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“You’re gonna be able to drive me to school, right?” A voice rung in his head, the echoes pounding in rhythm with the throb. “Travis?”
He groaned, registering the matted bath rug underneath him, and the hard linoleum floor he sat on with it. There was something sticky on the side of his face, and his shoulder ached from how he’d been sleeping on it all night. He tried to move, but his entire body felt like a magnet was pulling it back to the ground.
“Ugh, nevermind, just tell me where the keys are.” His exasperated sister flipped him onto his back, digging through the pockets of his pajama pants and sighing when she came up with nothing.
“No, no, I got it.” Travis slurred his words a bit as he managed to sit up, leaning against the tiled bathroom wall for support. He pretended he could blame everything on the sleep inertia rather than somehow managing to wake up both drunk and hungover at the same time.
“You have wine all over your face and in your hair, you don’t ‘got’ anything.” Madeline snapped, gesturing to his head. Travis blinked dumbly as he reached up and touched his temple, realizing that’s what the sticky sensation was. He was just glad it wasn’t vomit this time.
“Whatever, I’ll clean up. It’s fine. I’m fine.” He didn’t sound very convincing, and based on the look Madeline gave him, he wasn’t. He slowly stood up, gripping onto the sink for support, and looked at the mess in the mirror.
The right side of his face was now colored a mild reddish-purple, but it didn’t stand out too harshly against his tanned skin, it was the sticky feeling that bothered him the most. His hair was a different story, though; blond strands stained a reddish-pinkish-purple depending on where you looked, bunched together in ugly clumps. His dark eyes were flanked with a sharp redness from all the drunk crying he did the previous night—or, one of them was still dark. The right one was faded, now, and his vision had been going along with it as time went on. He tried not to think about why as he stared directly at it.
To his left, Madeline sighed. Travis didn’t want to look at the sad, pitying expression he knew was on her face right now. “Just, hurry up, please. I don’t wanna be late.”
Again.
That was the part she left out.
Travis washed himself up rather quickly after managing to get himself started, only nicking himself shaving once this time, which was a good sign. He didn’t bother getting dressed since he had nowhere to go today, but he did change out of the clothes he slept on the bathroom floor in, covered in wine, snot and tears, maybe a little blood of unknown origin.
He wore some thin, plaid pajama pants and a band shirt that Larry had gotten him, somewhat of a housewarming gift and a reconciliation gift at the same time. He swore they were really good, that Travis should check them out because he’d probably like them more than other metal bands, but he never did, he just wasn’t sure he’d be able to get into a band called Acid Bath.
He trudged out of the apartment after Madeline. As he left, he spotted Sal’s dad, Henry, exiting the elevator with some mail in his hand. He looked tired, but he perked up as he spotted Travis and his sister, and Travis tried to mentally prepare himself for a short conversation with the man.
“Ah, mornin’ guys. How are you?” He smiled. Travis couldn’t explain why that made him anxious.
“Tired, the usual. What else can you feel on a Monday?” Travis shrugged.
“It’s Wednesday, moron.” Madeline said.
“Wednesday, whatever. It’s one of the days of the week. I got close.” Travis fired back sharply.
“Well, at least you were only two days off, I woke up thinking it was Friday for some reason.” Henry shrugged, and Travis tried to let himself feel normal for a second, but it was just another face he put on. Just another long-practiced photogenic smile he pulled out. “That’s being an adult for you, huh?” He said back.
He could speak the part all he wanted, he’d always been praised by the adults for sounding a lot older than he was, but when he shut the door to his bedroom at night, he curled up in the sheets he brought from the house he grew up in and he felt just as small as he did at eight years old.
“Yeah, it sure is. Well, I’ll let you go, get Maddie to school before she’s late and all and I’ll catch you later. Say hi to Sal for me if you see him, alright?” Henry gave a stiff yet polite smile as he grabbed the doorknob with one hand and waved goodbye with the other. Travis and Madeline nodded, waving back as they stepped into the elevator.
“Will do, Mr. Fisher.” Travis said as the doors closed.
