Chapter Text
Dear friend,
There is this guy in my school called Nimrod.
I know it’s a bad word now but I didn’t until my sister pointed out mid-dinner that, hey, you shouldn’t be calling a teacher that!
But no one in our school remembered what the teacher was called before this became his name—so we called him Mister Nim sometimes, behind his back, of course, because it would have been rude to not remember a person’s name.
Mister Nim was our gym teacher, but he never really cared about what we were doing. Which was good because people could slack off during his class and we could just sit and talk on the grass most of the time.
I didn’t think he was… there, there in the sense that he knew where he was. Or who he was. And it was worrisome at times, but my classmates wouldn’t want to listen to my worries and Razor still didn’t talk to me—so that’s that.
Gym class with him used to be my favourite time between the schedules. The grass, the air, the giggles. All of that and getting to shower at school without any specific reason to.
It was a lot of freedom, and free time should be good, shouldn’t it?
My brother Jack had a different idea.
I think I told you about him before, but I didn’t go into why Jack came to live with us because I wasn’t sure if it would be okay to share. But yesterday, when he caught me writing this letter, and understood my purpose of reaching out, he said it was okay to share certain things since they didn’t define who he was anymore.
So, I’m telling you a little bit about my beloved brother. Please treat this story with care.
Before he became my brother, Jack wasn’t always named Jack. This was weird to think about but I would like to think of them as different people too. Born to a middle-class household, Jack was called John on his birth certificate, which was a proper name, and it did sound more like him because he was always a bit high class than the rest of us. At least that was what Heckler said whenever Jack corrected our collars before we head out to somewhere formal, like the church ground.
I just thought the name sounded nice. It wasn’t my brother but it could be a good name for someone else. Maybe that’s why he used it for twelve years until he got into the foster system. I never asked.
It was just Jack to me.
To make it simpler for you, I will now write about John who no longer exists.
John was a good boy growing up. He was nice, he was naive and he would look up to his dad a lot. He also had a big yard because his family was doing alright and his mom wore pearls, the prettiest kind. At one point, he even thought he knew what happiness was because he had never been unhappy before. Then the economy crashed. The house was taken and his mom vanished. His dad started drinking at first because booze had this effect of numbing the world for a few moments, and the man desperately wanted those very few moments to last.
So he drank more and more, and more.
John’s dad drank so much, he forgot who he was, where he was and who was his family.
It was like a black hole. The addiction sucked in everything else around him because the black hole didn’t know it was a black hole, and a drowning man didn’t know he was already deep in the sea when it took him by gentler waves.
Jack didn’t tell us if the man had ever laid a finger on John, but I think I would rather never know that. He skimmed it for my sake too, I think.
However, he did tell us that the man forced John to drink because he was paranoid of his own son looking down on him in the midst of vodka and blurs of mind. Which was wrong, I said and Jack chuckled softly, “yeah.”
My brother was nine when he had his first sip.
The second sip was worse, somehow. It choked him blue and he told me he remembered the taste of tears bubbling up his nostrils more than the alcohol. And that he had called out for his mother who wasn’t there, cried and choked and cried and so I hugged him and he told me silently that he ‘is okay now.’
I hope he really is.
The system took him in when he was twelve and he didn’t tell us what happened to John’s dad.
The process of finding a good place took about a year as he skipped around and eventually moved in with our dads. Which happens often, I guess. It happened to me too but I didn’t recall much before being ten.
A lot of the time, things blur.
He said he remembered his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and how he had been the youngest person there. He remembered feeling so frustrated but dads, our dads, squeezed his hand throughout the entire thing and kept telling him that it was okay to leave and start again another day.
So Jack cried, hard, and stayed there full-time even when he didn’t want to.
He stayed because, for the first time in his life, he knew what happiness was like. It happened to be an ugly, rough and jagged rock but it could be smoothed into something beautiful if he allowed it to. It could be so much better if he allowed it to.
“The first step is always the most difficult to take,” he laughed, quiet. “Then it’d get easier if you give it time.”
I gave him a nod.
My brother was a knight because he fought the dragon and now he’s sobered. Years. While the hardships made him and gave me my own brother, I wished they didn’t exist sometimes.
The day he reported Mister Nim, Jean was extremely furious.
She came over after work as a family friend rather than our principal, which made all of our dads anxious, because he didn’t tell the family what he had seen Mister Nim was doing.
Jack just skipped the rest of the afternoon and went home, staring at our stars-stickered bedroom walls for a while until the world became dimmed and static. Until he fell asleep sometimes in between.
“It’s weird,” he said. “So much can change in a few years but every now and then, the world would send you the slightest reminder and you’re shaken. You forget where you are and suddenly, you’re nine again. Nine and everything is warped, for a minute. Nine and whimpering for things you have yet to understand—but then you blink and you’re seventeen. You’re seventeen and safe.”
