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Laying at the bottom of the stairs, biting back tears, Winnie realizes that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with his life. His leg is clearly broken, twisted at an odd angle, burning pain racing up through his body. But that isn’t the worst of it, no. He turns his head and there he is, at the top of the stairs, staring down at him.
Augustine Orlov. Auggie, to some. To Winnie, rather. He was standing at the top of the stairs, dressed in his outdoor gear. Winnie loved that hat on him. But here Augustine was, staring down at Winnie, his face unreadable.
And then, instead of calling for anyone, he went away. Walked away.
Winnie lay there and did not move, and wondered if Augustine had seen him move his neck, if Auggie had seen him, if–
But it was impossible not to see Winnie at the bottom of the stairs, a puddle of blue and red. The teacher that came across him screamed.
Winnie felt like screaming too, to be honest.
At the hospital, they put his leg in a plaster cast, the sort that Winnie had seen on other people, but had never guessed he’d wear himself. People came by his house when he finally got home, signed his cast and brought him soup.
How terrible, how tragic, people said. Were you scared, waiting for someone to find you?
Winnie shrugged, and they were impressed.
But why did he leave , Winnie thought. Asked, begged. Everything. Why’d he see me and leave?
The question keeps circling round his head, like a news bulletin on a screen 24/7. Why did he leave? Why did he do that?
He watches out his window, toward the house next door. The Orlov house. He waits for Augustine to come out of the door and– and apologize, maybe? Yeah, apologize, he wanted Auggie to apologize. Augustine Orlov, apologizing. Begging for Winnie’s forgiveness. Winnie can see it now, see him clutching his hat and tearing up and saying just how sorry he is, how much he fucked up.
But Auggie doesn’t come out of his house. He doesn’t come to the window. He doesn’t… do anything. Winnie waits, but nothing happens.
What the fuck is he supposed to do now?
He goes back to school. Everyone is circling him around him on tiptoes now, careful like he’s made of glass and they don’t have shoes on. Offering to carry his bag and everything. It is inconvenient for him to carry it with the crutches, so he usually lets them take it.
But Augustine doesn’t offer. He doesn’t sit near Winnie. He moves his seat and he moves his locker and if it weren’t halfway into the year Winnie worries that he would change classes . What the hell is happening?
Then again, he isn’t reaching out to Augustine either. He’s stopped calling him Auggie, even in his head. They pass by each other in the halls and it’s Augustine that moves aside, shunting himself against the wall as Winnie’s horde goes by.
When he looks into the faces of his other friends, he wishes that he was looking at Augustine. He’s– It feels bad. There, that’s it on the table. He feels bad and he doesn’t understand what happened. He tore his leg up, his mother refused the pain killing medication that they prescribed at the hospital, and Augustine wasn’t talking to him anymore.
Winnie sits on the porch and looks at the Orlov house, and the only people that come out are Augustine’s mother and father. His leg hurts. His chest does too, even though he hadn’t hurt it that much.
He imagines, in that moment, Augustine is sitting in his window as well. He, too, is wondering why Winnie will not come over. He is wondering, as he sits in his window, why he did not help up his friend Winnie. Why did he not call for help when he saw his friend, his friend Winnie, broken at the bottom of the stairs.
He imagines Augustine crying, and a curling in his gut is warm and pleased by the idea of Augustine crying over his mistakes. Perhaps he will go to his mother’s church and ask for forgiveness. Perhaps he will beg at Winnie’s knee for forgiveness.
But Augustine does not come out, and Winnie sits on his porch alone in the cold. It makes his leg hurt more, and his chest too.
The hockey team came by. They were bummed about losing, but none of them blamed him. They did, however, blame Augustine for quitting.
“He’s gone all weird since you had the accident,” Sebastian says. “I don’t think I’ve seen him out of his house except for school, and even then he’s alone.”
“He’s totally abandoned everyone,” John says. But no one likes John, really, so– but everyone agreed with him, all nodding.
“You remember Teresa, right?”
Winnie didn’t.
“Wow, really? Player, much?” John laughs and Winnie sort of feels like punching him, which scares him. “But yeah, don’t you remember? Augustine had a crush on her but then she confessed to you!”
Winnie didn’t care about that. Why would he care about that?
“Well, anyway, Teresa tried to talk to him in the hall the other day and he just shouldered past her! What an ass!”
I don’t care, that’s what Winnie wants to say. He didn’t– why were they here? Why did this happen? Something had gone wrong, and it feels like if he closes his eyes and focuses hard, he will go back to the bottom of those stairs, and Auggie– Auggie, not Augustine– will rush down and help him up to the nurse’s, and Auggie will hold his hand in the ambulance as Winnie cries and–
“Hey, we’ll leave you alone now,” Sebastian says, shepherding the team out. “See you on Monday!”
“See you,” Winnie echoes, and he looks out the window. Augustine is walking out of his house, and if he isn’t quick, the team will catch him. Winnie is not sure whether to cheer or to cry when he sees the team rush out as a unit and surround him.
It’s impossible to see what they’re saying from up in his window, but Winnie can guess and wince when Augustine pushes John and he falls to the pavement. The snow cushions his fall, he obviously isn’t hurt, but well– you would have to be deaf to not hear what John shouted next.