The two of them ran to their dad’s–right, now it was Travis’s–old pickup truck, trying to dodge the rain as best they could. The truck sputtered to life as he turned the key and he pulled out, only hitting the curb once as he turned out of the apartment parking lot.
“Why don’t you go on dates or anything fun like that?” Madeline asked as she adjusted her hair and makeup in the flip-down mirror, and Travis rolled his eyes. He was too tired for a conversation like this, too caught up in his head about all his flaws, and he scoffed bitterly. “That won’t be happening any time soon.” He said, focusing on the road.
Madeline pouted. “Why not? You clean up pretty nice when you lay off the booze, I’m sure plenty of girls are in-”
“I’m gay.”
The car went quiet.
“Oh.”
He didn’t know why he’d said it at all, let alone right now instead of in a situation he could escape from if she got angry. But she didn’t seem angry, she seemed like she was just… Thinking about it. The anger would probably come later, he was sure, when she realized the social repercussions of having a half-blind faggot for an older brother.
Nevermind the fact that the only other faggots he knew of in Nockfell he’d had a very strained relationship with, considering how he used to bully them for being faggots in high school, back when he was still convinced he could become normal if he’d just prayed hard enough.
Normal. Hah. What a fucking joke.
Larry’s shirt felt like it was choking him.
The rest of the drive to Nockfell High was quiet. It didn’t exactly feel tense, but the air still felt thick with realization.
“See you after school. Don’t get too wasted to pick me up.” Madeline’s movements and tone were hesitant, awkward. She left the car in the drop-off line, and Travis just nodded, his mouth dry.
When he got back to the apartments, he stood by the entrance for a while underneath the awning looking at the pathetic little life he’s managed to make with his sister in the wake of their father’s arrest. Of the arrest of a number of other townspeople. Of the arrest of their other sister.
It was raining when the FBI had arrived, too, easily pulling him off of the bloody pulp he’d been beating his father into in front of the church when his sister struggled. He’d been screaming so hard his throat was raw, his own blood and tears mixing in with the weather, and a woman pulled him into her arms, thrashing and shrieking like an animal. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to comfort him or restrain him.
He didn’t know they were coming. Nobody did.
Looking back on it, Travis thought there must’ve been a God, because that was the only way to explain the cosmic irony of finally being saved from their father the moment he’d finally accepted that nobody was ever coming to save them. That’s why he was prepared to kill his father that night, and he still feels like he should’ve, but when the social worker held his head into her chest as they put his barely conscious father into handcuffs, he curled up in her arms and wailed.
Now he was here.
Twenty-one, almost twenty-two, but he didn’t feel like it. In an apartment that didn’t feel like it was his, full of a lot of nostalgia and second-hand things.
He went to the bathroom and properly cleaned up the mess he’d left on the floor that morning, finding that his wine bottle still had a bit left inside. He finished it off as he cleaned, letting the alcohol lubricate his mind. When he was done, he tossed the bottle in the garbage and grabbed some more from the small wine rack by the kitchen as he continued around the house, grabbing his and Madeline’s laundry to bring down to the basement, then doing the dishes, vacuuming the carpet, mopping the kitchen, wiping the counters, cleaning the toilet, dusting the tube, re-organizing the fridge and pantry, cleaning out the kitchen drawers and doing anything else he could think of to keep his drunk mind off of the weight on his back.
He was going to bust out the grout to fix some holes in the tiling in the bathroom when he realized his insober hands would be far too imprecise. He needed to cut himself off if he wanted to be sober enough to pick up Madeline later.
He checked the time, assuming it had to have been several hours since he’d dropped his sister off, but it was only half past eleven. He gave a shaky sigh, unsure of what else to fill the time with if he didn’t want to keep thinking about it all but couldn’t get any drunker than he already was.
Sitting on the couch, he decided to flip on the TV. Maybe he could find something that would turn his brain off.
He channel surfed, flipping through morning talk shows, news channels, sitcom re-runs. He sat on an episode of Family Batters for a bit before deciding that Sbeve Urkel just wasn’t doing it for him today and went back to searching when something caught his attention.
