I saw it with my own two eyes. That officer killed him. I killed him.”

Everything is a blur of color and light in his head, replaying that moment over and over again. Matt on the floor, Matt foaming at the mouth, Matt bleeding the blood that Owen had never imagined he would have to see in those quantities. How is he expected to believe anyone knows how he feels?

Owen is slapped back to reality by the chill of the October air, the scent of eutrophication, and Mom screaming after him to not jump in as he sways, ankle deep in reeds.

He dreams of the lake again.

On the sandy shore he lies naked. His penis is erect. Which is a sensation he isn't used to. Apparently that's a side effect of the new medicine, even though he takes it maybe once a week. Just whenever things get really bad. Even though he maintains that his dreams are normal, Ms. Gilligan still pushed the idea of a sleeping aid so he caved, said sure. It sucks sometimes when they’re doing the kissing horizontally thing, but Chrissy says it’s ok so Owen tries to make it ok.

The more fake dreams he scribbles down for his shrink to read every week, the more his subconscious seems to retaliate. It doubles down. Every night now he dreams of hallways. Long, seemingly endless hallways that are hollowed out by every step he takes deeper, onward. Sometimes at the end he finds a door, but it's always locked and no manner of rattling will set him free. Sometimes he feels as if he's being chased, but there's nothing following him. Just him, alone.

This means that it's almost refreshing to be back at the quarry lake. A pleasant change from the tile and fluorescents.

"Hi." It's Matt, looming above him. He's naked too. Almost naked, not quite. On his left wrist is a plastic toy watch. From here–where Owen is laying spread eagle on the embankment–he appears very soft. Very young, that baby-faced way he looked when they met in grade nine. There's a sun burning behind his head, a different sun than the one in the sky, and it gives him the effect of having a halo. "You're naked."

Owen smiles. "So are you."

"But you're hard."

He looks down. "I guess so."

In dreams, speech always sounds strange. Too slow, enunciated in the wrong places, echoey. Like you're speaking into a walkie-talkie underwater on the moon. Matt sounds like Matt through a walkie-talkie underwater on the moon. It's like coming home, and for some reason Owen hadn't realized just how much he missed his voice. All the copies of The Dirties, both versions, were confiscated from him and Jared. Nothing remains, all sealed into evidence bags to await further trial. Apparently Jared is a tough nut to crack, according to his mom when she stopped Mom outside the produce aisle a few days ago. The footage that indicted Nelson and had hung question marks above Owen’s head might now put Jared in detention. But the only person who could truly be locked up for good was blasted away by a Glock 19.

And here he stands now.

"Can I lay down with you?" And as if reading his mind, far before Owen's mind ever even came up with an answer, Matt flops onto his back next to him. The sand and rocks shift beneath them, warm and cold, smooth and grainy. Not quite sand, not quite rocks.

They languish there in silence for a long, long time. Years, decades, eons.

Finally, Owen cracks. There’s a deep well inside of him, and from the bottom of it he pulls: "Why did you leave me?"

"I had to." Matt grins. Owen can't see his face but he knows that Matt is grinning.

The shucked wire sparks off, setting blaze to the whole quarry. In an instant, everything he had been holding inside (very poorly) decides it wants to come tumbling up and out of the deep well.

"You didn't. There was nothing you had to protect me from. You didn't have to do anything.”

“They could’ve killed you.”

“They couldn’t. They were just bullies. And I didn't want- didn't need you to kill the Dirties for me. We were fine, things were fine. Things were always going to be fine and now everything is worse. I changed schools, I have to see a shrink, I have no friends-"

Helpfully, Matt tacks on. "You didn't have any friends before. Just me."

Furious, Owen sits up, ready to unleash his tirade, his armada of death wishes and I miss yous and why did you have to leave me all alone to pick up your mess- but when he looks down at his hands, they're bloody. Then feels around the embankment, and the sand is bloody too.

