I glance at Silas as his eyes land on it too, then he nods.
I take it out, holding the black spiral hardback notebook in my hands as I look over all the stickers stuck to the cover. Years of memories are in this book, and it feels like I’m holding the key to our past.
I flip it open and immediately smile at the first page.
Silas groans, and I let out a laugh.
We were eleven when we first created Redwave, and seeing the first-ever drawing of him staring up at us takes me back to that day.
Silas was upset because he got in trouble at school for ripping up his work. He tried to tell his teacher it was too hard and that he didn’t understand it, but she just kept telling him to keep trying and was getting more frustrated with him when he couldn’t do it. He even asked to go to the learning centre with it, which he hated doing. He did everything right, but no one helped him. Eventually he ripped the paper, threw it, and yelled at her, telling her no one ever listened to him. He got sent home with a two-day suspension, and then got in trouble again with his mom, since his dad wasn’t home.
When I got off the bus, I came straight to the lighthouse and found him up here. I had a new notebook in my backpack that I was supposed to use for math, but instead, we used it to create someone who would always listen. Someone who would always be here for us, could take everything we couldn’t carry on our own, and make life… better.
I smile as I take in the lines of the drawing, clearly done by a kid but still so good. Even at eleven years old, he understood how light and shadow worked and could perfectly capture the emotion on his face.
My eyes trace the ripples of red energy around his arms and the red glow in his eyes, and a chuckle escapes me as I read the name written above him in bold red letters, like we were trying to make it into a logo.
“Redwave,” I say quietly.
Silas huffs a quiet breath of laughter as we look at the first-ever drawing of the creation that would hold so much for us.
“What a stupid name,” he says.
A laugh bubbles out of me at those words, because, well… yeah.
I flip through the next few pages, the drawings improving significantly, the handwriting becoming clearer, and Redwave’s stories becoming longer and more serious as he grows with us. From lost hockey games to my cousin passing away, to Silas hating therapy and school, to feeling hopeless and lost as teenagers. This entire book is a history of us, told through Redwave.
But through all of it… is the power we gave him.
Stick-it power. The power to get through anything he can’t fly away from.
When I flip to the last page, my eyes immediately sting with the threat of tears.
The beautiful drawing is laced with so much pain, I feel it deep inside me. It was drawn right before I left for university, and everything started to change between us.
Redwave is on his knees, stripped of his strength by the villain who left him in the wreckage. A storm is brewing; the dark sky threatening to rain down on him, and Redwave looks broken and hopeless, unable to fight it.
The scene that Silas continued to live in and fell deeper into.
But looking at it now, I notice the thing I also saw then. The drawing may be dark, and full of stormy shadows and dark lines. But beneath all of it are the soft, thin veils of light. Hiding under the wreckage and storm clouds are subtle hues of warm gold and soft blues that feel like… hope.
I blink away my tears and pull in a breath, running my fingers over the stormy clouds that look so real I swear I’m actually touching them.
“He walks right into the fire and comes out stronger than ever,” I say, repeating the same words I said to him when he first drew this.
I turn my head to look at him, and his eyes lift from the page to meet mine.
“I hate that I broke your heart,” I say quietly.
His brow creases slightly, and he shakes his head. “You didn’t.” Then he looks down at Redwave, defeated and breaking on the page. “You were never the villain. Life was.”
I watch him as my vision blurs again, and his eyes move slowly over the drawing.
“It was everything outside of us that made it hard,” he says. Then he meets my gaze again, just as a tear falls down my cheek. He lifts his hand to brush it away with his thumb. “But it’s better now.”
Without another thought, I lean forward and press my lips to his. The feeling of his hand on the side of my face, his lips on mine, and everything we’ve been through sitting here with us, completely overwhelms me.
I don’t know what I did in this life to deserve him.
