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When Jeremy's mom leaves, the summer before junior year, Jeremy stops talking.
It's not something he does consciously. He doesn't even notice it for the longest time. Michael is away in the Philippines for the summer, and Dad is away in his head for the foreseeable future.
But after the hurricane that blows through the house, tearing photos off the walls and clothes out of the closet, shoving furniture and howling as plates smash, after the hurricane that is Mom slams the front door shut, there is a deafening silence inside him.
Dad is sobbing, louduglygrief and the phone is beeping on the ground, but Jeremy, pale and still and gaping, has no sound left in his soul. It's like all the anger and pleading that ever yearned to be heard exploded out all at once and then sucked back into itself, leaving behind a vacuum. It could almost be peace, but there's really too much emptiness.
"Wait! Mom, please!" He'd said. Or, something like that. It didn't matter anyway, she hadn't stayed and here he was, having used up all his words on her and leaving none for himself.
Dad turns to him, but Jeremy has already fled to his room.
(Later, Dad checks in on him, opening the door and letting yellow light spill into his bedroom.
"Jeremy?" He whispers, afraid to break the silence the same everything else that has already been broken, with too many shaking fists and too much noise.
Jeremy pretends he's asleep, and Dad closes the door.)
The next day, He emerges. He opens his door and showers before the clock strikes 10 in the morning. Skips breakfast because there aren't many clean unshattered plates left in the house, spends the extra time cleaning up the debris they'd left lying for everyone to see.
The dishes (or what's left of them) are washed and put away, the shards thrown out. He avoids the urge to pick up the ceramic and glass with his trembling fingers and instead sweeps it up like a good functional person he doesn't feel like it. The furniture is carefully moved back, and He does his best to line the corners of the table up with the indents they've left in the wood over the years. The couch is hard to move by himself, but he manages that, too.
(Dad wakes up sometime in the afternoon, comes out groggy, stumbling and confused, as though he can't tell whether the events of last night were a nightmare or not. His father watches in a sort of horrified bewilderment as he takes it upon himself to reorganize the closet, maximize the storage space.
"Jeremiah," Dad croaks.
So that is who He has become.
Jeremiah nods sharply, then leaves before he even finishes refolding all the pants.)
After the encounter with Dad, Jeremiah decides he's spent a little too long inside and leaves the house. He stands at the front door, shivering even though it's the height of summer and even the breeze is oppressively warm.
Instead, He writes a note to his Dad that he'll be at the library, and he walks out the back, leaping his backyard fence and circling back to the front of the house. The lawn is untouched by her wrath, at least.
He makes the short trip to the library, plopping down in one of the beanbags they have at the children's section. It's not big enough for him, but it's comfy and the library is air conditioned and quiet.
He wakes up a little while later, stomach growling and notices the librarian staring at him.
"Do... do you need anything?" She asks, and her voice wobbles with how much she hopes he won't say yes. He shakes his head with a flimsy plastic smile, then exits, shaking, without checking anything out.
The summer is sticky, and the smell of laughter and hamburgers drifts toward him as he passes little cookouts and family barbecues. Jeremiah starts walking faster, with no idea of where he's going other than away from this awful sugary lie.
He finds himself at a bridge at sunset. It's actually above a highway, but the cars move in the same current.
Either way, what's below would kill you, muses his brain, and the thought is a confrontation. No more half-whispers.
Oh. He doesn't know what to do, so he doesn't do anything at all, sitting down and watching the cars beneath flow until the sun finally sets and all he can see is the heady red tail lights. He wanders his way home, vaguely disappointed and faintly relieved, but pretty much just feels nothing.
(Dad springs out of his chair, knocking the dining room table slightly, when he walks in through the back door. Jeremiah winces. He'd spent so long getting it back into place.
"Jeremy, where have you been?" The tone is sharp and reeks of angryhurtworriedrelieved. Dad's in a bathrobe still, and his eyes are red and bleary.
He doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing at all. He shrugs, toeing off his converse and leaving them by the back door.
"I was worried..."
He knows. He's fine and he's here now. There's nothing much to say other than that. Jeremiah turns to Dad, meeting his eyes for just a second before his gaze is dragged suddenly down by something intangible.
