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Well. Wilbur was dead. Nothing else to be done about it.
Time to clear out his belongings.
Techno understood, he really did - he understood that it was tough for Phil to face the memories, tough enough that he'd had to call Techno home right in the middle of a six-month trip away to do it for him. He understood why he'd had to speak at the funeral on Phil's behalf, when Tommy sat still and speechless in the front row, Tubbo's hand on his shoulder like they'd feel pain to split apart. He understood why he'd been the one to talk to the police, and the lawyers, and the grievance counsellor when Phil found out he wasn't ready to be civil about it all by lashing out at the innocent woman until she left and took his deposit with her. He understood why all this responsibility was on his shoulders, and he understood why now he was here in front of a room he hadn't stepped foot in since he moved out at nineteen, ready to fill some trashbags.
Didn't make it any easier to figure out where to start.
Wilbur's room, the room they once shared, was all warm cream and sepia tones - green blanket thrown across the edge of the bed; guitar propped up on the side of his bookshelf of vinyls and CDs; gold tinsel decorating the closet, because they hadn't had time to take the decorations down, and a Christmas tree was still rotting downstairs. Techno had long debated whether it was worth coming home for Christmas, but decided against in the end. At least the time period made it a little easier to finagle a last-minute journey home, airlines geared to accept a larger workload as people travelled out and home in hordes.
Funny, wasn't it, that he'd spent his last Christmas alive with his brother six thousand miles away from home, and that was all he was getting.
Right. Room clearing. Important.
It felt a little sacrilegious, touching Wilbur's things, knowing he wouldn't be at the door to complain that Techno was fucking with his "design" or whatever. Still, first order of business was to pull out anything that seemed significant or valuable and put it in the single white "do not throw this one out" bag. That meant… Well, it meant moving the guitar into the hallway, it meant checking Wilbur's drawers for money, it meant pulling down the certificates he still had blu-tacked to the wall from back in school and straightening them out to form a little pile at the bottom of the bag. Wilbur's body spray that made him smell like trees or some shit - Phil would find comfort in that, as would probably Tommy. His good headphones were mangled in the accident, but he'd left behind a couple sets of earbuds that Techno pocketed for the trip home. They always needed new earbuds out there.
The toy killer whale he slept with, twin to Techno's pig. Definitely in the bag alongside the better-kept Pokémon plushies that inhabited the space behind his pillow and down the side of his bed, because god forbid someone see a toy in the hands of Wilbur Soot. They might find out his carefully crafted aesthetic was just that - a craft.
Actually, it looked like Wilbur was keeping a lot under his bed. Cast aside the trash, the wrappers, the empty cigarette cartons he'd discarded, and Techno could pretty much fit under the bed to see what hid there. A shoebox, which felt heavy when he pulled it out and left it in the open to come to later. Socks he'd probably assumed were lost to time, dropped trading cards, empty food containers that Phil had probably been asking after for years, Techno's old lunchbox (Techno's old lunchbox! That bastard! He'd told Techno it was stolen!). A coat, weirdly, considering the hook on Wilbur's door was empty. And a big jumble of cables - those might go with something they could sell on eBay, so Techno extracted the pile and left it for later sorting.
The shoebox was full of seashells, for some reason. Techno guessed that Wilbur just missed the beach.
He kept sorting and searching, bringing into play the first "definitely trash" bag and the "debatably trash" bag when he happened upon a rock collection entirely discrete from the shell collection and in another shoebox on the other side of the room. (Like, they were just rocks.) Books were re-shelved and fallen figurines were uprighted so that if Tommy and Phil wanted a crack at either of Wilbur's sets of belongings they could do so without worrying about if everything was there and organized. He took a brief recess to make Wilbur's bed, because that thing was just a pile of blankets, and damn it if he didn't want Wilbur to have at least some dignity in death.
Amplifier for the guitar, hidden under the desk - into the hallway it went as well.
And when the place was clear of trash, and his collection of "do not throw this one out" items weighed the bag down enough that it stood on its own, he moved to open up the closet.
Tinsel fell on his face. Of course.
He didn't know why, but he was struck with the strangest wave of emotional something when he went to move the clothes aside for better view of the pile of whatever that Wilbur had collected underneath, and his hand closed around a piece of fabric he remembered. One of Wilbur's old band shirts. He never recognised their names or connected them up to the songs Wilbur would blast on his more melodramatic days, but he knew the shirts were well loved from the number of times he'd rifled past them in the laundry basket looking for something of his own. It certainly felt soft as hell, and the whole closet smelled predictably like trees or some shit, like Wilbur had left his mark all over his wardrobe, like he wanted to be remembered and recalled and reminisced over, even with something small like this.