And when he looks at Matt's face, looming above him once again, it isn't Matt's face. Not anymore. Blown out. Obliterated. His grey matter hangs out the side of his skull like a deflated parachute. He's a shattered window, a popped balloon, a shucked clam. And Owen realizes that it hadn't been Matt's voice after all. Some twisted version of Matt’s voice. And all at once does he realize that he doesn't remember what Matt sounds like anymore.

There's a beeping. It's the wristwatch. There's more beeping, on and on, drilling down into him until he’s as split apart as Matt is. Matt was. And he can only haunt Owen's dreams, his voice can only sound as if it's coming through a walkie-talkie underwater on the moon.

At last, with a great heaving inhale, Owen breaks from the nightmare. Hunching over himself in bed, he catches most of the vomit in the palms of his hands.

Chrissy's car idles outside of Owen's apartment, shuddering in the stagnant night. He's still in the shower attempting to melt himself under the hot spray of water when he gets her text, and he has to apologize profusely for worrying her like that.

"What happened, are you ok?" She sets off before he's even had a chance to buckle his seat belt. "I thought you might've- ugh don't do that again, you scared the shit out of me."

"I'm sorry." With the back of her hand, she hits his shoulder once and then twice. "I said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Chrissy."

"So are you good? Did you... take a shower?"

Running fingers through his still sopping hair, he nods. "Brushed my teeth, too. I had to throw my sheets in the wash, which my mom isn't gonna be so happy about. I probably woke her up."

"What happened?"

"I threw up. Not because I'm sick, I just... had a bad dream. A weird dream."

As soft as anything can be, she whispers: “Do you wanna, like, talk about it?”

“Not really.” For some reason, he whispers it back. This is their little secret now.

She nods, eyes a little wide, but as soon as they’re off, they’re off. In silence, mostly, but eventually Chrissy turns on the radio. With a smile in her voice she mutters I love this song and cranks the volume up on Into The Groove.

“My mom used to put this on for me, when I was in like… oh wow like kindergarten. After dance class, baby ballet? That was so long ago, isn’t it crazy that we’re graduating next year?”

“I might be graduating  early. You know like… the year round thing has been good so I could just be done a semester early. My mom thinks it's a good idea, but I just… I don’t know ”

“Are you gonna go straight to college?”

Owen cringes. It’s a little like talking to his grandma or Ms. Gilligan, except Chrissy has no wrinkles and her hair is pinned back in twin braids. She wears driving glasses too, and they’re ridiculous and adorable even if she doesn’t believe Owen when he says that. I look like a little geek, my life is over if anyone sees me in these.

“I might take a gap year, I don’t really know what I wanna do with… all of this. There’s so much, it’s been so much. And without Matt- I don’t know. He just always knew exactly what to do at all times. Even if it was-” what had Ms. Gilligan said? “Unconventional.”

More silence, Owen clears his throat and tries to clear a path towards her. “Have you heard back from any colleges?”

“Not yet, I’m probably not gonna get any acceptance letters until the end of next semester. Or like, next year. But Dad says I have a good shot at Duke if not BYU.” He watches her smile, lips stretching over her brace-straightened teeth, her twin braids falling down her back in a cascade of dark brown hair. “I’m excited.”

Owen will never let her know but the prospect of her going further than Toronto is the most terrifying ever. He’s on some kind of precipice, a tightrope walk of utter doom and asking her to stay or asking her to let him come with would snap the string he’s balancing on. What would Matt think? Running off to chase some girl?

She’s not some girl, go away.

When they get to her place, the house is dark, and she tells him they have to be quiet. Not quite pushing the car into the driveway quiet- Chrissy has almost… religiously chill parents. But they set their shoes by the door and head up the stairs without a word anyways. It makes Owen feel like he’s sneaking around behind someone’s back but he doesn’t know whose and why. He’s allowed to be here at night, he’s allowed to be alone with Chrissy, he’s allowed to want things.

Does he want something? He’s not sure, but when her door whispers to a close behind her back he feels as if maybe he should want something but just as he doesn’t know who or why, he doesn’t know what. Maybe Matt really was wrong all along, and he’s the stupid one here.