“Is that what you did to Winnie, Augustine?!” He shouts, red in the face. He looks like blood against the snow. “I heard you were going down the hall when–”
Augustine got one punch in before Sebastian pulled him off.
“Fuck you, John!” That’s still audible. Winnie winces again. Then they’re back to just being figures outside his window, with Augustine storming away from the group. When it looks like that, Winnie thinks that Augustine looks better than anyone else in the team. They look like a singular mass, a tumor, and Augustine looked…
Winnie isn’t allowed to think of that, by the way. It’s wrong to think– Augustine left him. None of that. He moves to get up, but his leg aches, and he ends up sitting there for a while. He cries, and he’s not really sure why. It is not as though he’s very sad, but something is clearly wrong. He gets that much. Something’s wrong, that’s for certain.
He goes to school and he gets alright grades and he does work for scholarships and everyone looks him in the face and says you are so lucky , and Winnie feels horribly lonely despite the people around him.
It is not true that he is alone, but he is lonely. He feels, functionally, alone. He ends up watching Augustine during class, the way that he’s shifted himself away into the corner. No one sits with him and he doesn’t try to sit with anyone. It’s sort of like he’s become a ghost in the halls, the way that he lurches about and doesn’t talk to people. They lean on his locker and don’t move when he comes up to get his books.
Winnie doesn’t reach out to him. Once burned twice shy, his mother says. He never thought that’d apply to Augustine.
But he can’t stop watching. It feels like they’re stuck in orbit around each other, two parallel lines. They were supposed to be friends, goddamnit! And yet here Winnie was, with Sebastian on one side chattering away with John and on the other a girl named Trinity, who is a new addition to their group. Feels like the guys are always dragging in another girl that Winnie had noticed before but never thought about.
He’s thinking about Augustine when Trinity pokes him.
“What’s got your goat?” She’s a transplant, only moving to town in middle school, and she sounds like she’s from the US because she is. “You’ve been all moody lately.”
“Jesus Christ, Trin,” Sebastian says, a good friend even if Winnie doesn’t think about him that much outside of school and hockey. “Win just fell down the fucking stairs two weeks ago! What, did you think he’d be all smiles and rainbows?”
“You usually were, before,” she says, like that’s any excuse. The teacher snaps at them to be quiet, and when Winnie instinctually turns to Augustine to make a funny (hopefully funny) expression, he remembers that Augustine and he are put out at each other, and Augustine is staring out the window like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Look. Augustine was never the best student. He was good, alright, but Winnie was better, and they were both fine with that. They didn’t talk about grades a lot. They talked about hockey during the season and life outside of that and fun stuff that they were doing and they did things together. And when Augustine got weird and quiet, Winnie teased the problem out, and when Winnie was having a problem Augustine offered to kick it.
Winnie wishes he could kick this problem out the way, like it was just a dry balsa wood wall between him and Augustine. But every day the gap is getting bigger, more of a gorge than a ditch in the firmament of their friendship. If he doesn’t act soon, they might never get along.
Then he’s told that they’re going to move. And the gap gets a little bit wider, and Winnie lies in bed at night and cries and thinks, why the hell didn’t you say something? Why did you do this? Why aren’t we talking?
Sebastian, despite snapping at Trinity, knows something is up.
“Do you want to go to the rink?” He offers, and then they both look down at Winnie’s leg. “Want to go on a car ride?” he offers instead. Winnie nods, and they go out of the school together after it ends. Augustine is sitting on a bench, watching everyone leave.
Sebastian notices his gaze.
“What did happen, between you two?” He asks as they get in the car. Winnie doesn’t hear him at first, because Augustine is looking at him, a hateful look on his face as he sees Winnie hobbling into Sebastian’s old, beat-up car. “Winnie?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Winnie says huffily, slamming the door. Sebastian shrugs.
“If you say so.”
They pull into the line to leave the parking lot, because it’s never easy to do so. Takes ages, even though seniors are let out ten minutes early.
“Do…” Sebastian glances over, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Do you want to go get some shitty fast food? Whenever I’m in a bad mood I usually just get some fries and eat them in the parking lot.”
“...just fries?” They’re stuck in line, and Winnie can recognize John in the car in front of them. He wonders if John would jump if Winnie leant over and pressed the horn. But that might upset Sebastian. Sebastian laughs.
“Yeah. It’s like… well, it’s not like I’m hungry, right? I just want something warm when it’s cold, something that’s a little shitty but like, in the way that it’s still enjoyable, if you know what I mean? Sometimes you need some kinda bad to mediocre food to remind you what the good stuff is, or to cheer you up when you’re down, because like, at least you’re not relying on these shitty fries, right? But they’re still sort of good, because they’re all fatty and greasy. So you feel a little alive again after them.”
He seems to realize that he’s rambling.
“Sorry,” he adds. “That might not make sense.”
“No,” Winnie says, and he means it. “I think I get what you’re trying to say. Let’s go get some kinda-bad fries.”
They end up in a Wendy’s parking lot, sharing three large fries between them and a single coke. In the back of his mind, Winnie recognizes that he maybe, just maybe, should feel a little weird about sharing a single coke with another guy, both of them passing it back and forth in relative quiet, sipping from opposite ends of the cup.
