Today (Late Afternoon)

The cemetery was very large. Theo clutched the paper with his aunt’s directions in his hands and sat tense in the passenger seat, leaning forward to look over the dash. Wide expanses of grass were dotted with marbled gray headstones, matte for the most part but sometimes glossy and flashing beneath the hot afternoon sun. Among them were bright spots of color from wreaths, bouquets, and striped American flags that hung limp in the dead air. A few old, lumbering oaks and mausoleums towered over the rest of the residents.

This was a place of silence. Theo was not sure if he was afraid or not. The dead were quite different from demons, who shrieked and moaned and begged for attention at all times. They were silent and often forgotten. He had pushed his parents right out of his life and had not heard a peep from them since. Even his memories were hazy save a few select moments. Silent.

But every single gravestone had a shadow. The sun no longer hung directly overhead but was nearly halfway through its descent. So, the shadows were stretching ever longer. But in such a vast open space, they did not seem as intimidating as in the alleys between tall buildings. Besides, demons would not want to come here. They do not wish to possess decaying, silent bodies.

“Do you think that there are any demons here?” Theo asked for Abel’s opinion.

He did not answer right away, instead focusing on pulling the car to the side of the gravel driveway because they had apparently arrived. Abel knew this without having to look at the directions slowly being crumpled in Theo’s hands because he was the type of person who could hear instructions once and remember them perfectly. Capable.

The car slowed to a stop, and he put it into the park. Then, with his lips pressed together, he looked at Theo. It was the look he had whenever he was deciding how to word what he was going to say because he thought it might upset Theo. Who so very often was easily upset.

“It just would be nice,” Theo said by way of explanation, which would probably make him look even crazier, but Abel never got mad at him when he rambled, “if after we died, they would leave us alone.”

Abel hummed. “Are you worried that demons are bothering your parents?”

Theo swallowed. He did not know. Even when Abel popped open his door and got out of the car, he stayed frozen in his seat. When Abel knocked on the passenger window, he stared straight ahead and ignored him, heart hammering in his chest. The passenger door opened.

“If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to,” Abel crouched beside him, shoes crunching in the gravel. “I can just put the flowers on their grave for you.”

“I should…” Theo started and stopped, then started again, “I never…” Then blew out a frustrated breath. “I should say goodbye.”

Abel was chewing on his lip. Theo watched him out of the corner of his eye as he carefully reached forward, telegraphing his movement, to place his hand over Theo’s. The paper instructions now lay shredded all over his lap.

“Okay,” Abel said in his low, soothing voice, which meant he wanted Theo to trust him implicitly, even if Theo did not feel like he could. “I think that when you visit your parents, you should have the right mindset, or you might regret it, so I just want to check in with you. You know that the demons are not real, right?”

Theo did not. But he understood what Abel meant. He wanted to make sure Theo knew they were in his head and not real to other people. That he was not having one of his episodes where he was more in his head than in the present and was liable not to remember much of what they did.

He nodded.

“All right,” Abel continued in his soothing tone. “Just…we can always come back tomorrow before leaving town if you would rather.”

“No,” Theo sighed, trying to release some of the awful tension in his chest. “The flowers are fresh. We should…”

He trailed off and breathed for a few seconds.

“I need you to unbuckle your seatbelt for yourself,” Abel told him. “If you can’t do that, it's all right. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

Theo envisioned his hands moving. They brushed the confetti instructions off his lap and into the footwell of the car. Then they released the seatbelt and moved it out of the way so he could step out of the car. Then he was standing on the gravel beside Abel, grass poking through the sharp pebbles where it had begun to creep into the road.

“Good,” Abel brushed some of Theo’s hair away from his forehead, then ducked to kiss it.

The sun was warm on Theo’s face. He closed his eyes and looked at how it made his eyelids pink and veiny. Abel reached into the back seat to retrieve the bouquet they had bought from a roadside stand, where a guy had buckets of bouquets in the back of his pick-up. The plastic crinkled in his hand as he slammed the car door shut.

“You ready?”

Theo opened his eyes. He was not, but it was time. He took the flowers and threaded their fingers together so that he could follow along as Abel led the way, guided by the directions he had imprinted in his perfect brain.

They stopped at what would otherwise appear to be a random grave. It hardly looked different from the ones to the left and right, except it had his parents' names on it. William and Melissa Becker. The death date was the same. A car accident, his aunt said.

It was sad that his mom never managed to get away from Bill, and now her body lay beside his.

Abel bent down to remove the flowers in the little vase before the gravestone. They looked about a week old, not dried up yet, but wilting some. Theo replaced them with the fresh bouquet and stepped back, wrapping his arms around his stomach. It ached terribly.

“People usually say something, don’t they,” he mumbled.

“You don’t have to,” Abel assured him.

He thought about telling his mom that he still had his shark but thought it might upset his dad, so he kept his mouth shut about that. He could not update them much about his life. They wouldn’t be particularly proud of his line of work or that he dropped out of college. In fact, they were probably upset with him. He had stopped answering their calls and refused to say anything to the cop who came to check on him because his mom had filed a missing person report.

What would his life be like if he told that cop he wanted to go home but couldn’t because of Ken? But that would have been a lie. He never really wanted to go home. He just wanted to leave everything behind. To disappear, in general.

“What would you say to them if they were alive?” Abel asked.

“I don’t know,” Theo sighed. “That’s why I never reached out.”

You think they are going to want to talk to you after you ignored them all this time? You’re better off without them anyway. They didn’t really love you anyway. You belong with me.

“I guess I would say I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Abel nudged Theo gently with his shoulder. “I’m sure they would just be happy you are okay.”

Theo was not sure if he agreed but said, “That’s a nice thought.”

A breeze rustled through the huge, wide-canopy tree that sheltered a few graves and a bench nearby. Theo shivered and stared at the empty bench where it sat in the dappled, shifting shade.

“What do you think about going to find something to eat?” Abel drew him back from the empty bench into the sunshine. The shadows were lengthening as the sun descended in the sky. Theo nodded absently, looking at the long lines of darkness stretched out behind each gravestone.

“Yeah,” he reached for Abel’s hand. “I’m hungry.”

Able led him back to the car and stowed him away in the passenger seat. The interior still smelled vaguely flowery, like pollen and delicate, velvety petals. Theo wrinkled his nose and cracked the window when Abel turned the car on.

“You still interested in going to that bar across from the hotel?” Abel asked.

“Only if you are willing to play a game of pool with me if they have pool tables,” Theo lifted his nose to breathe in the fresh air blowing through the crack in the window, closing his eyes as if to savor it, but opening them just a smidgen to watch Abel out of the corner of his vision. Abel was rubbing a hand over his smile and looking away. When Theo sat back in his seat and made an inquiring sound because he had not responded, Abel pretended to be scowling.

“You aren’t going to hustle me out of my car or anything, are you?” he grumbled.

Theo laughed at him.