Guilt. It’s guilt.
Wow, he very much preferred when those little half-thoughts were mumbles. Coward.
I really don’t have to think about it right now, he murmurs back. It’s just a voice, which is really embarrassing. But it’s a voice that makes him uncomfortable wanna die and he doesn’t know what to do about it.
So you do nothing.
"Just... be careful," says Dad, and Jeremiah nods like it's a promise he can actually promise to keep anymore.)
When Michael flies home earlier than usual in the summer, Jeremiah only finds it in him to be vaguely happy. But now, with Michael sprinting toward him and him sprinting back, he's ecstatic. And terrified.
They tackle in one great clash of happy, filling the street with loudness electric. (“Jeremy!” It’s the first time he’s responded to that name in weeks.) Then, slightly embarrassed at all the staring from his neighbors, he drags his best friend indoors.
Immediately, Michael won't shut up. He's ranting, eyes alight with the fire of his trip—seeing his cousins again, the epic family games, his grandmother's savage roasting of his single uncle. Jeremy lights up, too. Michael crackles inside the house with an energy that hasn't been there in forever. He feels disconnected from the invasive emptiness that's been haunting him this whole time. Michael is a dramatic spike on a graph that he’d thought would flatline forever, but he revels in the unexpected high.
After nodding with all the right noises and smiling so much he knows he'll have a headache when Michael leaves, the chatter tapers off. They sit comfortable in the peaceful summer warmth. He's missed Michael so much. He rolls over in his beanbag chair to grab their controllers, but Michael pulls him back centerline.
"Nah, c'mon man, I wanna know what's up with you! How's your summer been?"
That's... a really loaded question.
He takes a breath, clears his throat, and speaks for the first time in two weeks.
"Fine, now that you're here. Just went to the library a few times, cleaned the house, did some walking around. I've been lost without you, man," and the last part has such a painful ring of truth he can see Michael falter a little, but he smiles anyway.
"Dude, honestly same.” And now he takes the controllers and they start the game and fall back into their pattern and it’s fine. Everything is, for the three and a half hours that Michael stays over, better.
(They pause about two hours in, hungry, and go upstairs. Michael’s so quick on his way downstairs that Jeremy doesn’t even remember there’s nothing in the fridge until his best friend has one hand on the fridge handle.
“Actually!” He yelps, panicked, then spots a takeout menu on the side. “Why don’t we order takeout? I’m kinda sick of leftovers.”
Michael turns easily, “Yeah, sounds great! Dude, I actually missed fake-Asian food. Like, everything there was good, but there’s really nothing like eating completely Americanized cultural dishes, y’know?”
Jeremy snorts, relieved. “Can’t relate, but okay.”
And that is that.)
Everything is fine. Well, when Michael leaves he’s still plunged back into the emptyquietgonestill but it’s all good. He deals.
Dad looks at him, haunted and ghostly pale, but he still gets up and goes to work. Jeremiah takes advantage of this and makes sure to grab a few bills out of his wallet.
He gets groceries on days when Michael is busy, makes an effort to fill the fridge and do laundry and the dishes and clean now that he has people to keep up appearances for. He never used to understand that, why she’d get so angry when the house wasn’t clean while guests were over, but Jeremiah gets it now. If Michael sees, even for a fraction of a second, that something is wrong, Jeremy will probably die.
It works well enough, but of course he’s trying so hard to keep everything fine and perfect and normal that he forgets the small things. He doesn’t put things in the dryer in time and has to run his clothes in the washer again because they smell, leaving him without a clean change of clothes. He’s forced to dig out some sweatpants he hasn’t worn in years, but Michael only raises an eyebrow and tells Jeremy he’ll support him no matter how strange his fashion gets.
Then, Jeremiah forgets to buy paper towels, leaving him with even more laundry as they use towels to wipe up a spill. Michael looks a little askance at that, too, but doesn’t comment.
He’s barely pulling things together, scrambling to hide the stitching of responsibilities he hadn’t even known about before she left, and he wonders if this is what drove her away. A week after Michael’s return, they pause the game and Jeremy slumps in his chair, exhausted.
“Hey dude, when are you doing your school shopping?” Michael asks him, a weird edge to his voice.