But he really doesn’t feel weird about it being Sebastian. If anything, he just thinks that he’d like to do this with Augistine someday. Then he remembers why they’re here, and he eats another few fries and takes a sip of coke.
When they’re done, Sebastian balls up the french fry bags and puts them in the empty Wendy’s cup, then tosses it into the backseat.
“...That’s kind of gross,” Winnie says, glancing back and worrying about the sticky dregs of coke. Sebastian shrugs.
“I clean my car every Saturday, so it never gets too bad.”
He drives Winnie home and even opens the doors for him, like a sort of gentleman. They make a game of it, the fact that some of their behavior could be seen as romantic from the outside. When they’re in the doorway and Winnie’s laughing, tilting his head away, Sebastian leans down like he’s going to kiss his hand.
Then Winnie sees Augustine, just a little ways away, coming out of the woods with a backpack. He ends up pulling his hand away before Sebastian can plant one on him.
“Huh?” Sebastian looks up. “Oh.”
He gives Winnie a sort of– a sort of knowing look, and Winnie feels suddenly like a bug pinned to one of those cork board walls, the kind they display in museums.
“You know, we’re a pretty chill school,” Sebastian says, turning on his heel and leaning against the wall. Winnie waits for a moment, still in the doorway, waiting for Sebastian’s point and wincing at his raised eyebrow. “If, you know, you ever brought–”
“I don’t want to have this conversation, I think.”
“Alright.” He shrugs again. “See you, Win!”
It used to be just Augustine who’d call him that. A nickname made up after Winnie called him Auggie for the first time, he thinks. A childish, sort of lame nickname. It got picked up by the hockey team, especially when, well, he started to win. It still feels odd as it slides so easily out of Sebastian’s mouth.
A moment too late, Winnie holds up a hand to wave and nearly drops his crutch. By this time, Augustine is on his porch, and he clearly sees Winnie wobble, nearly falling over. He pauses. Winnie is filled with a sense of hope for a split second. Augustine goes inside. Winnie catches his own balance. Somehow, he’s quite disappointed.
It wasn’t even feasible for Augustine to do anything. But he was still disappointed.
That night, he dreams that he is at the bottom of the stairs again. His mind is foggy, the angles all sharp and soft like dreams are. Auggie is at the top of the stairs, and when Winnie sees him, he sees Winnie, and he runs down the stairs two at a time, but not calling for help. It feels… It feels like he should be calling for help.
Winnie is limp when Augustine falls to his knees beside him and tries to pick him up.
What proceeds is something Winnie is too embarrassed to even think of. He wakes up and waits and hates himself. Despite a rather mellow religious upbringing, there has been one thing that has wormed into his mind: the shame that seems to follow religion like a ghost. It is the same sort of shame that comes with being naked, the sort that he just can’t seem to get over, even when it was just his mother helping him out of the bathtub.
As he lays there, wallowing, an idea comes to mind unbidden. He could get scissors, some very strong scissors, and he could cut off the cast that needs to be on for another month and a half at least. He’d release that pale, weak leg like a baby bird and he’d push it off the cliff. And then he’d walk around and it would break again, and maybe that’d be payment for having such thoughts.
He gets up and he strips his bed while balancing on one leg. It’s getting better, but he’s not quite solid on his feet yet. A few months left to go before he’s ready to hatch. It doesn’t make him feel better to count down the days to getting it off. Getting rid of the physical reminder that his friend left him– why– why–
Winnie leaves himself in the laundry room, shivering slightly in his fresh pajamas as he listens to the thump-thump-thump of the washing machine. It’s early, early enough that his father has left for work and his mother is still asleep. When he reaches up, Winnie feels that his cheeks are warm.
He hobbles into the bathroom and looks in the mirror, and he’s red. Maybe, when his mother wakes up, he can say that he threw up, had to wash his sheets. Had to come into the bathroom and wash his face.
She really wouldn’t wonder about the washing machine. Winnie just didn’t want to go to school. He was admitted to Uni already, he can afford to miss one day. So he coughs a little bit, rubs hot water on his face. When his mom wakes up, she puts a hand on his forehead and hisses.
“Yeah, honey, why don’t you stay home today?” She bustles him into his room again and seeing the missing sheets, she stops.
“I frew up,” Winnie mumbles, embarrassed and blushing. She nods and sets him down on the window seat. It’s just getting light now, and it’s around the time that he would wake up normally. His mom changes his sheets and Winnie feels like a child, and he is not a child, and he is eighteen and he is ashamed.
“Should I stay home too?” She asks, fluffing his pillow for him. Winnie is still wallowing.
“No,” he ends up saying, gaze still focused on the road outside. “Uh, I’ll do alright by myself.”
“I’ll tell Mrs. Orlov to bring over some lunch for you.”
“You don’t have to–”
“Nonsense, Winnie, why wouldn’t she?”
“Alright, mom.” He lays down and she kisses his forehead.
“Feel better, alright?”
“I’ll try.” She laughs in response to that, and leaves him alone in his room.