He thinks he wants to kiss her, so he does. Her back falls against the door, and Owen places his hands at her hips with an awkward attentiveness that causes her to giggle.

“That tickles,” she sighs into his mouth. And then she licks. Just the poke of her tongue against his sealed lips and from there all hell breaks loose. He licks back and it's not like this is the first time they’ve ever made out but every time they do it feels like Owen has never kissed anyone before. It’s all new still, a head rush of excitement and soon she’s walking him back so that he falls onto her bed.

Her bed–her bedroom as an extension–is so classically girly that it almost makes Owen laugh. He would find it funnier if he didn’t like her so much, and he likes her so much more than he could ever allow himself to realize.

The walls are a standard baby pinkish-white, tacked with photos from family vacations and pep rallies and meets from when she did gymnastics, dance, track and field, cheerleading. You can’t turn anywhere without a soft and fuzzy reminder of her past, her entire childhood catalogued in one room. In one whole room.

It’s almost unimaginable to Owen, to have so many photos of one's childhood. Of one’s childhood being so full of good memories that one would want to plaster their walls with all of those memories.

In front of him she stands, laughing a nervous laugh. Owen laughs back, his legs spread and she must see it as an invitation because she crosses her arms over herself, grips the bottom of her tee, and then she’s shirtless. In just jeans and a bra.  Pink bra, lacy. Owen sweats, Owen stirs, Owen desires but at the same time he’s standing at the edge of a cliff looking down. And beneath him isn’t sea or land but sky. Endless sky. He could fall forever.

“Are you sure this is like… alright?” He asks, and even though he’s speaking to her it’s more like he’s asking himself. Or, not himself, but the voice. The Matt-Voice, who has shut up in protest.

“If you’re alright with it, sure.” She grins at him wickedly before unhooking her bra. “Take it off me?”

“Ok.” He sounds weakened, like he’s on 1HP, next hit KO. “Ok,” he tries again, clears his throat, sits up so that she’s in arm's reach. “Ok.”

And he does, without looking down. He stares into her eyes and watches her watch him back. “Like that?”

“You’re such a dork, sometimes. Come here, why don’t we, um, lay down.” Has she always been this giggly? Are all girls this giggly and nervous and full of energy or just her? Is she special, in this way? She’s special to Owen, maybe the last special thing he has left.

And he does lay down, they lay down together. They kiss, horizontally, and at some point Owen’s shirt comes off too. It’s only when she’s reaching for his pants, where he’s found himself strained, does the voice give up its oath of silence.

You would’ve done this with me. It says with unearned confidence. But maybe the confidence is earned, because when Chrissy starts working the button he closes his eyes and behind them are images of Matt. Real ones, like him in the Lounge Singer costume, like him tearing the tearaway pants to reveal his balls, like him with his eyes softened staring at Owen because he thought Owen wasn’t looking, or because he thought it was too dark to tell. Fake images too, of Matt in positions Matt has never been in and never will be in and-

“Owen? Is everything ok?” She snakes her hand out of his pants and presses the warm breadth of her palm to his stomach. “Owen? Owen!?”

He curls in on himself, pressing his face into her hair which had at some point fallen from the braids and fanned out beneath them. “I can’t- sorry I just-”

“We don’t have to.” Fingers lace through his hair, pulling gently until he’s looking at her. It’s like a funhouse mirror, her face a watery version of her face through the watery version of Owen’s eyes. “Come here, we don’t have to.”

He shudders when she plants a kiss on his forehead, and he knows that must hurt but there’s nothing he can do about it. Inside his head is Matt. Not Matt. It’s not Matt, never again Matt. A sinner in the box, a prisoner on death row, he confesses: “I just wish he was here. He always- he would know what to do, with school, with this, with everything. He always had a plan, he always had shit figured out even if it was fucking insane. I don’t… I don’t even think we would be together without him.”

