Chapter Text
“What would you give up for him?”
“Everything,” M̷̯͇̯̝̠̭̲̈̉͜ͅi̸̙̝͇̹̯̊̈́̾̏͌̋̌̾̐͆͒͝k̵̨͓͕̙̩̘͔͔̥̋e̶̛͈̼̗̖̲͓͗̍͛̾́͐͒̚ said honestly, tears streaming down his face.
So be it.
Ą̵̢̘̱̥̱̭̺̯̿͗̐̀̈́̾̇̈́͌͂̓̚ņ̷̢̹̣͍͍̞͈̝̱̗̥͙͑́̂̀̈̔́̀̐͆d̴̻̼̹̭̅͂̔̾̎̊̈́͘ͅ ̶̳͈͋̆̏͗͒̐̈́͂̓̾͘͜s̷̘̮̹͛o̶̡͙̭̲̠̫̞͉̿̈́̄̀̃͗̉̈́ ̷͇̪̀͛̈́į̴̨͙̻͐̂͛͆̒̉̆̂̕̚͝t̴̨̩̮̘̬̦͕̜̹̤͉̩͓́͑̓̑͛̑͝ ̶͎̱̹̲̯̏̊̅͛͑̿̆w̴̺͋̂́̍̚ä̸̯͎͖͈́̀s.
Crack.
….
In a small town in Indiana, where beautiful autumns burnt into decaying trees, a boy awoke. There is very little to say about the actual moment of awakening, but the following events were both mundane and historical. All the clocks, seemingly broken, stroke one minute past midnight for the first time in three months. A single butterfly, blue in color, flapped its wings against the cheek of the hospital door, before being slammed dead by a teenage girl with a backpack full of guns slung over her shoulder. And a man named Henry Creel, who has not been a man for a long time, was disintegrated into particles by two brown-haired siblings with unnatural abilities.
The world was set back into motion.
But if you had asked the boy, the only thing to be registered was the bright light, golden and gleaming, shining into his eyes. He tasted blood on his lips, and when he went to sit up, his head pounded with pain. The boy tested his fingers, callused and blistered, warm and numb. Everything felt new, yet old.
He thought, for a brief moment, that something had been amputated from him, surgically removed. But that wasn’t right. He was whole, perfectly fine save for the headache.
There was an ache too, somewhere deep inside him. Not physical, but it was felt. Raw and sharp, like scrapped hands. Burning.
Spit bubbled up in the back of his throat and he spat up half-saliva and half-blood. He grimaced and wiped at the paper gown. Uneasily, the boy stood up and slowly stretched, all cracking limbs and sore muscles. He felt like a newborn deer, awkward and new.
But the boy knew he wasn’t new, just as he knew what a wall was or how to smile. It was something he simply knew but didn’t remember learning. Like learning to ride a bike, his mind supplied him. Not something you could forget. But the boy knew he could ride a bike, though he didn’t have a single memory of doing so. He stumbled to the wall, bruised fingertips tracing the wall as he made his way to the sink, dingy mirror above it. The reflection looking back was both strange and familiar, in a way all faces were. Soft black curls and sharp cheekbones, with speckles of freckle and fading bruises on his cheeks and nose. Huh. The boy thought to himself, there I am.
The door opened, and the boy looked to the sound, suddenly alert to the fact he was in the hospital. A man walked in, sporting a gray mustache that covered his entire upper lip and thin-framed glasses perched on his nose. “How are you feeling?” The doctor asked, mouth barely moving behind the mustache. “Nasty spill you took there, but your head bleeding was minimal.”
“Spill.” The boy whispered, tasting words on his tongue. It came out lighter than he expected. More childlike. He suddenly felt small and tired, so he climbed into the hospital bed. “Just a headache.”
The doctor pulled a blue pen from his breast pocket and grabbed a clipboard from the nearby table. Both were handed to the boy, who took them in his hands gently. “Just fill out the information here then and we can call your family to come get you soon.”
The boy nodded and put the pen together, making a singular blue dot on the sheet. With a blink and a sudden pang through his temple, he realized something rather important.
He didn’t quite know his name.
When he brought this up to the doctor, he got a sudden look of panic, eyes furrowed together. “Do you remember anybody's name? Your mother’s?”
The boy supposed he had a mother, but drew up blank on anything related to the word. Someone had to hold him as a baby or teach him to read. He couldn't remember.
