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Ricky always knew he’d die before his brother. He just didn’t anticipate coming back to life before death began to urge his body to decay. He also didn’t anticipate being revived which involved sometimes turning into a plant.
It was so strange and new to both himself and his girlfriend Laurel, so they kept his resurrection and its side effects a secret, which was easy yet difficult. He’s never kept a secret from Garrett that was so important for so long.
Between the two brothers, Garrett was honest to a fault. Ricky was the liar. He just never lied to Garrett. They might not tell each other everything, but secrets were always known between the two brothers. Garrett knew when at fourteen Ricky shot holes in their shed using their father’s shotgun. Ricky knew Garrett wasn’t really terrified like Ricky was of the town witch Christine, just skeptic. Garrett knew about the crumbled up college rejection letters Ricky hid at the bottom of his junk drawer. Ricky knew Garrett liked men way before Isaac Graves came into their lives.
Now Ricky had died, was brought back to life by Laurel, and sprouted stems whenever he bled. Garrett knew none of this, and honestly, Ricky hoped he would never have to. However life never really goes the way you want it to, a lesson he is all too familiar with.
Ricky was at his brother and Isaac’s shared apartment visiting Garrett. Isaac and Laurel were both out for the day. Since he moved out, Ricky longed to see his brother more than whenever they lived under the same roof. Strange how that worked. He was homesick while being at home when really he just missed having Garrett around. Home was not the same place it used to be in his older brother’s absence.
All he said out loud was, “Isaac is hogging you. We rarely see each other anymore.”
Garrett rolled his eyes. “You were here so late yesterday. I thought you were going to fall asleep on the couch again.”
“I wouldn’t have overstayed my welcome,” Ricky waved him off. Garrett gave him an all too familiar look that meant he knew Ricky didn’t really mean what he said and was deflecting, but he wasn’t going to push him. His brother was good at keeping boundaries and not crossing them.
“It’s just the house is different without you, man. Being here feels normal.” Normal in more than one way is what he meant, but he wouldn’t voice his thoughts. Don’t burden Garrett. Don’t burden Garrett. Don’t burden Garrett, not when he’s finally happy.
Garrett rarely cared about his own happiness, always everyone else’s before himself. His selflessness was his fatal flaw and Garrett carried it like it was nothing. Years ago, Ricky felt protective of his kind older brother, but Garrett never needed Ricky’s protection. It was not necessary.
“I spoke to Christine the other day.” This got Ricky’s attention. Now that he was part plant, Christine being a psychic didn’t terrify him the way it used to before his death. He was now more strange than she was.
“Oh yeah?” Ricky urged him to continue.
“We talked about you, actually,” he admitted. Ricky froze. Did the psychic know about him? Had Laurel told her? He knew the two women had come to be as close as friends, although they didn’t seem to realize it themselves. It struck him as amusing since Laurel goes to Christine for advice, and Christine takes Laurel grocery shopping with her, and they both cook meals together sometimes. He once asked them if they’re friends and they denied it. (They’re both stubborn and won’t acknowledge each other as friends until the other does so first.)
But before Ricky could continue his mental spiral, Garrett slapped him on the back and headed for the door. “C’mon, let’s go do men’s work.”
So Ricky followed his brother outside, where he learned that “men’s work” was Garrett’s way of asking Ricky to help him fix his old truck. Garrett opened the lid of his truck and began to check the engine.
“This is so manly, dude,” Ricky said to get a laugh out of Garrett, which he did.
The Mosley brothers began to get to work, the older brother instructing the younger brother until he knew his way around an engine. They worked on Garrett’s truck for over an hour. Christine Maynard was far from their minds, but not gone.
“Ricky,” Garrett broke the silence first. His younger brother looked up. He didn’t look directly at him, but faced him so he knew he was listening.
“Christine told me that you would die before me.”
And that was the moment the truck’s top lid fell and slammed on Ricky’s hand. He grunted, refusing to yell out in pain. Garrett quickly lifted the lid off his brother’s hand, and Ricky covered it under his shirt so his brother wouldn’t see. He couldn’t let him see. Then he would know that Ricky was not normal anymore. He would know and then Ricky would never feel normal again.
“Are you bleeding?” His brother panicked, trying to look for any sight of blood.
“No!” Ricky shouted, turning his back to Garrett. In truth, he didn’t know if he was bleeding, and if he was then saplings would start sprouting from hand. With all the creepy things that have already happened to them, he didn’t need to freak out his brother any more than that. Lifting his shirt, he searched for blood or plants only to find none. A bruise was forming, spreading from his index finger to his pinky. The bruising was not normal coloring, it had turned to a dark green color.
He forced himself to slow his rapid breathing. “No blood. I’m putting ice on it,” he said as calmly as he could.
Garrett heard the shakiness though. “Let me see,” he insisted.
Ricky just shook his head. “I’m fine. I just need an ice pack.”
His brother studied his face, and then his concealed hand, and then looked Ricky straight in the eyes. That’s when he knew Garrett would not let Ricky out of his sight without checking his injury himself. Defeated, he exposed his bruised hand to Garrett, except now the dark green spread to his fingertips. It was unnatural, surely Garrett would be shocked at least.
If this surprised Garrett, he did a good job of not letting it show. “There’s a bag of frozen peas in the freezer box.”
Then Garrett fetched it for him. Placing the frozen peas on his fingers, the coolness momentarily eased his pain. He should really call Laurel. She always helped him through his injuries now, but he couldn’t call her yet.
He can only imagine what Garrett could be thinking. Did he really think he could keep this from his brother? Laurel had asked him that very question after she revived him. He told her he could not let Garrett know, but Ricky knew he wouldn’t be able to for long. He really did try though.
“Are you afraid of dying last?” Ricky asked, going back to what he told him before the truck lid slammed on his hand.
Garrett shook his head. “I think it’d be worse if you outlived me. I can be fine without people, but you wouldn’t. You need people.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “I’d be fucking misreable without you and Laurel and Isaac.” It was easy to let out the truth in Garrett’s presence. “I guess that’s why I did it.”
“What’d you do?” Garrett didn’t say in an accusing tone, but a curious one.
“I sacrificed myself so Laurel would live.” A pause. “Garrett, I died.”
Ricky didn’t think when he broke Garrett the news he would still feel the same. All he feared was that Garrett would think him to be an abnormality and he would treat him differently. (He was terrified that his brother would hate him or that he didn’t think he was human anymore. He wouldn’t blame him, sometimes he didn’t think he was human anymore either.) But that’s not what happened at all.
At first, he was distraught that his younger brother was burdened by all this. That Ricky had died and he felt he couldn’t tell him. That Ricky died and he didn’t even know. Then, he realized that Ricky needed to process the experience properly, so he could accept it and tell him about it.
So now Garrett knew, which meant Isaac knew too. Ricky wouldn’t ask his brother to keep this from his boyfriend because he hated having to ask Laurel to keep it from her best friend. All his friends knew of Ricky’s death and resurrection and it was okay.
Everything was different, but different was beginning to feel like a new normal to Ricky.