Be together. He lingers there. She presses on his chest.

"I know. You miss him, I would, I would too. I mean like, I don't know." Owen stares up at her, dizzy. He decides–then and there–that he hates crying. He'll never cry again, over anything. "I don't really know, but I want to be here for you."

"You are here for me."

"We don't have to do anything. Like, ever."

"I want to."

"We don't have to yet." She kisses him again, holding his face in her palms. She holds his whole world in her palms sometimes, and he trusts her with it. "I like you a lot, Owen. I'm fine with it."

"I like you too."

It's as they're falling asleep that it happens. She rolls over, lands with her face pressed to Owen's bare chest, wrapped around each other like vines climbing up a telephone pole. It's as good as anything has ever been, a soft hug after a hard night. The words themselves are drowsy, barely a rasp into his neck. If Owen wasn't still wide awake he wouldn't have caught it.

"I love you."

He can't say anything back.

Owen's only been to one funeral before.

He was five when great grandma Belinda kicked the bucket. There had been a weird sort of relief that washed through the family. A mutual sigh of finally, that’s over with. Owen had been too young to get it then and he might be too young to get it now but from what he understands, it had been a long time coming. She was sick on and off, always in hospital, always needing someone to wait on her and when her siblings passed away, that left the weight on her children's shoulders. And when her children got too busy being old and having their own children, who were also getting old, they pooled money and collectively hired a caretaker. She hadn't been too happy about that, judging by stories told in hushed whispers and tearful laughter at her funeral, and subsequent family gatherings large and small. But people lose their minds as they get older, an aunt had said, and she was one hell of a kook. Owen hadn't known her. He can only remember her tiny papery hands handing him gifts on one birthday occasion, and a handful of retellings of retellings of her life.

He remembers as much about her as he remembers about the funeral itself. In typical funeral fashion, it had been raining and the mourners huddled around her casket covered by umbrellas. He had been five, and thus bored by everything and entirely uninterested in the actual service. All his cousins were older than him or babies, and this was in the time before stepbrothers so there he was. Lonely and bored, much like how he is now.

And even though he doesn't really remember her funeral, he doesn't think this is what funerals are supposed to be like.

For starters, it’s a beautiful day and they're in the Johnson's backyard. Beneath the great American sycamore that they used to climb together in hopes of one day building a treehouse even though they were far too old for treehouses, is the Johnson family, Owen, and Chrissy. It's more akin to burying a dog or a beloved pet hamster than mourning/celebrating the full extent of a person's life. 

No one is in suits or dresses either, or even in black except Mrs. Johnson. Owen himself barely managed to pull on his one all black zip-up before Mike stopped him as he was stepping out of the house and remarked that he looked like he was on his way to shoot up a school, and no number of yelling matches could've solved any of their problems. Not then and there. So he's wearing blue. Blue is a neutral color, blue is just a color that people wear to normal places and not funerals. It's kind of a not-funeral anyway. They buried Matt without fanfare months ago. Cause of death had been ruled on the spot, witness reports given in the following days. They had just ripped the band-aid right off, got it over with. 

Owen almost wouldn't believe he’s dead if it hadn't happened right in front of him. He knows Matt hadn't meant it to happen right in front of him but it did and he saw and now he's left to wrestle

with the aftermath of that.

It was like a movie. A cheesy movie. Where the main character is falling from some impossible height then record-scratch, freeze frame. So cliche. So terribly cliche that if Matt had been watching himself next to Owen he would've said what is this idiot doing? Who in their right mind would end their movie like this? If it were me... oh man if it were me I'd do a Taxi Driver riff. You know that one? Where he turns the gun on himself but there's no bullets left? Wouldn't that be funny?

But it had been him. And he's gone.

Ms. Gilligan said he needs to get used to saying that. Matt's gone, he's gone. Let it become a natural fact of the universe. You don't have to let go, you just need to reach acceptance. He's tired of reaching for acceptance. Accept this, asshole. But he tries anyway. Matt’s gone, forever. He's gone and he's gone! Never again will he spring Owen from his drab apartment. Never again will they fuck around in the park reciting their scripts. Never again will they hold hands in a sweaty basement against Owen's will.