He didn't know why he did what he did next even more, but Techno pulled the band tee off its hanger and held it in the crook of his elbow while he kept sorting.
Nothing interesting in the pile, but nothing obviously worthless - definitely all for the "debatably trash" bag, he decided, scooping up a few empty boxes that used to hold more sentimental things and birthday presents, clearing them into the bag and leaving the base of the closet -
Well, empty, but… tampered with?
The plywood pulled up easily at the corner, revealing how the back board of the closet had been unscrewed and used to store a few items Techno had never seen. Ticket stubs, a notebook (looked like a diary - that was too much of a breach of privacy for Techno's comfort, but it would definitely be going in the "do not throw this one out" pile), and a camera with a photo album.
Techno picked up the camera gingerly, turning it over in the light. One of those instant cameras. Polaroid.
The gauge on the back told him there were still three pieces of photo-film left unused in the camera. One for each of them left alive, his brain reminded him unhelpfully. He set it down on the chest of drawers to his side and pulled the photo album out to see what it was all about. Wilbur Soot was the only thing written, neat and black on masking tape, across the front of the book - it was brown faux-leather, same as the diary left inside.
Techno flipped to the first page.
"Will!" Phil waved at his son, drawing the teen's attention from where he sat excited on the floor. "Can I be your first picture?"
"Give me a minute," Wilbur replied crossly, "I've got to put the film in first."
"Omega Ruby!" cheered Tommy, obliviously tearing through wrapping paper at a rate unheard of by all rational species. "I needed this one, thanks, Santa."
Phil laughed. "Are you not a bit old for that, Tommy, mate?"
"You're the one who still makes us put out milk and cookies for him every year."
"Which Santa very much enjoyed, thank you, boys. Done yet, Will?"
"Gimme - a minute - yes!" He held up the viewfinder to his eye and shuffled awkwardly around to face Phil. "Right, hope the light settings are alright. Say cheese, Dad!"
"You're cheesy -"
Click.
Techno remembered that Christmas. He'd been given a new phone, to replace his one with the shattered screen, and Wilbur's present of equal value had been the Polaroid. It was honestly a miracle the thing had stuck around as long as it did - that Christmas had been years and years ago; the phone was an iPhone 6. Yet here was Wilbur's camera, in pride of place at the bottom of the closet - and here was the first ever image it took, Phil's face blurry and bashfully smiling, framed by a plain white border, and labelled Christmas 2015 in Sharpie on the bottom of the photo.
He turned the page.
"No, I need photos of everyone! Clean your face!"
"You can't tell me what to do. Maybe I like having gravy on my nose," Tommy protested, halfway up the staircase.
"Tommy, please!"
"Never!"
"Techno, do something," his twin whined.
Techno smirked. "Not without a fee."
"Call it even for the cupcake thing, then."
"You really wanna settle that for a photo of Tommy?"
"What if he dies next week and we have no record of him ever existing?"
"It'll be a week too soon. Fine. Tommy?"
"You'll never catch me alive, bitch!"
The resulting tussle left Tommy with an absolute bird's nest made of his hair and somehow got gravy on Techno's shirt, of all places. Wilbur chased them across the second floor of the house and commentated their every move until all of them were laughing so hard they could barely breathe and sitting in a heap on the floor in front of Phil's room.
"Boys?"
"Dad! Think fast!"
It was a miracle Phil was actually able to catch the camera and it didn't smash on the wall behind him.
"You want a picture?"
"Get Tommy!"
"Noo," the boy complained, muffled by his brothers' weight above him but a smile still evident in his voice. He shifted and grabbed Techno's hair -
"Ow, you motherf-!"
Click.
The three of them looked so young and unbothered, save for the evident pain and anger on Techno's face in the corner of the image. January 2016 - a week or two later, he now recalled. At least this one was in better focus; Phil clearly knew his way around an instant camera.
Next page.
"Did you bring your camera?"
"Do I look stupid? Of course I brought the camera!"
"Good. I'm not doing this fuckin' hike again."