The doctor went through another list of questions, all seemingly as simple and unanswerable as the next. He didn’t know where he lived, or if he had any siblings. He couldn’t even answer how he got to the side of the road by the hospital in the first place.
“Well, what do you remember?” The doctor- whose name tag read Dr. David, asked, scrawling on a tiny notebook shaped like a lemon.
The boy pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, trying to think of something to say. But his stomach rumbled and all he could do was ask for something to eat.
It was about thirty minutes and two pudding cups- the vanilla one abandoned for the banana, as it tasted like metal in his mouth, that Dr. David told him that they found his family. “Your sister came in to look for you, and said you ran away from home. She didn’t know how you got to the side of the road.” The doctor took the vanilla cup from its place between the boy’s feet and tossed it away, grimacing at the speck of blood in it.
“I didn’t know I had a sister.” the boy licked his spoon clean. “Is she going to take me where I live?”
The doctor nodded and put a stack of clothes on the counter, ripped jeans, and a baggy black shirt. A set of Converse and striped socks, and a tattered blue backpack. “This is what we found with you, they have been disinfected.”
“What’s in the bag?”
“Bricks.”
The young woman who picked up the boy looked a lot like the reflection in the mirror. A mess of dark curls, sharp brown eyes, light freckles, and pointed features. Her knees were bruised, and her clothes were bloodied and dirty. When she saw him she shrugged off her black striped sweater and put it on him, patting him all over. “Where were you? I was so scared.”
The boy let himself be shoved into the sweater but resisted when she started to check for bruises. She seemed to be fairly satisfied with what she saw, as her shoulders sagged as she let out a deep breath. “Are you my sister?”
The woman flinched slightly, her mouth twisting into a confused frown. “What are you talking about?”
The boy felt irked, taking a step back from her. She was being too touchy for someone that he didn’t know. The woman may know him, but she was a stranger. Brown eyes stared into his own until he finally sighed and handed her his paperwork. “If you are picking me up you are supposed to be in charge of me. They said I need to come back tomorrow for a check-in.”
Quick eyes scanned the paperwork, reading it over twice through. “Post-traumatic retrograde amnesia. Mild concussion.” She paused, brows weaved together, “What the hell happened to you?”
The boy shrugged. “I have bricks.”
…
The woman wasn’t too impressed with the bricks, but the boy didn’t want to part with them. There had to be a reason that he had them. People don’t typically keep bricks on them. Or at least- the boy didn’t think so.
Not like he had a lot of knowledge on the human psyche.
Or his psyche.
The woman took the boy through a McDonald’s drive-through, ordering him a quarter pounder with cheese, a fry, and a Coke with light ice. She emphasized the light, casting a small glance at the boy as if it made all the difference. Then she got a black coffee for herself, draining it down with one big gulp.
The boy tried to eat a fry, but his hand was slapped away by the woman. “No eating in my car.”
“I don’t remember the last time I ate,” the boy whined, “it could have been days for all I know.”
A long sigh came out of the woman, who rubbed her forehead between the brows. She pinched the bridge of her nose and side-eyed her brother. “You are so dramatic, you had scrambled eggs with maple syrup this morning.”
The boy grumbled again, incoherent and sipping on his drink. Coca-Cola was good, he decided, setting it back down. He fiddled with his bag and took out one of his bricks, curious to see if there was anything on them. It was simply scuffed and red, the plainest brick he’d ever seen. It was strange to know that this is all he had of himself, a bunch of stupid-ass bricks and beat-up clothes. He supposed he should feel anxious, missing everything about himself pre-waking up. But he didn’t. There was nothing to miss. It was more confusing than anything.
The woman kept looking at him- as if all of a sudden he’d stopped and said it was all a prank, that he didn’t actually lose his memories. Unbelieving, lips pressed into a thin line. “What happened? Why did you disappear this morning?”
“I told you, I don’t remember anything.” The boy mumbled, using a sharpie he stole from the hospital counter to draw a smiley face on a brick. It looked more crazed than happy.
“Anything?”
The boy bit the side of his cheek and rolled his eyes, “I’m not lying. It would be such a weird-ass thing to lie about.”
“What the fuck, Mike…”
“Is that me?” The boy leaned forward slightly, something zapping through his brain like lightning, “Mike? Is that me? Am I Mike?”
The woman nodded, her face finally settling down into something a little softer. She didn’t speak, but her face seemed to rest to say, okay, this is our life now.
