To: Mad-woman
Where are you two? It shouldn't take you that long
Mon 2:47
To: Gaige
Leon got us lost, ok? God calm ur titties we're like seconds away
Mon 2:48
Gaige rolled his eyes and shoved his phone back into the back pocket of his too-large jeans. He glanced back down at his duffel bag resting against his foot on the airport floor, before looking back up at the bustling Christmas crowd of the decently sized Tallahassee airport. Why was everyone that was supposed to pick Gaige up from various airports late?
Gaige had to squint at the sun that was coming out of the entry and exit of the picking up area of the airport, but he longed to feel some ray of sun on his neck. He missed that about Flordia. The light the brighten his darkness. To cover his goosebumps with thin blankets of warmth. He missed the sun that Michigan would never replace.
He was alone in the crowd, all waiting for their family so they may celebrate a very merry holiday. He was alone in his craving for the sun. He was alone for a lot of things despite the hundreds of bodies and souls that mingled around him.
Gaige could see Maddie and Leon's grin despite the slightly tinted windshield of Leon and Gaige's busted up orange ford truck they bought with assistance from their parents. It looked stupid against the fresh flow of new and smooth cars. But that was Leon and Gaige for you. The two stupid brothers with their stupid car decisions against the normal crowd.
Slowly but surely, the orange truck fights the traffic and idles slowly in front of Gaige, his too picker-uppers grinning madly. Gaige willingly smiles back. Throwing his duffel bag in the bed of the truck, opening the passenger side door with an ear-splitting creaking, and making Maddie slide into the middle seat, Gaige lifts himself into the truck, setting his backpack at his feet.
"I literally haven't seen you in years!" Gaige bites his smile, Maddie wrapping her short arms easily around his thinning frame. He tries to push away the idea that the way she speaks isn't as familiar as it was two months ago. But manages to force his arms around her too.
Gaige even gives a little chuckle, "I know. God, stepping off the plane felt amazing," He pulls away, whipping hair out of his eyes with nerves that he can not stand, "Leon, this thing was an embarrassment to get into."
Lone-behold, Leon leaned forward with his dazzling eyes and his thick black curls grown out more. Lazily, with one arm slung around the wheel, Leon can't help grinning despite his brother insulting his car -the thing most people don't get away with.
"Well shit, you should have thought of that before you put half your shitty money in this monster too," Gaige swims in the real-lifeness of his brothers laugh, "Hand it here, brother."
They do the 'magic' handshake they invented when they were eleven, slaps and shakes and weird little finger dances all included. It's a foreign concept to Gaige, to laugh with people he loves, it makes his stomach swirl.
"Ok, okay, enough with the bromance, we need to get going or someones going to curse us out," Maddie sticks her hands out, separating the boys. Gaige falls back in the cracking leather bench, reaching absentmindedly for his seat belt, staring at the sun ahead of him.
"Okay, with the camera I gave you to do home videos whenever you want, I need you to shoot interviews with your family," Adonis is obviously hesitant to bring this up, the library study room as bland as ever, Gaige's mind more occupied than ever. School got out yesterday, he leaves for Florida in two days. This is the last time he'll talk to the blonde boy with wire-frames and too big of ears for three weeks. Gaige's mind fights between being happy and anxious to return back to his real home.
"Now, I know none of your parents know about....well anything and I'll respect you keeping it that way. I need you to sit your mom and..step-dad down and interview them about you as a kid. All about your childhood, you know, and even photo albums would be amazing. These two are the ones that knew you best as a kid right?" Gaige doesn't move so Adonis keeps going, "You don't have to say anything about why you're really filming this, or what's going on. You can claim it's a time capsule kind of project for all I care."
Gaige watches under thinning eyelashes as Adonis takes in a deep breath and moves on, "But, I need you to talk to your brother and his girlfriend. I know you know they are the only ones who anything about what you're going through and I need that for an interview, Gaige. I need you to ask you're brother and his girlfriend to go back through every suspicion they ever had that something was wrong. The signs, the symptoms they may have noticed. And..." Adonis licked his lips, "I need them to tell the story of how you reacted to being called out-"
"Well, I can tell you that," Gaige scuffed, yet wrapped his arms more securely around himself.
Adonis sighed, nodding, "I know, I know. But sometimes outside perspectives are best for these kinds of documentaries, especially since I've already have so much of your perspective," Gaige's face twisted down, Adonis straightened his back, "Listen, Gaige, this is pretty awful of me to make you do. But it could be essential to a good story-line. I mean, somehow you've managed to starve yourself down to nearly nothing and only two people have ever noticed or had the guts to say anything about it," it was fair to say Adonis was now bringing emotion in, "Just, please. If you really want, call me. You film, I'll interview them, okay?"
"How crazy is it finally being back home?" They only let Gaige have a few minutes in the Florida sun, window down, eyes shut, before Maddie spoke again. Perhaps that was one thing he didn't miss. Maddie never left room for silence.
"It feels," Amazing, terrifying, wrenching, welcoming, shunning, wonderful, "Nice."
"I see you're still a man of few words," Leon chuckles at his brother, tapping the wheel to the nearly inaudible radio and whatever shit it was playing in scratchy tones.
"How much did Y'all expect me to change?" Gaige couldn't help but rub his hands down his jean thighs. The humidity was already getting to his brain.
