Stories of an Old Boy

By: XPud
(© 2018 by the author)

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

xpud@tickiestories.us

Epilogue

I wish I was able to say, “And we lived happily ever after,” but that never happens to me, does it? No matter how many times I live my life. Not to me, not to the people I love. I outlive every last one of them for whatever reason, even in my first run through life. I die at over a century old, and not a person I loved is there for me, and if I try to die any sooner...well, anyway. At least normally I get to be with them a long, long while before something happens. “Normally,” for whatever that means.

It was a week ago, right at the start of summer vacation. Matty went in for his third 3-month check-up, and they found something. Something they missed the last time, since it had different markers than the cancer they were looking for. Something that, of course, is way the fuck more malignant than what he had before. This poor boy hit the negative lottery when it comes to kidneys, and it fucking sucks.

The conversation was tense and emotional, with him trying to break the news softly to me, and me not taking it well. At all. Mom was pissed both that I had a full set of bruised, bleeding knuckles, and that there was a hole in my bedroom wall. Matty stayed strong, though, assuring me that they caught it early enough and that everything was going to be fine.

So here I sit, watching a mostly-unconscious Matty, with the steady whirring of the IV pump as the primary noise in the hospital room. Whirr, pff. Drip. Whirr, pff. Drip. At least he gets to sleep through most of this hell; the few times he’s had a chance to stay awake and eat something, it hasn’t been pretty. Still, this is the first chemo regimen, and it’s brutal on purpose--hopefully, the cancer can’t withstand the assault on his poor little body and will shrink away. They have elected to not do surgery for multiple reasons: one, he’s already had a pretty invasive surgery with undesirable side effects; two, the best they could do is take his other kidney out, and even being a young kid, the donor list is long (sure, he could live on dialysis, but that’s not very effective when you’re supposed to be full of lethal chemicals half the time); and three, it’s already metastasized to a few other places in the body, so the surgery wouldn’t really cure anything at this rate. And that brings us here, in the interminable passing of slow minute after slow minute measured in two-and-a-half second drips.

Matty stirs a bit, but we’re already more than a few hours into treatment on the third day of this round, so he didn’t start with much energy and was essentially depleted already even when we started. His mom runs her fingers across his hair, not yet falling out from the toxins. I assume that if his follicles are maintaining strength, then so is the cancer; it’s going to be a long battle. She looks over at me and smiles, trying to stay strong for me as I do the same for her.

“You don’t have to stay here,” she suggests. “He’s just going to be sleeping for most of the time.”

“I don’t have to,” I admit, “but I don’t have any reason not to.”

“But it’s summer; you need to go out and have fun. It’s not healthy to just sit here and stress out.”

I shrug lightly, still staring at Matty. “But then I’d just be out there stressing out. I know there’s a lot to be said for living your own life, but mine doesn’t mean a whole lot without Matty, honestly.”

She sighs, pursing her lips slightly. She watches me watching Matty for a moment longer and says, “Look, I get it. I’ve been in love before. But you two have hardly been together for what? Eight, nine months? And you’re so young--you’re missing out on one of the best parts of your life. When you’re older, you’ll wish you were younger again; trust me.”

“I know,” I say with complete certainty. “Being an adult sucks.”

She pauses a moment. “Yeah, pretty much. Not that you’d know yet, but I guess it can be pretty easy to see that much.”

“I do know,” I admit. At this point, I give so little of a shit of who knows about me; I’m done with everything, anyway. I’m tired of this endless game. “I live to be over a century old. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. It was interesting at first, but I’ve seen so many possibilities, experienced them, and frankly, most of them sucked. I’ve seen what it would be like if I were a billionaire, if I were famous, if I were a murderer, if I were any of a number of things. The future isn’t great, honestly, and...” I stop to squint a tear from my eye. “I don’t want to live it without Matty.”

Ms. Petersen watches me with an inscrutable face for a long while. “You make me reconsider a lot of the things I’ve ever believed,” she says slowly.

“Not that it helps,” I reply. “Knowing something is possible only helps if it might happen again. As far as I know, I’m a once-in-forever anomaly. After my time is up, will people even know about me? If so, I’m sure I’ll just be another tabloid story: a Rasputin, a Nostradamus, someone who future generations couldn’t possibly believe was real. I’ve researched all the information on psychics, time travelers, all that nonsense, and that’s all they have out there--nonsense. All they have on me right now is that I have a fucking seizure if I ‘think a certain way,’ which is basically what causes my...abilities. Just...eh. Never mind.” She tries to interrupt me with a warning against using that kind of language, but it seems more automatic than sincere.

