“What about him?” I desperately wished the conversation was over. I didn’t know why Corey brought it up in the first place. I wanted to be anywhere but where I was.
Corey shrugged. “He’s different. To you.”
“Meaning?”
He leaned forward and grabbed my hand. “Meaning, you’re a liar. You can say you’re over it, that it was just something like childhood adoration. Say that all you want, Ty. But you’re a liar.”
You’re a liar, it agreed.
She was Kori when she convinced me to come back to Seafare, one last time. “You’ll regret it,” she said softly. “If you don’t go back at least once, you’ll regret it.”
“I don’t want to see him,” I said quickly.
She laughed that Kori laugh, a light and seductive thing. “Notice how I didn’t bring him up. You did.”
Shit.
“Besides, it’s not about him, Tyson. It’s about your family. Anna. Creed. Their parents. JJ. And it’s about Mrs. Paquinn. I know you, Ty. I know it’s killed you not to see her again. And it’ll hurt even worse later on. Trust me. It’s easier to avoid now if you don’t think about the regret later on. But eventually, regret is all you’ll know.”
“That psychologist bullshit doesn’t work on me,” I retorted.
Kori smiled. She knew. She knew she was right. And what was worse, she knew I knew. “When do we leave?” she asked me.
SO THERE it is, the history lesson. All of it, I think. At least the high points. I’m sure there are countless stories I could tell you about my time away from Seafare. Things that have molded me further into becoming who I am today. Maybe I’ll tell you, one day. But here, now, in this moment, it’s about coming home to a place that I’ve avoided for as long as I possibly can. It’s about this drive into town on a rainy afternoon, Seafare looking bigger than it has any right to, looking brighter than it ever has before.
Here are the places of my youth.
Here are the things I’ve tried to forget.
Here they all are, spread out around me, and it’s like I’ve never left.
Here is where it began.
And here is where it begins again.
I know what you’re thinking. This is just like Bear and Otter! A homecoming after a long absence! A reunion destined to happen! Everything will be as it was and as it should be. It is, after all, inevitable. It’s like our word of the day, or like our ability to breathe. To just breathe.
But, in reality, life happens.
Paths that seemed convergent instead split apart.
It’s no one person’s fault. It just is.
Some things, no matter how much we wish, no matter how much we hope, no matter how much we beg for them in our secret hearts, are not meant to be.
I am here to say good-bye.
Nothing more.
8. Where Tyson Attends the Most Awkward Party Ever
“MY GOD,” Corey breathes as we pull up to the Green Monstrosity. “Photos do not do justice to this house. This… this is beyond epic.”
It is. It always has been. The Green Monstrosity is way past epic. A two-story piece of offensive architecture that rises out of the suburbs like a big fuck you to the rest of the neighborhood. It’s weird, really, the feeling that hits me when I see it again for the first time in close to four years. It is epic yes, the green so grotesque it should be illegal, but it’s still just a house like any other. It has walls and a roof and a yard.
So why then, when we pull up next to it, the driveway already full of cars I don’t recognize, does a lump form in my throat? Why is it that I can feel heat prick my eyes? It’s just a house. That’s all it is.
But that’s a lie. It’s more than that. The Green Monstrosity was the first time since I could remember that I knew that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay for Bear and me. We said good-bye to the hole-in-the-wall apartments with the gross carpets and the peeling walls. We said good-bye to a life where we existed merely by floating along. We said good-bye to the life where I wasn’t sure we’d make it, though I tried to put on a brave face, at least as much as a nine-year-old ecoterrorist-in-training could do. I was just a little guy, but I would have torn the world apart with my bare hands for my brother if called upon to do it.