A Matter of Unimportance

Bonus Chapter

**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.