I can see that she is brimming with other questions, but she keeps them all to herself, instead focusing her attention on Matty whilst working on some sort of fiber art--I think it’s crochet, but I never cared to learn enough of the difference between them. I sit there and watch him sleep fitfully as I fail to keep myself occupied on the various games and social media on my phone.

*******

A month later, he’s already looking thinner than he was, and he didn’t have much to lose in the first place. We sit around and play the games he got for Christmas; at least he’s still got the reflexes and coordination to whip me solidly on shooting games. Since this whole ordeal began, he has switched over to diapers full-time, both as a source of comfort to himself, and as a practical concern to help manage some of the...less savory side effects of chemotherapy.

After the 10th losing game or so, I claim, “A new record! Most deaths in a single game.”

“You...wait, what?” Matty stops and looks at me. “The rules are first to 25 points. You can only die 25 times.”

“Then nobody can beat my score! I have died the maximum number of times!”

My utter conviction to the stupid joke breaks through Matty’s incredulous stare, making him snort and giggle at my absurdity. “Yes, Phillip, you’re right. Nobody can beat how bad you are. Congratulations.”

I puff out my chest and proudly beam at my negative accomplishment. “If you ever need someone to get shot dozens of times, I’m your man.” That...that rings a bell for some reason. Hm. Anyway, I sit up on his bed and motion him to come over. “C’mere. I got you something.” He sits on the bed next to me and waits with a quizzical expression as I pull something out of my baggy cargo shorts pocket: a beanie colored in the style of a Minecraft “creeper,” that weird sort of blocky green camouflage-style coloration. “For you. It’ll go well with your creeper shirt you have.”

Matty beams at the gift. “Cool!” He turns it left and right, admiring it for a moment. He then looks up at me with a complicated smile, an upturned corner of genuine delight with the rosy cheeks of love mixed with a certain thin-lipped understanding and sadness, perhaps even a touch of resignation, though maybe I’m projecting a bit too much. I run my fingers across his thin-haired scalp; the remaining hair has been buzz-cut short enough that it doesn’t look so sparse, but each day it thins out just a little bit more. I trail my fingers gently across the back of his head, around his ear, and rest his cheek and jawline in my palm. Suddenly, his smile broadens as he puts the beanie on snug over his ears and hisses at me, the trademark sound of a creeper in Minecraft. (Creepers, by the way, are a strange, slightly phallic-shaped creature in Minecraft that walks up silently to you, hisses for a second, and then explodes violently. They are the bane of builders everywhere.)

“Nope!” I yelp, rolling backward off the bed semi-gracefully and crawling quickly underneath the bed. “No explodey! You can’t see me!”

“What--?!” Matty sputters as I fling myself off the bed, causing him to crack up laughing. “You are crazy, Phillip!”

From under the bed, I proclaim, “I may be crazy, but I am definitely not exploded.” This just sends Matty into a full-out laughing fit; I crawl out from under the bed to admire his red-cheeked, teary-eyed smiling face.

We sit and laugh about our stupidity for a bit. As the hilarity dies down and a pregnant pause takes the airspace, Matty breaks the silence with, “So...Daddy called again.”

“Yeah?” I search his face for clues about how to feel about this information; he seems not upset by the revelation, so I ask, “How did it go?”

“Pretty good, I guess,” he shrugs. “We talked a little bit about my...about the chemo and all that, and he told me to stay strong. He apologized a whole lot over and over for what he did, just like he did in the last phone call. I know he really means it. Um...he, y’know, he sounds good again--he hasn’t had a drink since that night, so he’s pretty proud of himself for that, so far.”

“Sounds like he’s definitely doing a lot better,” I agree. “I’m glad to hear it; I know you still love him dearly.”

Matty takes a deep breath and starts, “He...,” but the sentence leaves him in the next exhalation. Trying again, he says, “He said he wishes we could go back to the time when...when we used to play board games together. He--” Matty’s voice catches in his throat as his bottom lip quivers for a moment, but he closes his eyes and takes a deep, centering breath. “He said he really misses me, and misses spending time together.”

