Prologue
Benjamin
Iam afraid of being too crude—of sharing too much. I don’t want to hurt anyone. If I’ve hurt you, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m trying to make myself digestible, but everything is muddy; it happened too fast—all at once—and somehow took forever. I don’t know how to rip it all apart and make it easy. Nothing about what has happened to me, or the things I have done, has been easy. It has been nasty and tragic and obscene. I am backwards, an upside-down boy.
Patronized—belittled by my age and my lack of experience with love and loss, the great triumphs of being old in a world that only favors what has already happened. Believing you are wise does not make you so. No amount of tragedy I have faced will make me appear more intelligent in the eyes of my peers. But I feel the weight of what I have been through—the things I was forced to learn too young—and I am suffocated by it.
And from under that weight, I cannot tell you what memory or event caused me the most turmoil. All I can say for certain is that there is always something that terrifies me more than the last. There is always another moment of free fall where I think to myself, this must be it. Surely no one is expecting me to get back up after this one. The sad truth is that they always will. It is required of you to stay alive until living is torn from our wilting hands. That is the worst thing about being alive: you are never able to decide to die.
I have wanted to die more times than I can count. The weight of living is far too heavy for me to carry; I am not strong enough. I want relief, and I am tired of feeling guilty for it. I am tired of feeling pathetic for being weak. In nature, I am a weak boy. I always will be, and I find beauty in that. In being sensitive, overwhelmed, and nervous. Becauseit is natural. Because it is familiar and safe to feel like a feather just now reaching the concrete. A slow, torturous fall. A soft crash. This is who I am, who I have hidden because I felt vulnerable.
And like a hypocrite, I am also tired of aging, tired of running full speed toward something I do not want. Death, loss, heartache—memories fading, and time slipping away drip by drip. The anxiety of it suffocates me, and it did back then too, even at the ripe age of being a child.
Reality is cruel and demanding; I am not ready to pay the dues required of you after birth. I did not ask for this. I did not ask to be awoken and thrown onto a limb. I did not ask to be alone, angry, and clawing my way through adolescence—screaming and bleeding through my youth. Everything I touch takes on a new shape; everything I let go of is crumbled and covered in tears and blood from fighting to keep it within reach. I am small, yet too big, awkward in my own body, and expected to succeed and be pleasant. There is nothing pleasant about a boy learning how to be a man when there is no one there to teach him how to be one, how to keep the ghosts away.
At the end of the day, I just want to be seen. I desperately need to be heard. I want people to know that I am here, living and breathing and fighting. All of this—it has to have been for something. And it might be crude, and it might hurt people, and I’m sorry—but please, somebody hold these thoughts, shoulder these burdens for me, even briefly. Hear my cries and please, for once, choose me. An upside-down boy. A feather just now reaching the concrete.
Find me here. Find me deep in the recesses of my own mind and love me.
Chapter One
August 2017
Benjamin
The afternoon sun heats my skin as I doze to the sound of cicadas carrying on their daily lives around me. This summer day is just that quiet. My feet dangle in the pool, the cool water lapping softly against my ankles as a sense of calm settles over me. There are many times in this life when I am overwhelmed, when even the presence of a morning breeze is too loud. Sometimes I’m falling from too far up, and that’s just the day I’m given. But today—today I’m lying here, and everything is quiet. Everything is calm. My feet are on solid ground.
“Bear!” A sweaty body falls over mine, breathing heavily and full of the kind of excitement only sixteen-year-old boys can conjure.
“Hey, Fe. How was practice?” Felix drapes himself over my chest, sitting to face me on the warming concrete. He’s grinning, black curls stuck to his forehead, beads of sweat clinging to his lip. Somewhere along the way he’s lost his shirt.
“It was good. Coach Lynol said I cut my time down by two seconds.” He stares at me for a moment, pausing for input as I squint against the sun to see him clearly. “Bear, that’s supposed to be super impressive. As inohhhhandahhhh,” he adds blandly.
“Ohhh! Ahhhh!” I yell, digging my hands into his sides, tickling him as he screams and weakly punches at my exposed chest.
Felix has been my best friend for so long now that I don’t even remember how we became friends. One day, I didn’t know him; the next, I was at his house every moment I was allowed. There is nowhere safer than where he is, and for as loud and annoying as he can be, only here, at this house, does the world feel quiet. Only here do I stop falling. Only here does the itch seem to cease.
“Do you guys want peaches? Mom’s asking.” I stop tickling Felix as a shadow falls over us. Significantly larger, towering at six-foot-one and engulfing the space where we lie—Aaron. Felix’s older brother.
He looks between the two of us, unimpressed, but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips. For all his big-brother tactics, he and Felix get along very well. Which, in turn, means he and I get along very well. Another win for Team Benjamin.
“Personally, I wouldlovea peach,” I say, looking up at him from where I rest as he looks down, catching my stare.
The Archer boys and their mother share one common trait: the impressive nature of their piercing green eyes. At first glance, they all look the same, yet they are strikingly different once you really look. Once you really pay attention.
Felix, for example—his eyes have always been warm and honest. They’ve never shown a hint of malice, always incredibly kind. Mrs. Archer, or Tina informally, her eyes are sincere. Almost like a blank sheet of paper; you want to spill everything to her the moment she pries. They’ll get you if you’re not careful.
Aaron’s eyes are intense, always calculating. When they lock onto you, you feel it like a caress. The weight is heavy, albeit a bit suffocating. They aren’t cold by any means—no—but paired with his black curls, intimidating height, athletic build, and confident posture, he’s just… intense.
“I would too, Bub.” Aaron turns that gaze to his brother and gives him a gentle, lazy smile.
“Roger that. What are you guys doing, anyway?” he asks, looking between the two of us where we sit at the edge of the pool—me in my swim trunks and Felix in his athletic shorts. Our skin clings together with sweat, flushed red with laughter and exertion.
“Oh, you know,” Felix begins, grinning up at his brother. How they can look so alike yet entirely different is beyond me. “Bear is just torturing me, as he always does.”
“Well, you interrupted my peaceful vibes with all your crazy, so I believe the torture was warranted,” I argue in my defense, leaning back on my palms and giving my most innocent smile as I look between the two of them. “I truly cannot be faulted.”
Aaron’s lazy smile widens into a full-blown smirk as he turns back to Felix.
