Family of Trees, Part One
master post
March 13th, 1990
Bob wakes up to the phone ringing non-stop. His parents are still out, so he decides that they must have something to tell him. Years later, he wonders that if he hadn’t answered the phone, maybe things would have changed.
“Hello, Mom?” he asks, sleepily.
The voice on the other end is slightly crackly, but definitely not his mother. “No, I’m sorry. This is Wendy, from Mercy Hospital and Medical Center. I’m calling about Dean and Roberta Bryar.”
“Those are my parents!” he exclaims, his voice rising with excitement.
“Sweetie, you’ll have to lower your voice,” she says, her voice patient. “How old are you?”
“I’m ten and three months,” Bob replies, matter-of-fact.
“Is there an adult there? Or a relative we could call?”
“No, I’m babysitting my brother and sister. And we don’t have any more relatives since Grandpa Corey died. Why are you asking?” he adds, starting to get worried.
The voice pauses, almost for dramatic effect. “Your parents got in a terrible accident. A drunk driver smashed into their car. Your father… didn’t make it. And your mother is in a coma.”
“What?” he asks, incredulous. Then he starts babbling, “No. You’re lying. They were just going to the movies. We bought a pizza! They were here only a few hours ago.”
“I wish I were lying, honey,” she replies with a steady voice. “We’re going to send some people from the state department to your home, ok? They’ll take you to the hospital so you can see your mom.”
“You can’t be serious.” Bob feels like he can’t breathe anymore.
“I am. Hon, I have to ask you your address. Is it still-” the woman on the phone keeps talking and all Bob can do is meekly answer “yes” a few times. His mom and dad were just in the same foyer, laughing and smiling. His dad had given him a ten for pizza. His mom had kissed him on the forehead. There was no way they were gone.
A while later, he doesn’t know if it was minutes or hours, someone knocks on the door. He checks the peephole, just like his dad taught him to. A frowning lady with frizzy hair standing there. “Who is it?” he calls out.
“My name is Eliza Monroe. I’m with Child Protective Services. I’m here to take you and your siblings to the hospital, and then a place to stay for the night," the woman says.
“Show me some ‘dentification,” he says, thinking back on the few episodes of Law & Order he has seen staying up late when he’s supposed to be sleeping. She purses her lips, then reaches into her bag and pulls a card out of her wallet. She shows it to the peephole, and after confirming that she is who she says she is, Bob opens the door.
“All right, honey, I know it’s a shock that your dad is gone and your mom's not far off. But we’re going to get you to the hospital and then a place to stay.”
“We can stay here! They let me babysit Trisha and baby Spencer,” Bob protests. Eliza just tilts her head to the side and frowns again.
“Can you go get Patricia and Spencer?” she asks, after careful consideration.
“They’re sleeping right now, I’m not s’posed to let them be up past seven,” Bob says, crossing his arms and looking up at her. He’s not going to break his parents’ rules, even if the lady says that they’re gone. “Rules are rules, and if you want to be trusted, you have to follow the rules,” his father always told him.
“I know, but this is a special circumstance,” Eliza says, using the grown up voice that Bob has always hated. “Can you get them up and ready to go? I’ll come with you to help.”
“Sure,” he replies, still not pleased with her answer. His mother always told him to listen to adults though, so they walk up the stairs to wake the sleeping children.
~
Patricia can remember Bob shaking her awake. “Wake up, Trish. We gotta go.”
“Where?” she mumbled sleepily.
“To the hospital. Come on, just put some shoes on, we have to go,” Bob was frowning and a woman with wild hair and frown lines was standing behind him. She didn’t dare argue, he was ten years old, practically a grown up. She dressed hurriedly and he left to Spencer’s nursery. Trish could hear Spencer grumble about the hour, and Bob murmured soft words to him. She still had trouble tying her shoes, so she put on the sandals Daddy had gotten her last weekend when they went to the big store. It felt weird wearing her Princess Ariel nightgown and her glittery shoes, but neither Bob nor the frizzy lady (who identified herself as Eliza) batted an eyelash at the attire.
The next few moments were a blur of strapping her and Spencer into their car seats in a shiny dark car, and then whizzing off through the night. The hospital was white, blindingly so. The nurses that rushed them through were kind but Trish didn’t fully understand what was happening until she saw her mom lying peacefully surrounded by white. The fluorescent lights buzzed angrily, flickering as Trish climbed on top of the bed, white sheets scratchy like sandpaper under her skin. Mom didn’t move, and her face was pale. Part of her head was wrapped in a bandage, like the ones on TV. Trish turned around bewildered, shouting, “Where’s Daddy?”
~
Sixteen years later…
Spencer dreams about being thrust into the brightest white ever after black, silent darkness. A pair of wobbly arms grip tight around him and a little girl wails at the top of her lungs. A somewhat familiar woman is lying dead white on a hospital bed, the girl clutching at her corpse. He looks up at the boy holding him, whose eyes are filled with tears and he can feel some of his own forming.
A woman with an evil smile takes him away, and he’s lost forever.
He wakes up in a cold sweat, heart pounding in his chest. Brendon is poking at his side, worriedly. “Are you all right?” Spencer just nods, and Brendon crawls into the bed with him, stroking his back as he sobs.