“Aw, Matty...” I slip my hand under his arm and scoot us closer so I can give him a good cross-legged hug. “You can always play games with him once he gets out of rehab.”

Matty stays silent for a moment, and I feel a slight shudder ripple through his thin frame. “I might not be able to,” he says quietly. Even more quietly, he mumbles, “I might not be around long enough.”

“Yeah, nope,” I say suddenly in a firm voice, making him jump slightly. “We’re not boarding that train, no sir, because you’re not headed that way. You’re going straight toward Betterville, and there’s only parks and shops there, no churches or cemeteries. Those are strictly forbidden.” I wave my hand across the room in front of us both, imitating the Buzz Lightyear/Woody scene so often used in memes. “Nothing but awesome.”

“Yeah, but I’m--”

“NOPE. That’s the wrong train. Get off it. Off, off, off. We’re heading to Betterville, one-way trip.”

He giggles slightly. After a pause, he asks, “Are there cheeseburgers in Betterville?”

“Bigger than your head, and the bacon is long enough to use as suspenders.”

“What about...what about video games?”

“They’re the only sports that people watch. Billionaires only get that way by winning Call of Duty and Smash Brothers tournaments.”

“And school?”

I look at him flatly. “Uh. No. No school. Wait--there’s school, but it’s all electives. Electives and lunch, all day.”

“Dang,” Matty says reverently. “Now I wanna live there.”

“Ugh, me too. So. Get better, and we’ll make it happen.” I hold my hand out.

He takes my hand with a smile and shakes it firmly. “Deal.”

*******

Whirr, pff. Drip. Whirr, pff. Drip. I sit next to Matty’s “Chemo Throne,” as I call it, and gently rub his arm through the microfiber blanket he wears over his clothes. I’d hold his hand, but chemo-induced neuropathy makes it feel “like little knives” in the skin of his fingers and palms. The initial treatment didn’t work; the cancer responded only slightly to the chemicals, less so than the rest of Matty’s battered body. They’re trying another regimen, but nobody’s hopes are high. I don’t let Matty see this from me, of course--I’m all smiles and jokes, caresses and encouragement. It takes more out of me than I’d like to admit, but nobody in this room is allowed to know that. Matty watches cartoons on a wall-mounted TV, but he doesn’t giggle at the funny parts or even show any reaction to the show itself. I’m fairly certain he just needs visual distraction from the treatment itself.

After a week of the second treatment, Mom sees me walk in the door after Ms. Petersen drops me off, and as I hit the couch and practically fall asleep on the spot, she quietly says, “Phillip. You can’t keep going on like this.”

“I have to, Mom.”

“No, you don’t,” she insists. “You’re hurting yourself: you barely eat, you aren’t sleeping, you look sickly...you can’t keep this up.”

I take a deep breath and exhale pure determination. “Mom. If I don’t, then neither of them will make it, either.”

“Phillip Herbert Bontemps,” she threatens, though softly. “You know that’s not even remotely grounded in reality, and it makes no sense.”

“It does,” I reply. “Matty is stronger when I’m there. I’ve helped keep his mom from breaking down multiple times. They need me.”

“You need you,” she scolds. “I need you. You can’t just sacrifice yourself like this. Do you think Matty would want you to kill yourself over him?”

“I’m not--” I begin, but she’s right. I’m treating myself like shit. “I’ve seen a lot of futures, and I don’t want the ones without Matty to come true. I really don’t.”

Mom’s eyes narrow. “Have you been taking your medication?”

Though it’s true I’ve forgotten for the last couple of days, I say, “Yeah, yeah. This is just from stuff I’ve already seen.”

“Then you need to find happiness where you can,” she implores. “You’re way too young to have to deal with this kind of thing, but you have to realize that there’s a very real possibility that Matty won’t make it, and if he doesn’t, you’re going to have to find a way to keep going. It’s foolish and stupid to ruin your own life like this. I don’t want to say that you can’t go see him anymore, but you have to take care of yourself more. If not for anyone else, do it for him; you can’t go in there looking like crap and expect that he can get any strength from you like that.”

God dammit. Why is she always right? “I’ll...I’ll let Ms. Petersen know that I can only go up there a few times a week.”

Mom smiles dolefully. “I know it hurts, Phillip. I do. But you’re making the right choice. Now, have you eaten dinner?”

