How We Became Us

Chapter 1

Kelly.Kelly.Kelly.Kelly.

That name has always bounced around in his head for years now. He remembers the first time he had written the name. When he first learned to spell, he was supposed to write his name, so he wrote Kelly instead of Matthew. Kelly was shorter and more straightforward to write in his young mind, and the name felt significant. It felt like Matt needed to remember it, know it, and write Kelly on a piece of paper. Put it out to the world.

He remembers his tutor smiling softly at him and looking at Matt with so much hope in her eyes. Matt didn't know how to respond other than blush. That was the first time soulmates were explained to him. Ms. Cassie Langley—now Mrs. Langley-McKenna—had told him that names were significant. It was the name of his soulmate, his other half, his one and only.

She explained that soulmates are becoming rarer these days, and most people don't even believe in them anymore, but she had always told Matt that he should never lose faith in soulmates.

From birth to six, Matt had only ever known Kelly. He didn't know whether or not he was a boy or a girl—at first, he thought Kelly was a girl, but Ms. Langley had explained that Kelly could be both a boy and a girl's name. He didn't know anything about who his soulmate was, and in his young mind, only knowing the name was fine.

He wrote the name everywhere. It was on all of the work he got from Ms. Langley. He had signed Matthew-Kelly on all his drawings and even written the name on his arm with black marker.

Kelly was everywhere, and Matthew Casey was okay with that.

Gregory and Nancy Casey were not.

When they found out that their only child had a soulmate, they immediately told Matt that it was a myth and that soulmates didn't exist. Matt had cried his four-year-old eyes out because he didn't want Kelly to be a myth; he didn't want it all to be fake because he liked the idea of finding and falling in love with his half. (He used to be such a romantic—he blames Cassie for that. She always tells him about true love and fairytales and makes him believe the world is good.)

His parents didn't like that. Whenever they heard the name Kelly in the house, Matt was yelled at, and he had a shoe thrown in his direction. The shoe never hit him, but it was close enough to his head that he always felt the wind from the flying object fly past his face. It made him cry every time, making his parents angrier, making their voices louder, and Matt felt smaller.

Matt kept his mouth shut from then on, not allowing himself to slip up and say Kelly accidentally, but his parents hated having a mute kid.

Matt was so confused because he didn't know what to do. Ms. Langley encouraged him to continue to write out Kelly and to say his name, but they both agreed that it would only happen when his parents weren't here. But he wanted to be a good boy and listen to his parents, so it was only ever whispered in the night when Ms. Langley would tuck him into bed, and they would whisper about the different futures Matt could have with Kelly.

That all changed when he turned six. When he turned six, he had woken up with a mark on his left shoulder. He hadn't noticed it until his mother had screeched and slapped Matt across the face. Matt was so stunned by the sudden hit—his parents had never laid a hand on him before—that it took him a couple of minutes to wrap his head around what had just happened. When he came back to reality, his mother was yelling at him and furiously scrubbing at Matt's shoulder with a towel so hard that Matt started to cry from the pain. His father entered the room shortly after, and suddenly, two loud voices were screaming at Matt. His shoulder began to bleed from the force of the rubbing, and then he was shoved so hard that he lost his balance and fell face-first on the ground. He hit his head and doesn't know what happened after that.