Shit. Numbers are flashing in front of his eyes, the time he’ll take shopping, the money he’ll spend, how much it’ll take away from the weekly budget he’s been trying to stick to, what he even needs to buy, and it’s so overwhelming he can’t even answer.
“I don’t know. I uh, kind of forgot about that,” he answers honestly.
Michael huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. What with all the other shopping you’ve been doing lately, must be hard to keep it all straight.”
Wait, what? Jeremy sits up. He knows, he knows, he knows, chants the voice at full volume.
“W-what?”
“Everything’s off brand, dude. Her shoes are gone, you’ve been eating takeout and microwave meals for the whole week. When were you going to tell me?”
“T-t-tell you w-what?” Jeremy whispers.
“That your mom left, dude. What else?”
“I- I- I-“ He can’t breathe. Michael rolls over, eyes widening when he sees Jeremy hyperventilating.
Fuck, fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck. This is exactly what he’s been trying to avoid. Jeremiah is robotic, functional but not emotional, that’s the only reason he’d been able to deal, and now Michael’s making Jeremy talk about it and it’s too much.
He’s not even aware he’s been shaking his head frantically or muttering or crying until he comes back and Michael’s holding his shoulders steady, grip too tight in his reciprocated panic.
“Jeremy!” No, no, no, not Jeremy not right now. He takes a few deep breaths and closes his mouth closes his eyes tries to get his jittering frame to settle the fuck down.
When Jeremiah opens his eyes, he can breathe again.
“Dude, are you…” Michael stops. He already knows the answer to that question. “Your dad says you aren’t talking anymore. That he hasn’t heard you say a single word for a month. That you only talk when I’m around.” Michael’s voice is getting more frantic, and he pushes back his bangs in distress. “Jeremy, what’s going on? Why aren’t you-?”
Jeremiah’s hands flutter helplessly. He shrugs. Tears are forming in his eyes, but he doesn’t know what to say. So he says nothing.
Michael lets out a strangled noise. “Now you’re doing it to me?”
He nods, slow but getting faster and shoves down Jeremy who quivers near the surface, screaming. Jeremiah nods and nods and nods and pulls up his legs into the beanbag, tightens himself into a ball and buries his face in his hands and then his knees so he can claw desperately at his elbows.
Warm hands yank his hands away from himself.
“Please don’t shut me out,” begs Michael. “Please don’t do this to yourself. Please, just talk to me, man!”
Jeremy looks up into pleading brown eyes, and opens his mouth. No more half-whispers.
I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say so I just don’t say anything, he says.
I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough! I’m sorry, I tried so hard to make everything okay I didn’t want you to see and I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want to be such a mess, he apologizes.
Dad doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m trying so hard, I feel awful because I don’t understand but I do and I’m so sorry and she won’t come back, he admits.
There’s a voice in my head now, a kill-switch where there wasn’t before. I keep hearing that I should just end it all, and I keep thinking about how awful everything is and I wasn’t enough, why did she leave, it hurts and I wasn’t enough and everything is so empty I can’t do this I don’t know what to do, he cries.
I'm not gonna lie. I have no idea what to say, Michael says, then.
Michael holds him. Michael holds him and listens and is there. This hurts him just as bad, leaves his gasping like he’s been stabbed but there’s healing in this, a comfort emptiness and silence hadn’t provided.
I'm not a professional. I think you should go talk to one about this, too. But, here are some things that I know are true, Michael says, then.
You are more than enough, Jeremy, Michael whispers, when Jeremy’s self loathing spills out too quickly.
This is not your fault. You shouldn’t have to do this, and you’ve been under a lot of pressure, Michael reassures, when Jeremy’s shoulders shake with the weight of his burdens.
It’s okay to get help. I’m here for you. I love you, you don’t have to do this alone, it will be okay. It will be okay, Jeremy, Michael confesses, when Jeremy’s heart cracks open for him.
Jeremy. It will be okay, I promise. We’ll get through it together. Michael calls him by his name, even now.
We’ll get through it together, Jeremy echoes, mumbling into the hug.
We’ll get through it together.
This time, when Jeremy stops talking, it’s because he’s fallen asleep in Michael’s arms, where he is warm and safe and loved.
It'll be okay.