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Spring Break was finally in session. Sunny was tapping his foot to the rhythm of the music he was currently listening to as the outside slowly changed from a bustling city to the calm quiet of a small suburban town. He’s still peeved at his Mom for not mentioning that their new place was only an hour away, but he understood. If it wasn’t for Kel, desperately knocking on the front door to their old house in an attempt to finally reconnect with Sunny last year, there really wouldn’t have been any reason to know that information. His friends on the other hand, who learned that information right after the year ended, would not take that as an excuse.
But he has the chance to make up for it this year. He’s visited on weekends but with Spring Break, he’d be able to spend an entire week with them to catch up better. Two days and one night or three days and two nights never really provided enough time to learn about what’s been going on with everyone.
The bus halted to a stop and Sunny turned off his music and took off his headphones, setting them inside his duffle bag as he stood up and exited the bus, stepping onto the concrete right next to Faraway Park. The park itself remained mostly the same but there was noticeably less trash around. Sunny liked that. He probably should head over to Kel and Hero’s place, but he had an entire week to spend with his friends and he honestly needed some alone time. An hour or two wouldn’t hurt them. Besides, ignoring the eyepatch, it wouldn’t be that hard to find him. Not in Faraway, where apparently, watching and/or helping people with the most mundane tasks ever is enough to raise your social status. Only in Faraway, he supposed.
There weren’t a whole lot of people in the park, so there were plenty of places open for him to sit, but he already sat on the bus for an hour, so he’d rather stretch his legs out. He’d also rather not have to deal with anyone at the moment, which again, since he was in Faraway, it would be bound to happen. Thankfully, there’s a place where he could spend some time alone.
Moving past the trees, breaking a few twigs and moving past the ‘Road Closed’ signs that were still there for some reason, Sunny found himself at the hideout, now under shared custody between the friend group and the hooligans. It was the perfect place to just lie down, stare at the sky and think. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t the only one who had that idea. Lying down on the grass nearby was the blue hoodie wearing delinquent known as Kim. Sunny glanced around the hideout for any sign of the other hooligans.
“No, the others aren’t here.” Kim said, having noticed Sunny looking around. “Vance is at the dentist at the moment, Angel and his sister are visiting relatives for the week and Mikhael and Charlene are working.”
Sunny quirked a brow. “Wait, Mikhael? Working? Like at the Bakery or-”
“Bakery.” Kim turned her head towards Sunny. “You here to space out before meeting with Aubs and the others?”
Sunny nodded. “I love ‘em, but I can hardly get some time to myself.” He set the duffle bag down near the dock and lied down a little ways away from Kim. “I know they’re worried, but there are days where I just want to think. Y’know?”
“I get ya. It’s nice to have some time to yourself every once and a while. Ignore everything that’s going on.”
Sunny sighed and laid one of his arms over his eyes. “Even after doing so for four years, there’s still something so cathartic about it.”
Kim nodded, not that Sunny could see it. “Yeah. There is.”
The two sat in silence which was only broken by the sound of the rustling leaves. Sunny lifted his arm off his face and stared up into the sky, which was a giant sea of blue at the moment. Not a cloud in sight. Eventually, he rested his arm back onto his face and sighed. “Y’know, there was a question I’ve been wanting to ask Aubrey, but I couldn’t really do so with Kel, Hero and Basil there.”
Kim turned her head towards Sunny with a smirk. “What, were you going to ask her out or something?”
“Actually I was wondering if you two were dating.” Sunny replied swiftly.
“Eh?” Kim sat up. “What gave you that idea?”
Sunny shrugged. “Not sure, really. Just a thought I had when I looked back at those three days last year.”
Kim hummed and nodded, lying back down on the grass. “I mean, I won’t lie, I did have a thing for her for the last couple of years. But when I tried asking her out during the winter...Well, there wasn’t any interest.”
“Ouch. That must’ve sucked.”
“Not really. She just didn’t see me in that way. I’m not gonna let something like that ruin my friendship with her.” Kim chuckled. “I never understood why people get mad about that kind of stuff.”
“Me neither. If anything, it’s something you could look back on and laugh about.”
“Tell me about it!” Kim’s chuckles died down into snickers, which eventually turned into a hum. “Well, now that you know that, you plan on giving it a shot yourself?”
Sunny grimaced. “If I was twelve, maybe. I had a crush on her then and sometimes would dream about if she also had a crush on me, but looking back on those days now…” He made a disgusted noise. “God, I was almost as bad as Basil was with me.” Kim started chuckling again. “Besides, I doubt there would be any interest. Both back then and now, especially considering…”
“What happened with your sister?”
