Smile, Synonym

[39] Out Of Sight

Fletcher was still sick to his stomach the following Monday.

He would have skipped school entirely if it wasn't for his mum. Somehow, during the course of the worse weekend of their lives, she had come to believe that, if they pretended everything was fine, it eventually will be.

It was complete, utter bullshit but, at that point, Fletcher was too tired to argue with her.

In fact, he was too tired to speak, and move, and even breathe. Which was ridiculous, really, because Fletcher saw it coming - it was fucking inevitable. His parents were never going to wake up one day and magically find their sliver-lining. That was unrealistic. No, they were bound to slip through the cracks of every thunderstorm and every hurricane they made, and they were later bound to scrape their knees against the shards of their broken home because that - that was the only way they could ever end.

Fletcher knew. Heck, he called it. Because he was smart enough to piece together that his family wouldn't last.

So why did it hurt?

Why - goddammit, why - did it hurt this much?

Someone called for him then as Fletcher walked along the crowded halls, trying not to be seen, trying to disappear. When he looked up, Fletcher saw Sam just a few steps away, smiling and waving at his direction.

And it came in an instant. That instinct. That reality. That harsh truth he'd grown to learn, to stitch upon his skin, to practice and continue until the day he died.

Nothing here lasts forever, the world whispered. So what do you do?

Fletcher didn't even think twice - Leave first.

So he did exactly that and turned the other way.

-

Home was quiet in a way that was unbearable.

Where there was nothing but the sound of your pulse, the mumbling of the wind, and the hush voices of the world outside you.

For a long time, Fletcher had wished for this sort of quiet. This dream-like sense of peace.

Now though, the silence was only deafening his ears.

Noise came at around midnight, when his mum had finally arrived home from work. She moved loudly, as if on purpose, her footsteps trying to mimic the screams she and Fletcher were so used to hearing.

And, in some ways, he did miss it. The shouting. The fighting.

Because it was familiar. Because that, to him, was home.

Which was psychotic, he knew, and beyond all else unfair. Because who the hell decided to leave all the worse parts of the world on Fletcher's doorstep? Who the fucking hell decided that it was right - that it was okay - to rob a kid of their childhood? To crush their sense of decency and bury all form of hope?

And why, of all people, did it have to be Fletcher Greenly?

These four questions were enough to send Fletcher into overdrive and, suddenly, he found himself getting up from bed and heading over to his mother's room. If they both wanted a fight, then he was going to give them a fight. Their house wouldn't mind a few more holes, in fact, it was waiting to be destroyed.

So Fletcher was going to rip it apart, piece by piece, until there was nothing left.

He opened the door, a scream at the tip of his tongue, when his mum looked up at him and asked, "Fletcher, what's wrong?"

And perhaps there might have been something in the tone of her voice - something broken, something missing - that caused all the flames in Fletcher's heart to go out all at once. "I - I -" He stammered, then he found himself admitting, "I couldn't sleep."

His mother sighed and patted the empty side of her lumpy mattress. "Come here."

Fletcher awkwardly followed, because he didn't know what else to do, and for a while, they stayed like that, side to side, in the agonising silence. That is, until his mother did the unimaginable, and turned to his side and gave him a hug.

The first few seconds were uncomfortable. Fletcher was never the hugging type. He couldn't remember the last time he was hugged. In fact, he wasn't even sure if he's ever been hugged. But, the longer his mum held onto him, the more the warmth from her arms crept into his skin and the more Fletcher found himself sinking in.

Deeper and deeper until it almost swallowed him whole, because this was what he missed out on growing up. The tight hugs and the goodnight kisses. The homemade lunches and snacks. A proper roof and a backyard. A nice house in a quiet neighbourhood, with a mum who was around and a dad who tried.

It was then that Fletcher realised that he will never have those things. Because years have gone by in a blink of an eye and time had been cruel enough to age Fletcher's soul faster than his own body.

So he clutched onto his mum's old blanket, with its wrinkles and stains, and cried. Unapologetically and nonstop, for all the heartache he experienced and for the rest that's next to come, until his hush whimpers broke down into heavy sobs.

-

It was obvious last night rattled his mum because, when Fletcher asked to stay in the next day, she didn't argue. In fact, she even suggested he take the week off.

He took the offer, of course. Mostly because he knew this would be the only time his mum would go easy on him, but also because last night rattled Fletcher too.

He's never been that vulnerable before. Never spiralled so hard his vision got blurry, never fallen too deep that it knocked the wind right out of him, and never utterly, pathetically broken enough to need someone else to glue back the pieces.

It was honestly terrifying, how much Fletcher actually cared. How much Fletcher actually felt.

And it didn't help that his stupid glasses made him aware of everyone else's own heartache.

Because if he couldn't even fix his own problems - couldn't even fix himself - so how could he be expected to help someone else? To fill up their empty spaces when there was nothing whole about himself?

The only rational answer Fletcher could think of was to get rid of them.

At first, he tried to break his glasses. He chucked it across the room, stepped on it, and even tried to manually snap it in half - but not even a scratch remained intact. Stupid fucking magical glasses.

So his second solution was to simply get throw them away. Far away, until it was out of sight, out of mind, and out of Fletcher's life forever.

And there was only was place in town that could help him do just that.