They'd gathered the whole gang plus Techno for a trek up the hill and a "party", if you could call it that, under the stars. While Techno had abstained from drinking with everybody, Wilbur had done absolutely the opposite, and been loudly expressing every thought that entered his brain and singing every song that crossed his thoughts for about an hour before Niki had remembered the reason they'd dragged everybody up this high - an attempt at getting an artsy Polaroid of everybody's silhouettes in the sunset.
Now, she and Wilbur continued their muttered banter back and forth for a few more seconds before he fumbled the camera out of his bag and messed with the settings gracelessly. "Does this thing have a flash mode?"
"We can just use our phones!"
"Oh, that is smart, that's genius, Niki."
She giggled and ushered another of Wilbur's friends towards the edge of their little plateau. "Come on, it's gonna look so good! Before the sun sets!"
Wilbur finally finished sorting his settings out and looked up to survey the group.
Techno knew what Wilbur was going to say before even Wilbur did, he reckoned.
"Techno, can you take the picture?"
"Sure."
Wasn't like he was part of Wilbur's friend group. Part of any friend group.
"Right, Eret, shift up a bit, you're not quite - yep - theeere we go, that's perfect."
Wasn't like he was part of the moment. Part of any moment.
"Are we ready?"
"Hold on, I might -" Fundy paused to check if he was going to throw up "- nope, ready."
Wasn't like he should be part of the memory. Part of -
"Do it, Techno!"
Click.
The image came out almost black, but for the light of Wilbur's phone flashlight illuminating the sweep of his hair and the line of his brow in a misguided attempt to spotlight himself. Everybody else, apparently, either forgot to turn their lights on or had it aimed in completely the wrong direction to make the picture look good. As it was, all they got was a faint sliver of sun lining the centre of the image like a terrible barcode, and the form of Wilbur's face, an abstract painting on black paper. May 2017. The year they'd started drifting.
Next page.
"Come on, can't we get the whole family in one?"
"Please, Techno?"
"I don't wanna." He'd become increasingly camera shy since his roots had started to grow back out, instant camera or not. It didn't matter that he was home for the first time in a couple of months - that was a couple of months he'd spent not dyeing his hair appropriately, and he didn't look photo-worthy.
Not that the rest of the family cared.
"Techno," Phil warned, "it's a family portrait, not a Wilbur-Phil-and-Tommy portrait. Get over here."
"No."
"You're such a bitch boy, you know that, right?"
"Seriously, Tommy?"
"Techno -"
"I said no. Don't you know what consent is?"
Phil and Wilbur looked at each other. Tommy seemed to stifle a joke he found extremely funny, which told Techno it was definitely better off remaining stifled.
"You can hold the camera if you want."
"I'm not interested in your stupid camera or your stupid photo, Wilbur!"
"Hey, hey," Phil suddenly sounded like he was soothing a spooked animal, and Techno bristled at the patronisation, "is there something going on, mate?"
"There's nothing 'going on', I just don't wanna be in the picture."
Phil considered this, frowning, for a few silent seconds. "What'll you do it for?"
"What? You're trying to bribe me?"
"Not so much bribery as... enforced participation with a reward. Come on, man, what'll it take?"
Fine. Two could play at that game.
"Thirty bucks."
"I'll give you a tenner."
"You drive a hard bargain, Dad."
Still, he shuffled into place, affecting his most bored expression as Wilbur held out the Polaroid in a crude approximation of a selfie. He was getting a photo of Techno, but he wouldn't get a smile.
Click.
Of course there had been something going on in the months before Techno first left home - Techno and Wilbur had been having increasingly aggressive conversations out of earshot of the rest of the family, over everything they disagreed on, picking fights for the sake of it, trying their hardest to seem apart. Techno dyeing his hair had been the first strike in the war on identical twinhood, and Wilbur had responded by throwing out his contacts to become the twin who wore the glasses, stealing Techno's one good pair, forcing him into shortsightedness the next morning until he stole them back. Wardrobe changes and fighting over being Tommy's number one idol and switching schedules and lunch tables and Techno's decision to abandon his English major for a potato farm far, far away from here and home and anything Wilbur had laid his hands on.
Keeping secrets, apparently. But not getting rid of the evidence that, once, they'd been happy to share this family.
Next page.
"Tommy!"
"What, bitch?"
Click.