It was the beginning of some children’s show he was only vaguely familiar with, My Glitter Ponies: Rainbow Spectacular. Madeline used to like the toys when she was younger, but she’d grown out of it in recent years. They never got to watch the cartoon, they didn’t have a TV growing up, so the only times they’d ever got to watch it was when they’d gone to a friend’s house. Maybe it was fun.
He pulled his knees to his chest and leaned against the armrest of the tattered love seat Lisa had pulled from the dumpster for him and let the episode play.
It made his chest hurt to think about childhood more often than not. Both his own childhood, and the concept itself left him feeling a deep seated ache. He was often familiar with a feeling he didn’t know the name of, he just called it ‘bad nostalgia’, named as such because nostalgia was usually supposed to feel good, and this generally didn’t. He mostly felt it when he was reminded of the good periods of his childhood, times he wanted to go back and relive just to feel like a child one more time before he had to grow up. Maybe if he was able to have just one good, strong childhood memory to point to, to orient himself under, he would feel ready for all of it to be over and he could finally move on.
But you only get one childhood, and he could never get those years back.
As the cartoon flashed in front of his drunken eyes, magical problems solved with the power of friendship, he was reminded of the figurines his sister handed to him when she wanted him to play with her. The two of them were so small. It was so easy for Kenneth to grab them and throw them around however he wanted, by the arms, by the ears, by the collar, by the hair. But he wasn’t home that day he was thinking of, it was just them in Madeline’s bedroom, and Mary making lunch in the kitchen—macaroni—back before her eyes went so dark and she still smiled. Nobody could get them here, not in Madeline’s bedroom or in his mind.
He woke up a couple of hours later, his face damp with tears. The sound of someone knocking at the door cut through the fog of his fatigue and got up fast enough to make himself dizzy, checking the time as fast as he could. He was thankful to find it was only three, and Madeline got off of school at around three forty-five. Plenty of time.
He stood up more carefully and wiped his face off.
“I’m coming.” He uttered, just loud enough to be heard through the door as he peered through the eyehole to find Henry.
He unlocked the door and opened it, hoping he didn’t look like total shit, but Henry’s grimace told him otherwise.
“Bad time?” He asked.
Travis shook his head. “No, no, I’m just… Y’know.” He wiped his face again.
“I just wanted to check in on ya, see how you were doin’.” Henry gave an apologetic smile. It felt like there was a weight to it that Travis didn’t understand, but he was never good at reading people.
“I’m- I’m alright, Mr. Fisher, thanks.” Travis gave an exhausted one back.
“You sure? ‘Cus you’ve got a stain that’s either blood or wine in your hair, and either way that’s not a good sign to me.” Henry gestured vaguely to a spot on his head, his mouth flattening itself.
Shit, he thought he got all that out.
Travis sighed and leaned against the door frame more heavily, arms loosely crossed, letting go of some of that mask and letting himself look as bad as he felt. Not that he was trying that hard in the first place to look fine, but he definitely looked worse as he took that extra layer off of himself.
“It’s nothing, really. Same shit as usual. Nightmares, bad memories, et cetera.” He smiled to try and make himself seem more lighthearted about it than he was, but he had a feeling it just made him look bitter. Whatever, he was bitter.
“Well even the same shit needs to get talked about, ‘specially if you’re drinking about it at three PM.” Henry’s voice was low and sympathetic, tilting his head inward while his thumbs hooked themselves through his belt-loops.
Travis really did not want to have a conversation like this right now. “Look, Mr. Fisher, I have to pick up Maddie soon, so-”
“Hey, doesn’t have to be with me. It could even be in a journal or something, that’s what Sal and Lisa do. Just as long as you’re not completely leaving it in here.” He tapped his temple with a raised brow, as if he was giving some kind of sage advice that Travis wasn’t already aware of. It’s not like he was trying to keep all of this in, it’s that he didn’t have anyone but Maddie, and she already occasionally has to comfort him when he wakes up from nightmares in the middle of the night, he can’t keep putting her in that position.