~
Dear Spencer,
I know it may have been a surprise for you to receive this letter, but everything you are about to learn is completely factual, though it has been hidden from you most of your life.
First of all, you are not who you think you are. You were born Spencer Dean Bryar, on September 2nd, 1987 in Mercy Hospital, in Chicago, Illinois. Shortly before your second birthday, you were adopted by James and Ginger Smith, whom you now call your parents. You were not abandoned by your biological parents, nor were they in any legal or financial trouble. Instead, you were orphaned on March 13th, 1989, when your parents were killed by a drunk driver.
How do I know all this? I am your older, biological brother, Bob. I was ten when our parents were killed, so I remember you and our sister Patricia, though you may not recall us...
Bob sighs and crumples up the letter he’s been working on for the past fifteen minutes. Ray looks over from where he's sitting upright on the bed, flipping through a guitar catalogue.
“Bob, come to bed. The right words aren't going to come to you if you don't get any sleep,” he says, and Bob sighs.
“It's just- I've been looking for him all my life, and he doesn't even know I exist. It's not fair! I have to tell him soon, or it'll be too late, and he'll become... embittered or something!”
“Have you been reading Gerard's books again?” Ray asks, and after Bob sheepishly admits to it, he continues, “Don't rush it. It'll be a big shock to find out his parents have been lying all these years. You have to be delicate about it.”
“I guess you're right.” Bob sighs again and switches off the desk light. “You truly are my better half,” he says after he swivels the chair around and crawls into bed with his boyfriend. He can see Ray’s smile in the soft light coming from the window. They kiss, short and sweet, before Ray falls asleep, Bob not far behind him.
~
Patricia Stumph is not having a good day. In the middle of the night, her boyfriend turned off the alarm clock “in order to get some fucking sleep, Trish.” She was woken this morning by the manager calling in to tell her she was fired, and needed to return her uniform. She barely has enough time to put on clothes before she has to rush to campus, for her 10 a.m. Feminist Literature class. She doesn’t bother to look out the window before leaving, so of course she is running a few blocks in the rain without a proper coat or umbrella.
She finally arrives at the lecture hall, panting and soaked, and sitting in her spot is the bitchy British girl that Trish caught flirting with Pete the other week. The only available seat within hearing distance of her soft-spoken professor is behind the group of annoying tall guys that talk all class. She barely gets any notes down when all she can hear is the group talking about the Composition 346 professor's ass.
When the lecture is over, William, one of Pete’s obnoxious friends, corners her about a party going down over the weekend. She finally gets away, assuring Bill that she’ll tell Pete about it. She’ll do no such thing, but Bill doesn’t have to know. Her phone rings during Flowers’s class and she gets kicked out of the hall because the professor is a stickler about cell phones. It turns out to be Pete, asking where she hid the Lucky Charms. She calmly reminds him that he finished them off last night before going out, and he argues with her for another ten minutes about something else completely redundant.
When her day is over (and after she buys an extra large box of Lucky Charms at the grocery store), she checks the mail. She smiles when she sees that she got a letter from her biological brother, Bob. They’ve been writing since her eighteenth birthday, and she can’t wait to hear about what is going on with his life. She tucks it in the inside of her sweater, deciding to keep the secret of her adoption from her boyfriend just a little longer.
~
Bob and Ray’s house is close enough to Main Street that they walk to work. After Bob’s shower and fifteen minutes in the bathroom getting ready, he grabs a cup of coffee and walks to his bakery, in the dark chill of the early morning.
It’s a nice place, with a cozy store front and a roomy kitchen. He always opens and closes the shop, as he is the first to arrive and the last to leave. After finishing his coffee, he puts the dough he prepared the night before in the oven and moves the older goods from the glass case to the “bargain” shelf.
One of his assistants, Darren today, comes in around five-forty, to help him get the shop ready to open at six. They work in a pleasant silence, putting fresh bread, cookies, rolls, and muffins in their proper places. After Darren sweeps the shop front and Bob wipes down the counters, Darren flips the sign “open” and busy commuters slowly but steadily trickle in for breakfast.
Bob goes to the back, to check the still-baking foods or look over his taxes until seven-thirty, when Chris comes in to keep an eye on the kitchen. Ray comes into the bakery around eight-fifteen every morning, and Bob chats with him as he hands his boyfriend a cheese-filled croissant and a cup of black coffee. Ray pecks him on the cheek and then crosses the street to the music store where he works. Bob usually stays in the back to fill out paperwork, or test new recipes, but on the rare occasions when he goes to front, he can almost always spot Ray, hard at work, selling guitars or doing manager-like things.
Darren gets a break at ten-twenty-five today, so Bob mans the register and watches Ray across the street, in between customers. The morning rush is long gone, so he has a notebook to write in if something inspires him, when Ray is in the back or teaching lessons. Darren comes back at eleven-thirty, which is when Ray and Bob simultaneously take their lunch break together.
Bob grabs a loaf of French bread from the back, and then visits the deli next door for some meat. Ray meets him in front of his store, and they walk to the park and make sandwiches on one of the picnic tables. They laugh as they eat and hurry back to their shops for the lunchtime rush, which subsides around one-thirty.