Tommy looked so young, his face alive with emotion, his frame huge and childishly assertive. Nothing like the way he'd looked at the funeral, small and shrunken and silent, like he was ready to disappear. Techno hadn't seen Tommy in four months before that. He hardly remembered what his brother's face had looked like the day he'd left.
Next page.
"You think landscape photos will come out good on this thing?"
"Not in the car they won't."
"Well, I'm going to find out!"
Click.
He only remembered the drive on which Wilbur had snapped this one, labelled Definite Failure 2018, because of the disaster it had been when Wilbur nearly dropped the damn camera out of the window. He'd hyperventilated for a solid ten minutes after, while Phil had attempted to calm him from the front seat, Techno had stared resolutely into the rearview mirror the entire time (definitely not looking at his brother without turning his head), and Tommy had played mobile games obliviously and without headphones the entire time. They had barely managed to enjoy the family day out that followed. No more than you could enjoy a day when you were forced to stand within three feet of the brother you'd made it your mission to completely blank for the whole afternoon, that was.
Next page.
"That's a beautiful sunset!"
"It's not going to come out right," Phil warned.
"I don't care. The important thing is the memory of the moment, right?"
"That's so sappy," Techno muttered in complaint, "you're such a fuckin' sap."
"I have fun, you know?" Wilbur continued to address Phil, as though Techno were nothing more than a gust of wind. "I like preserving the memory. And you were a part of it, Dad! You're part of this image, even though you're not in it. You're part of the memory."
"Is that right, Will?"
"Oh, absolutely! When you're dead and I'm going back through these old photos, I'm gonna remember this moment and remember that you were here to share it with me. Isn't that so cool?"
"Yeah, mate. Go on, then, sun's not gonna wait for you."
Click.
Ironic. That one was New Year 2019. A year ago, ish.
This photo was a year old. And Wilbur was dead.
A year ago.
Next page.
"What are you taking a selfie for?"
"Well, we need a record of my youthful beauty, don't we? I'm not gonna be twenty-one forever. Plus, my hair looks really good today."
"Take one of me, then! I always look good. I get so many women."
"Tommy, you're sixteen."
"So what, and I can't get women?"
"Shut up." Wilbur re-ruffled his hair and tilted his head at the perfect angle for his cheekbones to catch the light.
(Techno, silent and buried in his phone on the other side of the room, pushed the heel of his hand into his cheeks to hide the squish.)
Click.
They'd looked so very different by the end of their division, Techno realised, something he had stopped paying attention to by the time he'd come home again for the third or fourth time. Looking at the photo Wilbur had taken last July, though, it was crystal clear that where Techno had filled out into softness and paleness, Wilbur was all sharps and angles and yellow undertones warming his skin tone. Techno burned and Wilbur tanned, somehow.
Techno went out and did something with his life, though, Techno helped the world while Wilbur sat at home and played his damn guitar and -
Well, that was unfair. Wilbur didn't exactly get a chance to catch up in the race of "doing something with your life", did he?
Fuck.
He didn't care.
Next page.
September 2020.
He didn't recognise this one, because he'd been away by late August of last year. It depicted a few of Wilbur's friends sitting on a wooden fence at the edge of a field. The one on the end was smoking - this was a friend Techno didn't recognise. Niki sat closest to the camera, looking just over the proverbial shoulder, in the middle of saying something from the strange expression she was pulling, but clearly in the middle of laughter, too.
Next page.
Halloween 2020.
Tommy, in a costume Techno had been emailed better digital photos of on Phil's behalf - he looked great as Spiderman, Techno had to admit. Something in the poor quality of the Polaroid film gave it a dated feel, though; this could have been a photo from Will and Techno's childhood.
Tommy looked exactly like his brother had.
Next page, next page, next -
December 2020.
Phil and Wilbur and Tommy. The camera holder was unknown. They were all smiling, all so happy, all wearing stupid winter hats and scarves and gloves and they were all smiling without Techno -
Next page.
Nothing.
Next page.
Nothing.
Next page.
Next page.
Next page.
…
And Wilbur was dead and Techno never got the chance to say sorry for the way he'd treated his fucking brother -
And there were no more photos.
And there was no more Wilbur.
Techno swallowed back tears, unsuccessfully, and stumbled back across the floor he'd cleared until he was sitting on Wilbur's empty bed, clutching a half-empty photo album, hands heavy and heart so full of everything he should have said before, before, before.
It wasn't fair. He should have had time to say sorry.