"Well when you're living up there with you Mr. rich-man dentist dad and his new fancy family, going to some fancy-dancy school, who knows? We sure don't," Maddie crosses her arms and tilts her chin up like she knows the word of God, "You could have totally switched on us. I mean, look at your backpack. Champion? And I bet that shit isn't even second hand."
Gaige glanced down at his backpack that usually held his few pieces of school work. Maddie was right. It wasn't second hand. Neither was the laptop/tablet Brad had bought him -that Gaige would proudly admit he didn't use (often)- or the new shoes he didn't ever wear, or the sweatshirts he bought with Brad's money just to abuse the power he was given with the credit card.
Gaige looked back up at the girl who was basically his sister. Who accused him of changing because he wore a 50 dollar backpack. He rubbed a wiry hand over his lips. Little did the same girl know that the only way he had changed was more holes in his belt, more space in his shirts, smaller numbers on his new scale. Little did the same girl know the only way he had changed was now, instead of hiding, he bared it all in front of a camera for a student film fest.
"I didn't ask for it," was what he said instead of everything else he could have.
"I think it's dope," At least Gaige could trust his brother to be on his side, "I mean, fuck them but use their credit card, am I right?" Gaige forced a smile for Leon.
The ride back home to tiny town Florida was full of Maddie bugging for some story, Gaige pushing her off, Leon singing to awful country music, and complaining about how he wished he had money for food. Gaige didn't remember his truck being as big of a piece of shit as it was, but it sure rattled and patted on the highways back. More than once Gaige had to look out the back window to make sure his duffel bag hadn't bounced out.
Pulling in to the town -of what he used to call terrors- made Gaige forget all about the shitty truck or whatever Maddie was ranting about or how Leon wanted to posin his body with food. The baseball field was deserted like usual, the swings in the elementary school swung from the light wind. He could see every spot, every memory of every mistake he'd made in this town. Every place he snuck off to get high to forget about the way his body curved. The places he bent his body to fit into the back of a cop car or bent his body to fit alongside another body.
"Doesn't it feel good to be back?" Gaige turned his attention away from the window and the familiar neighborhoods and pulled his stiff lips upward for the sake of the other passengers in the truck.
"Yeah. Yeah I missed this place," Leon grinned like he knew some gritty secret, and Maddie rubbed elbows with Gaige, and the cold interior of the inside of the door rubbed elbows with Gaige too.
"Mom has been going on about you being home too," The turning signal clicked loudly, streets became more and more recognizable. Cold nights wandering these sidewalks.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, making me clean and shit. I'm like, Mama, he ain't gained some high-privileged outlook on where he sleeps," That makes Gaige share a common -genuine- chuckle with his brother, "But you know Mama, fretting about shit and shit that don't matter," Gaige did miss the way Leon added 'and shit' to everything. His brother's ability to go from educated middle-class boy to some hoodlum who curses between every other word.
"I'll make sure to tell her she doesn't need to clean," But Leon doesn't actually hear what Gaige mumbles. Because it trails off at the end when Gaige sees his old house, his house that probably had an itty bitty bag of coke and a couple of cigarettes under one of the baseboards of the back porch.
"Welcome home, brother," Curtly, Leon parks the truck on the curb outside the mint green house, cuts the engine and yanks out the keys making his whole bundle of a key chain clank together.
Only when Gaige is forced to open the door to let himself and Maddie does Gaige think he should have filmed his whole town and his ride to his little house.
"Oh, don't forget your duffel bag!" Maddie giggles, jogging to catch up with Leon, swinging her hands, catching Leon's large one. Gaige doesn't move from where the cab and the bed of the truck meet, watching his brother and his best friend galivant into the house and disappear behind the navy blue door.
He rubs his face, rubbing his left eye, soaking in the way his stomach swirls in a whirlwind of emotions he doesn't understand for merely coming home. Coming home to real parents. To his real friends, his real siblings, his real house, his real town, his real life. If he has one to come home to.
His duffle bag isn't as heavy as it seems when he first packs it, maybe because he's distracted walking up the driveway, past his mom's new car, and past the heavy blue front door.
"Gaige!" Will his mom notice the way her arms wrap easily around his multiple layers? Will his mama notice the way his smile is still strained even after months of missing her? He can't feel comfort in limbs that hold his torso, but he makes himself smile down onto her head, his thin, lanky arms copying her own. He will admit, her lavender shampoo does flicker good memories.
"Hey, Mama," She pushes him back, arm's length, throwing her head back so she can see all the way up to her son's whole height. She was a tall woman, 5'10, but that still meant Gaige was a whole half a foot taller than her.
"Baby, you've got dark circles," Gaige frowned alongside his mother, ignoring all the others in the room as she pushed some of his disorderly hair around, "Are they letting you sleep over there? Are you on some wild sleep schedule still-"
Gaige quickly shook his head, "No, no. I've got my own room and everything. I just, uh, the plane ride was annoying. I'm fine, really. I basically sleep all day that I don't go to sleep," Gaige pulled his lips into a tight smile and looked over her shoulder, "Hey Pop."
Neil smiled, stepping around Gaige's mother, and pulling his step-son into a tight hug, slapped Gaige's back a couple of times, "Gaige, son, hows it been up there? You doing okay? We've only heard one complaint."
"Yeah, when you decked that guy," Leon cackled behind his father's shoulder, despite his mom's scolding look.
"I've been doing good, i've been doing okay," Gaige shook his head and shook away all their worries within minutes of walking back through his front door, "I'm doing okay."