Sunny sighed. “She told you that, huh?”
Kim nodded. “Yep.”
“...When?”
“We got the full gist of it a few days after she first found out. Me and the others were hanging out here while she was visiting you and Basil at the hospital. Suddenly, she came bursting through the woods and paused when she saw us. She tried to leave, but we all already noticed that she looked upset by something and, not wanting to have a repeat of last time, we all stopped her and asked what was wrong.”
“Mhm…”
“But we really couldn’t make sense of what she was saying, since it was garbled by rage and tears. So we let her go and gave her a few days. After that, we all met up back here and she gave us the rundown. What she said you told her at the hospital and the stuff that went down that caused her to lock herself in her house before then.”
Sunny lifted his arm off his face and sighed. “General consensus?”
Kim stayed silent for a beat. “...Pity.”
Sunny scoffed. “Why? I don’t deserve it.”
Kim rolled her eyes. “Okay, first off, shut the fuck up with that self deprecation shit. It is far from okay based on what we were told.” Sunny mumbled in response. “Second off, it doesn’t take a genius to know that what happened was an accident. From what we all gathered, you were just trying to get past her so you could run off somewhere. You couldn’t have known she would tumble down the stairs.”
“Yeah, but...I still…” Sunny sighed. “What about Basil? What was the opinion on his part in it all?”
“After everything we put him through, we all pretty much agreed that he’s been punished enough.” She sighed and sat up. “Although, I am curious about why you went through with the whole ‘staging a suicide’ plan.”
“To be honest, I didn’t even register what we were doing until after it was already done. From my perspective, I was lying beside her bed after I managed to get her onto it, crying my eyes out and then all of a sudden I was outside with Basil heading back into the house. I was confused and looked back and…” Sunny let out a choked breath, digging his palm into his good eye. “I shouldn’t have looked back. That image haunted me for four goddamn years. I couldn’t even sleep in my own bed without having that knife nearby.”
Kim’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit, that’s why you had a knife on you!?”
Sunny lifted his hand away from his eye and sat up, hugging one of his knees. “That’s the first of two reasons. I felt safer with it on me. If I ever saw that image, I could just swipe at it and it’d disappear.” He tightened his grip on his knee. “You could probably already guess the second reason…”
“Yeah.” Kim nodded. “I can.” She propped herself up on her hands and looked up at the sky. “If you don’t mind me asking, why wait until then to come clean? How’d you even avoid spilling the beans when you were walking around with them before you ended up at the hospital?”
Sunny looked away from Kim and sighed. “I just forgot. The memory of what happened, as well as any memory that could lead me to remember, locked away. After that, I hid away inside my mind. I created, or well, expanded on a perfect fantasy world, where the incident never happened. Where Mari was alive, where we were all still twelve and full of joy. It was like...An eternal sleepover.” Sunny sighed. “But, what I did. What I saw. It wasn’t just going to stay away. It would keep coming back, trying to make me remember and I’d fight back to forget. Spending those three days with my friends...Finally gave me the courage to confront the truth, I guess.”
“Damn...That’s...Damn.” Kim muttered, to which Sunny nodded. “If something like that happened to me and Vance, I don’t think either of us would be able to pull that off.”
“It’s easy when you daydream a lot.”
Kim nodded. “Yeah, I’d say a powerful imagination would be useful to do something like that.” She pulled some grass out of the ground and dropped it back down. “You shouldn’t keep beating yourself up over an accident, you know.”
“HOW CAN I NOT!?” Sunny shouted. He stood up and turned towards Kim with tears streaming down his face. “After everything I put them through, why shouldn’t I beat myself up over it!? Hero was catatonic for a year, snapping out of it just to scream and yell at Kel for trying to help him, only to come back to his senses after seeing Kel curled up on the ground, crying his eyes out, completely ignored by their parents!