Darren gets off after the lunch rush is over, and Other Bob (or “Morris” as everyone refers to him), comes in. Chris leaves after making three batches of cake batter, and the Bobs close the shop at six. They make the next day’s dough, and Bob catches up on more paperwork before leaving at seven-thirty.
He goes home, eats dinner with Ray, watches a bad sitcom with his dogs, and falls into bed.
~
Spencer gets the first letter during Winter Vacation. One of his chores is to get the mail, and normally when he flips through the pile, it’s all bills for his parents, random magazines, or fliers from desperate colleges in need of a higher student population. But when he sees his name and address scrawled out in blue pen, underneath one of those cutesy return address stickers with puppies and the name of the letter-writer, a Bob Bryar from New Jersey, he knows it is different.
He carefully tucks the envelope inside the music magazine Brendon ordered subscriptions of for his last birthday, and then at the bottom of the stack, and walks back up the pathway to his house. They live in an older neighborhood, with individual mailboxes instead of a big metal one for a large portion of the street. The houses all had grass yards at one time, before most of his neighbors converted to desert landscaping, which Spencer’s dad says adds to the quaint charm of their cul-de-sac. Spencer has been pleading with his father to make the switch, citing environmental reasons, but mostly he just hates mowing the lawn.
His sisters are watching TV with his mom as he steps inside. Crystal complains about the weather, and Jackie yells at him to shut the door before letting the heat out. (It’s been unseasonably moody this winter, the wind blowing clouds around and the temperatures varying from the mid 70’s to the upper 30’s, though snow is never in the forecast.) They’re watching a serial killer special on E!, something about supermodels being killed, and he can smell his dad cooking something cheesy.
Spencer walks into the kitchen, drops the stack (except for his magazine and letter) on the kitchen table, and then climbs up the stairs to his bedroom. He sits on his bed, and starts to open the letter, but his mother calls him down for grilled cheese. The letter will be for another time, then, he decides, and shoves it under his bed. He flies down the stairs to see Brendon sitting at his kitchen table, mouth stuffed with a sandwich.
~
Bob is trying to come up with animal product alternatives to use in his future line of vegan cupcakes when Ray walks into the bakery. Bob can tell it is Ray, because there is a Ray-shaped shadow over the notes he has carefully taken. Bob can also feel Ray’s fingers on his back, and he’d know those fingers blindfolded and underwater in the dark. “What do you want, Ray?” he asks, and turns around when he hears a coughing sound. “Holy shit.” Almost half the town is crowded into his tiny bakery. There are balloons.
Bob is maybe hyperventilating, a lot.
“Robert Nathaniel Corey Bryar,” Ray starts and Bob just counts his breaths, trying not to die. He had a lengthy speech, about houses and love and their dogs and dear god he takes a discreet black velvet box out of his pocket and Greta has a huge bouquet of roses in her hands and Gerard is smiling at him all big and shit and Ray pauses. “Will you marry me?” he finally asks, holding the ring up for Bob to see.
“Y-yes, of course, Ray!” Bob stammers out and the nervous grimace on Ray’s face turns into a huge grin. Ray grabs him in an awkward hug over the counter and Bob kisses the side of his face before breaking free. He walks around the counter and holds his hand out for Ray to slip the slim gold band on his finger. Bob grabs Ray again and kisses him, roughly this time, until all they can hear is the beating of their hearts and the panting of the breath. “I love you so much,” he breathes, and then notices the whoops and hollers from their friends. “Thank you, guys!” he says to them, and then they descend upon the happy couple.
Greta’s gushing about how romantic it is at the same time Gerard is asking about the
date and Ian is blathering on about an engagement party. Bob can hardly discern
any of the conversations, but he’s never been happier to be so busy in his life.
~
The letter is kind of a big shock to Spencer. He doesn’t know if he should trust the information in it, so he googles it. Bob Bryar really does own his own bakery in a tiny New Jersey town. The name of the private detective is legitimate, and when he looks up the people who Bob claims are his biological parents, he finds a newspaper article about their tragic deaths. It takes a bit longer for him to finally work up the courage to sneak into his
parents’ files. While they are sitting in a filing cabinet in the office just off the den, he doesn’t want his parents to know what he is up to. So, late at night, he sneaks out of his room and into the office. He digs through the folders inside until he gets to one with his name printed neatly on it. Inside is his birth certificate, and he is shocked to find that it says “Spencer Dean Bryar” instead of “Spencer James Smith”. He sits there, staring at the folded paper for what seems like forever, until he sees something else in his file.
Adoption papers.
Multiple questions run through his mind as he scans the documents. Why had his parents never told him about his adoption? Did they ever plan on telling him about it, and the biological siblings he had seemed to lose? Did this affect how they felt about him in relation to his sisters? Were Crystal and Jackie adopted too? He sits in the office until he sees streaks of sunlight peaking in through the blinds. He feels numb, and while he can hardly think of anything else but his parents’ deception, he knows he can’t let them know about what he found out. Spencer carefully puts the files back where they belong and gets up, stretching. He barely makes it back to his room before he can hear the familiar sound of his father’s feet softly padding down the hall and the stairs. Spencer drops onto his bed and falls asleep without another thought.