He should never have pretended he wanted anything more than his brother's love. Above his friends, above his grades, above anything.
Because now Wilbur was dead, and all Techno had to show for it was an album of memories he'd actively refused to be a happy part of at any turn.
He didn't know how long he sat and cried into laminated paper with empty holes where photos should have gone before Phil got home.
"Techno? You here?"
Techno trained his eyes on the far wall and wiped his face. He could do this.
"Hey, Dad."
The voice approached. "You getting on alright?"
"Yeah, fine."
"Find anything intere- oh, you…"
Techno locked eyes with his father, and the floodgates threatened to reopen. "It's just photos. It's whatever."
And then Phil was sitting by his side, a warm and claustrophobic arm around his waist and his arm and his body, peering over at the empty back half of the photo album that lay open on Techno's lap. "Doesn't look like photos to me."
"Yeah, well he kinda… got interrupted before he could take the rest."
Phil was silenced by that.
They stared into white, laminated paper with empty holes where photos should have gone, for maybe a little bit too long. It's okay, Techno imagined the grievance counsellor from a week ago saying. It's okay to take all the time you need. It's not a logical process.
"Dad."
"Techno."
"In the pictures -"
He flipped back, back, back to January 2016. Three brothers, laughing in a pile - Techno shocked and pained, seconds away from anger. Phil's thumb obscuring the lens just a little bit. Just enough to cloud the bottom of the frame.
"That's a good one," Phil laughed quietly, his voice a little heavy with pain. His hand reached forward as if to take the photo, to trace the line of Wilbur's younger face, but it never left his lap.
"I never…" Techno cleared his throat. "I was never smiling. None of these photos. I never did."
"You're camera shy."
"No, that's not -" Techno cut himself off, pushing a stray hair out of his face "- it's not the point. I want to."
"You want to take another photo? Now?"
"Yes. Yes." He nodded, as if enough affirmations would push the tears back into his skull and out of their waiting position right on the edge of his eyelids. "It's - I left it in the closet -"
Phil stood, and by the time Techno had closed up the album, he was holding the Polaroid gently, viewfinder to his eye. "Ghost camera."
"You see ghosts through that thing?" Techno joked.
"I wish."
They both smiled sombrely, Techno rolled his eyes, and looked up into -
Click.
Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt, printed the photo. Phil plucked it from its egress and shook it gently.
"You know you don't actually have to do that with the modern ones, right, Dad? Or are you too old to get that?"
"Okay, smartarse. What's that in your elbow?"
Oh. He'd forgotten about the shirt. He pulled it back out and held it up to the light.
"Shirt. Wilbur didn't - did Wilbur even listen to the Ramones?"
"I don't remember hearing that, no."
"Fucking poser," he laughed, and suddenly he was hysterical again, like he had been all those years ago, holding a piece of cloth with a random fucking band's name on the front and breathing in the smell of his dead brother's body spray and smelling a home he'd long refused to enter.
Click.
"You took another one?"
"I saw a smile and I took advantage!" Phil defended, hiding his own grin with the bzzt-bzzt-bzzt of image number two. "Besides, you said it yourself. We need as many as we can get."
"There's only one piece of film left in there."
"We can buy more. The model's not discontinued, it's only been five years."
The two photos came out a perfect illustration of Techno's mood - the first snapshotted him mid-eyeroll, the corner of his mouth quirked up like somebody had said something stupid and he was about to make fun of it; the second caught him laughing like Tommy with eyes screwed shut and mouth wide open, leaning into a joke the audience couldn't see, pure joy overpowering the grief he'd felt for one simple golden moment. He picked up a Sharpie from Wilbur's desk and labelled them both -
The Memory
The Moment
Did it matter which was which?
(The last bit of film, they decided, should be used on something stupid. Luckily for the family, Tommy spotted a really fat pigeon the next day, and that was their model.)
Wilbur was dead, sure. But that wasn't to say there was nothing else to be done about it - as long as they were keeping the memory alive, part of every moment, they would never really lose sight of him.
Eventually, Tommy would get back his massiveness, and he'd learn how to fill a room again. Phil would get through a therapy session without losing his temper again. Techno would stick the image of Wilbur in the sunset, a terrible barcode and the swoop of hair, to his wall when he left home again.
Eventually they'd figure out where to start, and they'd work out where to go from there.
(He labelled the last picture, the pigeon,
Do not throw this one out,
and none of them ever would.)