And Henry… That was Sal Fisher’s father. As in, Sal Fisher, one of the guys he used to bully for being a faggot in school. The guy who’d given him a lot more patience and grace than anyone else did, much more than he felt like he deserved. They’d long since reconciled, they’d never really hated each other anyway, but it wasn’t easy to pretend like tension wasn’t still there, especially when facing his father. He’d rather keep his distance.
Travis sighed. “…Alright, I will. And,” He flicked his eyes downwards. “Thanks. For checking.” He didn’t want Henry to feel like he was being completely rejected, even if he was going to take his suggestion of talking about it and immediately throw it into the garbage.
“No problem, kid. Just remember that people need people to live. Take care, I’ll see you around.” He walked back to his apartment, his socked feet padding over the matted and stomped-down carpet. Travis watched him until he opened the door and went inside, wondering why the man kept coming over like this, checking on him, trying to be friends with him. Travis didn’t want or need friends right now, and as nice as the guy was, he kind of wished he would take the hint and fuck off. Must be a family trait.
He shut the front door and went to clean himself up in the bathroom so he didn’t look like total shit when he went to pick up his sister from school.
He showered, moisturized, combed his hair, put cold spoons over his eyes to try and keep the bags underneath them at bay, and by the time he was finished, he almost looked like a person. He still felt somewhat disoriented as he put on his shoes and walked out of the apartment, but he could drive with one eye closed if he needed to.
He pulled out of the apartment parking lot and managed to stay in one lane for the majority of the drive.
In the drop-off line, Madeline flung her backpack into the back seat aggressively before getting in, slamming the car door shut and leaning against the window with her arms crossed. Travis raised a brow as he made his way through the line and back onto the main road. “Bad day?” He asked. Madeline just rolled her eyes. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” She huffed. Travis shrugged and decided to leave it alone. “Alright, then.”
The drive was quiet for a few minutes before Madeline spoke up again.
“It’s just that Celine is pissed off at me because I told her George Michael is gay and that stuck-up bitch won’t let it go.” She glared at the passing fences and power lines.
Travis blinked. That was news to him. “He is?” He asked into the rear view, and Madeline just looked at him incredulously. “Duh!” She said. Travis hummed contemplatively as he watched the world pass by from his dashboard. Just more pop-culture bullshit he was out of touch with, nothing new, but if George Michael was gay and doing alright, maybe he should listen to the guy sometime.
“And… You too, apparently.” Travis tensed as they made eye contact in the rear view again.
Right, he’d told her that this morning. He had no idea why. Maybe he was drunker than he thought he was this morning, maybe he was tired of her asking when he’ll go on a date or something, he wasn’t sure. That was the first time he’d ever said it out loud and he barely remembered it.
“Yeah.” Travis said quietly as he focused back on the road.
“How come you never told me?” She asked, and Travis could hear the disappointment in her voice.
He paused, focusing on the way his head swam a bit as he drove through the old roads. “I wanted to be normal.” His answer was shockingly honest, but it’s not like he had many options.
Madeline scoffed. “You know everything dad said was bullshit.” She said, looking back out the window.
A bitterness bubbled in Travis’s chest. She didn’t get it, she was normal.
“Knowing and believing are two different things when your dad beats you because your hair is too long and he doesn’t want you looking like a faggot.” That was a bit harsher than he’d intended for it to be. Madeline looked through the mirror with an apologetic expression before looking back out the window.
“Sorry.” She said quietly.
“It’s okay.” He replied, his face softening.
They arrived back at the apartments a couple of minutes later, wiping their shoes off on the doormat. Madeline made a beeline for the elevator while Travis stopped and double checked the mailbox first.
Bills, bills, local news station, a less local news station, oh—he’s pre-approved for some credit card he doesn’t care about. Awesome.
“Hurry up or I’m letting the doors close without you, dickhead.” Madeline called from the elevator, her arm held out, and Travis rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, I’m coming, you little shit.”