He is still feeling ashamed. But he goes back to sleep and wakes up at the doorbell. He doesn’t move at first, groggy and unsure of what exactly is happening. Before he can wake up properly, Mrs. Orlov is already in the house and coming up the stairs. She’s huffing by the last of it, when she turns the corner and comes into Winnie’s room.
“Feeling alright, Winnie?” Mrs. Orlov still has a hint of russian accent, and it sounds very pleasant to the ear. “Something really should be done about those stairs– they’re so steep!”
“Yeah,” Winnie says, and he’s glad he didn’t fall down those stairs. “Sorry, Mrs. Orlov.”
“Don’t apologize,” She chides. “I’m going to go warm up some soup. That’ll get you better. Do you need more water?”
“Yes please,” he says. Mrs. Orlov is very nice, and it makes Winnie feel a little bad for how he and Augustine are just circling around each other. She brings him soup and makes sure that he has a few bottles of water on the bedside, that his crutches are easy to reach from the bed. Then she goes home, because she’s not his mom.
He spends the rest of the day sipping on water, hobbling to the bathroom, and wallowing. Eventually, he moves to the window seat, like maybe he’ll see Augustine. He’s not sure what he’ll do next time– there’s a lot of emotions where he’s involved, and more now that… well, more now.
He thinks that Sebastian might have been a little more right than Winnie had initially anticipated. He thinks, also, that he hates John, and he’s not sure where he stands on the rest of the hockey team. He is also, oh-so-terribly, certain that Augustine hates him at the moment, and is just as certain that he is feeling a lot of conflicting emotions about him in return.
Sitting around, not doing much, Winnie wonders if his life will ever return to a familiar normal before he leaves, or if he will have to sit in this discomfort until he leaves, and there he will sit in discomfort until it becomes familiar. It will hurt. And he is afraid of pain.
Sebastian comes over after school, knocks on the door and looks up when Winnie sticks his head out of his window to wave him on in. He laughs when he realizes that Winnie doesn’t seem very sick at all.
“Senioritis finally hitting?” He asks, lobbing a ziplock bag of cookies at him when he comes into the bedroom. “Makes sense. Surprised you lasted so long.”
“What?” Winnie manages to catch the bag, and finds that they’re his favorite cookies, ginger molasses. “Who made these?”
“Trinity brought in cookies for everyone, I made sure to save your favorites.” Sebastian comes over to the window and peers out. “So, senioritis?”
“I dunno,” Winnie watches as Augustine walks up to his house and knocks the wet snow slush off his boots. “Maybe?”
Sebastian can see him watching Augustine. Sebastian knows. It’s both relieving and scary to know that he knows and– yeah. It was both.
“Can I have one of those cookies?”
“Yeah, sure.”
They eat the cookies and both of them look out the window, and Sebastian laughs when Augustine comes out of his house again.
“Everyone was wondering where you were,” Sebastian snickers. “Including Augustine.”
Winnie is not proud of the way that he whips around.
“What?”
“He was waiting around our table and even asked me if you were coming! Me! And he lives right there!”
“You know that he and I haven’t exactly been talking,” Winnie starts, ready to tiptoe around the topic while also addressing it just enough to satisfy any curiosity that Sebastian might have.
“...did he say something to you about why ?”
“No.”
“Hm.” Sebastian squints out the window at Augustine, who’s halfway down the road now and carrying his duffel bag. “I think I’m going to have a chat with him.”
“What!” Winnie’s heart seizes up with fear and panic.
“Not a fight! Nothing like that. I’m just going to… Something’s clearly wrong, alright? You and him have been thick as thieves for ages, and it doesn’t make sense for him to just stop talking to anyone without saying anything about why . So I’ll talk to him and I’ll report back.”
“Not to the–”
“Not to the team, no. To you.”
Winnie sighs and relaxes.
“You’re a good friend, Sebastian.”
He grins.
“Thanks, I like to think I am.”
--
He goes to school the next day, and everyone asks where he was, but nothing much else happens. Sebastian disappears during lunch, supposedly off on a mission not to be disclosed to the rest of them. The hockey team jostled each other as they theorized, and Winnie took refuge in the corner with Trinity, who seemed, without his noticing, to have integrated herself fully into the group.
“Thanks for the cookies,” he says, because his mother raised him to be polite. She smiles at him. “They’re my favorite.”
“I know,” She glances over toward the doors. “I asked around to see what your favorite was. Speaking of that…”
His stomach goes cold and twisty when she looks at him like that. Her mouth opens and he sees her mouth move in the first syllable of Aug– and then John is there, knocking into Winnie and nearly sending his face into his tomato soup.
“John!” Trinity barks instead, and he’s cackling like a hyena. In the chaos afterward of everyone criticizing him and John being a bastard , Winnie sits there seething and glad, oh-so-glad that she didn’t get to finish.
After school, Sebastian offers to drive Winnie home. It’s a much better choice than anything else, and he takes him up on the offer. Augustine is outside watching everyone, a sketchbook in hand.
“...He never used to draw,” Winnie comments once they’re safe in the car. Sebastian looks over too.
“I think that… I think that he’s trying to become someone new.”
Why? Winnie wants to ask. He thought that everyone loved Augustine. Why would he want to change if everyone was already happy? But he doesn’t ask these questions, because he’s quite sure that he knows the answer. Something had gone wrong, after all.