~
When Trish gets home, after a long day of job-searching, she finds another letter from her brother in her mailbox and her boyfriend glued to his computer, typing frantically. The letter goes into an empty box of tampons under the sink (Pete wouldn’t dare to look in there), and she plops onto the couch next to him.
“Hey, sweetie,” she says and tries to get closer to him. Pete turns the screen so she can’t see anything and continues typing. “What are you doing?”
“I am advising a young soul on his troubled life,” Pete replies, completely serious.
“Oh, is it your internet boyfriend?” Trish teases, and Pete stiffens, looking up at her over the screen.
“No,” he finally states defensively, and then continues whatever he is doing. Trish sighs and gets up off of the couch.
“I’m going to take a bath, is that okay?” she asks, and he just nods vaguely.
Trish reads the letter as she bathes and when it includes a detailed description of Ray proposing she can’t help but squeal a little.
“Are you all right in there?” Pete asks, tapping on the door.
“Yeah, there was just a- a spider. It was really tiny. Don’t worry, I got it,” she lies, and is amazed when he actually accepts the lie.
“Just hurry up in there, I gotta piss,” he adds before she can hear him turning back to the living room, and the steady tapping of keys continues.
Trish sighs, and resolves to be more careful in the future. Pete is a pretty chill boyfriend, but he hates it when she talks to someone he either doesn’t know or like. She gets out of the tub and pulls the plug to let it drain while she hides the letter again. Trish gets back into the tub and turns the shower, washing her hair quickly, wincing at the cold water. She must have used all the hot water in her bath. She gets out again, wraps a towel around her body and leaves the bathroom.
Pete rushes in after she leaves, and she sees his computer screen move. Curious, she leans in to see. It’s an AIM conversation, between Pete (pweezy69) and some unknown person (grr182).
pweezy69: but while im waitin how bout a pic
pweezy69: herd u got a new cam 4 xmas
pweezy69: ;)
grr182: ty 4 it btw
grr182: here u go -> http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l58/grr182/sxy-3.jpg
pweezy69: lol i lyk ur style
grr182: ty I lyk urs
pweezy69: brb
grr182: ok
grr182: brb 2
Pete sent a stranger a camera? Trish is tempted to click the link, but she doesn’t have enough time, as she can hear Pete’s footsteps. She rushes down to their bedroom, and sits on the bed, realizing she probably dripped all over the couch, snooping on her boyfriend. She sits still, until she realizes he is probably too engrossed in his conversation with grr182 to actually care.
~
Spencer’s reply to his brother- it feels weird even thinking about the fact he has a brother- is short and simple, stuffed into a envelope taken from his father’s desk, and stamped with a stamp swiped from his mother’s purse. They’re not even his real parents, anyway, what does it matter?
Still, things grow extremely awkward, especially with Ryan stuck to his computer, probably talking to some perverted old guy with breathing problems. He hasn’t really been around as often, and with less Ryan, there is even more Brendon. Brendon has always practically lived at Spencer’s house, but now it is even more apparent. Spencer’s mom- adoptive mom, he corrects himself- doesn’t say anything, and just puts Brendon on the family chore roster. His secret is kind of hard to keep, and with Brendon pestering him every five seconds, Spencer is ready to flip.
“Spencer, what’s wrong?” Brendon asks him, one day after school starts up again.
“Nothing is wrong,” Spencer replies, gritting his teeth. Brendon is sitting dangerously close to a reply from his brother, and he is trying to figure out how to get him away from it.
“Something is wrong, Spence, I know it. I can feel it,” Brendon says, scooting closer to him on the bed. Spencer sighs in relief that Brendon won’t find the letter that he has yet to read, but then realizes the predicament he is in.
“Look, Bren, everything is fine-” he gets cut off by his phone ringing.
“Who is it?” Brendon questions.
“It’s Ryan,” Spencer answers, then flips open his phone. “Hey, Ry, what’s up?”
“Will you come outside for a second? I gotta talk to you,” Ryan answers, his voice sounding borderline impatient, which is pretty surprising because he normally just sounds bored.
“Brendon’s with me, can he come?” Spencer asks when Brendon jostles his arm, leaning in to eavesdrop.
Ryan sighs on the other end, but replies with a tentative, “Sure. Just, hurry.”
They race down the stairs, and Ginger tells them to “Slow down, or you’ll get hurt!” Sure enough, Brendon slips and hits his funnybone on the hand rail, but undeterred, they continue to Spencer’s front yard, where Ryan is sitting in the slowly dying grass.
“What’s up, Ryan?” Brendon asks, grinning like whatever they are about to be told isn’t going to be completely serious. Ryan rolls his eyes, but beckons them to come closer with his arms. They follow his directions, and then he speaks.
“I’m transferring to Chicago for my spring semester," he says, uncrossing his legs.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Brendon exclaims, but Ryan shushes him.
“You can’t be serious, what if this Pete guy is like 40, and a pedophile and-” Spencer adds, slumping down on the grass next to him, Brendon quickly following.
“I’m 19 years old, Spencer, I can make my own decisions," Ryan says, and when he sees Brendon's mouth open, he adds, "And besides, I’m not just going for him."
“Oh yeah, then what are you going for?” Brendon asks.