They stepped into the apartment and Madeline tossed her bag on the couch before pausing.
“It’s really clean today.” She looked around and made her way to the kitchen, looking for something sweet. She seemed careful, knowing what it meant when things were too put-together. “Are you feeling alright?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. It was nothing.” He grabbed his copy of Carrie off the coffee table and sat down to read it again.
It went silent as Madeline started heating up some of their apple cider on the stove. When it was done, she poured two glasses and left the rest on a low heat setting and covered it for later. She walked over to the couch, nudging her brother’s leg with her foot to get his attention, and she handed him the warm glass.
“Thanks.” Said Travis.
She hummed as she sat down close next to him, her head on his shoulder, watching the quiet TV he’d left on all day as he sipped his cider and read.
“You know we’re in this together, right?” Madeline asked, after a few moments of silence.
Travis looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was staring straight ahead. “Yeah, of course.” He replied.
“Then why don’t you tell me stuff?” She sounded more than just disappointed this time, she sounded betrayed. “I tell you everything, but you don’t tell me what’s bugging you, you just drink. I’ve been asking you about dates for months and it’s only now that you tell me you don’t even like girls. Now you’re stress cleaning again and you won’t even tell me why. Is it money?” She turned to face him, and Travis looked at her apologetically.
“If it’s money, I could get a part-time job. I’m not in any clubs or anything special like that, and my grades are fine, I promise I can help.” Travis sighed and put the book in his lap.
“No, it’s not money, we’re okay on money.” Travis said, and they were. They didn’t really have any savings at the moment, but other than that, they were alright, so it’s not like it was a complete lie.
“Then what is it, Travis? Just talk to me, please?” She pleaded.
“I don’t need to be putting my shit on you like that, Lin, you just need to worry about finishing school.” His voice was soft as he tried to dodge her questions.
“Bullshit! How am I supposed to worry about finishing school when I’m not even sure you’ll be able to drive me there in the mornings because you keep drinking yourself to sleep every night?” Now she really looked pissed, and Travis had a feeling that it wasn’t Celine’s indignancy that put her in that mood on the way home.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t have a good answer to any of her questions, but especially not that one.
“I’m worried about you, Travis.” Madeline replied to his silence. “I know it’s been hard with the trial coming up and Mary being put away, but we’re not gonna get through this if you don’t talk to me.”
Shit, he’d forgotten about the trial. It was supposed to happen in late February. He’d been so stressed with other bullshit that he forgot to get stressed about that. And Mary—what day was it? They were supposed to visit her in the hospital that Saturday.
Travis set his book aside, and his drink on the table, sighing. He wrapped an arm around his sister tiredly. “It’s just bad memories. It’s nothing I can’t handle.” He said. It wasn’t exactly true, but it wasn’t entirely false either.
“Then why do you keep drinking about it?” Madeline’s voice was quiet and bland.
Travis sucked in a deep breath through his teeth. “It just makes things easier.”
“Easier than talking to me about it?”
“Look-” Travis started, but he cut himself off, staring at the wall behind the TV as he held her. “It’s just hard.” His voice shook as he realized he didn’t even know what to say. He hardly understood why he was so upset this morning. He knows he’d been drinking, but he felt so alienated from the ache of that familiar smallness he felt, curled up on the couch. Madeline looked up at him with a soft expression, and he looked away.
“I used to think that when we got away from dad, I would know exactly what to do and I’d be able to handle it, but now that I’m here, I don’t understand anything anymore. I went from having no control over my life to having complete responsibility so fast my head is still spinning.” He leaned back against the couch and tugged on his earlobe as he stared at the ceiling. “When you’re a kid, nobody tells you that all the adults are just winging it because you have no idea what’s going to happen next. I don’t even feel like an adult yet, I don’t know if I ever will.”
“Everything changed so fast it feels like I got whiplash.” Madeline replied. “I still can’t believe it’s over. My classmates keep asking me questions, and they make fun of me for it. They call me the cult girl.”
