Chapter Text
December, 1997
It’s a winter's night in Colorado, and you’d have to be a fool to go outside. Not that anyone would want to. The snow is hefty enough to slow anyone’s walk to molasses, and the frigid air is the type to slowly sink its teeth in. Makes your skin go pink and sting with a sort of sharp numbness. The neighborhoods lay in loneliness, any Christmas card beauty finding itself scarce.
But to a boy named Troy Barnes, this all might as well be invisible. As he tugs on a balloon in the hallway, the sound of his parents talking in the kitchen (they’re always talking) is mostly drowned out by his own delight. Excitement sparks him up and makes him want to shout, get on the roof and shout my uncle is visiting for not-Christmas!
Yes, the uncle who’s been teaching him how to throw a football and catch it without breaking a sweat, who always lets him have the remote, and who doesn’t pull his hands down when he flaps them is gonna be staying over for Troy’s 8th not-Christmas. He thinks about everything he needs to talk to him about. There’s school (of course), but there’s also cartoons and comics and other stuff his parents say he’ll grow out of. He hasn’t found anyone willing to let him talk about Spiderman in months, but his uncle will listen.
He wonders, briefly, why he isn’t getting the same thing from his parents. He brushes the thought away, too lofty of a question for someone who still thinks of 6th graders as “big kids”.
Suddenly, he jumps. His father’s put his hand on his shoulder, and he still feels it after he pulls back. He always feels like someone’s pressing static or slime into his skin when they touch him.
“Troy, I-”
Troy stares up at him (looks at the mouth, not the eyes) and puts on some phony remorse. “Sorry for playing with the balloon so much, I’m just so excited that I…” Troy trails off when he studies his father’s face more closely. Oh no. Troy knows just enough about adults to know that they have a certain way of breaking bad news to someone his age. They look downwards and soften their gaze, as if to say “this will only hurt for a second”. Troy bites his lip.
“Uncle Chris can’t make it this year. His flight got delayed, so he’ll be staying in Nevada, okay?”
In that moment, Troy’s father seems taller than before. Like he’s standing above what she’s just said. Grown-ups always do that. They never know how anything really hits him.
Suddenly, everything hurts. He feels like he’s being squeezed, and that something is being torn. No no no, it was supposed to go the way I needed it, it’s all come apart. Troy can feel tears coming, but crying doesn’t feel big enough. He wanted it to go the right way. He needed it. It was all there, in his head and ready to go. His uncle always visits for not-Christmas, why does it have to be different now? The wind outside is getting louder now, and he feels like the room is getting smaller. No, crying isn’t good enough.
Troy kicks the sofa twice, and almost lands a third blow before he feels his arm being pulled. He looks back up and sees the disapproving look of his father. “Troy, where are your manners?” he hisses, and now his face doesn’t look so sorry. Troy's had “incidents” before, and at least this one isn’t in public, but he’s so panicked that it doesn’t make much difference to him. A quick pinch on his arm just makes the tears spill faster.
Less than five minutes later, Troy finds himself alone in his room. Everything had gone by so fast, what with being dragged up the staircase by his father, his eyes too blurry to really process any of it. Troy sits on his bed, rubbing his scalp on the places he’d beaten his fists against.
As the feelings start to soothe down, he takes some deep breaths. His brain feels fuzzy, like one of his mom’s old records, but the bam bam bam feeling is finally starting to quiet down. He lays on his side and closes his eyes.
Maybe tomorrow, everything will be okay.