“No, but I’m not--”

“Good, because I’m making banana pancakes right now, and you’re eating at least three of them.” She gets up and heads to the kitchen. I have no response to this except for a half-frustrated, half-amused smile; if I can’t have infinite strength, at least I get pancakes out of it.

*******

Whirr, pff. Drip. Matty’s once-round cheeks are slightly sunken and his face looks a little bit green, but he concentrates as well as he can on the game of Candy Land in front of him. At this point in our lives, it’s an overly simple game, but it doesn’t matter to Matty as he draws a card with a double red and gleefully moves two red spaces forward.

“Ugh, why do you always have the best luck at this game?” his dad asks with a smile. He draws a card and lands directly on a licorice space. “And then I get licorice. I hate licorice.”

“Me too,” Matty says, “except when it’s not me who lands on it.” He smiles a tiny, smug smile.

I draw a card from one of the stacks (we decided it makes it a little more fun if we get to choose a stack to draw from instead of having only one) and move past Matty’s dad into a purple square. “He really does get all the luck,” I point out, noting that he’s over 10 squares ahead of both of us. “I’m still rooting for second place, though.”

The game continues for a little while longer, though every player in it knows the winner by that point already. Still, we all have a good laugh at how horribly his dad does in the game; if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear he rigged the decks to ensure he got the worst draws. As we congratulate Matty on his victory and pack the game up, we have small talk about how summer is going and how the previous school year was, how Mr. Petersen’s recovery is going, that kind of thing. Mr. Petersen finally asks, “So you two are friends? How do y’all know each other?”

Matty and I look at each other with the same “Oh shit” expression; apparently, his dad doesn’t know. We both look at Ms. Petersen, who has been studiously avoiding any interactions, most likely for the sake of civility. She glances back with a reassuring, encouraging expression, so Matty takes a deep breath and says, “We know each other from school, and we’re going out.”

His dad takes a moment to process the information and looks at us both, one and then the other. “You mean, like...” he says quizzically, pointing at us and then pointing together in a gesture that I assume means ‘couple.’ When Matty doesn’t deny it, Mr. Petersen’s eyebrows raise dramatically. “Oh! I didn’t realize...I mean, uh, congratulations.” The look on his face is priceless, his desire to support his son trying desperately to overcome his utter bewilderment. “I...wow. Well, I just want you to know that I support you, no matter what, like if you, yeah.” He awkwardly alternates between trying to figure out something to say and just smiling supportively at Matty. I find it exceptionally difficult to maintain composure, but I don’t want to ruin this moment, both for the sentiment and for the fact that it’s fun watching Matty’s dad suffer socially. What? I’m allowed a tiny bit of vindication here.

Matty just smiles in amusement and offers his arms out, which his dad accepts readily, lifting Matty halfway out of the Chemo Throne. “Thanks, Daddy.” I still find it adorable that he calls him that.

“Of course, Champ.” Jesus, these two are sickeningly cute. “So how long have you two been going out?”

“Since...” Matty begins, but he stops, realizing at the same time I do that the answer to that is extremely awkward.

I interrupt, “Shortly after the start of the school year. We met in gym class, and kinda became good friends pretty quick after that. And then, well, y’know. I thought he was really cute, and nice, and smart, and...”

“Phillip, ugh, stop,” Matty says, a faint blush to his cheeks temporarily hiding the paleness of his face. He can’t help but smile, though, even as he rolls his eyes at me.

“And apparently I like being told to shut up, so that really helps our relationship.” And in preparation for the inevitable, I add, “And getting hit.” Just as I finish saying that, I feel him smack my shoulder.

Ms. Petersen tries her best to suppress a laugh, but ends up snorting it out instead. “Well, I’m glad you two found each other. Matty has been a lot happier ever since, and when my child is happy, I’m happy.”

“I have to agree,” Mr. Petersen says, earning him a sidelong glance from Matty’s mom. “But if you’ll excuse me, I have to go use the restroom. Which way is...?”

Ms. Petersen points toward the wall on the right. “Down the hall, take a right, first hall on the left. There are signs.” He thanks her politely and heads to the restroom; after the door closes, she looks at Matty and me both. “I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised at his reaction to you coming out like that.”

Matty furrows his brow in time with mine. “Why so?” I inquire.

