Yesterday (a few hours after the police precinct)

“But his Aunt doesn’t want him to stay with her?”

Abel’s mom did her best to keep her voice down, but the incredulous note kept dragging the register up. Theo scooped up another spoonful of his yogurt parfait, making sure to get a heap of strawberries and crunchy granola. She kept glancing in his direction like she wanted to make sure he could not hear her, even though he could. But for some reason, being crazy made people think he was deaf or couldn’t understand adult conversation.

She probably thought he was having a full-blown conversation with his shark plushie since he was staring it dead in the beady little plastic eyes while he ate his snack. He shrugged at it like oh well, what can you do? When he glanced up, he saw her eyes dart away.

Abel twisted to add the shirt he had been folding to the pile of clean laundry on top of the dryer. “No, but I didn’t plan on leaving him with her anyway.”

“No?” His mom was leaning against the doorway to the laundry room between Abel and Theo, who sat on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. His hair dripped onto his neck, soaking the collar of the shirt Abel let him borrow after stuffing him into a shower to ‘get the hospital smell off you, Jesus.’ Now Abel was throwing a bunch of clothes into bags to pack the car so they could drive to his aunt’s house.

Because, apparently, Theo needed to have an ID. When he insisted that he could not drive anyway, Abel patiently explained that a state ID was different from a driver’s license. Theo did not understand why it was important to have one. He was just happy that Abel wanted anything to do with him, so he would go along with anything he said.

“What is he going to do then?” Abel’s mom asked him.

“I’m going to take care of him,” Abel told her. “The first step is to get him an ID. Then, we can figure it out from there.”

“Are you…” She tilted her head, lips pressed together, and lifted her hands in surrender. “Look, when I said I was happy because it seemed like you had finally found someone, I didn’t realize it was…” She glanced toward Theo again, “He belongs somewhere that can help him. Is he even able to have a normal relationship?”

“He knows enough to make his own decisions. And it’s not like I’m going to fuck him over. I treat him right, Mom, and he knows enough to realize that.”

“But, you…”

“Look, Mom,” The shirt Abel was folding collapsed between his hands as he dropped them to the top of the dryer with a thud, “He called me, alright. I’m not going to leave him hanging. He has literally nothing else because he relied on that fuckhead for everything.”

He looked over his mom’s shoulder and met Theo’s eyes, which widened and dropped back to his shark.

“You don’t even have your own place,” his mom hissed. “If you think I’m going to be okay with—”

“I’ve had enough saved up to move out for years.” Abel went back to folding the shirt in his hands. “As soon as we get back, I’ll look into apartments.”

Abel’s mom rubbed a hand across her forehead, defeated for now. She glanced over at Theo again, then started to approach him. He sat up a little straighter and fought the urge to grab his shark and cradle it against his chest. Instead, he braced an elbow on the counter and casually poked around in his parfait.

“So…Theo,” she sat beside him and smiled. He smiled back because he was in her house, and she was Abel’s mother, and that was what you did when people smiled at you. It always seemed to make everyone feel more at ease. It never really made Theo feel at ease. He preferred people to show him exactly how they were, but he knew she was just trying to be polite, not patronizing.

“How are you feeling?” she asked because what the hell else was she going to ask? Even this was terrible. If he were not trying to be nice because this was Abel’s mom, he would have laughed in her face. Instead, he took the question seriously, not even answering with the little “I’m fine” that maybe she expected and would be totally, absolutely, unequivocally false.

“I’m better than I was last night,” he told her. He still felt like a singular raw nerve about to snap, but it was daytime now, and the previous night felt like it had been an entire month ago in an alternate universe. The past few years felt like an alternate universe when he sat in Abel’s mother’s house eating parfait. “This yogurt is good. Thanks for letting me eat it and letting me use your shower.”

He wanted to say thanks for giving birth to a wonderful person like Abel, but he held himself back. She already thought he was weird enough. Her smile tightened as if it was growing more challenging to keep it on her face. Something about him thanking her made her uncomfortable. He ducked his head and scooped another spoonful into his mouth.