“He’s going by August now,” Sebastian says, pulling out of his parking spot.
“What?!” Winnie asks. In the past, Augustine– August, now, he guesses– had always protested that nickname, saying that it was too girly.
“Yeah, August. And– Jeez, he’s like, mad .”
“Mad?” Winnie asks faintly. What on earth does August have to be mad about?
“Yeah, but like, it felt like he was sort of aimless with it. He softened up a little when we started talking, basically.”
Winnie sighs and curls up, hugging his legs against his chest. His leg hurts. His chest hurts. His best friend is mad and not talking to him and changing everything about himself and– and he still doesn’t know why Auggie– Augustine– August left him at the bottom of the stairs. Is he trying to escape the idea of Winnie? Does he hate him?
“Do you think he hates me?”
Sebastian shrugs and pulls out of the parking lot, finally.
“I dunno. I didn’t bring you up– I was asking about him. He was a little evasive, but apparently he’s planning on taking an apprenticeship in town?”
“...Not uni?”
Sebastian pauses again, the air in the car heavy.
“Apparently he didn’t get in.”
“Oh.”
They’re silent the rest of the car ride, and Winnie is running over every interaction that he has ever had with August, trying to figure out where it went wrong. Where the hell did they split into this broken world, where they’re not friends anymore, and Winnie is going to University while August is staying in town.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“Do you want me to carry your backpack up?” Sebastian asks when they come to a stop outside Winnie’s house.
“No.”
For the first time in a really, really long time, Winnie actually wants to be alone. He’s had moments where he’d like some respite, yes, but he hasn’t– he doesn’t think that he has ever wanted to be alone like this before. Something empty has opened up in his chest, and it feels like it shoved out all of his organs when it did.
He sits in his room and he thinks about the day that they met. Back then, August was bright and charming and it felt like he was the first living thing that Winnie had met in his life. Not to put him on a pedestal, but it felt like that. It felt like everyone else had just been floating along, including Winnie, but August knew what he wanted. He wanted and it was inspiring, because Winnie wanted to know what he wanted. And if August wanted, well, then clearly it was a good thing to want.
But he thinks and then he realizes that every time that he leapt for the star that August chose, he was hip checking August out of the way, and now it’s Winnie with the friends and August is trying to reinvent himself because Winnie took who he was. Winnie fucking stole his life.
He hates himself for it but more than that there is a burning rage where the emptiness was. Rage because August let Winnie do that , rage because August didn’t tell him, rage because instead of manning up and expressing his feelings August let Winnie act like an ass and then he left him at the bottom of the stairs–
Before he’s quite sure of what he’s going to do, he’s struggling down the stairs and tugging on a thicker coat and he’s stumbling out of the door. It’s icy outside, late February weather, and he’s this close to eating shit and breaking his other leg as he hobbles determinedly toward the Orlov house. Somehow, he manages to get to their porch without slipping and cracking his head open.
August is not on the porch. Leaning on one crutch, Winnie knocks. Mrs. Orlov opens the door.
“Winnie!” She says. “What are– did you walk over here by yourself? My goodness, how didn’t you slip?”
“I dunno. Is August home?”
“No, I think he went out for some– Winnie, where are you going?”
“Have to talk to him!” Winnie shouts behind him, and he swings his crutches and his leg through the snow and it’s a little easier without the icy and salty sidewalk, but not by much. He does have to talk to August, it’s true. He has a lot to say.
He makes it to the treeline, and it’s cold, and he didn’t bring a hat and his foot is freezing in the plaster cast.
“August!” He calls. There’s a rustle in the brush, and then August comes towards him, properly kitted out for hiking through the snowy forest. Winnie, obviously, is not prepared.
“Winnie?”
He missed August’s voice. He missed the way that he looks up close, and he realizes that he has missed the building of further muscle. August has been working out aside from hockey, and Winnie hasn’t.
“Winnie, what are you–”
“Shut up, you bastard,” Winnie hisses. He hobbles forward and August is so shocked he doesn’t even move.
“What did you just say to me?”
August sounds dangerous. He never used to sound dangerous to Winnie, it was only the opposite team or idiots like John. He has never threatened Winnie, and it does make him quail a little bit inside. He wonders, briefly, if this was a bad idea. He raises his chin and forges forward anyway.
“You heard me.”
“What the fuck–”
“You left me at the bottom of those stairs.” August flinches, and a sick little sense of satisfaction flickers through Winnie. “You– You didn’t tell me that you were mad at me. How could you do that?”
“What are you–”
Winnie, despite not being very physically strong, is very quick. He lunges, using his crutches to propel him, and when he lands he jars his leg, but he’s always had a high pain tolerance. He punches August in the nose, and he stumbles back. Instinctively he puts up a hand, and when he pulls it away to look his nose is dribbling blood.
“Waht the fuck,” August repeats, sounding stuffed up from the blood. “Why did you do that?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you hated me?”
He goes for another swing, and instead of retaliating, August sticks out his leg and trips him. Dirty fucking bastard cheat, and Winnie pushes himself up while wincing.
