Has Been

One Shot

Stoic, sarcastic, perpetually annoyed Ellen misses them. Dearly. Don't ask her, she won't admit to it. Despite her denial, her life has been void since their departure. Bremin holds too many overwhelming memories and she wasn't enough to keep the boys tied to the place. She guesses she was only really a part of their group out of necessity, at most.

Jake was the first to go. A backpack on his back. A world trip, he had said. It had been supposed to be a gap year, but he had met someone. He stopped answering the others' texts about two months after arriving in Ireland. Soon, their only source of news from him was Mr. Bates. Painful as it was, Ellen thinks it is better than nothing. She wishes Jake would just send her the pictures of his new baby, instead of her having to look at them on her boss's phone. She dreams of another world. One where the baby would call her Aunty Ellen and she would pretend to detest it. It certainly exists, somewhere. For the first year, she is almost tempted to search for it.

At the realization that Jake wasn't coming back, Sam also went away. He got an art scholarship in the United States. Felix, Ellen and Andy had taken him to the airport. They had all cried. There was no doubt in Ellen's mind that Sam had loved them, but he is also an airhead by nature. The boy has the object permanence of a golden retriever, and with his ADHD and her unwillingness to reach out first, she knows he has already forgotten about her. These days, Ellen mostly watches his skating videos on YouTube while she eats breakfast in the morning. He has only become more skilled. He also has a beard now, and raises money for charity from the ad revenue of his videos. Sam had been one of the people who made her feel seen, especially after he had returned from the other reality. Watching him through a screen is worse than watching him pass by in the hallways, back when he wouldn't spare her a glance. He is smiling, but Ellen doesn't feel anything, and it feels the same as rewatching something for the nostalgia, only to find it lacking in quality. She misses making him laugh the most.

Andy went next. Off to college, somewhere in Sidney. They have lost each other's phone numbers, but he still occasionally sends postcards to her parents' home. He camps a lot in his free time and is writing his thesis on interdimensional wormholes. Only Andy could pull off such a thing in an academic context. Ellen has yet to send him a letter telling him her new address. It would be caring too much... Which she does. Andy doesn't have to know that, though. For now, she will keep picking up the post cards from her parents' house. There is an upside to remaining in Bremin, after all.

Felix was the last to leave. He stuck around with her as long as he could. They actually both went to Bremin community college for a few months, until Felix dropped out. For the first year he was away, for a better job that could support him and his part-time music career, they would video call routinely. He actually drove back to see her every weekend. He didn't miss one. Until he did. He missed one, and then two, and then Ellen was informed his work schedule didn't really align with such a routine anymore. But they could still video call, and he could drive to Bremin every once in a while, and she could come visit him, too! He would even pay for her transportation! Ellen could see him gripping onto their friendship for dear life. But it was just the two of them left, and although they had been fine with that reality once upon a time, after experiencing loving and losing the others, it felt terribly empty. She just had to let him go. She did it via phone call, because that was the only kind of contact they had in months. It was a barely successful attempt at closure, the night before her first day of teaching at Bremin High. Through sobs and snot and running black eyeliner, she told him maybe they should just each live their lives. Felix's voice broke in a way she hadn't heard since Oscar's accident, and he told her she would always be one of the best friends he'd ever had. Ellen hung up so she could weep freely.

And now there's a boy in her class that is staging a play about them, and he's gotten it so fantastically wrong. She just has to watch. But something happens before he can present his play. Something strange and familiar, although completely new. Ellen doesn't know what happened to these kids, but she believes the parts they want to reveal wholeheartedly. She knows better than to doubt these kinds of things.

Ellen helps them. She has to. She would help them to control their powers if they asked, and tell them whatever they'd like. Their elemental magic that is so reminiscent of her most beloved memories, and yet so different. She thinks the way Heath handles fire is similar to how Sam handled air, but with the same lack of control as Jake. Nico has so much of Andy in her, paired with Felix's wit and Jake's stubbornness. Jesse is Sam's dramatics to the bone. Luke has Andy's pungent awkwardness, along with his smarts.

It's embarrassing to be stuck in high school, but it's hard to avoid when you work there. Throughout those hellish years, Ellen had soothed herself with the thought that the jocks and popular kids would peak at high school and then become has beens, forever stuck in those years. And where is she now? Every time she looks at the new elementals, all she can see is a patchwork of her own elemental boys, and she misses them. She misses her family dearly.