**Only read this if you've read Dramatic Child Stars!!!!! It had blatant spoilers! This book doesn't even give very good context for the situation so dramatic child stars is a must!!
It occurs after Basil leaves Percy's home in chapter 34, but before Basil returns to find Riley in their home in chapter 35. **
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Riley was dead.
It sounds silly and overtly imaginative to say it, but when the sun rose the following morning I was absolutely shocked to see it. How could the sun rise when Riley was dead? Who gave it permission to do that so flagrantly?
Riley was actually dead.
From the moment Percy told me, the thought just kept cycling over and over again. I couldn't stop thinking it. Nothing else mattered. The fiber of time and space itself had unraveled around me until I couldn't give thought to anything except for the fact that Riley was gone. Dead. No body. No closure. He'd disappeared, and he'd taken everything I thought I knew about myself with him.
I was no stranger to loss. My mothers passing had been horrifying, but it had been slow. I'd gotten used to the idea that it was happening over time. When she died it was the end of something I'd anticipated for a long while. Then Whaya had been taken. That one had been sudden and alarming. I'd held onto the grief for a year before acting out erratically in a way that made me someone I didn't particularly like all that much. When it was over, I'd told myself I would never be that way again.
But from the moment I'd truly met Riley onwards I'd always known I was capable of becoming a dangerous person again. If anything, I knew I was capable of being worse. His existence made it inevitable. I'd known that, as it was a thing I had been conscious of from the beginning.
Riley was dead. Riley had fallen and not come back up. Riley's sister was broken beyond repair. Percy was a deer in the headlights. I was alone.
When I felt my soul touch Riley's in such an inseparable way, I resolved myself to protect him. It was the natural act I assumed I could do in order to keep myself level and functionable. As long as Riley was safe, my heart was also similarly protected.
At the same time, I had recently aligned myself with powers that afforded me protection in other ways too. I was friends with a man in Seattle that I'd never met. That man shipped me tabs and vials of hallucinogens so that I no longer had to risk killing my self in a homemade lab. He promised my safety from God and his ape like friends, and in return I was a loyal customer that passed along information occasionally. I kept my nose clean, and my business discreet. I did not play games with big men anymore and I kept a wide circle of friends that did not often know my actual legal name nor the details of any of my business ventures.
Riley was unfortunately hell bent on being unprotectable.
It's not that he went looking for trouble exactly. He wasn't trying to get himself hurt, at least not any kind of hurt that extended beyond the regular attempts at self harm that came from knowingly engaging in risky substance use. It was just that Riley was too friendly for his own good. Riley was drawn towards broken and sad things. One of Riley's closest friends was a homeless teenager that was hopelessly addicted to coke and pills.
His lifestyle was simply a hazard. I couldn't hold him down. I couldn't demand he make better choices. Part of loving Riley was knowing he wasn't exactly one to listen.
But God had gotten his hands on him. I hadn't watched him closely enough and God entrenched him in the danger.
Riley was dead, and I was about to do something insane in the aftermath.
It took me less than a week to figure out where God lived. I'd been trying to figure it out desperately since Riley first went missing from my home in the middle of the night. My search signaled a marked change. It was somewhere I'd originally promised myself I would not seek out.
I did not need to know where he lived before. After he'd finally agreed to cut me loose, I'd resolved myself to never need to know again. We would live outside of each others scope. It wouldn't be good for me to know. Knowing invited me to act and I didn't want to act. I wanted no part of any of it.
Until he touched my Riley. As soon as he took him I started looking. As soon as I was told Riley was killed, I tried immensely harder.
God was hiding from me. He made it difficult on purpose, but I still found him. It had taken mere days.
I also wasn't sleeping. I hadn't slept soundly since that morning on Percy's sofa. I blame that for my lack of awareness, because one second I was walking up the street towards the inconspicuous house on the corner in the southwestern edge of town, and the next I was being restrained from behind by large brutish arms.
