“It’s not broken, Kid. It just needs to right itself.”
“That’s absurdly profound.”
“I try.”
“Everyone’s probably waiting for us, huh?”
“At the Green Monstrosity? Probably. But they can wait as long as you need.”
I shake my head. “Nah. I’m okay.” The rolling panic has been pushed away.
For now, it whispers.
Bear slides his arm off my shoulders, and I turn to head back up the beach. Corey and Otter stand at the top of the hill in the rain, watching us.
“Ty,” Bear says from behind me. I turn back. He’s watching the ocean.
“What?”
“You don’t have to see him while we’re here. You know that, right?”
Damn you, Bear. “Oh?” I ask innocently. “He still lives here?” Like I didn’t know that already.
Bear’s not fooled, but he lets it slide. Say what you will about him, but he’s grown into something extraordinary. “Sure, Kid. Still lives here. Still a cop.”
“Good for him.” I walk away, back toward the car.
It doesn’t matter. I’ve moved on from something that was never there to begin with. That’s one of the dire things about escaping from childhood. Eventually you grow up and realize the things you wanted when you were young weren’t really yours to ask for.
I know that now.
The sun peeks through the clouds above as I reach the car, and for better or worse, I have come home.
7. Where Tyson Gives a History Lesson
I KNOW, I know.
Tyson, you’re thinking. What in the blue fuck is going on? What’s with all the angst? The crazy voice in your head? The cliché standing in the rain on the beach and having a meltdown? Who do you think you are? Your brother?
The irony isn’t lost on me, trust me. As much as I told myself that things would be different for me, essentially I’ve turned into the former Bear McKenna.
Hysterical, I know. It’s like the people who say they’ll never be their parents and then wake up one morning thirty years later saddled with an upside-down mortgage, a rebellious teenager who alternates between hot and cold and says things like “You don’t know what it’s like to be me,” middle-aged, fat, and with thinning hair who wonder why there seem to be more and more empty wine bottles in the house because they didn’t drink that much wine with dinner last night, a cubicle job that is essentially a soul-sucking concubine thinly veiled as a necessary livelihood, and a sex life labeled as “do not resuscitate.”
I never thought it could get to be this bad. I never thought it would actually get this far. I don’t know how it happened. One minute I’m hearing Dom shout my name through the phone as my delusional, self-centered world comes crashing down around me, and the next, it’s four years later and I’m coming home for the first time. I haven’t spoken to Dom since, though not for his lack of trying. The daily phone calls went on for a time. He showed up in New Hampshire a few times, not that I ever saw him. He was always intercepted by Bear, who would come out with teeth and claws bared.
Therapy started up again shortly after that phone call. Getting an official diagnosis of panic disorder was both a relief and a disappointment. The relief stemmed from the idea that finally whatever was wrong with me had a name, because sure as shit it was something more than just panic attacks. The disappointment came from the fact that whatever was wrong with me actually had a name, that it wasn’t something I’d manufactured in my head or simply a product of my overactive imagination. No, I, Tyson James Thompson, am afflicted with panic disorder, which explains the panic attacks themselves.
If you don’t have these attacks, then it’s kind of hard to explain them so you can understand what exactly happens to me when they hit. The best way I’ve heard of describing them is that essentially it feels like you’re drowning in a vast ocean, and you can see the surface but it’s too far away and so you just drown, drown, drown.
Again, the irony of my life is not lost on me.
But it’s also the earthquakes. Times a billion.
With the therapy came the drugs, and with the drugs came Drone Tyson, the one whose eyes were slightly dead, whose thoughts were muddled and murky. Drone Tyson didn’t have the panic attacks, at least not as many and nowhere near the intensity, but Drone Tyson didn’t have much else either. Those are a hazy six months that I don’t quite remember, to the point in which pills started disappearing at a rate faster than they should have, because the high I got was better than the encroaching panic. Part of me knew what was going on, knew I was drowning in an ocean just the same, but I could find little reason to care. I woke up, took a pill. Three hours later, I’d take another. And then another. And then another.
Sure, Doctor, I’d say during the therapy sessions. Let’s talk about my feelings. Let’s discuss how betrayed I feel, though it’s not my right. Let’s talk about how embarrassed I am about my actions. Let’s talk about how he belonged to me, though he never really did. Let’s talk about how smart I am, how I can solve almost every kind of mathematical equation put before me, how I can tell you the chemical formula for caesium acetate (C2H3CsO2). Let me tell you that one day, I want to find a definitive intervention for strokes so no one can ever be taken from the ones who love them the most ever again.
But honestly, Doc? Let’s really talk. Let’s talk about how naïve I really am. Let’s talk about how there was this guy, this boy I knew. This boy I’d met when I was nothing but a Kid, who I thought was going to be there forever, who I thought was going to be mine forever. Can we, Doc? Can we talk about how, other than Bear and Otter, Dominic was the only other thing I needed in my life? I love Anna. I love Creed. I love JJ. They are my family. But Bear is mine. Otter is mine. Dominic is…. well. Dominic isn’t.