"Thank you for coming," is how Mrs. Johnson greets him when they walk through the gate. It feels more like he's waltzed into a very dower family barbecue uninvited, and he has no idea if he should thank her back or say you're welcome. Nothing sounds quite right in his head so he opts to just nod solemnly. "I know this must be so difficult for you."

He wants to say: this is actually the most difficult thing I've ever had to do, second to watching him die. Even you didn't watch it happen, you didn't watch his body hit the floor. Suddenly lifeless except for the occasional convulsion and peeing of his pants. You could never understand that. You could never understand him.

Instead he nods again, tries to unstick his throat, chokes, and lands at: "It's been hard."

Her face is permanently tear-streaked it seems, and when she smiles it's not much of a smile at all but instead a grimace. As if the act of smiling will never come to her again. "I'm sorry, honey, for everything you went through. I know it doesn't mean much coming from me but I think he's sorry too. And he's happy you've forgiven him enough to come to his funeral."

"I don't know," he manages. "Maybe he was sorry, maybe he wasn't. It was hard to tell, he didn't look- he didn't want a funeral."

"Sorry?"

"Sorry, he just... back when we first met, he said he didn't want a funeral. Didn't need one cause-" and Owen can't help it, he giggles a bit. It's absurd, actually, that no one saw the signs. Even back then, before the plan. Before any plans had been planned for Owen's sake. "He had said he wasn't gonna need a funeral ‘cause of how he wanted to go out. That's so morbid, right? Who thinks that at 14?"

She seems stunned a little, and there's a momentary shock of regret pulsing through Owen but it's cut off abruptly. Mrs. Johnson leans in and gathers him in her arms and now he's almost too stunned to hug her back.

"Where did all those ideas come from? He was so crazy all the time, so bright," she laments when they let go. Owen thinks that Matt really did a remarkable impression of his mom. "Do you miss him?”

Of course I do. He could scream that to the entire world. How could I not miss him? My only best friend, the one person I maybe ever truly was allowed to love. And he must've loved me, or otherwise he wouldn't have died for me.

And then he has to pause. Reread his lines to himself. I loved him. I loved him?

With an honesty he wishes he didn’t mean: "Sometimes."

The funeral service lasts an hour or so. Mrs. Johnson says a few parting words under the sycamore tree, and then they pray. Owen finds it all a bit ridiculous. He stays on his best behavior, however, all through lunch which is tense from the lack of conversation. Mrs. Johnson cries through words, Mr. Johnson sits in stony silence, out on the porch Emily smokes and runs her eyeliner down her face.

Owen manages to excuse himself and Chrissy before dessert. Together they reprieve in the backyard, out of sight beneath the porch. It's when he's leaning in to whisper in her ear that the backdoor swings open then shut with a rattle like a snake's.

Craning his neck up, he watches. Emily is now smoking with Eric, and they seem to be exchanging tense words or sorrowful words or joyful words. It's hard to tell. With a quick glance at each other, Owen and Chrissy agree to this new mission. They creep closer, the crunchy untamed mane of the backyard licking their shoes as they tiptoe. 

"No, get your own, I'm not sharing anymore. And you're not borrowing one of my lighters again."

"You aren't even supposed to be smoking out here." Eric leans against the porch railing, hands in pockets.

"What're you gonna do? Tell mom? Fuck off."

"C'mon, just one?"

"I said no."

"You're so greedy."

"Fine, fine. One. But then you get your own, I'm tired of having you bum off me. Just don't let mom see."

"She's too busy worrying about that kid. She's so worried about him." A puff of smoke obscures Eric's already partially obscured face, and Owen instinctively wrinkles his nose. "I feel pretty bad for him."