He is lucky that he spoke as quickly as he did. One second I was being held with full intentions of stabbing backwards with the knife in my hand, and the next I was frozen as Harrison's voice invaded my ears.
"You are going to get yourself killed," he hissed, dropping his grip slightly, just enough to get me turned around.
I hadn't laid eyes on him in a very long time, but I knew it was him, even in the darkness of the night. Harrison had always been tall and broad, but I felt like I was staring at a mountain of a person, now. I never envisioned how old he'd now look in his twenties. His hair was grown long. His facial hair was scruffy. By comparison I probably looked quite small and unimposing. I'd been blessed to never truly grow hardly anything on my face. I was still lithe and thin.
"Florence," he said sharply, because I was only staring his way, but not speaking. "You are out of your fucking mind if you think he's not expecting you."
"I know he's expecting me," I scoffed.
"Then what the fuck are you doing?"
"I'm going to kill him," I said calmly.
"You can't kill him," a third voice entered.
My blood immediately boiled in my veins. My eyes darted around in search of her, although my scope was limited because Harrison had not fully let me go. Coming up the path in the opposite direction was Adeline.
She looked timid like always. I saw an edge of something like fear or hesitance, but mostly she just looked sad. Percy had described her that way too, when she watched my Riley plunge into the river.
She'd complied to all of that.
"I can," I said coldly in her direction. "And I wouldn't get in my way Addie."
"Flo," she started.
"You're a coward!" I snapped, attempting to face her. Harrison rightfully refused to fully release me. "Get out of here or you'll be on the list too!"
Harrison immediately gripped me harder, so that I couldn't even fully look at her where she stopped several feet away. It looked like she was attempting to hide in a shadow.
"She's my family," he snapped, and because Harrison was my friend and not some random person off the street, there was compassion. He wasn't even upset with me for the threat. His overlying concern was evident instead. "Pull it together Flo. I'm trying to save your life here."
"I didn't ask you to do that," I reminded him sharply.
"You didn't have to," he replied. Then he looked at Adeline, who had managed to work her cowering self up to us out of the shadows despite my threat to kill her. "She's the one that called me and asked me to watch out for you. She knew you'd be coming around the second her dad mentioned that you were connected to him."
I froze at the word him. It didn't matter that Riley's name hadn't come up. The mere mention of his existence was enough to make my brain spiral out of the murderous anger that had brought me there and into a grief stricken anger that would propel me away instead.
"I know he meant something to you," Adeline added on a timid voice. "You wouldn't have inserted yourself in any of this if he didn't. You've been out for way too long otherwise."
I dropped some of the tension out of my shoulders to look her direction. I thought I would yell, but I was actually sharply calm when I spoke.
"You just watched him jump," I said with a gentle shake of my head, like I was reprimanding an unruly school child. I swallowed. "You have never been particularly brave, so that didn't surprise me. I was disappointed, but not shocked."
"Flo," she attempted. "It wasn't right. I know he didn't deserve it."
I shook my head and in the process managed to unravel myself from Harrison's grip. I took two steps back. Harrison followed, but Adeline stayed frozen like her feet had sunk into the concrete.
"You've never been one to concern yourself with stepping in when things aren't right," I lamented. "So when I come back for Roy, be yourself and don't step in, or I'll just kill you too."
I turned away completely and headed off down the sidewalk, Harrison's footsteps in unison with mine as he sped up to match me. I didn't even know where I was going. I just knew there was no point to hanging around Roy Barkers street when the two people hovering so close to me seemed intent on preventing the murder. I couldn't accomplish anything under those conditions. I was certain that Adeline had no power to stop me, but Harrison was much bigger than I was, and he was clearly thinking more rationally than I was capable of doing. He'd refused to tell me the address anyways, so I could assume he'd probably stop the breaking and entering as well and then I'd have wasted the effort.
"You were really mean to her," he said, after several moments of silent walking.
"She been really mean to me several times," I retorted. I wanted to say she'd watched my Riley jump. I refrained.