“I left Basil after promising we’d stick by each other, resulting in him taking the blame for blacking out all the photos in his album, which was MY fault, which ended up with him getting bullied relentlessly by Aubrey! We were both haunted by the same thing and I left him! And you already know how Aubrey turned out! I put all of them through hell, all the while I hid in both my house and my mind, ignoring the fucking problem!” Sunny clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. “I don’t deserve to be forgiven...I don’t deserve to be back here…And I don’t deserve to-”
Kim stood up and slapped Sunny, snapping him out of it. “I told you to shut the fuck up, with that self deprecation bullshit.” Sunny opened his mouth to protest, but closed it with a huff. Kim gripped his shoulders with a sigh. “Look, I don’t know much about Mari, but what I do know is that she wouldn’t want to see you like this. Whether it was an accident or if she...Really did take her own life.” Sunny stayed silent. “And since it was an accident, I know that she’d forgive you and that she’d want you to forgive yourself and move on.” Kim sighed. “Like I said earlier, if the same thing happened to me and Vance, either one of us would be fucked up about it, yeah. But both of us would want the other to move on.”
Sunny sighed. “I know...You’re right and so were the others. Mari would want me to move on…” He clenched his fists again. “But I just don’t. Know. Where to start!”
Kim sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Well, where did the others say you should start?”
Sunny rubbed his arm. “Well, the general consensus was that I should go into therapy, especially since I gave them more details about where and why I hid away.”
Kim smirked and jabbed a finger into Sunny’s chest. “So go into therapy then! What’s stopping you?”
“We can’t afford it.” Sunny replied softly. “Mom already spent a good chunk of her paycheck for the moving process and to pay off the medical bills.”
“Oh.” Kim pushed her glasses up and cleared her throat. “Shit, dude. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“S’fine.” Sunny sighed and sat down on the grass, pulling some of it out of the ground. “Stupid unreliable insurance…”
Kim chuckled. “Well, at least you aren’t blaming yourself for that.” She sat down next to him. “Money problems though, eh? How’s that working out?”
“Well…” Sunny rubbed the back of his neck. “For starters, Mom’s not at the house all that much, which honestly, I’m used to. Same reason too. Always having to work, except this time I’m actually moving around myself. School, visiting Aubrey and the others or just walking around the park near our apartment.”
Kim shrugged. “At least you're not home by yourself all day.”
"True..." Sunny sighed. “The main issue is that her job doesn’t really pay all that well, even if she takes on extra shifts, so she’s been thinking of getting a second job.”
“Oh, it’s THAT kind of situation…”
“Mhm…” Sunny nodded and looked up towards the lake, anger building up in his eyes. “A situation we wouldn’t be in if that bastard didn’t leave.” He picked up a rock nearby and chucked it into the lake. “They pieced everything together after the funeral. Mom understood why it happened. Why I broke down under the pressure and she understood that it was an accident. She tried to be there for me afterwards. To try and make amends for all the pressure, but it’s hard to do something like that when the other person won’t even answer the door.”
Kim sighed and shifted around, leaning back against Sunny. He felt his ears heat up, but chose to ignore it. “He didn’t say anything. He just grabbed an axe and started to chop down the tree where me and Basil hung Mari. All day and all night, he just kept chopping at it. I tried to get something out of him. The first words he ever said to me after the funeral were used to disown me.” Sunny scoffed. “Not that it would make a difference if he didn’t. In his eyes, I didn’t even exist.”
Kim huffed. “That’s messed up. For a lot of reasons…” She stared up into the sky, spotting a couple of birds flying overhead. “Do the others know about your money situation?”
Sunny shook his head. “I was going to tell them sometime during the break. Though, I’m not so sure if it’d help.” He sighed. “I know Aubrey would be willing to donate some of her paycheck from Gino’s, but I know that still wouldn’t be much. I don’t have any doubts that Basil would tell Polly about it and knowing her she’d try and help, but I don’t know her salary, so I don’t know if it’d help much either.”
“And the two Jennings?”
“Oh, they’re not going to be able to do shit!” Sunny chuckled. “Hero’s a college student, so he has nothing to share and Kel still owes me $20 from those three days last year. I’ve reminded him about it, but I still haven’t gotten it.” Kim burst into laughter and Sunny joined in soon afterwards. They spent the last minute letting their laughter die down, before the sound of a jazzy tune echoed out.
Kim moved away from Sunny and gave him a disappointed look. “Dude, is that seriously your ringtone?”
Sunny pulled his phone out and shrugged. “I like Jazz. Everything else is too loud for my tastes.” He checked the caller ID while Kim muttered something. “It’s Aubrey.” He flipped open his phone, put it up to his ear and braced for impact. “Henno?”
Kim raised a brow. “Wha-”
“WHERE ARE YOU!?!?” Aubrey shouted through the phone, causing Sunny to recoil. Kim fought back a chuckle while Sunny leaned back into the phone.
“I’m at the hangout spot. I needed some time alone to think and-”
“The hangout spot? WAIT, ARE YOU AT FARAWAY!?”
