Four Years Ago

“I’m leaving tonight, Sebastian.” I declared. My heart pounded and my stomach churned, and that discomfort matched the burning in my legs I had from walking all the way here. 

I’d have to walk even further if I was to get where I needed to go tonight. But not now. Not yet.

I looked up at him and caught his gaze, his dark brown eyes narrowed in confusion. 

“Wh-what do you mean leaving?” His voice was sharp, desperate. Reaching out with clawed hands to hold me closer and never let me go.

But I stepped back, away from the claws.

“I’m leaving. L-e-a-v-“ I began, but he cut me off, waving a hand.

“I know what it means, El, I want to know why.” His voice was jagged. He sounded hurt. 

A part of me felt guilty for making him feel that way, I didn’t want him to feel bad.

But the other part of me was angry. Who was he to be hurt over this? He had barely cast me a passing glance in the hall in the last two weeks, while I was dealing with this whole mess alone.

Who was he to be hurt when I was the one with the knife in my back?

So I didn’t care how he felt.

Yet there I was, standing next to his open window on a humid August night telling him I was leaving face to face. So maybe I did care. Maybe I cared a lot. I only wished I didn’t.

“You know why. It’s not safe for me here anymore, Seb. My…my parents are gonna send me away. They think they can ‘fix me.’” My words ached as I said them, as if I had pressed my thumb against the fresh bruise on my heart. He just looked at me with those beautiful brown eyes of his….doing nothing, saying nothing.

The silence said nothing either, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. 

“I….please…don’t go.” His voice shook as he spoke, tender as a fresh wound. His eyes were shining, and I couldn’t even tell if it was tears or just the way the light was shining through the window.

For a moment I considered it.

But which did I value more, him or my freedom? My future? My life?

….is it bad that it took me a second to decide?

“I can’t- no!” I cried out, as loud as I could without being loud enough to disturb his sleeping parents. 

“Why not?”

“You don’t understand, Sebastian! If I stay then they’ll…they’ll kill me!”

“What?!” He exclaimed, eyes going wide.

“Not, not like that.” I sighed, rubbing my hands over my eyes. “They’ll…turn me into someone I’m not. They’ll kill the real me so they don’t have to see him anymore. They’ll let me die just because I’m not what they wanted.”

He said nothing, gaze drifting to the floor. He knew it was true. He’d seen the way I’d been treated these last few weeks since….

For a moment I had doubts. I didn’t want to lose him, but I couldn’t stay, because I’d lose myself. So it was him or me. Unless…

Slowly, I reached out to him and took his hands in mine, looking up to meet his gaze.

Please, please, please-

“Come with me. Run away with me.” I whispered, voice so desperate and full of emotion I nearly cringed hearing it.

For a moment he looked like he was considering it. His eyes shone with more than just tears, more than just hope, they shone like for a moment he was imagining our lives together, away from all this and away from here. 

Then his hands slipped out of mine and he took a step back, further into the dark.

“No.” He said simply, shattering my heart into pieces with just one heartless word. 

I nearly scoffed, but instead chose to take one of his earlier statements and throw it back at him, just because I knew it would hurt. I wanted it to hurt. “Why not?”

He winced. “I…I have a life here. I can’t give it up.”

“And you think I can give up mine?”

“That's different!” He cried, eyes wide and watery. His hair was still messy from sleep, the sleep I had interrupted him from to tell him I was leaving. 

For a moment I wanted to envision that this was like other nights, where I came to his house and snuck in through the window to see him under much kinder conditions, to see him smile at me from beneath his messy brown locks. But it wasn’t that. This wasn’t one of those sweet moments I yearned for, things were different. 

And I hadn’t come to visit him in weeks, not since what happened.

“No it’s not!” I hissed, anger beginning to boil my blood. He didn’t understand, he’d never understand.

But he didn’t care to either.

Because he’d abandoned me the moment the truth came out.

Right at that second, a floorboard creaked across the house. The familiar sound of footsteps slowly approaching met my ears, and I took a panicked step back. 

If his parents caught me, I was doomed! 

“I-I have to go. I’m sorry Sebastian. Goodbye.” I said quickly, turning back to the window, throwing my leg over the sill and beginning to crawl outside.

“Wait!” He gasped, grabbing my arm. His eyes were wide, pleading, dare I say desperate. “When…when will I see you again?”

