It was an unusually warm day for the start of March. The sun was shining, the sky a blanket of blue without a cloud in sight. Iggy and I had ventured out to the lake after a morning group therapy session, and it felt completely different to our previous visit. For starters, we weren’t bundled up like we were bracing for an Arctic expedition, freezing our balls off at sunrise.
But also because Iggy was quiet.
He usually jabbered on until his throat was raw, bouncing from topic to topic until I forgot how we’d even started. Iggy never got sick of hearing his own voice. Never got tired of telling anyone who would listen exactly what was on his mind. It was like the filter between his brain and mouth was faulty, and whatever words popped up were launched into the world without warning. He was talkative on the best of days, loud and dramatic on the worst. Enough to give someone a migraine if they stayed too close for too long.
Strangely, though, I didn’t mind.
I was Iggy’s opposite, keeping my thoughts tucked away and my words carefully rationed. At least until something felt truly worth saying. When I was younger, I was so quiet my mom worried something was wrong with me. She took me to three different doctors, just to be sure, and each of them told her the same thing. I just didn’t feel like talking.
So imagine her surprise when I told her Riff and I were starting a band. That I was going to be the singer.
But singing was different. Easier. It let me pour emotion into melody instead of conversation. It was simpler to stand in front of strangers who didn’t really know me and pretend I was a god. To wear a mask. To open my mouth and just sing.
For Iggy, everything was worth saying. It didn’t matter if it was ridiculous, crude, or wildly inappropriate. He didn’t hide his thoughts or his feelings, which meant he never had a secret agenda. Mostly because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut long enough to maintain one. It was refreshing, after years in the music industry. A place where insults wore the disguise of compliments and manipulation hid behind honeyed promises. The only people I could trust to be direct, to be honest, were my bandmates. My brothers. And, I realised now, Iggy.
But today, he was curled into himself. Chin resting on his knees, arms wrapped tight around his legs, eyes fixed on the water rippling in the breeze. He hadn’t said a word since leaving the sunroom, when he’d stood up abruptly as the session ended, marched through the gardens, and dropped to the ground like gravity had finally claimed him.
He didn’t react to the wildflowers glowing under the high sun. Didn’t care when a butterfly landed briefly in his hair before vanishing into the grass. His gaze stayed locked on some distantpoint, though I doubted he was really seeing it. I wasn’t even sure he knew I was there, too lost in his own head to notice I’d followed him. He hadn’t asked me to. I just did.
“Do you think the staff ever think about former patients?”
The question was quiet, almost swallowed by the sounds of nature. Still, my head snapped towards him. It was the first thing he’d said since we arrived.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Iggy picked at the cuff of his cropped lilac sweater. Less ostentatious than his silver puffer jacket, but still unmistakably him. Cropped just enough to skim the bottom of his pecs, and dotted with tiny red hearts.
“Like... how many people leave the Willow and actually make it?” he said. “How many reallysurvive?”
I stayed quiet and let him have the space. Let him speak while I simply listened.
“I’m sure some people leave and live long, happy lives,” he continued. “But how does that compare to the ones who don’t? The ones who leave hopeful, only to come back and start all over again.”
His hand dropped to a stray pebble by his side, and he tossed it into the lake. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this place was more tears than water by now.”
A weak chuckle slipped out, then died before it could become anything real.
“And what about the ones who fall back into old habits and just... disappear?”
He finally looked at me then. Green eyes glossy beneath dark lashes. Scared.
“I don’t want to disappear, Bodhi,” he whispered. “I don’t want to become a statistic someone uses to scare kids straight.”
I turned back to the water, listening to the calming sound of the waves lapping against the muddy shore a short distance away.
“I think I’m scared of the opposite,” I said quietly. “That I’ll have too many eyes on me when I get out of here. That their stares and expectations will feel too heavy on my shoulders.”
With a sigh, I leaned back and stretched my legs out in front of me, resting my weight on my hands. When I rolled my head to the side, I found Iggy watching me, chewing on his lower lip.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to us when we leave here,” I admitted. “But I am sure of one thing.”
Iggy leaned closer, like we were sharing a secret he was afraid to miss.
“Fear doesn’t mean failure, Iggy.”
“Okay,” he whispered, unconvinced. “But what if we leave here and stumble? What if we fail?”
A small smile tugged at my mouth. “Then we get back up and start again.”