“Well, the schools in the Midwest are so much better than the ones here,” Ryan says with a pointed stare, and continues, “Also, for my health. I would love to live in the Windy City. It would help get my respiration rates up.”
Brendon's mouth opens and closes as he tries to collect his thoughts. “Okay, that is utter nonsense. First of all, Chicago is even the windiest city in the US. That’s in, like, Kansas. And Vegas is a lot windier than Chicago," he finally blurts out.
“Not really, they don’t call Vegas the ‘Windy City’,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes, but Spencer can tell he’s getting defensive.
“Do you remember the time you got knocked over by the wind, and flew five feet when we were cutting through an empty lot to get to Big Lots? If you moved to anywhere windier, you’d have to put weights in your shoes," Spencer recalls, and Ryan's glare is mutinous.
“Not true-”
“And also, the wind spreads around pollen particles. Particles that you are allergic to,” Spencer interrupts.
“Well then, I’m moving to a place less windy for my health. So I don’t get thrown into the air by a tornado-”
“It wasn’t a tornado, just a particularly strong gust of wind,” Brendon replies and gets another glare from Ryan.
“Shut up, Brendon. Also, I have always aspired to see the Great Lakes.”
“You never have-”
“Drop it, I’m moving to Chicago, and you can’t stop me," Ryan says, finishing the conversation by standing up and walking back towards his house. Brendon looks at Spencer, dumbfounded, and for once, Spencer has no answer.
“Let’s go back in, I think your dad’s making fajitas!” Brendon says, after a few moments of silence and Spencer follows him.
~
“Ray?” Bob asks, feeling ridiculous. He shouldn’t be nervous about this.
“Yeah?” Ray is sitting at the table, rarely-worn glasses perched on his nose as he punches numbers into the calculator.
“Can we invite Trish and Spencer to the wedding?” Bob blurts out, before he can get too tongue-tied.
Ray looks up from his business calculations, with a worried look on his face. “Of course we can. Did you think I was going to say otherwise?”
“No, it’s just-”
“You don’t need permission from me to invite your family to our wedding. All of my cousins are coming, and you know how many of them there are,” Ray interrupts, looking back to his notebook and calculator.
“I know, just-”
“Oh, are you being nervous about inviting them? Don’t be, they’ll definitely accept. Trish has been writing letters with you for years, and Spencer has got to be curious about everything.”
Bob sighs, gets up and presses a kiss to the top of Ray’s head. “I love you.”
“I know,” Ray replies, his mouth curving into a slight grin.
“Whoa there, Han Solo,” Bob laughs and Ray pulls him close for another kiss.
“You’re too big to be Leia, though,” Ray smirks at him, and Bob grins, pushing away. “I love you too!” he calls as Bob leaves the room.
~
Brendon has been nagging Spencer for what seems like forever, and his persistence may have worked out. This is only because Spencer is tired, and Ryan is gone, and there is so much stress on him, that he feels like breaking down.
He finally does, in the grungy bathroom at the mall, and he feels ridiculous when Brendon has to cart him out of the stall to prevent him from hyperventilating. He takes in Spencer’s red eyes, and the tears dripping from his nose, and pops a pair of girl’s sunglasses on to hide them. “We can talk about this later, but for now, you have got to stop hiccupping,” he says, and Spencer nods soberly, trying to take deep, calm breaths. Brendon pats his hand, and a dirty skater in a tattered Misfits tee is looking at them funny, but Spencer doesn’t care.
Finally, when Spencer’s face has de-puffed enough that no one could tell that he’d been crying, they stroll out of the bathroom. Brendon buys him some Dip N Dots, and even though it’s even darker in the mall with his sunglasses, Spencer is glad he has them on. They sit on a bench outside the automatic doors, and Brendon shares his headphones with Spencer as they thaw out from the extreme air conditioning of the inside.
Eventually they search out Brendon’s car (on loan from his mother), and get inside. With the air conditioning blasting and windows rolled down, they make their way home.
“Thank you,” Spencer says, as they roll up their windows before turning onto their street. Brendon’s mom calls it “wasting gas” when they have the air conditioner on and the windows rolled down, and rolling the windows up gives them at least a sense of privacy.
“Are you ready to talk about it?” Brendon asks, as they pull into his driveway.
“Yeah, but, I-”
“You didn’t get a girl pregnant, did you?” Brendon babbles, and Spencer can’t help but give him a look.
“Brendon…”
“Are there drugs involved? If you’re trying to quit meth and having withdrawals or something, you always know you can tell me, though I don’t know how much help I could be. I think the church has a program for addicts and-”
“Oh my god, it’s nothing like that, it’s just-” Spencer’s carefully rehearsed speech is interrupted by sticky fingers knocking on the window.
“Are you ever coming out of there?” Jackie asks, her eyes barely reaching over the
“Maybe never!” Spencer shouts back at her, but he’s grinning underneath the bug-eye sunglasses that swallow his face.
~
Trish is rubbing the sore spot on her shoulder from the huge bag she’s had to carry around, all freaking day, and answering her brother’s letter, as best she can, when there’s a knock on the door, followed by a shout. She glances at the clock, and sighs when it reads 2:30 p.m. Pete left the night before at 6:30, promising it’d be an early night. She gets up, puts on a brave face as she pads over to the door of their apartment and peeks into the small glass hole in the door. Pete’s standing there, with his clothes rumpled, his hair mussed and a mark blooming on his neck. He knocks again, shouting at her to let him in.