“Has anybody asked you what you want to do next?” she asked.

“Mom,” Abel admonished from the laundry room.

“I don’t know,” Theo told her honestly, letting his fake smile drop. He really did not know. He had not been a real person for a long time—if he could ever have claimed to be one. He was a pet who’d been kept in captivity, and now that the cage was unlocked, he hardly even knew how to leave through the open door. She made a face like she was thinking the same thing.

The parfait suddenly was far less appetizing. He dropped the spoon into it and pushed it away. He could not even have a normal conversation with a regular person. And he knew this lady, as nice as she was, disapproved of her son taking care of him. That much was clear. Because Theo was an adult and should not need to be taken care of. But it was always so nice when Abel made him feel like everything would be okay. He forgot sometimes that relying on somebody else like that was not acceptable.

“I need to use the restroom,” he told her with another quick smile, far less convincing than the first one. Then he grabbed his shark and hurried down the hallway to the bathroom. It was still muggy from the shower he had taken. Condensation clung to the mirror despite the fan that began to run as soon as he turned the light on.

He did not have to pee, but he had not lied. He needed the privacy of the restroom to center himself. Sometimes, with Abel, he forgot that he was awkward at best while interacting casually with others when he was not actively self-sabotaging. Abel was patient and always made it seem like what Theo said and did was reasonable. And if he did obviously think Theo was being odd, he never acted like it was a negative thing. He was so comfortable to be around. Other normal people were terrifying, though.

He stood there and massaged his shark between his hands for a little while. Then he flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and crept back out. Abel had finished the laundry and joined his mom in the kitchen. Theo hovered in the hallway, still mostly out of sight, not wanting to interrupt their conversation.

“You’re telling me that the cops told you he belonged in an institution?” His mom’s hip was propped against the counter so she could lean toward Abel while he dumped a box of granola bars into a bag of snacks for the car ride. Again, she probably thought she was keeping her voice low enough. But she was not.

“Since when have you ever given a shit what cops say?” Abel tossed the empty box in the recycling bin with a weary expression.

“I’m just saying that maybe they knew what they were talking about this time,” she said, hands emphasizing her words. “He just killed his boyfriend, but he seems fine to me. Smiling and everything.”

“Mom, come on.” Abel braced his hands on the counter and leaned heavily on them, shoulder blades popping beneath his shirt. “You didn’t see Dad having a mental breakdown every time he came home from a job he did for Dario. Did that mean he needed to be in a mental institution?”

“Maybe.” She lifted her chin.

Abel dropped his head and sighed. “Besides. You didn’t see him at the station.”

“I still just think- “

“He’s been cooped up in that asshole’s hellhole where he couldn’t make his own decisions for a long time, alright?” Abel stood up and crossed his arms. “I’m not going to stick him in somewhere they are going to do the same thing to him – drug him and tell him what to think all day long. Maybe someone should listen to what he wants for once.”

“He doesn’t know what he wants. You’re telling him what to do,” his mom pointed out. “It’s not like he asked you to take him on this little road trip.”

“No, not specifically. But he asked the police to contact me. He trusts me, and I’m not about to throw him in an insane asylum like he’s some abused dog who needs to go back to a shelter because he’s too aggressive to be placed with a family, alright? Let me try with him first, goddamn.”

Theo stroked his shark and thought about all the times that Ken told him he was insane, he should be locked up, and he should be grateful that someone took time out of their life to put up with his nonsense. He had constantly threatened to have Theo committed if he threw too many temper tantrums. Maybe he had been right. It seemed like he was driving a wedge between Abel and his mom just by being here.

But Abel spotted him hovering in the hallway and gestured for him to come into the room. “Are you done with your yogurt?”

Theo looked over at the little half-eaten cup on the counter. He nodded and looked back at Abel, keeping his eyes from straying to Abel’s mom.

“Good,” Abel nodded, closing the snack bag and putting it with the duffle of clothes he had just put together. “Let’s get going, then.”