She raises a disapproving eyebrow toward the door. “I love him dearly, but he has his flaws; he comes from a very conservative family with deep homophobia, so to hear him say that--even if he doesn’t mean it 100%, just saying it is a big step for him. I mean, he used to say some pretty shitty things about LGBT people, especially back when you were very young, but I made sure he didn’t ever talk about that kind of thing around you. I was adamant that you were to have the most accepting upbringing possible, and that he needed to get over it.”

“But...” Matty begins, and stops to form his sentence. “Did you, like, know or something?”

She shrugs. “I don’t have some magic way of knowing those kinds of things, no, but I thought of it like this: if you were straight, I’d want you to respect everyone, period, regardless of gender or sexuality. If you weren’t straight, though, I’d strangle him before he had a chance to make his own son feel inadequate in any way.”

Geez. It sounds like there were some issues underneath the surface in their marriage for quite some time, even before the drinking. I think I’ll keep my mouth shut on that one, though. Not a can of worms I want to open.

Matty’s dad stays for a little while longer, but he has a strict curfew at the rehab clinic and leaves shortly before dinner starts. Mom shows up to pick me up as well, but I give Matty a huge hug and kiss on the cheek (rules are rules), saying, “Make sure you keep eating. You need all your strength to get through this.”

He just smiles at me, but I see the sheen of tears form in his eyes as his lips quiver slightly. “I’ll try.”

*******

Mom called me out for not taking my medication; she was apparently keeping track of the pills just to make sure. I’d feel violated if not for the fact that she has every reason to, seeing as I wasn’t taking them. So I start taking a pill each day and putting it in another container that I’ve hidden between my mattress and box-spring; it’s near my legs so that I don’t feel the lump in my back or anything, but it’s pretty much impossible to tell it’s there. I realize it’d be less hassle to just take the pills (and swallow them), but...I have my reasons. Cognition, for example, just seems to be easier when I’m not taking the stupid pills. I think they interfere with some of my higher order thinking or something, but I always feel fuzzy-headed when I’m on them.

The other boys are doing better than me, for the most part. Beto and ‘Canelito’ are adorable, though they act like they’re just friends in front of other people for the most part. The twins, though, are clearly bummed out by the whole thing, and ask me by text message every day how Matty is doing. I try my best to bring good news each time, but there’s only so much lying one can do before the truth finds its way out. They had me deliver a card with get-well wishes to him, and other friends have given me cards as well; it brings me joy to watch his face light up with each bit of recognition he receives from his friends and peers.

At the end of the second round of chemo, Matty needs all the friendly and family support he can get; underneath his Minecraft creeper beanie, he’s completely bald and rail-thin, despite trying to fatten him up for extra energy. They check his vitals and such, but the cancer has barely responded, only slowing down its growth. In short, Matty tells me the doctors say that at the current rate, he has maybe a month to live. They could extend it with more chemotherapy, but he would likely not make it much past the beginning of school even at that. It rips me apart inside to hear it said, though I’ve known that it wasn’t going to be cured for some time now; stage IV metastatic cancers, especially the more rapidly-growing kind, are almost guaranteed to be lethal, but just hearing those words makes it sink in like a knife to the heart.

Mom lets me go over to his place to have a quiet dinner, which Matty has asked that his dad be able to attend as well, despite the whole ‘separation’ thing. His mom agrees, for Matty’s sake, and we gather around the table to have dinner: good old-fashioned hamburgers, home-cooked happiness between two buns.

Once everything is set up, Matty takes a few bites of his hamburger and manages to keep them down; of all the random things to not be affected, red meat seems to taste just fine to him (though the nerve sensitivity in his hands is still annoying him).

We eat in relative silence, though both the parents interject halfway through with encouragements for his strength and bravery, and you-can-do-its and such. Though they are trying their best, the encouragements ring hollowly across the linoleum of the kitchen.

Near the end of the meal, Matty slowly puts the last bit of his hamburger down and stares at it for a half a minute, tears forming slowly in his eyes.

“Honey?” his mom asks. “What is it?”

He picks his head up and looks at all of us with quivering tears but he firmly, unwaveringly says, “Mom, Daddy, Phillip...I want to stop treatment.”

Silence. Nearly ten full seconds of silence settle thickly on the table like the ashes of Pompeii, freezing us in the same position for a seeming eternity. His dad is the first to break the moment: “Matty. Champ. You can’t. You have to keep going.”

