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When Neil was five, he learned that the world was full of lies.
He saw them in the way his father smiled; the way his mother pretended she wasn’t endlessly exhausted; the way people never did what they truly meant to. Really, he thought, the ones who didn’t notice it were the real fools.
His childhood wasn’t a happy one; it was a labyrinth of cruel hands, empty promises, and dead ends - his only help was a map of rules his mother forced upon him, certainly in hope of dimming his father’s anger. It was a futile attempt, but he supposed he should appreciate it anyway.
When you put it like that, it was no wonder that Neil ended up the way he did; paranoid and cautious of every person he encountered. It was no surprise that he smashed down any emotion that would stand in the way of his survival; any distraction was intolerable; any detail that wasn’t crucial was filed away and hidden. At one point, he realized he was no longer like the people who surrounded him; they were real and tangible, while he was jagged pieces of every person he attempted to be, a study in lies, too tangled to pinpoint any truth, but this - he was nothing.
His mother’s closed fists taught him how to stay alive; his years on the run trained him to slip away unnoticed. His disembodied ghost floated from one identity to another quicker than he could get used to the new face. He forgot what it felt like to wish he would wake up and not have to relearn how to breathe; stopped wondering what it meant to belong.
But because the universe works in curious ways, there came the day he remembered. Before burning his mother’s bones, he promised her he would do exactly what she instructed - and, for the record, he did try. But he was tired; worn after constantly watching his back and close to giving up. He shouldn’t have stayed in one town for so long, and he shouldn’t have signed the contract. But he did.
The Foxes were a mismatched collection of people who never quite believed in second chances, but got one anyway. They were not cruel; they were human - possibly more than Neil had ever witnessed.
And perhaps if only because of that, he found himself drawn to their defiance; entranced by their unashamed rawness. Neil watched as they tested each others limits, as they fought, ready to bruise – and yet, he knew they cared; about the things they didn’t talk about, just because they all understood, and about everything they pretended not to. He let them mold him into someone almost real; no longer a creature with marred skin and insubstantial voice, but a human with crooked teeth and this weird feeling lodged in his chest.
He thought that if someone were to crack him open and try to unravel the thing that spilled out, they would be surprised to pin down its name; this disheartening, quiet devastation that threatened to drown him; he knew it was hope. Sometimes, when his dreams didn’t sound like tragedies and time stretched into a soft hum, he thought he perhaps liked it.
And when death faded away and became a distant thought, Neil allowed himself to breathe. He allowed himself to taste the word "home” on his tongue and reveled in the way it coated his insides; he sunbathed in the warmth of the very tangible possibility of the future, and became greedy for air like a man who had been submerged for too long. Neil thought that that was life, or purpose, or maybe it just was.
He spent such a long time with his fear – it became another shard of glass in this mismatched mosaic stitching him together. He wouldn’t be letting go of it anytime soon, maybe ever, and he found that quite all right. Because, sure, he was afraid – but it was a duller, dimmer version of the thing he carried in his bones since he could remember; a reminder, a proof of life.
Finally, there was no invisible countdown hovering above his head; only the thrill of being on court, the movie nights with the Foxes, the quiet hours spent on the roof with Andrew, where they traded simpler truths. The car rides lit only by the gentle strokes of moonlight weren’t a place where Neil catalogued his surroundings; where he committed to memorizing them as best as he could, just because he knew he might not have another chance. They were simply a moment; the fragile trust intertwining with all the things that didn’t need to be said; not then.
Every second was a grain of sand he wanted to put into a bottle and keep forever; something he had fought for with bloodied knuckles and a cruel mouth. The easy banter, light shoves, sharp tongues, and wide smiles; he held it all in his open palm and vowed never to let go.
Being real; it was a weird feeling. It wasn’t easy, but Neil never expected it to be; he had lungs full of hope and veins that were slowly untangling. It was enough.