Sunny raised a brow. “Uh...Yeah? Why is that so surprising?”
“WE CHANGED PLANS REMEMBER!? WE DECIDED WE WERE GOING TO SPEND SPRING BREAK WITH YOU AT THE CITY!”
“Wait, what? When did that happen?” Sunny scratched his head and turned to Kim with a confused expression, to which she shrugged with an expression of 'Don't look at me.'
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘When did that happen?’ HERO TEXTED YOUR MOM YESTERDAY ABOUT IT!”
Sunny blinked. “No…? Mom didn’t mention anything like that. She kept reminding me to pack for the trip here all day yesterday.” He heard Aubrey talk to someone on the other side of the call, which soon resulted in a bunch of shouting. Sunny snickered a bit and covered the speaker with his other hand, turning to Kim. “Sounds like Hero fucked up!” Kim nodded in response and Sunny leaned back into the call.
“Ok...Turns out Hero managed to pull a Kel and forgot to hit send.” The sound of Kel shouting a ‘Hey!’ rang out in the background. “So we’re going to come back and pick you up so we can get a move on with our Spring Break.”
“Alright. I’ll be waiting at the park for you guys. See you soon, bye.” He hung up and pocketed his phone. “Never thought I’d see the day where Hero would be the one to cause a mix up.”
Kim chuckled. “Well there’s a first for everything!” A beat. “Hey, so...How’re feeling? After saying all that?”
Sunny sighed. “Tired mostly.”
Kim nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right. I’m sure anyone would be after all that.” She hummed. “Y’know what always picks me right up when I’m feeling down?”
“Considering that it’s you we’re talking about, I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s candy.”
“Hell yeah it is!” Kim stood up and stretched. “Come on, let’s go get some. I’m sure it’d at least make you feel better.”
Sunny hummed in consideration and then nodded. “Yeah, I could go for some candy.” He stood up and walked over to his duffle bag.
“Cool! Though…” Kim rubbed the back of her neck. “I hope you don’t mind paying for it. I left my wallet at home and I don’t feel like heading back there at the moment, even for just a second or two, y’know?”
“I understand.” Sunny slipped his arm through the strap and sighed. “And while I know Mari would be disappointed, I personally can’t stand Ms. Candice, so...” He turned to Kim and smirked. “You feel like ruining her day?”
Kim smirked back. “All the time!” Her and Sunny made their way out of the hideout. After a few steps, Kim hummed. “So, you’re heading back to the city for Spring Break?”
“Seems like it.”
“Do you...Know when you’ll be back in Faraway?”
Sunny raised a brow. “I’m not sure really. Maybe the weekend after next. Why do you ask?”
Kim stopped and held out her hand. “Give me your phone real quick.” Sunny tilted his head, but pulled out his phone and handed it to Kim anyway, making a mental note to deal with the fallout later. She took the phone and flipped it open, typing at a speed that really took Sunny by surprise. After a second or two, she took out her own phone and did the same before giving back Sunny’s. “There. I added my number to it and...” She pressed one last button on her own phone. “Sent you a text.”
Sunny’s phone buzzed in his hand and he glanced at the text which read ‘Same time the next you visit?’ He turned to Kim. “What exactly does that mean?”
Kim rolled her eyes. “The next time you visit Faraway, shoot me a text. We can grab a box from Gino’s, meet at the hideout and y’know, talk. Vent to each other.” She sighed and pushed up her glasses. “Aubrey mentioned that you were a great listener and from what I could tell, you need someone like that yourself. Besides, God knows I have stuff I’d like to get off my chest and the other hooligans aren't really the best option. Not even Charlene.”
Sunny hummed and looked back at his phone. He’ll admit, the prospect did sound nice. Talking to someone other than his friends about his problems. He just didn’t expect Kim of all people to be the one to suggest that though. Then again, he doesn’t know much about her and she could end up surprising him. He smiled and closed his phone, stuffing it back into his pocket. “Alright. That doesn’t sound so bad.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And, thanks. For listening.”
Kim smiled back and playfully punched Sunny in the arm. “Anytime. I’m already Aubrey’s Emotional Support Bitch, but there’s nothing that says I can’t extend my services to others.” She nodded her head towards the park. “Now let’s hurry and give Ms. Candice a headache before your friends steal ya back!”
“Right behind you!” The two started making their way out of the woods at a faster pace, fueled by a mutual desire for candy and to make Ms. Candice’s blood boil.