"I know," he agreed.
More silence followed in the darkness. I thought about screaming just to fill the void. I tried not to think about Riley, but it was a failed effort. I thought about how it must have looked when he fell. I thought about how badly my chest hurt.
"Florence," Harrison attempted to start again.
"Stop calling me that!" I cut him off. I was frustrated to hear Harrison's voice at all in the silence I had hated only moments before.
My chest still hurt. It had hurt for nearly a week. It hurt from the moment Percy had woken me up onwards. I couldn't make it stop. Nothing made it stop. Not working, not crying and certainly not screaming into the void while ripping flowers out of my garden. I'd been reduced to pacing erratically. Pacing in my home had only made it fester, and I'd paced and festered until suddenly I felt unhinged enough to go ahead and kill someone.
"I'm sorry," he said calmly. "What do I call you?"
"It's Basil," I said, my voice suddenly weak. "He called me Basil."
"Basil," he agreed solemnly.
I thought I might cry for a moment. It had been a long time since I'd cried infront of anyone else, but I thought I might. Harrison maybe saw that look blooming onto my face because he threw an arm over my shoulder as if neither of us had aged a day since highschool.
"You have joints on you, right?" He asked me, almost completely random.
I nodded.
"Cool," he agreed. "Let's go to a party."
Harrison kept me busy for the evening. It was his own way of making sure I didn't kill his uncle. I'm sure he was protecting Adeline as well, but in a few weeks time I'd come to realize that he was also working to save me as well. I was his friend. Be valued that, even if we were not traditionally active in eachothers lives. He saw me in a very low place and he took it upon himself to lift me up in the only way he actually knew how. He pretended we were in highschool.
Simplicity is sometimes our biggest savior. Because my chest hurt and I was pretty certain that Harrison could flatten me if I tried to fight him, I complied. I went to a party at the college Harrison had evidently attended and graduated from, and I sold the meager amount of joints I'd had on my person. Then I began drinking wine in excess while Harrison watched me with a careful eye that told me he'd chase me down if I left.
One of the people I'd sold a joint to tracked me down and asked to smoke it with me. He wore a football jersey for a different college than the one we were currently in proximity to. He told me he wasn't normally interested in men, and I didn't correct him because nothing felt real, and I missed Riley because Riley had never once even bothered to guess who or what he thought I was. Riley hadn't ever cared to bring it up.
When the joint was gone, I hadn't listened to a word the man had said. Instead I'd just compared him to Riley. He had brown hair like Riley, but his was short, and Riley's had been long and curled and soft. He had blue eyes. Riley's were brown. He was taller than me. I was only slightly taller than Riley.
The man kissed me. Riley's lips had always been more messy than that, like he was scared I'd reject him if he didnt just go for it. He seldom asked even though he'd stated it was important that I atleast ask him. This random man kissed much too bravely for a man who had maybe blatantly lied when he told me he didn't usually kiss men.
The man took me to a room. Harrison watched me walk in after him and gave me a thumbs up like the fact that I was an easy lay somehow made me seem more stable than I'd been earlier when I'd left home to go kill his family members.
The stupid man in the football jersey did not seem to care that I did not care for him. He ignored me when I set my shoulder bag on the nightstand. I thought about killing him with the knife I had tucked inside it, but the thought passed very quickly when I realized that I was drunk. I thought I'd had only two glasses of wine, but grief makes it hard to count. So did the special joint I'd smoked.
We had sex. I don't think that details matter, but it was not enjoyable sex because it wasn't the type of sex I usually had. I never assumed the role of a submissive partner. I never just laid there and did it because I couldn't think of anything better to do. Sex was never menial. Sex was supposed to be freeing and fun, but it couldn't be freeing and fun when all I could think about was that I didn't want to have sex with someone that wasn't Riley.