I hadn’t understood much of what he meant, but I nodded and he called me a good boy afterwards. He rarely did, but it was okay because I knew he loved me.
Jack was the kindest brother, because he loved everything, quietly.
I know Mona told me not to call the teacher by a bad word, but he made my brother feel bad, so this will be a secret between you and me, alright?
I think Mister Nim truly is a nimrod and I won’t miss him at all.
Your sneaky friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
Today was weird. There were dreams and I didn’t know how many of them were true. They came often after my chat with Jack and I don’t feel like dwelling on it, so let me tell you what my friends have been up to:
Fischl recently got a local reward for her poems! Which was great, more than great, and my dads even clipped out a piece of the newspaper so I could frame it. I still didn’t understand much of what she wrote because Fischl’s relationship with words was very complicated. She once told me she saw them through the airwaves, like the radio and I was in awe of how talented she was.
Barbara had been doing really great with cheerleading. She also took on singing, which was very cool of her.
There were clips of her in the choir on the internet. One even got a hundred thousand views, which was a lot because my house only had seven people living in it right now and we could barely move around!
I told her that she could be a real singer someday and she pushed me a little bit on the swing, but I could tell that her eyes were glad. Happy.
Razor,
Well, I didn’t like to sit still and wait for him to talk to me anymore, so I waited by his locker to stop him in his tracks and you want to know what he did? He went into the next class without his books. It wasn’t a hopeful look.
I think he hates me now and there is nothing I can do about it, which sucks but Mona tells me that it’s a part of life to not have the same friend anymore. This is somewhat true because everyone else I knew earlier in the school year was now hanging out with someone else other than me. And I’m happy for them, I am.
But I also feel a bit sad for myself, I think. Which is unfair. Which is not nice. Which reminds me of the dreams again and I don’t want to think about that, so I’m going to go stargazing with my sister now.
Your sparkling friend,
Bennett.
P/S: We saw a comet! It was very pretty up close because one of our dads bought us two binoculars to use. Can you believe it? Two! And the comet looked like a smudge at first so I was very worried I missed it, but I didn’t. Mona told me it looked like that because it was a small, frosted solar system body that grew white due to the sun and had a tail because the sun warmed it up and made it gassy.
Which was a thought I didn’t like to think about. But it was pretty so I was okay. Then she leaned on me and quietly told me I was the best brother she ever had, which made this feel so much better than ‘okay’.
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
Sorry for the lack of a new letter during this past week, something happened.
Sort of. Kind of.
I don’t remember how it started but one day I just woke up and felt… wrong. Like really wrong. Like I wasn’t real even though I woke up in my room and it was my brother Royce who said good morning to me. My brother. I’ve known Royce for five years but it didn’t make sense because there he was at the door and I started crying loudly because my body felt wrong. My ears didn’t register the sounds around me and my head hurt. So much.
The room didn’t start spinning, but it felt like it did and it felt like I did, and I was crying, so much.
Royce called dads because I wouldn’t stop spinning.
One of them told me to close my eyes so I wouldn’t be nauseous, but they wouldn’t close so I pressed my hands onto my face until I saw the comet and there were stars. It was really weird. I was in the universe, but I wasn’t and there was a silhouette and I started crying again.
Sirens and cars, it got worse.
After a while, I took my hands off. The bed was a heavenly white of cold sheet and the scent was off. My dads were sitting around the hospital bed, one with red around his eyes and Mona told me I had been here for one night now. She said I was in the emergency room for a night now.
Royce hugged me for the first time ever when I came home.
One of the dads tucked me in and told me I could take the rest of the week off school, which was alright because we didn’t have any important tests. But Jack said it was okay to take time off even when I had tests too, which felt wrong but I didn’t correct him.
When they asked if I would like to tell my friends about what happened, I didn’t want anyone to worry like Royce anymore. So please, let this be our little secret.
Your recovering friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
I’m okay now, I promise. The bi-weekly counselling was suggested to become a weekly thing and it made me uncomfortable at first, but I got rescheduled to meet someone else now and it’s a therapist this time.
So.
Goodbye Miss Eury and the weird room filled with tiny trinkets, hello Miss Ganyu with an office that isn’t in my school.
Our first meeting went great. She’s quiet, a lot more quiet and very patient when I can’t recall something and she gives me a sticker whenever I open up, which makes me feel less anxious. Her voice is very soothing and I like it a lot. She speaks with her hands, gentle carvings as if the wind has shaped her whole.