August tosses aside his bag, and it crunches in the snow with a sound like wood. He’s been doing something out in the woods, something that he hasn’t told Winnie about, and he– Winnie is so mad. Winnie is so mad and he doesn’t know what to do about it. He tries to grab August’s leg and succeed, taking him down into the snow with a grunt.
The problem is, really, that Winnie is smaller and weaker and already has a broken leg, even if he is quick. August is big, has always been bigger than Winnie, and if he put Winnie’s head between his bicep and his forearm he could absolutely crush Winnie’s head.
That would be hot, if they weren’t fighting. Winnie scrambles and bites and cries, snot dripping from his nose. August’s nose is dripping blood, and he’s so careful despite the fact that Winnie is flailing. He’s very careful not to hit Winnie’s leg, and in the moment it only makes Winnie hate him more.
“You left me,” Winnie says, grabbing August’s hat and then his hair after the hat has been thrown away. He’s crying now, full-on. He tugs on his hair. “You left me and then you left me and I don’t understand !”
“I’m sorry,” August says, and Winnie’s elbow catches him in the eye and he retreats a little bit. “I’m sorry, Winnie.”
He sounds scared, and that makes it a little better. Winnie’s scrabbling becomes a little half-hearted.
“I just don’t understand,” and Winnie goes limp in the snow. His leg hurts. His chest hurts. He’s just hurting in general.
He turns his head to watch August touch his nose and lick away some of the blood.
“I miss you,” Winnie whispers. It’s the truth.
“Why?”
It seems that is also the truth. Winnie sits up and sniffles. The snow has gotten them both wet and cold, and it sucks. It sucks and he’s shivering, but he tries to answer.
“You’re my best friend,” he starts. “Always my best friend, and then you– why did you leave me down there? Do you hate me? Why didn’t you tell me that I was taking over your life?”
“So you noticed that.” August pulls up his body and tries to tuck in, but it doesn’t make him look smaller. He’s going to get a black eye.
“I just don’t understand why you didn’t say anything.”
“I was–” August chokes up and it’s only then that Winnie realizes that he’s crying too. “I was just mad and upset and Win, what was I supposed to do about that? I don’t know what I was thinking, I just–”
It feels right to hear August say Win. It makes Winnie want to call him Auggie again, but he keeps that one for later. If later is good.
“I would have stopped if you asked me,” Winnie tells him. And it’s the truth and August had to know it.
“I didn’t think you would.” He snuffles, and then spits out a glob of snotty blood. It melts the snow and it is gross, but Winnie is still in love with him. Yeah. Love. It was the truth. What could Winnie do about it? “I just– for a while I was just angry at you, and then I was mad at myself. And by then I had already walked away from you once, and I thought that it would hurt less– hurt us both less if I just let sleeping dogs lie and went off by myself. You already had that life. I decided to make my own.”
“I didn’t want you to leave.”
“...It wasn’t about what you wanted, though.” August sighs, unfolds, stands. He goes over and fetches Winnie’s crutches. “It was about the fact I didn’t feel like a person, and I got mad at you, yeah, but it was really just my own problem.”
“I would have–”
“It doesn’t matter what you would have done.”
It both feels like this is his Augustine and also not. This is supposed to be when they make up, but it feels like they’re not quite communicating.
“I’m sorry, August,” Winnie says when he hands over the crutches. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” August says, and hadn’t Winnie been waiting for that moment? Hadn’t he been dreaming of this since he left him at the bottom of those stairs? So why doesn’t it feel good when August is saying it now?
They hobble back to the house and Mrs Orlov gasps when she sees them, and yells at them when she drives them to the ER. In the ER, they’re split up, and the doctor x-rays Winnie’s leg, but it didn’t break any worse than it already was. However, it’s not healed, and he gets at least two doctors and three nurses telling him not to be an idiot. In the waiting room, Mrs. Orlov yells at them again.
She drops him off at home and makes Augustine apologize and makes Winnie apologize back, and it feels like being a child all over again, even though he’s a senior and he’s meant to be a young adult now. His parents say that they’re disappointed in him and send him to his room. They send him to his room like he is a child.
But Augustine waves before he goes inside his own house, and it makes Winnie think that something has begun to heal. Maybe, like his leg, it will take a while to fully come together. It no longer feels unbridgeable.
The next day is Saturday, which Winnie hadn’t even remembered was coming. His parents are gone when he wakes up, having left a note on the fridge for him. They aren’t pleased, but they’d like to believe that he’s better than whatever drove him to hurt August. They’ve realized, he thinks, that they haven’t been talking these past two months. That something has happened.
He doesn’t think they realize that the fight needed to happen for them to heal. He eats some toast and then there’s a knock at the door.
It, as he expects, is August. He never used to knock, Winnie mourns. But the future's looking brighter, isn’t it?
He opens up the door and August’s nose is still somewhat swollen, plus he has two black eyes, which Winnie hadn’t expected. Winnie only came away with one black eye.
“You beat me up pretty good.”
He misses August smiling at him so much. He steps back, and August comes in, sheds his jacket like they’ve gone back in time.
“I think that we need to have a longer conversation,” August says, laughing at himself. “One where you don’t punch me.”
“Sorry about that,” Winnie says, actually meaning it. He probably shouldn’t have done it, and he does feel sorry, but he also can’t help but think that it’s helped.