Trish sighs again, and opens the door. The grin he flashes at her is a bit manic, but her heart warms when she sees what’s behind him. A new guitar! She practically dances, but as Pete wouldn’t approve, she just smiles at him, and opens her arms wide, as if to hug him. He prances into her arms and plants a sloppy kiss on her mouth.
“Where were you?” she asks, once he’s gotten settled back in, and she’s opened her gift. “You said you’d have an early night.”
“I had to pick my friend up from the airport, and then we met this really awesome dude who owned like, a music store chain and then we got totally wasted and we crashed at his place. He decided to give me a guitar half-price when I woke up, but we had to break into his store, because he’d lost his key. We almost got arrested, but when the police saw his ID, they just laughed and took us to IHOP for lunch.” The slight limp in Pete’s step speaks otherwise, but he got her a shiny new Gibson to add to her guitar collection, so Trish ignores it this time.
“I love you,” she proclaims after playing around with the strings a bit.
Pete grins up at her, like she’s the moon, so she tries to forget how much he smells like sex. It doesn’t really work, but she can drown out the distaste with the sound of her new guitar, plugged into one of her many amps. She almost doesn’t notice that he doesn’t return the sentiment. Almost.
~
Spencer and Brendon are sitting on the patio in Spencer’s backyard, drinking iced tea in awkward silence.
“I- I was adopted,” Spencer blurts out, and a little tea dribbles out of Brendon’s mouth.
“What?” he asks, choking.
“Ever since Winter Break, I’ve been writing letters with my biological brother, Bob,” he adds, staring straight forward, trying not to make eye contact with Brendon.
“Are you sure this all checks out? What if it’s all a big lie and-” Spencer cuts Brendon off with a glare.
“I’m not stupid, I made sure to check it all out, before I believed it.”
“How?”
“Well, I googled everything his said, and it all checked out-”
“You can’t always trust the internet!”
“-and then I checked my file in my dad’s office. There were adoption records in there, with my name on it.”
“Oh my god, Spence, I’m so sorry-”
“Don’t be,” Spencer says, and they look in opposite directions
“Can I ask what happened to your r-biological family?”
“My parents were hit by a drunk driver, but there’s a lot more than that.”
“What do you-” Spencer’s mom knocks on the glass of the door, hoisting a large pitcher of iced tea. Spencer sighs, but smiles at his mom, after a quick look at Brendon to tell him not to say any more. Brendon nods, and Mrs. Smith refills their glasses.
“So what are you two boys talking about?” she asks, happily.
“We’re talking about our plans for the future, college and stuff,” Brendon quickly lies and Spencer feels indefinitely grateful to his best friend.
“Ooh, how exciting! Have you decided on anything? I know you got accepted to some pretty good business schools, but I don’t want you going all the way to the east coast, so have you reconsidered BYU or ASU? I worry about you not being close enough to home,” she chatters, obviously not paying attention to her son.
“We were just discussing the pros and cons of everything, although I still want to go somewhere farther than a border state,” Spencer says, his glare mutinous.
“I know that Brendon’s going to BYU, and you two are awfully close,” Mrs. Smith says, and Brendon laughs nervously.
“There is the internet,” Spencer replies, staring at her and trying to telepathically tell her to go away.
“Oh, there is that,” she replies, and sensing she is unwanted, goes back inside.
“I’m buying tickets to go visit him, in June,” Spencer says after a few more minutes of sipping tea in silence.
“What?” Brendon asks, nearly elbowing Spencer in the side.
“He’s getting married, to this wonderful guy, Ray. And my sister, Trish, will be there too,” Spencer replies, his voice nearly a whisper.
“You can’t go!” Brendon exclaims.
“That’s not for you to decide, Brendon.”
They’re quiet until dinner, where they both put on fake smiles. Spencer’s been doing it so long that it feels almost natural to him, but Brendon looks like he’s about to crack.
“Mom, can Bren sleep over tonight? We have a big project for Government,” Spencer decides to ask after a slight nod from Brendon.
“Sure thing, do you want me to ask Grace?” his mother inquires after instructing Crystal to eat all of her peas.
“No, we’ll ask her when we go over to get his stuff.”
“I’m pretty sure Brendon has left some clothes around here. He does have his own toothbrush,” she says, winking and Spencer’s dad laughs.
“Yeah, but he always leaves dirty clothes,” Spencer retorts, and Brendon rolls his eyes.
“Then bring those ones home and trade them for something that won’t stink up my house!” Spencer’s dad chimes in.
“Will do, sir!” Brendon says, and salutes him before running upstairs. Spencer had forgotten that Brendon was such a good actor.
~
Bob is a bit nervous about telling Ray’s family about the engagement via invitations to the wedding.
“It’s seems kind of tacky,” Bob complains.
“My mother knew I was planning on proposing, and since we live together, I doubt it’s that big of a surprise to my other family members,” Ray replies, flipping through another newspaper’s classified ads looking for somewhere to buy their tuxes. He is about to ask Bob what he thinks of renting, when Bob opens his mouth.