"Who? Owen? I'd be worried too, I mean did you read that big article in the Star? About the shooting and trial and everything? He was basically like- what's the word? Groomed by Matt. I mean the whole thing was for him-"

"The Star's a fucking rag. And that's unfair to the kid. How was he supposed to know?"

"I'm just stating what I read! And like... I wish mom had let us go to the trial. I don't know what she's protecting us from, we're adults, and it's all out there anyways."

“Not all of it.”

“Well, most of it.”

There’s a pause, more puffs of smoke polluting the early winter chill. And then Eric’s now gravelled voice breaks through: “I feel bad for Nelson.”

“Why? What is there to feel bad about? He gave Matt the guns-”

“Matt stole the guns. Did you even read the article? And I- can I, you know, tell you something? You can’t tell anyone, I mean you can’t tell a single soul.”

“... fine.”

“Matt showed me one of the guns. I didn’t know! Don’t give me that look, I didn’t know. He said he had taken it but just the one gun and it was unloaded and the whole time I was thinking ‘I should let Nelson know’ but then I… kinda forgot. And… it happened two days later, so. I don’t know what-”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Em, c’mon. He said it was unloaded-”

“Who cares if it was unloaded? Why didn’t you- Nelson is in prison right now and Matt’s- no, don’t go- I’m not gonna tell anyone! I swear on my life. But that’s unbelievable. Why didn’t you tell him? Why didn’t you tell mom? That’s fucking dangerous, letting Matt get away with having a gun.”

“I didn’t know Matt was planning to shoot up his school!” Eric’s voice raises at the same time Chrissy’s eyebrows raise, but he softens. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m just. It’s been on my mind. Maybe I could’ve stopped it, maybe Nelson could’ve stopped it if I told him, maybe even mom could’ve stopped it. How are we supposed to know? ‘Ifs drive you crazy’ that’s what Dad always says.”

And then there's a long, lone pause. A terrible pause. And Owen sits there digesting. It tastes bad, it tastes horrible. How are we supposed to know? How is anyone supposed to know if seemingly everyone knew? Eric had known, Nelson could've known, Matt’s mom could’ve known. Anyone one of them could’ve been the one to stop them. There are probably tens of other people who could’ve known. Chrissy knew. Owen stares at her, mouth agape. She knew, Matt told her. And why didn’t she say anything either?

He’s about to ask when a sniffling comes from the porch, then a choked off sob and Eric catches Emily before she falls. Broken, she trembles out:

"I'm sorry, this is awful. I'm sorry. I just can't believe he's, like, dead. It still doesn't feel real. Half the time I'm just waiting for him to pop up from the basement and say some deranged shit about the movie he's working on or- or- I don't know. It’s just not real."

"I know."

“I miss that stupid kid, Eric. I miss him so much. I should’ve been paying more attention to him, you know? Maybe I could’ve gotten help-”

“Don’t beat yourself up. I miss him too.”

“You don’t either. How could you have known… fuck, he was so stupid. So crazy.”

“C’mon, let’s go inside before mom asks what we’re up to.”

“Ugh, ok.” Another big sniffle, then the wiping of eyes. “Give me a second, I don’t wanna smell completely like smoke.”

They leave without saying goodbye. They leave without saying anything at all, really. They march to Chrissy’s car half a block away, wrapped in their coats and fighting the windchill in silence. They hold hands as they go so as not to lose each other in the gusts, blowing them this way and that. It's when they're halfway to Chrissy's place that she finally speaks up. 

"Let's go get ice cream." She’s already turning out of her neighborhood, her mind made up.

"Why?"

"I feel bad for leaving like that, and like, ice cream makes me feel better? So let's go."

Owen feels nothing about anything right now. He’s still thinking about what Eric said, and a certain lightness finds its way into his chest. As blinding as headlights coming front long as they truck to wherever it is they’re going. "Sure."

The parlor is empty at this time of day and year, so they slide into an empty booth near the back with two cokes and a banana split. Beneath the table, Chrissy kicks one leg out so that their ankles are rubbing against each other, a spot of warmth Owen can tie himself to. His spacesuit in the vastness of the stars.