Riley and I had never been exclusive. I had openly sought out other partners whenever Riley expressed an interest in someone of the opposite sex. Riley didn't even like woman, but he liked trying to like women, and I liked watching him try to explore himself and his abilities. Sex was empowering. I liked watching him try to be empowered. I liked being the safe place he kept coming back to. I liked being with him. I liked it when he was there and not dead.
When it was over I put on the strange man's clothes. He watched me do it without stopping me. I have no idea what he thought, but he just stared as I stood infront of the vanity in the bedroom and looked upon the man staring back at me in the mirror. In a football Jersey, I looked aggressively male in a way I hadn't seen in myself in years.
I wasn't Riley's Basil. I was Ben. I was a man that had never had a Riley. I was a man that hadn't experienced loss.
I walked out of the room into the welcoming arms of Harrison, who gave me a shot that burned and then offered to walk me home. I declined the offer. Harrison asked me to please not try to kill anybody else for the night and I agreed because I was drunk, and because I did not feel physically capable of committing murder in a football Jersey that did not belong to me. The sun was starting to rise anyways. It wasn't as if I could do such a thing in daylight.
When Harrison was far enough away from me, I finally cried. I cried for several minutes, and then my phone rang and I stifled the sobbing enough to answer it.
"You made Adeline cry," the voice said on the phone.
It was Roy Barkers voice. I wanted to be surprised, but I'd been waiting for it. Instead, I felt immediately sobered and angry. I felt myself tremble with it in the half darkened street leading up to my home.
"You did," I found it in myself to respond. "She cries because she has a selfish father."
"Is that so?" He taunted. "Because I saw you approach my house last night. You were not very kind to our dear Adeline, were you?"
I wish I could say I was poised. I wish that every part of it was calm and collected. I wanted to be scarily calm. I wanted to leave him unable to sleep in fear of me.
"You looked like you haven't been sleeping," Roy said. "I have to assume you're unwell if you're breaking the very deal you insisted we had to leave eachother alone."
"I'm going to kill you," I said. "I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to make sure it hurts, and then I'm going to throw your body in the same river you left him in."
"I'd like to see you try," he replied. "But in the meantime I just wanted to remind you that I'm not the one that sought you out this time."
"If I were you, I wouldn't sleep too soundly."
"I'm quaking," he promised in sarcasm. "How will your friends in the north feel about the way you've thrown yourself back into the fire over a boy?"
"Go fuck yourself."
I'm not sure if he heard that last bit of poeticism I offered. I just know that I was hung up on. A dial tone was the only thing I received in answer.
I was already on my own street, so with nothing else to to ponder, I walked my way past the broken gate and let myself in the front door.
My house was clean. I'd left under the impression that I was likely to die in my quest for vengeance, so I'd cleaned. I wasn't necessarily a clean person. I wouldn't even call myself tidy. I enjoyed a bit of maximalism and organized chaos, but I didn't want to intrude on someone else's efforts, so I'd put the laundry away and tidied up for whoever had the misfortune of cleaning out my abandoned home after my demise.
I think that's why I noticed something was off immediately. It was either that or the energy he oozed. It was only seconds before I realized I wasn't alone.
Riley was not dead. Riley was in my house. Riley was looking right at me in my kitchen and he'd seemingly come out of nowhere.
He would tell me his version of events, but they wouldn't make sense. He looked like a ghost. He spoke like a mania of a person that he once was. He said things that didn't make sense and offered explanations that were even less so in terms of coherency. Nothing about Riley was settled, but it was all very much the opposite of what I'd thought he was. He was alive.
Riley was alive.
Riley did not die.
I'd just broken my deals with Roy Barker and now Riley was standing in my kitchen and neither of us were safe under those conditions.
Nothing made sense, but Riley needed help. Riley needed to get out of the city. Riley needed to get better, because he was clearly not okay.
I told Riley he needed to go to rehab. Riley asked me to leave the city with him. I realized while looking at him that my chest hurt slightly less, so I said yes. It was simplicity again.
A few days later I saw Roy Barkers name in the news. Dear Adeline was braver than I ever could have thought.