by Kat Helgeson
Humber River. Please pass along my contact information
to your friend Stephanie, along with this check for your incidentals while you are her guest. We understand you’ve taken a sabbatical from school. You’re welcome in our home, if you’d prefer that, until you’re ready to go back.
Spike and Thomas miss you...
xoxo
Aunt Jane
I think this is the last method I HAVEN’T tried to reach you. Can you just let me know if you’re okay? I promise I won’t bother you after that. I just...fuck, Gena.
–J
in Finn’s sketchbook
someday I will write a perfect, epic poem
my magnum opus
and I will name it
tylergirl93 is a cunt.
I'll leave that my legacy, a huge goddamn middle finger to anyone who thinks that
maybe this is for the best
maybe it will be a stronger show now
like anything could possibly be stronger now
like someone dying is like taking a weight off
like a little dot,
a hundred and sixty pound TV-guide-magazine boy
a hundred and thirty scrawny shivering mess in his
brother-figure's arms
a ninety pound man of the house,
now it's gone and the load is a little lighter
instead of
there is one less person to pick up this fucking shithole
of a world
we need everybody
every pair of hands and legs and fists on board to hold us up, bracing arms across arms like cheerleaders in a pyramid
like goddamn warriors.
we need everyone
except maybe tylergirl93
because she's a cunt.
on a carefully folded sheet
of notebook paper
Steven has fingernails that are a little too long and he crushes
Dixie cups
When they're empty.
I like your sneakers,” he says, at the end of the meeting
when it's time for mingling or
for awkward phone-fiddling in the corner
texting nobody
get me out of here
I talked today
told a little story about my parents that might have been true.
Something about a birthday.
I look down at my shoes
Red, high tops, words all over them, french or english or real
I wrote them in with pen times I don't remember
john used to ask me if there were poems on them
like poems were something I could put in a place
like I have any control over where they end up
burned, on a wall in your room, washed down the drain in green
marker slime
now I conquer the world like Steven does his Dixie cup
I think today is
my birthday
on the bottom of Finn’s shoes
if I hear the name jake one more time i'll scream
(if I let myself believe that tyler never will again I'll die)
how do I tell steven that I lost two people
where are the funerals for dead decency
where's the hallmark card to send your parents that says
I miss him all wrong
if parents don't have to exist to be real
why should you
(i'll burn fandom to the ground)
For You:
I have to get out of the house. I can’t take you walking around like the ghost of a stranger. I can’t take listening to you crying in the shower and then whistling while you fix your hair like nothing’s wrong. I can’t deal with the way you’re so on top of everything, except when you’re not and I have to help you in and out of your sweaters and you slump against me and shiver and don’t talk.
And I don’t want to hear any more about Steven. So that’s a thing.
You smiled this morning, and when I asked why, you said you were excited to tell Steven something. I can’t remember the last time you smiled about me.
“He gets me,” you say, the clear implication being that I don’t.
And maybe it makes sense that I don’t, because everything we are, whatever it is, grew out of fandom, and you are raging at fandom. You sign on to your computer for stretches of five or ten or fifteen minutes at a time, click through journals, slam it shut and sit there shaking with fury. I’ve tried to stop you, weirdly and passive aggressively, by piling a bunch of stuff on top of the computer and hoping you won’t think about it if it’s not out in the open, but that doesn’t work. And maybe I should be glad you’re feeling something so straightforward. But somehow, angry at fandom just feels like angry at me.
“Out of the house” in this case means Charlie’s bar. I’ve been here for about fifteen minutes, and of course he can’t come straight over. He keeps making little hand gestures that are meaningful between us – tugging his ear, biting his knuckle, this customer is an ass, I’m glad you’re here.
Okay. Here he comes, with a beer I can’t afford. Good thing he can tap it out for free. We need every damn dollar because your hospital bill came today. Happy belated birthday, I guess. Even after Up Below’s insurance, the copay is more than I’ve ever seen on a bill, ever. It’s going to wipe out our savings, and I have no idea where the money’s going to come from for your Zyprexa next month.