“Can we sit down?”
“Yeah, sure.” There’s still that awkward hesitation, it’s not quite as easy. But still, it’s better than not talking at all.
“Is your leg alright?”
“They told me not to do anything stupid again, but it’s alright.”
They sit on the couch in the living room, one on either end. But Winnie has thought enough about how they need to get closer.
“I’d like to lay out what’s been happening with me,” August starts. “Because I think you deserve an explanation.”
“I would like one of those, yeah.”
August sighs.
“Like I told you yesterday, I was just… I was mad at you, for a little bit, but it wasn’t really you. I know that you didn’t mean to hurt me, and I ended up realizing that it wasn’t you, it was us. We were just… AuggieandWinnie. It didn’t feel like I was my own person anymore. Felt like I was just an extension of you.”
Winnie doesn’t interrupt, even though he longs to. He sits on his hands, which are smarting from where he busted one of his knuckles on August’s face.
“So I realized that I had to go be someone else for a bit, or find out who I was. I didn’t get into Uni, I didn’t get the girl, I didn’t– you get it, right? You understood.”
“I understand what I was doing now, yeah.”
“Anyway, I needed a new nickname. To go with the new lifestyle.”
“New lifestyle?” August shrugs.
“I do carving now. Found a few old books of my grandfather’s stuff, and it turns out that he was a woodworker. It’s fun, actually. I’m working on learning more russian from my mom, I’m boxing–”
“Boxing?” Winnie asks, somewhat aghast. It does explain why his arms are stronger, but it feels so incongruous.
“It’s fun!” August says defensively. “Look, it’s not too different from hockey, right? You’re still beating people up.”
Winnie wonders if he’s feeling faint because he got hit in the head or because of what August is saying.
“But yeah. I’m… I’ve been reading more, listening to music by myself. I got…” he blushes now, pretty in red. “I got a therapist, and it’s been helping a lot.”
“Oh,” Winnie says, and he won’t lie and say that he isn’t asking himself why this couldn’t have included him in some way, even if August wanted to be his own person. Couldn’t he be his own person and Winnie’s friend?
“It isn’t about you or what you’ve done, by the way,” August says, repeating himself. It doesn’t change the fact that it feels like it is about him and Winnie. It very much is about them. “It’s more that I needed to be by myself to realize who I was without you.”
“And you weren’t going to be my friend again. And you still left me at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Yeah.” August looks him dead in the eyes, and usually Winnie hates eye contact, it burns. But he stands it for a moment, for August. He puts himself in the range of those beautiful brown eyes and it stings, but he does it because he thinks it will make August feel better. “I’m so, so sorry about that Winnie.”
It is not August begging on his knees. But it feels better this time.
“It sounds stupid, but that’s why I didn’t talk to you. I was going to tell you how I was feeling, I was coming down the hallway to find you– and then I passed the stairwell and there you were at the bottom.”
“I tripped,” Winnie says.
“You did. I didn’t see that part.” August shakes his head. “I have been– every day since. I have been regretting that I didn’t say anything. And I can’t make it up to you and just– I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I didn’t do anything. I mean, I know why I was in such a bad place but that doesn’t exactly make it better, does it?”
“I can forgive you,” Winnie says, like he hasn’t already.
“I know, and that makes it… made it worse, honestly. Because it felt like you would forgive me if I just talked to you, and then I didn’t apologize immediately and then it was a week later, and you were surrounded by all these people that I wasn’t exactly happy with, and it felt like it was too late.”
“I would have talked to you any time you asked.”
“I know that!” August looks frustrated, but Winnie’s not sure if it’s at him or himself. “It was all in my head, I was– my therapist calls it catastrophizing. I was making up all these scenarios and they all sucked, and I got stuck so I couldn’t do anything.”
“I got mad at you,” Winnie says, because they’re telling the truth to each other right now. “I got, really, really angry when I realized that you hadn’t fucking told me that you were upset. How– Okay, look. You know that I’m dense! You know that I don’t,” he pauses to catch his breath.
“You know that I don’t do good with realizing when people are upset at me,” he continues. “You knew that, and you still hid it all from me, and I just… I understand that you didn’t want to be AuggieandWinnie. That makes sense . But I don’t understand why you thought it would be better to just cut me off entirely.”
“I thought it would make you happier in the long run.” August tugs up his legs, puts his socked feet on the couch and hugs his legs to himself. He’ll never make himself smaller in Winnie’s eyes, though. “Thought that like… a clean break would be good. You could keep your decent life, and I could make my new good life and–”
“The only reason my life was decent was because I had you as a friend.” Winnie says, very serious. Then he pauses. “Well, Sebastian is a good friend, but the point is that I had all those friends and was happy because you were there.”
August closes his eyes and cracks a smile.
“Yeah. Sebastian is a good friend.”
“You did hear me, right? I was happy because you were there.”
“I did.” August’s eyes are still closed, and he snuffles. It’s got to hurt. “And I was trying to figure out what to say to it.”
Finally, he opens his eyes. He looks at Winnie, but he’s not expecting eye contact. That’s a relief.