“Yeah, they used to call me church boy. I still can’t believe I tried to hand pamphlets out to people all the time.” He laughed bitterly, and he was hit with familiar pangs of loss over what his father robbed them of. “I wish I could tell you it gets better, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I’m sorry.” Travis’s expression grew anxious as he stared at the ceiling.
“I believe they will.” Madeline said, wrapping her arms around Travis. “As long as we stick together and work hard, things will get better. They have to.”
Travis felt like that outlook was rather naive, but then he remembered Sal Fisher, the boy who’d started it all by moving here and sticking his nose into the Phelps family’s business, not stopping until Travis’s father was arrested. He believed from the start that things would get better, and when Travis walked out of the police station early the morning after his father was taken in, Sal was there with his hair down, damp and clumped together from the rain that happened the previous night. He hadn’t even showered yet.
Travis was shaking, and it wasn’t from the cold, with his arms wrapped around himself. It wasn’t easy at 5’11, but he tried to make himself look as small as possible. He wanted to go home and pull all his hair out, but Sal wrapped a skinny arm around his waist because it was the best his height would allow for, and he led him outside to Larry’s van.
“This is it, Travis. A new start.” He’d said, his voice gentle. “Things are gonna get better.”
“I think you’re right.” Travis said, swallowing the lump in his throat. “As long as we stick together, it’ll be okay.”
Please God, don’t let her be wrong, Travis thought to himself. I don’t think I could take it if she was.
After a comfortable silence between the two of them, Madeline spoke up again. “Drink your cider before it gets cold, I made that for you, asshole.”
Travis let go of her and punched his sister in the shoulder a bit roughly. “Shut up, you were the one who made it and then decided to have a gut-wrenching conversation immediately afterward. Do we have any bourbon or anything to put in here?” Travis got up from the couch and went to look in the kitchen.
“Oh come on, seriously?” Madeline got up from the couch looking about ready to throttle him.
“Don’t worry, you can have some too, if you want.” Travis smirked as he picked the large bourbon bottle from the corner of the kitchen floor. It was too big to keep anywhere else.
She grumbled under her breath before giving in to the teenage allure of a trusted older family member offering her alcohol. “Okay fine, scoot over.” Madeline grabbed her glass and bumped herself into Travis’s side, causing him to almost spill the bourbon he was pouring into his cider.
“Oof- you little shit.” He glared at her, but there was no fire behind it, and Madeline laughed at him. “C’mon, my turn.” She gave up her cup and made her best puppy-dog eyes. Travis rolled his and poured a good amount of bourbon into her drink.
“Now c’mon, they’re about to play The Odd Couple on the ABC channel. That’s a fun one to watch drunk.” Travis began herding his sister back to the living room.
“Oh, great. Speaking of,” Madeline started as they sat down. “When are you gonna get a boyfriend? If you lay off the booze, I’m sure plenty of guys are into tall twinks with daddy issues.”
Travis did a double take and nearly choked on his drink. “I am not a- where did you even learn that word? Fuck you.” Madeline just laughed at him a lot harder than he wanted to hear. “My friend Georgie. He said you’d get mad if I called you that.” Travis sneered. “Yeah, because he’s wrong. Tell Georgie to go fuck himself.”
Madeline raised her brows as she put her legs on his lap. “Mm, I don’t know, I think he’s right.”
Travis scoffed and continued bickering with his sister as he flipped through the channels, catching the opening credits to The Odd Couple just in time.
As Madeline kicked him in the shoulder and he threatened to kill her for almost making him spill his drink, he was reminded of his conversation with Henry earlier, about making sure things don’t stay in his head. He certainly felt better than he did before, he didn’t even feel like getting completely wasted tonight. It felt like he was drinking for fun, and not to make himself sleep as quickly as possible. He actually wanted to be awake as the afternoon faded into evening, to watch the movie with his sister, to get some drunk cooking done for the two of them later.
He sunk into his couch and smiled as the bourbon started to hit him a little bit.
Henry was right. People need people, and no two people needed each other more than Travis and Madeline, because they were all each other had right now.
As long as they held onto each other, things were going to get better.