Mike- how strange it was to have a name- decided to give his sister a break. If anything were to be said about the shadows underneath her eyes, she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in ages. “Look lady, if you are going to kidnap me you should at least have the decency to introduce yourself.”
The woman scoffed. Like Mike said something ridiculous and unheard of. “I didn’t kidnap you. I’m your sister.”
“So you say.”
She side-eyed Mike, lips pursed together. Then she sighed, hands drumming on the steering wheel as she waited at the red light. “My name is Nancy.”
“Nancy,” Mike repeated, glad to put a name to a face.
“That you?” Nancy asked, tips of her fingers tapping on the boy’s brick.
He scowled at her and flipped over the brick, drawing a dick on it. He shoved it in Nancy’s face, “This one is you.”
Nancy laughed so hard she missed when the light turned green.
…..
The Wheeler household- that was Mike’s last name- was a simple two-story home with a comfortable basement and four bedrooms. Mike’s bedroom was a blue color and covered in posters and street signs, with handmade drawings posted on a pinboard above Mike’s bed, signed W.B. It was a comfortable room, clearly very lived in. Cluttered clothes, wrinkled quilts, and a guitar with a worn body.
His room was a museum of someone else. It felt a little intrusive, looking at another version of him and his old things. But it was his things, and in some fucked up way it was fascinating, going through all his possessions. Most of it was junk; half-baked storylines, elementary homework assignments, sticky-note to-do lists, and books. Some of the things were more fascinating.
There was an old binder, creased with age. Drawings, captured like pressed flowers in sheet protectors. Mike spent a long time looking over those pages, where wizards and knights came to life. Some were in painstaking detail, colorful crayon strokes taking a blank piece of paper and making it beautiful. Some of them were loose sketches on the back of homework assignments or in the margins of ripped sheets of paper. Either way, they were gorgeous.
Mike ran his fingers over the drawings, feeling a sense of awe take over him. He knew that it wasn’t his work, as his hands were clumsy and awkward. But it was someone’s work. Someone with talent, and real artistry in their veins. A real Michelangelo or Monet type.
The books were interesting. Some of the copies were worn in and had cracked spines, with bookmarks sticking out every which way. Picture of Dorian Gray, Carrie, Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, The Color Purple, Chronicles of Narnia, The Outsiders, Nancy Drew, Maurice, To Kill A Mockingbird, and many more were stacked on the bookshelves inside his closet. Some of the books, Dungeon and Dragons guidebooks, had papers stuffed inside the pages. They seem to have detailed plans for campaigns, character sheets, and notes about different monster stats.
Then there were the photos. They lined the walls and were pinned on corkboards. Some of them were put in frames or pushed in shoeboxes. Mike took a stack from the shoebox and started to card through them. A few were of Mike as a child, Nancy holding him like a baby doll. Holly with ice cream smeared on her face. School photos of a little boy with a bad bowl-cut with the year scratched on the back with crayons. Mike with friends, a cast of nameless faces. The faces made him feel queasy, like something tight in his stomach. He wasn’t sure if they looked familiar because of the amount of photos or if it was something in his brain that knew them. Unfortunately, it was probably the former.
Mike kicked off his Converse and lay in bed, staring at the faded yellow stars on the ceiling. He tried to blink forward any memories, but all he felt was rather annoyed. He couldn’t put a pin in it. Mike couldn’t remember them being taken. Not even the photos with his tight-lipped smile in them. There were many faces featured throughout the photos. A brunette girl who always looped her arms around someone, a black boy with a smile constantly was caught mid grin, a curly-haired boy with the stupidest shirts, a ginger girl who looked half annoyed and half happy, and a boy with a bad haircut and the biggest baby doe eyes. The kids- all around Mike’s age- seemed to be his friends. Good friends, by the way, they all seemed to have to hold each other tightly.
“That one is Lucas.” Holly, Mike’s baby sister said, pointing to one of his friends. She chewed on her chipped blue nails, which she had proudly proclaimed to have been learning to do herself. “He plays basketball. Remember him?”
“No,” Mike said honestly, immediately forgetting who she pointed to.
Holly mouthed a soft oh, and shrugged, unbothered by Mike’s lack of memory. “He is our neighbor. His sister sometimes watches movies with me for pocket change.” She kicked her feet, soft ruffle socks bumping into his leg. “You can watch movies with me tonight, but Mom won’t pay you.”