“I’m kinda glad we left early.” Between bites of fudgy chocolate, Owen sighs. "That was depressing. I was depressed just being there, you know?"

"Yeah. We probably should've said something though." Digging between the vanilla and strawberry, Chrissy loads her spoon up before presenting it to Owen with a quiet tada. "There, the perfect bite."

"Maybe we shouldn’t have, though. I don't know. It was just kinda... wrong? It's not what Matt would've wanted, he didn't want a funeral at all. And did you hear what she said during the 'service'? She said Matt is looking down on us, but from where? From heaven?"

"Owen-"

"I'm being serious, who says that after their- their son kills someone." Suddenly sick, Owen drops his spoon onto a napkin and pushes the ice cream boat away from him. "I think I'm done."

"You know she's his mother. You know that right? I'm not, like, mad at you, ok? But she's-"

"Trying her hardest."

"She is, and so is everyone else who knew him. You heard what his brother and sister said. They miss him too, they feel guilty too. You can't pretend like you're the only one going through something right now. That's not fair to literally everyone else."

They stare at each other for a long minute. Chirssy’s red in the cheeks a bit, clenching her spoon as ice cream drips off it and onto the lacquered wood.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes at last. “I just hate watching you do this to yourself.”

Owen's teeth hurt from the cold and the sugar and from something else. Something he can't quite place but he's been biting it back all night. Ever since he first thought it into existence. But surely that wasn't the first time. He's thought it before; when they were building a campfire, or riding their bikes, or shooting a scene, or when things went wrong and they would fall into each other in eruptious laughter.

"I think-" but it's too terrifying. In the way doing anything for the first time is terrifying but magnified times a thousand. He wishes he had Chrissy's hand to hold but she's across the booth so instead he knocks their knees together, tries to sense her warmth through the double layer of denim. "Never mind."

"No, you gotta say it." She points her spoon at him, smudged with chocolate sauce, like it's a tiny sword. "If you don't say it I'll never forgive you. No more holding stuff back, ok?"

"There's a lot I should hold back."

"Not to me, not anymore."

"You're not my therapist."

"But I am your girlfriend."

They both freeze, the sundae in front of them melting into a puddle. They freeze for what feels like a long while until one of them laughs. Owen has no idea who laughed first or if they were blessed by the laugh and it happened at the same time but they sit there giggling. Their legs brush again. and Owen finds that he doesn't seem to mind that word so much anymore. He might not be able to say I love you back, he might still be in love with Matt, if that's a thing he ever was. But he can do this, this simple task of being her boyfriend. Having her as a girlfriend.

He's been preparing for this, he's ready. The headphones strapped to his ears are just tight enough, the room is warm. The doctor shines a light at his eyes, nods with finality. It's like the Neuralyzer from Men in Black, and Owen half expects them to just erase all his memories of Matt, every last one down to the times when they just passed each other in the hallway. And then they'll throw him onto the street, a new but emptier man. He tries not to think about those things, tries to calm his nerves. This won't work if he isn't calm.

With two fingers pointed to the ceiling, the doctor waves his hand rhythmically in front of Owen's eyes. It's like watching breakers crash ashore, and in the seafoam is a bottle, in the bottle is a note, in the note is a memory. The memory goes something like this:

The sun had beaten down on their backs as they clambered over roots and through brush until at last they made their final trek down a hill and to the tree stump Matt had been lauding the day before.

It had been hot as balls out, and Owen, wiping the sweat from his forehead, hadn't known it at the time but he would miss that heat unlike anything he had before. Summer was a time to do nothing and be no one and together they had been no one and done nothing but write scripts all day in the sheltered AC of Matt's bedroom.

"See? Isn't it perfect for the scene?" Matt swung his dowsing rod stick around in the air, catching spider webs in it before flinging it to the side. "All clear, good to go. Mission control to Owen: prepared?"

"What do you even want me to do?"

"Get on the stump! You'll see, it'll work." 