“Daddy.” He stares his dad down. “No, I don’t. I’m dying.”

“Yes, but honey...” Ms. Petersen takes a moment to collect her thoughts. “Even though you’re dying, you can’t just give up! You need to keep fighting, right? Give it the old Petersen fighting spirit!”

“But why?” Matty seems completely confident in his question. “I have felt horrible for over a month now, and all I’m going to do is feel more horrible for the rest--” He chokes up on the last bit of the sentence: “--the rest of my life.”

His dad snaps, “But you can’t just--just give up! That’s not fair!”

Not fair? Really? What is he, 12? Matty catches it as well and replies, “What do you mean, ‘not fair’?”

“I--” his dad starts, but stutters a few times trying to defend his outburst. “You’re not being fair to yourself!” he says in a flimsy attempt to recover. “You could live for a lot longer!”

“And feel like shit the entire time, yeah.”

“Matty!” Ms. Petersen scolds. “Watch your mouth!”

“Or what?!” he snaps back with sudden vigor. “Or you’ll ground me? For the rest of my life?! I can’t go anywhere or see anyone anyway, so go ahead!” He takes a deep breath and continues his tirade, “Besides, I’m literally dying in a month, and you won’t let me make a single decision about my own life. I can’t even curse? I can say whatever the hell I want, and you can’t stop me. Go ahead. Do something about it. What are you going to do, kill me?”

Everyone else at the table is completely stunned at the assault, myself included. His mom gently implores, “Matty, please. Calm down. I didn’t mean--”

He interrupts with renewed ferocity, “It’s my life! I get to make the choice, not you!” He breathes through his nose, seething for a moment longer, when tears start to boil over from his eyes. “I’m tired, Mom. I’m done. I spent a...a year fighting it once, and then the rest of the time getting better from it while peeing my pants like a damn baby, and being bullied and made fun of at school, and now it’s back and it’s winning and I’m...” He takes one last shuddering breath to complete his monologue. “I just want to feel okay for a little while before I go. I want to stop getting chemo. Please.”

The earnest, exhausted plea breaks everyone’s dams, tears flowing on all sides. Unexpectedly, though, his dad looks straight at me and accuses, “You put him up to this, didn’t you? You little shit.”

“What?!” I snap. “Why the--why would I want him to die?! I love him!”

“So you want him to continue chemo too, right?”

Oh, that sick, twisted shithead. “I want Matty to be happy. If that means he wants to feel better for the last days of his life, then so be it. If he would be miserable for the rest of his life while doing chemo, I don’t want him to do it.”

“So you want my son to die?!”

“I want him to not be tortured by his parents because of an inability to deal with grief!” That was pointed and probably inappropriate. Oh well. “What I want...is for him to be able to be his own person.”

“You worthless piece of shit,” Mr. Petersen hisses. “You put all these ideas in his head so that he would--”

“Kenneth!” Ms. Petersen shouts. “Are you drunk?! There is no way that Phillip could have said anything like that to him since we got the news. You’re not thinking straight. I want everyone to sit down and shut up for a moment! We’re all getting way out of hand; Phillip, now might be a good time to go home so we can have a proper discussion as a family.”

Matty stands up, in direct defiance to Ms. Petersen’s request. “No. He can stay here. He is my boyfriend, and I love him. Phillip made everything better this last year; really, he’s about the only reason it was worth it at all. He turned what could have been the most miserable year ever into the best one ever, and you can both stop treating him like he’s a piece of...whatever. He’s my boyfriend, and it’s not like I’m going to be around long enough to get married, so he’s family enough.”

Surprisingly, they both acquiesce. We clean up the kitchen table and leave the kitchen without actually having a “proper discussion” at all; Matty’s dad has to leave to go back to the clinic, his mom goes to her bedroom, and I head with Matty to his room. I text Mom that I’m going to spend the night, to which she just replies that she’ll pick me up in the morning.

In his room, he sits down on the floor and looks up at me. “Do you think I’m making the right choice?”

I sit down and look at him directly. “As much as it hurts to even think about you being gone, I want you to be happy for as long as you can be.” My voice quavers the entire time, and tears freely flow down my face, but somehow I’ve managed not to break into sobs.

“Thank you, Phillip,” he says softly, offering me his hands. I take them as he says, “You make me happy. I...I hope you live a happy final life.”