His words stung. He wanted to see me again? But I’ve been here, begging for him to see me for weeks and he turned a blind eye! 

Why do you only care about me when it’s convenient for you to? I would never have abandoned you if you were in my situation. Why did you do that to me?

I met his gaze with a heavy heart. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

With that, I pulled away from him and dropped back out into the night.

Snatching up my bag from where I had tossed it next to his window, I threw it over my shoulder and began to run. The warmth from his hand on my arm lingered for longer than I wished it did, and I am ashamed to say that I clung to that warmth for a moment, heart pounding as the reality of what I was doing set in. 

I was terrified, and I wished I wasn’t doing this alone, but I knew what I had to do. 

So I did it.

I didn’t turn back to see him stare after me, I didn’t see him reach out and pull back, closing the window and even locking it before slipping back into bed like nothing had ever happened.

Because surely to him it didn’t. My life was the one falling apart, not his. All he had to do was lie back and act like it never happened. Like I never existed.

I only saw the crumbling asphalt beneath my ratty sneakers as I ran as fast as I could away from the only home I had ever known, in hopes it would allow me a tomorrow.

And as I would soon realize the next morning, a tomorrow I would have.

It just wasn’t as bright as I thought.

-

“Tomorrow”

So I found myself sitting on a blow-up mattress on the floor of what used to be my bedroom and would now just be a room in someone else’s house, bouncing my leg and tugging at my hair as I thought about everything that had and was about to happen to me.

Just one year.

That’s all it was. Next September we would be back home and I’d never have to think about that horrible town again.

A deep ache welled back up within me and I squeezed my eyes closed, flopping back onto the mattress and digging my nails into my backpack strap.

It hurt like hell, but I was used to it by now. I had to be, what else could I be after two years of it? 

“How you doin’ kiddo? All packed?” My Uncle's voice broke through my spiral of anxieties, and I looked over to see him lean back against the doorway, running a hand through his dark hair and sighing. 

“Just about.” I replied, sitting up. “Just putting the last few things into my backpack.”

He shot me a soft, tired smile and walked over, mattress dipping with his weight as he took a seat beside me. 

“I’m sorry about all this. I know you don’t want to go back.” He frowned, voice solemn. I didn’t meet his gaze.

“I’m not upset, Unc, I promise.” I said, my voice quivering slightly. I wasn’t lying per se, not entirely at least. I was upset to go back…just not at him. If I said I was upset he’d blame himself and…he didn’t need to know.

It was just a bad situation. It wasn’t his fault. 

But that didn’t mean I was happy about it. We had to go back to Hyacinth Creek.

A lot had changed in the last four years, a lot that I wish didn’t. 

After running away from home that one night in August, I found myself states away on the doorstep of my estranged Uncle Rory, a man I had known when I was younger and had known to be kind. My best (and only) option.

He took me in. Well, after a legal battle involving parental rights and guardianship that ended well over a year after it began when my biological parents signed away their parental rights. Sometimes I wonder how they could just give up on me so easily but…I guess they just got tired of fighting to change me. They must’ve figured it would be better if I just wasn’t around. …I don’t really like thinking about that. 

My Uncle did everything he could to support and care for me since the night I found myself on his doorstep. 

Helping me get on testosterone, taking me to therapy, helping me figure out a new name-

“Alright, Jet, if you say so.” He shrugged, looking down at his hands.

Oh, that’s not my name. My name is Ellis. It’s not that different from my deadname, but I feel like it fits me. 

Jet is just my uncle's nickname for me that stuck around after I started my ‘emo phase’ as he calls it. 

I just like black clothes, I think they’re pretty cool and they look slimming. Doesn’t matter how badly my binder fits if you can’t even see anything, after all!

My point is, things were good after I left Hyacinth Creek. Well, not at first, they got good after a while.

And then two years ago everything changed again.

I got sick. Or something. That’s just what I call it. What else can I call it? 

I tried to ignore it as long as I could, but when I stopped trying to ignore it, it seemed like the people around me wanted to ignore it, teachers and nurses and doctors alike either not believing me at all or just not taking me seriously enough to do anything useful.

Eventually something changed. Suddenly my doctors listened, people cared. My Uncle took me to specialist after doctor after specialist after doctor but nothing came of it.

Months long waiting times for appointments and I always left with tears in my eyes and words ringing in my ears.