Matt–Owen had come to realize over the weeks as summer waned on and school was rearing its head–had only one true passion in life and that was movies. He had other subpassions. Such as: making Owen laugh, scheming up plans to get their names out there as serious filmmakers, setting off fireworks. But movies were the big one. The One. It's like that playground tease. If you love movies so much, why don't you marry them? But this transcended marriage, transcended love. And Matt had dragged Owen right down with him. They would spend hours watching every DVD in Matt's basement, and when they ran out of new movies they went out to rent more. They would watch and watch until their eyes went dry and couldn't be forced open any longer.

Owen climbed the stump with caution. It belonged to an old tree that had to have been struck down by lightning or rotted out, and thus bark crumbled beneath Owen's feet as he perched atop of it like a large, awkward bird.

“What now? Where in the script are we?”

“Right before ‘die by my blade’ but do the voice you were using for the tavern fellow.”

“I don’t wanna do that voice.”

“C’mon, it sounds so good when you do the voice.”

“It literally doesn’t.” He argued. Matt had stuck his tongue out at him, fanning himself with the pages of their script. “You’re such a child, man. Fine, but I’m not gonna be able to speak for like, a day afterwards.”

“Just do it, ready? Got your lines? And action!”

Standing up on one shaky leg, Owen unsheathed the plastic katana they bought from the dollar store. The stump whined beneath him but he found his balance eventually, got a nice foothold and stood tall. Leaves brushed his hair, and beneath him Matt kind of looked like an ant. A very pale and doughy ant.

“‘Tis the rule of the jungle, dude.” He dropped his voice to the pitch of dirt and gravel, somewhere between a valley boy accent and his grandpa. “Die by my blade! Matt, I don’t think this is gonna work. The voice is for the tavern fellow for a reason.”

“It’ll work!”

“My throat hurts, man.”

“Ok but then say it in the tavern fellow voice,” he did, “see, isn’t that sick? We’ll get you like, some hot tea when we’re home, you primadonna.”

“This thing isn’t stable, by the way.” More bark crumbled off and fell away beneath Owen’s runners. “Fine, but if my mom thinks I caught laryngitis or something it’s your ass.”

“Sure, it’s my ass. Just do the voice.”

"Tis the law of the jungle, dude. Die by my blade."

"That little blade? My blade is so much bigger, motherfucker." To giggles, Matt proceeded to brandish an even smaller sword they had gotten at the same dollar store but a week later. "You cocksucker! You cock sucking cocksucker! We'll duel! Now jump, the lighting is perfect right now, just jump."

"There's no way this thing is gonna hold, man, I can't jump."

"Just do it!"

Owen bent his knees, ready to spring himself on top of Matt, but then a loud crack, much like a gunshot sounded through the forest. The log split and Owen toppled. He toppled and toppled, his katana flung in the air in the commotion, and then he was sprawled out on the mulchy floor. Winded, bruised, and battered, he had cried out. Through the rush: pain. White hot and burning pain. He lifted his hand to his face to check for blood and damages, and that’s when he found the source of the white hot and burning pain. One finger was hanging at a brutal angle, and even Matt seemed a little sickened by it. Matt, who could watch the bleakest of documentaries and the gooiest of horror movies, looked as if he was going to puke at the sight of Owen's broken pinky.

“Oh, fuck. Oh man, fuck.” Matt hopped from one foot to the other, clenching his sword, PS camera hung around his neck. “Should I? Should we?”

“I’m gonna be sick, Matt. Holy shit, that’s-”

“Wicked.”

“Brutal.”

Somehow between then and urgent care, they had managed to find something funny about the whole thing. Way to ruin the scene, eh? Said Matt. I think I made it better. Argued Owen.

And the thing about memories is that there's no pain to be found in them, no physical pain. So Owen can exist there forever, covered in dirt and clutching his hand to his chest in tears, barking adrenaline fueled laughter up at that unfortunate babyfaced kid he had met the summer before grade nine.