“Win,” He says. Winnie wants to say Auggie now, more than ever. “I felt like I was never going to make it up to you, no matter what you said. I didn’t think that I could live with myself as your friend and have done that.”
“Didn’t think,” Winnie grabs onto the past tense with the desperation of a drowning man. “You didn’t think. So you think now–”
“I want to be your friend,” August is still looking at him. “I want… We can’t go back to the way that it used to be.”
Winnie feverishly nods.
“We can’t,” he agrees.
“But I want to be friends again.”
August puts his hand out, and Winnie takes it. They shake it, and then they intertwine their pinky fingers. It’s an old and stupid secret handshake that isn’t very secret. But the use of it is like saying that it’s all going to be alright. They’ve built a bridge of promises, and the earth is healing. Winnie throws himself further and hits his head against August’s shoulder. They both groan in pain.
“Ow,” August says, but he still hugs Winnie.
“I think that,” Winnie says, not quite sure where he’s going with the sentence. “I think that I am glad that I punched you, in a way.”
He can feel August as he laughs and he is so glad that they are touching again, that they are friends again. August is laughing and for the past two months he has been so dull and sad-looking, and now he is laughing again.
“Hey, want to come over and see some of the stuff I’ve been working on?”
“Yes!”
They go over to August’s house and it’s almost like being children again, running between the two houses and playing and– Winnie is feeling a little overwhelmed, but he’s coming to terms with the feeling and he thinks he can handle it for a bit longer. August shows him how he’s been carving elk and bears over and over again, and he knows that they’re both thinking about those childhood stuffed animals neither of them have gotten rid of. There’s some other stuff, sure, and he’s working on a bigger one of his family, actually, but it also feels like every surface in the room is covered in elk and bear figurines.
“I have a type,” August admits.
He does not make a joke about that. Shut up.
Over the course of the weekend, they catch up with each other. August tells him everything, and Winnie doesn’t have much to tell, but what he does, he does. Sebastian comes over on Sunday and August does too after being forced to go to church. They spend the afternoon going around in Sebastian’s car, Winnie in the backseat and August in passenger while Sebastian drives.
When the school week starts, August comes and sits with them again. John tries to ask, but August cuts him off with a glare. So everyone sort of deals with the fact that August has changed up his entire life only a few months before everyone scatters for adult (or adult-ish, rather) life.
--
“So you’re going to be a carpenter?” Sebastian asks, laying on August’s bed. Winnie’s sitting beside him, and August’s at his desk. They’ve begun spending a lot of weekends like this, cycling between all three of their houses. It’s been a month and a half, and the prior day, Winnie’s leg was released from its plaster prison.
“Yeah, I was just applying for apprenticeships earlier, I was also considering being an electrician– but there’s a carpenter willing to take me on! His name is Mr. Torres, actually. I’m going to have a meeting with him after school next monday, to see if we’d jive.”
Winnie closes his eyes and listens to them talk about the future and knows that even if August stays and Winnie goes, they’ll still be friends. And that’s what the internet and letters are for, naturally. It’ll all be alright.
--
He goes to college, and he makes a choice to switch from a general business degree to a path that will eventually see him recognized as a teacher. His parents were a little disappointed– it’d be easier to get along financially as a business major, but Winnie has realized that he wants to work with people and make their lives better, not worse.
August sends him letters and polaroid pictures of him and Mr. Torres, always smiling and proudly presenting something new. August is thinking of being an artist alongside his plan to become a professional carpenter that does furniture. Winnie suggested that he do both when August asked which path he should go down. And August listened. It’s dizzying.
Sebastian had gone cross-country with his own plans, taken away on a hockey scholarship. Trinity and Winnie run into each other sometimes, as it turns out that she’d applied to the same school. She’s in pre-med, though, so it’s not entirely often that they have time to talk to each other for long.
August sends him long letters, and Winnie somehow finds time to write longer ones. Somewhere along the line, their friendship naturally slid into something a little more romantic, and it was actually August (whoa! August communicating!) who had finally asked if they could put a more official label on it. Of course Winnie had said yes– he was the one that was in love first, you know, despite what August might say.
Weirdly, for all that he had catastrophized and gotten angry, his life actually got better. August was talking to him again and he had friends other than August, real friends who actually did care. He was joining clubs at school and making more friends– he was realizing that he had been frightened of university and all it symbolized. He had thought that it would feel more like an ending. But instead, it felt like his life was starting again.
He got back to his dorm and picked up his mail from the mailroom, and among his was a letter from August. It was fat with a letter and crinkled like he had shoved a lot of pictures into it. Winnie couldn’t stop smiling as he practically bounces up to his dorm. His roommate, Christopher, glances up.
“Another letter?” He asks.
“Yeah!” Winnie rips open the envelope, and laughs when he sees what August had included. Pressed and dried flowers, small little ones the sort that Mrs. Orlov grows in her window boxes when warmer weather finally rolls around. They still smell like fresh flowers, and he pins them up beside all his photos of August.
“You have got it bad ,” Chris says before rolling over. “Wake me up when it’s time for class.”
“Alright,” Winnie says, leaning back in his chair. He likes his string of August pictures of flowers, the way that it reminds him of home. It seems like the future is bright, and he likes that idea and the way that it sparkles happily in his mind.