“But what about your poor grandmother?” Bob asks, and Ray just brushes it off.
“You’ve met my Nana, she’s worried that we’re living in sin and she won’t have any grandbabies with a proper name.” Ray says, circling a tuxedo rental place that looks vaguely promising.
“She does know that we can’t make babies, right?” Bob asks, scooting a little closer to Ray so he can see what his fiancé is doing.
“Of course!” Ray replies, his tongue sticking out a bit as he concentrated. “But I think she was thinking of some adopted baby or maybe a surrogate or something. Not right now of course.”
“Not right now?” Bob asks, his voice quiet.
“Well, we’re obviously now just getting married. We can think about babies a little bit farther ahead.”
The remark is so offhand that Bob just has to ask, “But… you want them?”
“Well, do you?” Ray’s actually looking at him now, brown eyes questioning.
Bob spits out a quick “Yes,” followed by “But do you or don’t you?”
“Of course I do!” Ray takes his hand and rubs his fingers in quiet circles, and Bob presses a kiss to his temple. “Well, I’m glad we’ve had that talk. It’s much better then always wondering about it and silently going crazy.” Bob laughs, but gets quiet again.
“I want to adopt, a younger kid at first, but maybe an older kid later. I want to give them the chances that I’ve never had,” he says, after a few moments of deep consideration.
“I think that is a great idea. Maybe we can look into it after the honeymoon?” Bob kisses Ray again, this time on the lips.
~
It isn’t as common now as it had been when they were younger, but sometimes when Brendon would sleep over, he’d crawl into bed with Spencer and spread his limbs like a blanket or cling like a vine. Nowadays, Brendon only does it in times of stress (like after school dances or before major tests). When his problems at home get really bad, Brendon will sneak over to Spencer’s house and sprawl out all over Spencer. It’s getting harder for Spencer now, too, because when he wakes up with a boner in the middle of the night, he has to check for Brendon. It would feel less creepy to rub one out if it wasn’t Brendon who caused it in the first place.
It’s really a lose-lose situation. When Spencer wakes up with Brendon curled around him, nose buried into his neck, he gets a sickly flutter in his stomach. When Spencer wakes up alone, he shivers from the cold (Brendon is a portable heater, built into a person) and tries to ignore the feeling of loss and the stab of pain that accompanies it in his heart.
Ever since Spencer told Brendon about the letters from his long-lost brother, Brendon’s been sneaking into Spencer’s room more often than not. Spencer thinks it might be Brendon’s way of keeping Spencer in Vegas, and maybe a little jealously, but nowadays, Brendon is surprisingly hard to read.
Spencer is mulling over the last letter from Bob when he hears the familiar creaking of the side wood and the squeak of his window. Brendon kicks his shoes off and tosses his jacket onto a chair, then flops onto the bed. He mumbles something, then wraps his arms around Spencer and buries his face in Spencer’s side. Spencer waits until Brendon falls asleep before wiggling out of his arms and shuffling the blankets so they cover Brendon. He feels a pang in his chest when he looks at Brendon, but gets up to write his letter anyway. Once he’s done, he carefully places the letter in an envelope, addresses and stamps it, then tucks it into a small box under his bed before climbing back into it. Brendon nuzzles his arm and Spencer closes his eyes.
~
Trish walks into her apartment after a hectic day to what sounds like a very noisy porno being played at just the right volume on their high-def speakers that it sounds real. “Pete, would you turn that down?” she calls, and sets her keys on the table before hanging her coat up. The soundtrack doesn’t do anything, so thinking he didn’t hear her, she says it again, louder this time. The noises pause, and then she hears a rustling sound, complete with a few faint curses. Pete must be cleaning up, now that she’s home.
She pours herself a glass of water in the kitchen, and waves at Pete, whose total nudity isn’t uncommon. What is uncommon is the condom wrapper, torn open at the edge, kicked under the coffee table. Trish decides not to comment, and instead walks toward the bathroom to get some Advil from the medicine cabinet. Pete lunges toward her, but is too late, because when she opens the door, a half dressed teenager is attempting to leave through the window. Trish screams at the top of her lungs, causing the boy to fall off the toilet he had climbed on top of. She kicks him before she sees his face and the stream of hickies trailing down his chest. She whirls around to glare at Pete.
“It isn’t what this looks like,” he says, walking steadily toward her.
“Oh yeah, then what is it? A teenaged, naked burglar who looks a lot like the kid who you’ve been talking to online for months?” She turns back around, and feels a punch rather than sees it. “What was that for?” Trish asks the kid, her voice now borderline shrill.
“You kicked me!” the kid defends.
“I thought you were robbing us!” she cries.
"But you knew who I was!” he claims, rubbing at his shin.
“That was before I saw your face!”
“All right, we should probably put some clothes on and sort this matter out,” Pete tries to reason.
“No,” Trish says, angrier than ever. “I’m going to my brother’s place, and I’m not coming back.” She storms past Pete to get the bags she’s packed, throwing a few extra things into an old backpack. When she leaves the bedroom she shared with her boyfriend, she can hear Pete and the boy going at it again. They could have at least had the decency to wait until she left.