I bring him in and hug him like there’s no tomorrow, because I don’t actually know if there will be, and I don’t want to lie to him about what I have planned.

*******

For the next few weeks, I spend most of my time over at Matty’s; I often bring a dinner so that I’m not a burden on the Petersens’ finances. He ends up having a lot of visits and sleepovers in the meanwhile: the twins, Zacky, Edgar and Beto, Sean, even Kyle once or twice, and a few other people that he knows from school who wanted to come say their goodbyes. No wild sex parties or anything, of course, though he and I do share a few intimate moments here and there. His condition worsens to the point that it begins to affect his ability to urinate at all, so his hospice team brings in a dialysis machine a few times a week. He quickly becomes bedridden and his responsiveness dwindles.

The day comes where he is no longer able to respond when I call his name or touch his hand, and it leaves me cold inside. Cold and empty. He’s not dead yet, but he’s gone. I call my mom to have her come pick me up, and I sit in my room for the next few hours, unmoving, uncaring. Mom comes up to wish me a good night and hugs me deeply, telling me that everything’s going to be okay. Soon, everyone else in the house is asleep.

I’m done. I wasn’t kidding when I said that Matty was the only thing I had left keeping me here. I’ve experienced dozens of lifetimes more than I should have, I’ve been the best and worst of men, I’ve seen all the things I care to see. Until recently, I thought there was no way to die, but tonight, I have a plan. Tonight, maybe finally I can die in peace.

I pull the pill container out from underneath my mattress; it has weeks of my anti-seizure medication in it. I take the bottle and head to the kitchen, where I take out the bottle of sleeping pills Mom sometimes uses for insomnia. With the flat side of the meat tenderizer, I crush the contents of both pill bottles together into a fine powder in a bowl, which I then mix into a glass of water. I down the whole thing as fast as I can, gagging a few times afterward from the extreme bitterness of the powder, even when dissolved. If I can’t wake up, and I can’t go back in time, I should hopefully, finally die.

I feel the drugs kick in within about 15 minutes, and the world begins to spin. I go out to the backyard and prevent myself from vomiting as long as I can, but eventually the symptoms of anticonvulsant overdose take over my body, tearing my brain and body apart even as the sleeping pills blur the lines between reality and oblivion. Eventually, I feel the familiar but dulled sensation of reaching the end of life, that stretching, stopping, squeezing feeling, but it’s almost as if I manage to slip through the holes of that net, and for one tiny fraction of a second, I feel free.

Then my life starts flashing before my eyes. I see Matty on his deathbed. Matty telling me the news that he has cancer. Faster. Christmas, then October. Being shot dozens of times by Michael. The time I met Matty. Faster. Failing the tests in 6th grade on purpose. Kissing a boy for the first time in 5th grade. Was that my first life? Saying goodbye to my husband. Dragging a wounded soldier to safety in the wars. Learning martial arts to find a peaceful way to disable people. Becoming CEO of the biggest megacorp in America. Watching the first person I ever killed slowly die in my grasp. The first time I had sex, with a 17-year-old boy while I was 13. The fifth time I passed my driver’s ed test. Memory after memory of every moment I can remember goes whipping by until I lose myself entirely in the sea of experiences. And then--
 

No, no no.
 

This isn’t how--
 

Wait! I--

*******

Hi. My name is Phillip Bontemps. This is my second year at Akronis Middle School, meaning I’m in 7th grade. I’m a kinda awkward kid, I guess: I feel like maybe my nose is a little too long, I stumble like I’ve got three left feet on only two legs, and I always seem to say stupid things. To make things worse, I sometimes have pretty bad seizures. I have medication for it, but I think it gives me weird side-effects, like strange deja vu type things. Have you ever thought that something happened before? So that’s deja vu, right, but sometimes I think that something happened before, but it was different, like maybe someone said something but just in different words. I dunno, it’s weird. Like I said, I’m awkward. I kinda wish I could rewind all the stupid things I do sometimes like in the video games I play, but I’m sure everyone thinks that sometimes.

But it gets worse. Today is gym class, and I’m gay. I don’t think we need to shower yet, but we do have to change out, so I’m going to be surrounded by boys in their underwear and I’m supposed to somehow not pop a boner. I end up getting a stiffy in the middle of math class, so how am I gonna avoid it here? I wish that the GT kids didn’t have to go to gym; I mean, we’re supposed to be the super smart brainy ones, right? Why do we have to play ball and run a mile? Stupid.