‘We don’t know what’s wrong with you.’ 

‘Have you tried drinking more water?’

‘Are you sure this couldn’t be caused by your testosterone?’ 

‘You’re probably just out of shape.’

‘It’s probably just growing pains.’

But it didn’t matter that they never helped. The medical bills didn’t care if the doctors did anything. And they kept coming.

My Uncle did everything he could to support us, everything he could to keep us here and help me. 

But sometimes everything isn’t enough.

We couldn’t afford to stay here anymore, not if I wanted to continue going to doctors and seeking the help I needed.

We had only one option. 

Go back to Hyacinth Creek.

Unlike me, my uncle still knew people there, and he had connections that allowed him to secure a nice new job. But it was only temporary, he said. For a year while the company he works with opens up a new branch over here and it takes us back home.

Or something. 

I don’t know, all I heard was ‘moving’, ‘one year’, and ‘Hyacinth Creek’. That’s all I needed to know.

I told him it was fine. What else could I say? That I’d rather die than go back there? He was doing all this for me, to ensure I had an actual future to look forward to!

I couldn’t tell him the truth, not after all he’d done for me. 

So every time I felt horrible about all this, I thought of him and all he’d done to help me.

I thought of what I had planned to do to repay him for all he had done.

And I thought about how quickly time flies, how fast a year can go by if you just…blur your eyes and squint a little bit.

So it was fine.

“Moving truck comes tomorrow, then we are outta here, dude.” He said from beside me, forcing a smile onto his face as if to try and spark some excitement in me for this new beginning.

I wasn’t excited. At all. 

No matter how much my Uncle insisted that sometimes bad things just happen and nobody is to blame, I knew he was just saying that.

If I hadn’t gotten sick we wouldn’t have the medical bills to pay.

Just because he told me not to blame myself didn’t mean I would listen. He just didn’t want me to feel bad. We both knew whose fault this was.

“What about school?” I found myself saying. “They’re not gonna be…weird about me or anything, right?”

My Uncle shook his head. “Everything is sorted out with them, don’t worry. If anyone gives you any trouble, you send ‘em to me and I’ll set ‘em straight.”

I laughed softly, smile blooming on my lips for a brief moment. “Okay, okay, thanks, Rory. I…it means a lot to me.”

“I know it does, bud.” The bed shifted again as he stood up, stretching and turning back to look down at me. “I figured I’d just order pizza tonight, since all the pots and pans are packed. Besides, who wants to cook right before moving day?”

“Mhm, sounds good.” I said, smile fading from my face. 

Then I turned towards the window, gazing out at the darkening sky. One last night here…the thought made me sick.

“I’ll…I’ll leave you to it. I’ll let you know when the food gets here.” He said, closing the door as he left the room. 

So I was plunged back into silence, drowning within my own thoughts.

I’d spend my entire senior year of high school there. Hyacinth Creek High School. For years I’d looked forward to going there when I grew up, and now…mmm….

I wondered if anyone would recognize me. I hoped not. I didn’t really look similar to how I used to after all.

But…even if I did look similar, I had no plans to get close to anyone. Not close enough that they’d be able to recognize me as the kid who ran away four years ago.

So I didn’t have to worry.

Everything would be fine.

It had to be.

And yet…I still felt torn up inside.

I didn’t know what would happen next, maybe that’s what killed me.

Not knowing.

Tomorrow everything would change, and I was leaving my life behind and putting everything on hold. 

How was I meant to feel about that?

It was hard to sleep that night, same as every night. 

My mind was so full of worries that it felt hard to breathe.

It remained like that when we packed the truck - though my uncle insisted I not push myself by trying to help him.

It remained like that as we drove down long, familiar roads, wind whipping through my hair.

It remained like that when we drove into town, every street so familiar I could’ve directed my uncle around with my eyes closed.

It remained like that when we pulled up to the new house, when we walked inside, when we moved stuff in, and all the way to that night.

As I spread the blankets over my bed, I tried to force myself to feel okay about all of this. I tried to imagine things being good here, this being a new start.

I imagined where I’d put my posters, which side of the wall I’d lean my bed up against. I tried to imagine myself having a life here, being happy here, even if just for a little while.

But as I went to bed that night, lying beneath an unfamiliar ceiling in an all too familiar town, I knew I couldn’t lie to myself.

I dreaded the next morning.