Archive of Our Own

Glenn Close’s life is fine. Sure his parents split and his dad’s not really around, but overall he’s pretty okay with everything. He’s got a solid group of friends, a guitar, and his mom doesn’t care enough to take away the weed. She’s seemed to realize that it’s a battle she just won’t win. So yeah, Glenn’s life is pretty standard, nothing particularly good but nothing particularly bad. 

There are some aspects that are strange though. For instance, Glenn’s English class is assigned a project to write a simple essay detailing where their families are from, a family tree of sorts. When he asks his dad about it he gets a few words about Bill’s mom and dad, nothing more, but Glenn’s only aiming for a C, so that’s just about fine. It’s when he asks his mom when things get confusing. She tells him enough about his grandma, stuff he’s known for years, but when he pushes about her dad, his mom clams up. She tells him that his grandma would say all these crazy things about a famous movie star knocking her up. Coincidentally it’s also a famous movie star that mysteriously disappeared just in time to neither confirm nor deny. Glenn gets the sense that his mom believes it all to be a crock of bullshit, and he’s inclined to believe her, but the curiosity gets the better of him anyways. He goes to the library and finds an old newspaper from the 30s with the headshot of a handsome Asian man smiling boldly on the front. The article details the washed-up star’s disappearance and it’s really nothing special. The article suspects he went on some strange drug bender and ended up dead in a back alley somewhere no one would care to find him. Glenn doesn’t really care about that though. He’s too busy staring into the eyes of the man in the picture. It wouldn’t be crazy to say they looked similar, but past that there’s something so familiar about the man’s smirk. If Glenn were a better student or cared really all that much more, he may have looked further into it. He may have found articles about three other disappearances around the same time, maybe found one about a massive fire at the editing building for an old long-dead film company. He may have found an article about a nuclear facility just up and disappearing in the blink of an eye one cloudy night. He may have, but Glenn Close’s life was fine.

Darryl Wilson is at his peak. He’s only a freshman and is already on the varsity football team, has a steady girlfriend, and his dad lets him take a sip of his beer on weekends. Darryl honestly can’t even imagine his life going downhill in any aspect, nothing can bring him down.

And then he and Carol have their first fight. It’s about something stupid. Casey is a couple of years younger than them, and being deep in her tomboy phase she hates Carol with a passion. She’s just some twelve-year-old who thinks it’s stupid that Carol is so “girly” and will take any chance to remind Carol of this fact. Darryl finds this harmless and tells Carol so when she tells him to get Casey to stop. She doesn’t quite agree and when Darryl insists that he can’t do anything about it either way they break up for the first time. The breakup leaves Darryl with a curling, white-hot shame deep within his gut. His buddies tell him that she’s just punishing him and the two will get back together in no time, but Darryl can’t shake the feeling that this is it, this is the end. There’s a thought in the back of his brain that tells him he simply can’t be with any other woman than Carol. At the time he labels it love. Most of him does at least. There’s a small little thought poking at the back of his brain telling him it’s something else, telling him that he could love someone other than Carol, just no other woman. The first time Darryl thinks it, he punches his bathroom mirror and has to get stitches for the glass that lodges itself in his knuckles. After that, he has a talk with Casey about how Carol’s feminine aspects are some of the parts of her he loves most. He tells her that it’s something she’s going to have to deal with because he’s never going to date someone who’s not like Carol. He tries to convince Casey of this just as hard as he tries to convince himself. When he and Carol kiss again for the first time once they’ve gotten back together Darryl feels relief. Relief for the fact that if he can do this, if he wants and likes to do this then there’s nothing wrong. He chooses not to ask himself if he wants and likes to do it. It doesn’t seem important because Darryl Wilson is at his peak.

Ron Stampler is miserable. His dad is dead, his mom is always sick, and he doesn’t even have a dog. He spends his days going through the motions at school and doing his best to fend for himself at home. His mom has to try and start working again but she can barely manage to get out of bed some days so Ron tries to help her out by selling stuff they don’t need around the house. The first things to go are most of Willy’s things. None of it’s out of a sense of malice or vengeance Ron has for the man, but just the simple fact that they don’t need it. Ron does his best to pawn off Willy’s old fishing poles, his clothes, and even tries to get rid of his extra toothbrush. Ron’s mother insists that it’s not necessary and Ron doesn’t have to worry about her, but he still does. 