I’ll have to get a job.
But the thing is that I found your shoes in the trash today, your written-on shoes, twisted so the soles cracked like maybe you didn’t like what you’d written and tried to crumple them up like paper, and I’m freaking out because I left you for an hour to come down here for a beer I can’t afford, so how am I supposed to leave you alone all day? How am I supposed to leave you on bad days?
Today’s not a bad day. Today’s a Steven day.
Steven, with his similar trauma, with his ability to relate to you, Steven who understands. Steven who I sent you to because I couldn’t help.
And I know that’s the point of the group, and I feel awful. That’s the whole reason I wanted you to go, isn’t it? If Steven’s helping you, I want you to have him. I want you to get better.
No. I wanted you to go so you’d get better enough to talk to me. You’re my best friend. I thought I was the one who understood you.
God, how selfish. I am the worst person I know.
That’s a self-indulgent statement if there ever was one. I’m not the worst person I know. I’m jealous and insecure and I miss my best friend, and this is nothing I haven’t done to you every time I prioritized Charlie. I’m not awful. I’m just sad.
Why can’t Steven be there to help you out with the trauma stuff, and I’ll still be your go-to person for...
For what? Fandom? You need a trauma buddy now, and you don’t need me, except to pay for therapy and drugs (and apparently a new pair of shoes).
It’s not gonna matter anyway if we can’t figure out where to get the money to keep you in group. And despite my fucked up conflicted feelings, I do want you to stay in group.
Charlie’s smiling and making drink your beer gestures, why is he fucking amazing, so what the hell. The beer is cold and light and feels like being irresponsible with everyone’s heart.
So...
God.
I shouldn’t have gone out.
I got home about
an hour ago. You were sitting in the middle of a pile of broken laptop components, trying unsuccessfully to break a piece of casing in your hands and crying.
“Finn?”
“Yeah?”
“Did I do it?”
“Break the laptop? Yeah, baby. It’s okay.”
“No...”
“It’s okay, Evie.”
You let me sit you down on the stool in the bathroom and wash your face and hands, take down your ponytail, brush your hair, get you ready for bed. Now you’re just staring at the wall and acting like I’m not here, which I guess I might as well not be. But I’m not going to leave you alone again tonight.
Charlie got in about ten minutes ago and stuck his head in here, but I sent him away. Tonight it’s just you and me. He kissed us both before he left, and left behind a brown leather journal with a cat on it.
It’s much nicer than mine, and I’m jealous (for a change, ha), but Charlie says it’s for you.
Maybe we won’t have to get you new shoes after all.
in Charlie’s notebook
My favorite fics were the ones where you were cold.
I could have read those a hundred times
read each individual one
a hundred times
some of them I did, over and over
bad writing, trite cliches, the same tropes in all of them
it was the tropes that I liked.
It was you shivering that I liked
The ones where you were cold had Tyler with a down jacket ready to
wrap you up
they had pretty frozen fingers
scared eyes
sometimes your hair would be wet
sometimes you'd have a fever, hot really
but cold to your bones
and no one could warm you up.
But Tyler would never stop trying.
Those were my favorites.
that doesn't mean that there weren't times
that I set you on fire
I saw it
that's the thing
I saw smoke coming from that light
and I thought to myself
okayokayokay
you don't smell burning plastic mannequin skin fake LA
plastic reality machines
you don't hear anything starting to burn and whistle
you don't see smoke coming from that light
I could have pulled a fucking fire alarm
a poet
should like irony.
it matters less than what I wrote about
your shivering is bigger than my shallow breathing and your burning alive
I scrape feelings out of your grave
making out with a tv screen
I prefer delusions
I prefer poems
with pretty line breaks
and timing
it's just that I'm waking up in the middle of the night
invisible hands on my throat, invisible smoke in my lungs
not shiveringwaiting for
a part of me
to like it
in Charlie’s notebook
after group
Steven and I lie in the grass outside the rec center
waiting for finn to pull up
he taps my nose with the stem of a dandelion
What show was it again?” he says
I tell him
or I tell him the name.
