He hesitated. “Is he… taking anything? Any medications?”
I blinked, unsure of where the hell this was going. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because he’s buying pills on campus.”
Everything pretty much stopped. “What?”
He told me a story then. About a guy he used to date, a real fucking scumbag that Corey had thought had the whole bad boy thing going on. Turned out that underneath the leather and swagger and cheap cologne was an asshole who made bank selling Klonopin and Adderall and Xanax to stressed-out frat boys and sorority chicks, people looking for a way to de-stress in ways that alcohol couldn’t provide. It’d taken Corey longer than he cared to admit to dump the asshole, but he’d done it and was better off because of it.
But Corey stressed he wasn’t a snitch, okay? He didn’t like getting involved in shit that didn’t concern him. It was just… Tyson. There was something about him. Corey had seen him around campus, at first a little unimpressed with this kid who was supposed to be some big shit.
He was smart, sure. Of course he was. He was Tyson Thompson, after all. His IQ was high, he’d skipped grades, he’d graduated early, he’d gone to college at sixteen, and yeah, his grades had sloughed off a little, but then he’d turned seventeen, and asked us to trust him. I got this, Papa Bear, he’d said to me. I can handle this on my own. Let me do this on my own. And sure as shit, I’d said okay, okay, okay, because I had trusted him. He’d never given any indication otherwise, he’d never lied to me, never held anything back, or so I’d thought.
And yeah, maybe we weren’t in each other’s back pocket like we’d once been. There were years when he’d been my sole focus, when all I could think about was making sure he was fed and bathed and happy and whole, and even though it felt wrong at first, I’d slowly backed off, because he was his own person. He didn’t always need me hovering over his shoulder forever, no matter how much I wanted to be. And it was hard at first, hard to let him go out into the big and scary world on his own, knowing there were people out there that could hurt him, that would hurt him. Otter had held me close, had whispered in my ear that mistakes were going to be made—it was inevitable, after all—but we’d be here to help him, we’d never leave him behind. Things are changing, Otter had said. But it’ll be okay, Bear. I promise.
So I’d let him go.
I’d trusted him.
And I had other things going on, didn’t I? I had a job. I had other kids in my life that I cared about, other kids that were exasperating and fascinating all at the same time. I had a house in a town that was almost starting to feel like home, no matter how much the call of the ocean tugged on the back of my mind. I had friends, and maybe they were the type that I’d only meet up with once every couple of months for a beer, but they were mine. They weren’t Creed and Anna, they weren’t lifelong and forever, but they were good.
And Otter, of course. I had Otter. For the longest time, the Kid and I had been a package deal, just like it should have been. We were Bear, Otter, and the Kid, and that’s the way it was. Every choice I made had Ty in mind. Everything I did, I did for him, and when I let him go, when I trusted him to know his limits, I was able to see—maybe for the first time—what it meant to be Bear and Otter, just the two of us. Because that was what it was going to be, eventually. I knew that one day, and maybe one day soon, Ty would take that next step. Maybe he’d find a roommate. Maybe he’d get a place on his own. Maybe we’d stay here. Maybe we’d go back to Seafare and he’d stay here. Maybe he’d follow us home. I didn’t know. I tried not to think about it.
But for the first time in a very long time, I felt settled in my skin. We were making plans for the future instead of day by day. We weren’t just surviving.
We were living.
Or so I thought.
It was the little things, wasn’t it? The little things I hadn’t put together to see the picture as a whole. The glassy eyes. The robotic movements. The indifference. The Kid was brash. The Kid was sarcastic. The Kid was fire and outrage and noise and vital.
But he hadn’t been that way in a while. Maybe a long while.
And here it was now. Being dragged into the light by some kid I didn’t know.
Hindsight is a fucking bitch, because now that I could see it, I thought maybe it went back months and months, and as Corey spoke, as he told me what he’d seen, I couldn’t help but feel a mounting sense of horror that I’d never seen it. That I’d missed all of this.
Mostly.
Yeah. That was my bad. I was getting my dose yesterday while brushing my teeth. They fell in the sink. Faucet was running. They melted fast. Forgot to say anything.
I gritted my teeth, pressing my palms into my eyes, shoulders shaking.
“I… saw him,” Corey said. “Talking to my ex. I told myself it was nothing. That it didn’t—I don’t know. I just—needed to see, you know? For myself. I thought maybe I was overreacting. Or that it was none of my business what this kid I didn’t know did. His life, right? Not mine. I have my own shit to worry about. But… I just couldn’t let it go. I don’t know why. I just… I remember reading about him. In the Dartmouth paper. It was so… gushing and talking about how shitty he’d had it and all that he’d overcome to get where he was, and it just wasn’t fair that he would do this. So I followed them.”
Corey had seen it happen, from a distance.
Money changed hands.
A little bottle went into the side pocket of Ty’s backpack.
It was familiar, this. He’d dated his ex for almost eight months. He knew what it looked like.
And later he’d followed the Kid to the library, bumping into him in the stacks hard. Ty’s backpack fell. The bottle popped open. Pills of varying shapes and sizes and colors spilled on carpet. Corey had apologized profusely when the Kid went down on his knees but had managed to do one thing when my brother wasn’t looking.
“I took a picture of them,” Corey said, looking down at his hands. “On my phone. So I could see what they looked like when I looked them up later. The numbers and the letters.”
“What were they?” I asked in a calm voice.