He never tells her, never tells anyone that it’s his fault. He never tells anyone that he made Willy stumble into the water and didn’t jump straight after him right away. He never tells anyone that he’s agonized over that moment since the very second it happened. He never tells anyone except the pages of his journal. He writes it all down, all of his anguish and all his random thoughts. He carries it with him at school and one day it’s taken by a guy much bigger than him. Before this kid can even try to open it, Ron lurches forward and tries to grab it right back. He manages to get his fingers around it and wrench it back out of the bully’s grip, but it clearly makes the kid angry as all hell. He rears his fist back and slugs Ron straight in the eye, but he barely registers it. All he’s thinking about is keeping his grip on the book, keeping his awful secret and shame safe from prying eyes. The bully punches him again and ends up splitting his lip, but Ron just hunches his body around the small leather-bound book in his grasp, begging that it won’t be taken from him. Before the kid can get a third hit in, a teacher pulls him off and Ron scurries away. When he gets home that day his mom is in her bedroom sleeping and he does his best to avoid waking her on his way upstairs. He grabs the first aid kit but doesn’t make his way to the bathroom. Instead, he goes all the way up to the attic. There, propped up against a back wall and covered in dust, is the old mirror with the word STUD written across the top. Ron wipes the dust from its surface, coughs a little, and then gets to fixing his eye. He really hopes that it doesn’t swell to a point where he can’t see out of it, that wouldn’t be very “studly” of him. Despite sitting in front of the special mirror, Ron doesn’t feel any better. When he looks into it, he doesn’t see someone cool staring back at him, doesn’t see a man. All he sees is a scared little kid because at the end of the day Ron Stampler is miserable.

Hen Ry’Oak is angry. He’s so fucking angry all the time. Anything he does his dad sneers at or ridicules and Hen is getting pretty fucking tired of it. His mom won’t even meet his eyes anymore because of what that dick is doing to them. Every second of Hen’s day is dictated by his stupid father, telling him what spells to practice, what yoga poses to do, and even when to breathe. Every second except this one.

Hen makes his way out of the window, growing a couple of vines to help soften his fall. The moon is full and bright in the night sky lending him a blanket of light over the plush grass. He knows that some suck-up to his father will probably see him and let the douchebag know of his escapades in the morning, but at the moment he doesn’t give one flying shit what that dickhead thinks. Just to be safe though, he goes through back areas before he can get to the outskirts of Oakvale. It’s here, every full moon, he and Goosey meet up. Goosey insists that the time frame is stupid, but Hen insists that if it were too frequent his dad would certainly take enough notice and put a stop to it. He would tell Hen that anyone else who wasn’t like them would corrupt him and he wouldn’t be able to achieve perfection. Plus, the two of them mostly spend their time making out and smoking weed so Hen bets Beary wouldn’t be too fond of either of those activities. Those nights are some of the only moments of freedom Hen can rejoice in, some of the only moments where the chaos and fury raging inside him quiets itself for a moment and he can take a breath of fresh night air. They play music and look up at the stars for hours before Hen has to start his trek back home. One night when they’re just basking in the moonlight while Goosey plays a soft melody, a dark shadow comes over them, and the guitar is suddenly stopped. It’s fucking Horsey here to mess with them because he can’t mind his own damn business. He breaks Goosey’s guitar over his knee and manhandles Hen to his feet just to push him back down into the dirt. The brothers get into a shouting match and it draws enough attention to them that Goosey kicks him n the shoulder and subtly casts invisibility, trying to tell him to run. Hen doesn’t want to, he wants to smack Horsey back himself but he knows that if this gets any bigger Beary will be drawn out and then all the monthly meetings are done for good. The whole thing has Hen steaming as he stomps through the grass, intentionally trying to scuff the grass beneath his feet but none of it budges. He just wants to be able to make some fucking difference in this world where Beary has every little thing under his control, even a goddamn blade of grass. He wants to scream. Of course, he wants to scream, but he doesn’t because if the one thing he actually enjoys about his stupid life is taken away he might as well blow up. And blow up he will because Hen Ry’Oak is fucking angry.