I don't watch much TV,” he says, not like
he's judging me, not like
it matters really, just like
it's a useless fact about him
a color hair he doesn't have
something he doesn't think about
a person he doesn't know
"TV raised me,"” I say, and I tell him about learning sex from Boy Meets World
drugs from Degrassi
family from Man of the House
He's never heard of any of them
a hundred voices in my head
and here is a boy who has never heard of any of me
I go home and kiss Finn's shoulders and pretend it is all
the parts of her
in Charlie’s notebook
Hi Gena. You left this in the kitchen and I thought you might want it. I’ll be playing Halo if you need anything.
—Charlie
I'm here but you're not. invisHalo! --Gena
I took out the trash!!
Where the hell did YOU go, is the question.
Well. This seems like an opportunity for a treasure hunt. Let’s see how quickly you find this.
gena was on the fire escape
the question is
WHERE AM I
--notebook
Notebook,
Are you sentient? You must know so many secrets. Tell me everything.
—Charlie
do my pages know secrets?
let's see if they do
if you've found where i'm hiding
you've found the next clue
--notebook
I found you in
my tv tower
after searching for
a fucking hour
but the question is
as questions be
did you note what was
underneath me?
uh. what?
for the ease
of your finding
i've slipped the clue under
a door so sliding
this picture’s from the set of man of the house
it must have been the day you shot that thanksgiving scene
I remember your ugly sweater
is that why you were crying?
in fact it was!
i didn't know you watched.
Zack was my age, and it was a family show.
We always watched on holidays.
My mom used to say you were cute.
my mom said i had too-big eyes like a bug.
they still call me that.
if you’re a bug you’re a Tardigrade
which is a super tough bug that can survive in a vacuum
(I just Googled that.)
i used to think that
about surviving in vacuums
i used to live like that.
shrunk up and vacuum-sealed.
put me anywhere.
why do you write poems on your shoes?
in retrospect, it’s dumb to think it was only because
no one had ever gotten you a notebook
so if people try to read them when i don't want them to
i can kick them in the face
god. it's a bad day.
I’ll make you macaroni and cheese with bacon for dinner.
If you don’t like bacon you can always pick it out, which will
be adventurous.
i do.
the truth is
we were friends when we were little because we were together
we were friends because people told us to be friends
conveniently i loved him and i think he loved me
but we didn't talk for ten years,
and we had some nice emails before he died
and i told him i was in love with your girlfriend'
the truth is
i didn't know him that well
and in the middle i had jake.
how do you NOT be a fangirl? how do you not do it?
how do you just love one person
how do you just choose everyone's real person.
you don’t.
the truth is
your heart is stronge
r than you think it is
and bigger than you think it is
the truth is
loving someone isn’t a period
it’s a semicolon
and the choice you make is what comes
on the other side
maybe it’s a picket fence and a subaru and 2.5 kids
maybe it’s a fantasy world that lives in your computer
maybe it’s a guild
maybe it’s a fandom
maybe it’s the last thing you ever expected
loving someone means whatever you decide it means
that’s the choice
really
i love you charlie
are you gonna watch the premiere with us?
if you want me.
I’d love to.
carefully folded, tucked in the back of Charlie’s notebook
our counselor says
you didn't get to choose what happened to you
you don't get to choose if it still hurts you
you get to choose if you put it in your sentence about yourself.
So here is my sentence.
I love you, Zack
and fuck all the rest of it.
from: Joan Bartlett
to: Finn Bartlett
date: Monday, November 3 10:14 AM
subject: Girls shopping day!
Dear Stephanie,
Angie and Lydia were here last weekend. We all went shopping. I’ve attached a picture of them holding up their new sundresses. We all missed you and wished you were here. Will we see you soon?
I got a seed packet from my subscription service in the mail. Sunflowers. I’m thinking of planting them in their own little patch in the backyard, but sunflowers are kind of garish, aren’t they? I wonder what you think. Would that be too dramatic? Do you think the neighbors would complain?