I’ll tell you more about Miss Ganyu but for now, let’s talk about something else:
Barbara called me earlier today and she was crying and not making sense so I ran to her house with two mismatched shoes. Then she cried a lot more and it took me a second to realise the red streaks on her face were strawberry jam. And that it was Valentine’s Day soon and she was trying to make chocolates.
To be honest with you, I have never had any edible Valentine’s gifts.
I don’t want to say it’s my luck but maybe you’ll agree with me on this, since every chocolate box I received was rotten with worms. Three in a row, actually. And I was worried that the people who gave me this would be sad, so I would take the box home anyway, even when it’d fill my bag full of crawlies and melted candies. Even when it’d take me a really long time to scrub the bag clean so I would have something to carry my books tomorrow.
“It’s a prank,” Heckler used to groan from the top bunk. His magazine of ladies in revealing clothes folded downward. “Worms don’t grow in chocolates, so it’s pretty clear that you’re targeted, kid.”
He would say this every year but I didn’t want to believe that because it would be cruel. I didn’t want to think anyone around me could be cruel.
So when Barbara asked me if I would like to help her with making chocolates, desperate—I said yes. I just hope these won’t grow worms overnight.
Your worried friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
Please excuse my bad handwriting, I have rewritten this letter twice but this time it’ll be sent no matter what because I don’t want to practise my words as I write to you. That’s no fun.
(I also sprained my wrist recently but I promise it’s not as bad as it sounds. It’ll get really, really sad, though.)
Valentine’s Day was earlier this week and I brought all of my friends chocolates. Of course, that meant some of my teachers, and my family too because it was a day for love. And love is everywhere, I think.
Glad to announce none of them had worms in them, which made Babs really confused when I jumped about this excitement. But she just shrugged because it was a ‘very Bennett thing to be happy about.’
Usually, Barbara would have a lot of chocolates prepared for everyone because she didn’t like picking sides. She believed the gods loved everyone equally and she must follow their rules if she were to be devoted to them; but this year, she only had one heart-shaped box to give someone while everyone else got normal bags.
There’s something very intimate about seeing someone you know—figuring themselves out, and it made me feel tingling inside when she smiled—so even though I don’t think I can tell you who got the gift, I can tell you that they were both very happy with it.
Again, about why my wrist was sprained… I fought Razor.
I didn’t mean it. He didn’t, too. I knew this because I looked into his eyes afterwards and they were ruby and sad and sour, and I blinked and he apologised softly. By the end of it, we were both sprawled out in the park and my chocolate box for him tilted over to the pond. Tired. Worn. Woven into a mess of hurt.
“Didn’t mean to ignore you,” he started and then stopped and I plucked grass strands out of his hair. It felt like a stupid habit, but he eased into my touch and it felt… nice. “Didn’t.”
“I know.” I whispered back. My throat was too clogged up to speak out loud. “I know.”
He fumbled with his thumbs. Then bit them. Then stopped. Then fidgetted again when we both took in a long breath, words heavy. “Benny said he didn’t love Razor.”
I paused.
There lived a nanosecond where I wanted to interrupt him, to wipe the beads of water off his cheeks. Didn’t.
I started crying in sync with him instead.
“You kissed me, but didn’t love me.” The shared sniffling became louder when he continued, nose red. “You— Benny— You said people should only kiss the ones they really love— But you apologised for kissing me and— I’m confused. Very.”
His shoulders shook. The hair along his ears became wet and matted and I instinctively reached out a hand to hold his body. To coddle what was left in the wreckage I made. Only hearing the hiccups that got lodged behind his bony rib cages, I murmured into his head, quiet.
“Oh, Razor. Oh, Razor. ”
At the time, it felt like the worst pain I could imagine—but after that came a breakthrough and the air was lifted from my chest.
Razor wasn’t ignoring me because I made him mad, it was because I had kissed a friend romantically before we understood the weight of the action, and because I took back the words in shame, instead of holding his hands through it— he was hurt.
Which was worse than him being mad. Much worse.
I felt like a black hole as I held his body into mine. Like we were cosmic. Like we existed, real.
I guess these were the fireworks I awaited upon kissing him, but they didn’t come until I really knew him, until our souls were halved and filled again in between these gaps.
To tell you the truth, I think I love Razor. I would write it out for you, the conversation we had after our walks home, the one where he told my dads about the sprained wrist and we hugged as we cried and the world felt alright; but I think that would be disrespectful to share something so vulnerable between us when we are only on our first steps of figuring things out.
One thing for certain, if I can share a little about it, please know that it was beautiful.
Please know I would not trade it for the world.
Anyway, here I sit with the rusted lightbulb after dark and I want to tell you that I hold love, always to you too. Wherever you are in this world, please know that you have touched my heart like stained glass art. We are existing and we are so real, please trust me when I say so.
Your forever friend,
Bennett.