So anyway, I go to the locker room, and everyone’s all trying to pretend that nobody else is there, except for the 8th graders who all know each other. I know a few of the 7th graders, but we’re a pretty big school, so I don’t know all of them, like, at all. That, and I kinda keep to myself, really--I don’t know how to talk to people at all, so I just look stupid when I do. I can’t help but scope out some of the people and stuff--I mean their junk is like right there at eye level when you’re sitting on the bench taking your pants off--and there are a lot of cute boys in this class, dammit. Think about...elephants. Or kittens. Or dachsunds. No, not weiner dogs, that’s too close. Running the mile! That always sucks.

While I’m trying my hardest not to get hard, in walks this super-cute little boy, short for his age, but like these piercing sky blue eyes and cute dusty-brown short hair, wearing a shirt with an atomic symbol and the letters ‘GG’ on the front. Maybe it’s a video game reference. But anyway, he sits right next to me and starts changing, and when he’s down to his underwear, he’s got a natural 6-pack, not from being super strong, but just because I guess he doesn’t have a lot of fat on him. I do notice a scar that runs up the middle of his abs, though, but he doesn’t seem to be concerned or ashamed about it. There’s something about him, though, that feels...I dunno. Interesting. Dammit, boner, stop it!

I stand up and try to quickly hoist up my gym shorts so nobody sees the tent in my briefs that’s trying to stand up. As I’m doing so, I feel a foot connect with the back of my knees, buckling my legs and sending me forward. Before I even have a chance to react, though, that short-haired kid is already in front of me, bracing both my shoulders. “You okay?” he asks in a cute, boyish soprano.

“Aw, the little 6th grader saved Phillip the Fuckup!” Ugh, great. I thought Rodrigo “Rod” Juarez would have grown out of this stupid shit, but he always finds some reason to mess with me. I’m so tired of it.

“Funny,” the shorter boy says as I straighten myself up and yank my shorts up, “because I’m in 7th grade and you look like you should be in 9th. How many times did you fuck up in school?”

“Oh-ho!” Rod says, looking at Diego, his right-hand thug of a friend. “The little guy has a big mouth! You wanna take this outside, little man?” Rod puffs up his chest and looks down at the kid, who is considerably shorter than the big-and-tall Rod.

The kid, though, points to the speaker in the ceiling, which immediately blares the sound for class beginning. “Sorry, no time right now. Maybe after class.” By this point, he’s already slipped his gym shorts on, and he wiggles his shirt over his head. “C’mon, Phillip, let’s go.”

What the hell just happened? Some kid just protected me from the biggest, meanest bully in school, and I’ve never even met the boy! I’m speechless as we walk out into the gym; Rod and Diego follow us out, but the coach is looking straight at us, so there aren’t any problems as we head to the bleachers.

We sit on the opposite end from the assholes. The boy looks at me with concern in his baby blues and asks, “So are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I respond, bewildered. “You really shouldn’t have helped me, though. Rod is a huge asshole, and now you’re gonna be his target.”

He looks at me with sly confidence on his features. “Let’s see him try. So, Phillip, right? I’m Matthew, but everyone calls me Matty.” He offers his hand, which I take tentatively. His hand is soft, but his grip is decently firm as he shakes my hand. The confidence level of this boy is through the roof, and it’s making me feel even more awkward, I swear. “I’m new to the school,” he mentions, “so is it cool if we hang together?”

“Uh...yeah. Yeah! That would be cool.” God, I sound like an idiot. “But...Matty, you said, right? Somehow that rings a bell...I feel like I knew a Matty before, but I can’t remember when.”

“Huh.” He thinks about it. “What was this other ‘Matty’ like?”

“Maybe like...shy? I dunno. My brain is really weird sometimes. Don’t...just never mind.”

“Interesting,” he says. “That’s not what you said last time.”

“Wait, what?”

“Kidding! I’m just kidding with you.” His disarming smile sends butterflies into my stomach and heat to my cheeks (and blood to my...). Just then, the coach starts talking in a loud voice that reverberates through the gym, so any hope for further conversation disappears. However, I catch ‘Matty’ looking over at me once or twice with a strange smile.

Some small part of me wonders if I’m just prey, and one predator just stole me from the jaws of another.