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Jack Kelly survived.
He’d been hurt. He’d been broken. He’d been beaten down til he couldn’t get up the next morning, but he survived .
He had to.
It had been easy to learn. Easy to pick up, living in Warren Snyder’s home. It was how the older boys got by. How they kept the littler kids safe.
But Jack Kelly did not like to be a little kid.
He had watched his mom and sister die from pneumonia and his father work himself to his death bed by the time he was seven. He didn’t need to be treated like a little kid.
So when Jack Kelly was left to watch, he made sure he learned. When he was pushed to the side so he could be protected, he learned how to protect.
Jack Kelly got bruises younger than any other kid with Warren Snyder.
He ran to the front, desperate to stop what he knew was about to happen.
Warren Snyder had hit him, and he hadn’t stopped.
That’s when Jack Kelly really learned. When he understood what it meant to survive.
From that day on, Jack Kelly didn’t keep his mouth shut.
He talked back without shame. He learned how to hide a tear behind a cheeky smile. He learned how to laugh in Warren Snyder’s face instead of cowering in fear. The part of him that was bent on living was gone, replaced by the part of him that was bent on surviving so others could live. He lost his self-preservation instinct, but he learned to get by without it.
So if he carried that same attitude with him to school, so what? If he got in fights to protect a random kid he met that day, so what? If he refused to let authority intimidate and manipulate him, so what?
Jack Kelly learned those lessons, and he wasn’t about to forget them just because the people he needed to protect weren’t living in the same foster home with him.
Warren Snyder broke him, and he hated him for it.
***
Antonio Higgins felt.
He had been left. He had been loved. He had been pushed to the side and cared for at the same time, but he felt.
How could he not?
It was easy to feel with a mother that loved him, a father that left him, and a little brother that trusted him. Not hard at all when his mother had been sent to jail. Even easier when he was sent to Warren Snyder’s home, with a little brother to protect and an abusive foster father to hide from.
Antonio Higgins learned to keep his mouth shut.
He had never been one to shut up. He said what was on his mind. His mom said he didn’t have a filter, and maybe that was true.
Warren Snyder gave Antonio Higgins a filter.
Of course he had, with the way he was punished when he opened his mouth at the wrong time. Actually, it wasn’t so much the abuse that shut him up, but the way his brother looked at him when he came back with bruises and blood on his face. His brother, his little brother, was scared. Scared for him, and it killed him.
Then Antonio Higgins met Jack Kelly.
Jack Kelly taught him to let it go. Jack Kelly taught him to smirk and grin. Jack Kelly taught him to survive, to protect others when they needed to be protected.
Jack Kelly took away his filter again, even if he didn’t realize it.
Which, of course, wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but he felt like him again. He got back his old childish snark, learning to turn it into a tool to survive and defend.
Jack Kelly healed him, and he loved him for it, even if Jack Kelly didn’t love him back.
***
Sophia Kelly-Larkin lived.
She had lived when she was home with her adoptive parents. She lived when she was out with her friends. She lived when she needed to help someone, but she lived.
It hadn’t been hard to do, not with Jack Kelly there.
He tended to teach people things without realizing it. Self confidence left him in waves, washing over those around him. It had taken root in her veins, flowing freely through her body and infecting her.
It had gotten even easier when she met Antonio Higgins.
His quick smirk and easy quips had rubbed off on her. He taught her to be herself, to not worry about the eyes of others. He taught her that it didn’t matter what anyone else felt, because it was her life so what did they care anyway?
Sophia Kelly-Larkin had been broken from a young age. She had been left and abandoned by her mother with only a name. She had been taunted for being small. She had been hurt by her adoptive parents’ death.
Jack Kelly had helped. He had held her and wiped her tears away and whispered sweet words of consolation to her and told her she was loved.
Antonio Higgins had helped. He had understood her and helped her through it and promised her there was nothing wrong with her and told her that she was loved.
Jack Kelly and Antonio Higgins loved her, and she loved them for it.
***
Jack Kelly survived because he was broken.
Antonio Higgins felt because he had been healed, but he wasn't loved.
Sophia Kelly-Larkin lived because she was loved.
But if Sophia Kelly-Larkin could live and be broken, why couldn’t Jack Kelly?
What if breaking was a part of living, and Jack Kelly was much closer to living than he thought? What if he lived without realizing it, because he was loved, and to be loved is to live?
And if Sophia Kelly-Larkin loved Antonio Higgins, why couldn’t he live too?
What if Antonio Higgins was loved more than he knew, because he had helped Sophia Kelly-Larkin to live and she loved him, and what if Jack Kelly really did love him after all? What if everyone that he loved loved him back, even if he didn’t know it, because love can be hard to express?
Because if Sophia Kelly-Larkin could live and Antonio Higgins could feel and Jack Kelly could survive maybe there was a process to healing and maybe Jack Kelly and Antonio Higgins were farther along the process than they thought. Maybe Antonio Higgins was living, and maybe Jack Kelly was feeling, and maybe, just maybe, Jack Kelly was living too, if only through Sophia Kelly-Larkin and Antonio Higgins, but isn’t that how we all live? By giving ourselves to others? By loving and being loved, because Jack Kelly certainly loved them, and they certainly loved him.
Maybe you can survive your entire life only to learn to live by learning to love, and maybe you can feel your entire life only to learn to live by being loved, and maybe you can do it all without realizing it. Maybe Jack Kelly and Antonio Higgins and Sophia Kelly-Larkin are all living, through each other and through others, because maybe that’s how we all live anyway.