“Okay, thanks, Holly.” Mike smiled, amused by his sister’s bluntness, “That’s really nice of you.”
Holly shrugged again and rolled off the bed, as if to say, I know. She popped up, blonde hair swinging after her as she ran out of the room and downstairs.
Mike folded up the photo he was holding- the six of them at some ice cream parlor in the summer, his own face squinting up and to the sun, mid-lick on an ice cream cone. But he was happy, joy slipping into the corners of his face. He slid it into the pockets of his jeans, feeling a little unsettled by the whole thing.
He had a whole life- a family, house, friends. A goddamn girlfriend if the crumpled-up notes in his trashcan were correct. Love, El, they were all signed, in scratching writing. There were drafts of his own notes in the trash as well- crossed off and crumbled up.
Dear El,
I miss you. I miss hanging out with you. I wish you were here with me. I’d even kiss you if you came back. Even though I don’t care for it. Everyone acts like kissing is fun. It’s so boring.
I think something might be wrong with me. I’m not wired right.
How is Will? And Johnaton and Joyce? Is it weird Does Will
I haven’t heard from them in a while. Did I do something?
From Mike
Maybe they weren’t together anymore. Hopefully, they weren’t together if the letters were right. It sounded like forcing puzzle pieces from two different puzzles to connect. Either way, Mike certainly didn’t want to date someone he didn’t even know- never mind if he liked kissing her.
There was a knock on the door and Mike glanced up to see Nancy leaning on the door frame, her perm parted into two small braids that stuck up like Pippi Longstocking. She was out of her dirty jeans and had on blue plaid pajama pants instead. There was an uneasy look on her face like she forgot how to communicate with him. Like he was a caged animal, and she was scared he’d bite. “Your friends want to see you tomorrow. Think you’re up for that?”
Mike shrugged, feeling rather ambivalent. He supposed he should be excited, or nervous. Instead, he just felt tired.
Nancy pursed her lips together, “Come down for dinner, Mike.”
Mike immediately needed a break from his parents. Ted was, in every imaginable way, a complete bore. He ate, called Nancy out for cursing, and made small muses about the weather. “Might rain tomorrow.” He said, mid-bite of some vegetable medley. “Lawn needs it.”
Karen, Mike’s mother, gave him an obligatory nod. Then she immediately went back to being overbearing, pressing a cold thing of peas to Mike’s forehead. He half-heartedly smacked it away. “My head is fine, I don’t need that.”
“You need to ice or you won’t get your memories back.” Karen tutted, pressing it against his head once more.
“Not what the doctor said,” Nancy pointed her fork at their mother. “That’s not doing anything.”
“I wouldn’t trust anything those doctors said. It’s over by those aliens trying to steal our jobs.” Ted mumbled, leaning back further into his chair. He looked like a king on a throne but sounded as sensible as the court jester. “And especially not Dr. David, I heard that he’s a fa–.”
Nancy cut him off with a loud thud as she smacked her hand on the table. “That’s enough.” She scolded. Grabbing both her and Holly’s plates, she spun around and headed downstairs. Holly jumped up as if this was a routine occurrence. “We won’t eat with you if you talk about politics.” Nancy spat over her shoulder.
Mike stared, wide-eyed and unsure, at his parents. He knew very little about them and had difficulty seeing himself in them. Nancy’s face nearly mirrored his own, and he could see how Holly’s energy wasn’t so different from his own jittery knee and spinning thoughts. But Karen- with her bleached hair and need for perfect disposition- was not someone he could even pretend to know. The little he saw of her made him feel slightly uneasy as if some part of him knew that he couldn’t fit in the picture-perfect version of himself she wished for. And Ted was worse. The only thing that he could see similarities in was the dark hair and long legs. So Mike did the only thing he knew to do, picking up his plate and the dish of mashed potatoes, hurrying after his older sister.
The stairs to the basement creaked, and he saw Nancy and Holly giggling as they made themselves comfortable around a small table. “Sit with us, Mikey.” Holly smiled, flashing her missing teeth.
So Mike sat down between his sisters, at the rickety old table in the basement of their picket-fence home. The basement was cozier, with crushed Coke cans in an old bin and a bundle of blankets draped over the couch. Gameboards and old toys littered the surface, and a bottle of vodka was poorly hidden behind a throw couch. Light spilled in from the windows and hit the photos taped to the walls. Nancy smiled and Holly started to eat the potatoes right out of the bowl, and suddenly Mike was home.