~
next
March 13th, 1990
Bob wakes up to the phone ringing non-stop. His parents are still out, so he decides that they must have something to tell him. Years later, he wonders that if he hadn’t answered the phone, maybe things would have changed.
“Hello, Mom?” he asks, sleepily.
The voice on the other end is slightly crackly, but definitely not his mother. “No, I’m sorry. This is Wendy, from Mercy Hospital and Medical Center. I’m calling about Dean and Roberta Bryar.”
“Those are my parents!” he exclaims, his voice rising with excitement.
“Sweetie, you’ll have to lower your voice,” she says, her voice patient. “How old are you?”
“I’m ten and three months,” Bob replies, matter-of-fact.
“Is there an adult there? Or a relative we could call?”
“No, I’m babysitting my brother and sister. And we don’t have any more relatives since Grandpa Corey died. Why are you asking?” he adds, starting to get worried.
The voice pauses, almost for dramatic effect. “Your parents got in a terrible accident. A drunk driver smashed into their car. Your father… didn’t make it. And your mother is in a coma.”
“What?” he asks, incredulous. Then he starts babbling, “No. You’re lying. They were just going to the movies. We bought a pizza! They were here only a few hours ago.”
“I wish I were lying, honey,” she replies with a steady voice. “We’re going to send some people from the state department to your home, ok? They’ll take you to the hospital so you can see your mom.”
“You can’t be serious.” Bob feels like he can’t breathe anymore.
“I am. Hon, I have to ask you your address. Is it still-” the woman on the phone keeps talking and all Bob can do is meekly answer “yes” a few times. His mom and dad were just in the same foyer, laughing and smiling. His dad had given him a ten for pizza. His mom had kissed him on the forehead. There was no way they were gone.
A while later, he doesn’t know if it was minutes or hours, someone knocks on the door. He checks the peephole, just like his dad taught him to. A frowning lady with frizzy hair standing there. “Who is it?” he calls out.
“My name is Eliza Monroe. I’m with Child Protective Services. I’m here to take you and your siblings to the hospital, and then a place to stay for the night," the woman says.
“Show me some ‘dentification,” he says, thinking back on the few episodes of Law & Order he has seen staying up late when he’s supposed to be sleeping. She purses her lips, then reaches into her bag and pulls a card out of her wallet. She shows it to the peephole, and after confirming that she is who she says she is, Bob opens the door.
“All right, honey, I know it’s a shock that your dad is gone and your mom's not far off. But we’re going to get you to the hospital and then a place to stay.”
“We can stay here! They let me babysit Trisha and baby Spencer,” Bob protests. Eliza just tilts her head to the side and frowns again.
“Can you go get Patricia and Spencer?” she asks, after careful consideration.
“They’re sleeping right now, I’m not s’posed to let them be up past seven,” Bob says, crossing his arms and looking up at her. He’s not going to break his parents’ rules, even if the lady says that they’re gone. “Rules are rules, and if you want to be trusted, you have to follow the rules,” his father always told him.
“I know, but this is a special circumstance,” Eliza says, using the grown up voice that Bob has always hated. “Can you get them up and ready to go? I’ll come with you to help.”
“Sure,” he replies, still not pleased with her answer. His mother always told him to listen to adults though, so they walk up the stairs to wake the sleeping children.
~
Patricia can remember Bob shaking her awake. “Wake up, Trish. We gotta go.”
“Where?” she mumbled sleepily.
“To the hospital. Come on, just put some shoes on, we have to go,” Bob was frowning and a woman with wild hair and frown lines was standing behind him. She didn’t dare argue, he was ten years old, practically a grown up. She dressed hurriedly and he left to Spencer’s nursery. Trish could hear Spencer grumble about the hour, and Bob murmured soft words to him. She still had trouble tying her shoes, so she put on the sandals Daddy had gotten her last weekend when they went to the big store. It felt weird wearing her Princess Ariel nightgown and her glittery shoes, but neither Bob nor the frizzy lady (who identified herself as Eliza) batted an eyelash at the attire.
The next few moments were a blur of strapping her and Spencer into their car seats in a shiny dark car, and then whizzing off through the night. The hospital was white, blindingly so. The nurses that rushed them through were kind but Trish didn’t fully understand what was happening until she saw her mom lying peacefully surrounded by white. The fluorescent lights buzzed angrily, flickering as Trish climbed on top of the bed, white sheets scratchy like sandpaper under her skin. Mom didn’t move, and her face was pale. Part of her head was wrapped in a bandage, like the ones on TV. Trish turned around bewildered, shouting, “Where’s Daddy?”
~
Sixteen years later…
Spencer dreams about being thrust into the brightest white ever after black, silent darkness. A pair of wobbly arms grip tight around him and a little girl wails at the top of her lungs. A somewhat familiar woman is lying dead white on a hospital bed, the girl clutching at her corpse. He looks up at the boy holding him, whose eyes are filled with tears and he can feel some of his own forming.
A woman with an evil smile takes him away, and he’s lost forever.
He wakes up in a cold sweat, heart pounding in his chest. Brendon is poking at his side, worriedly. “Are you all right?” Spencer just nods, and Brendon crawls into the bed with him, stroking his back as he sobs.
~
Dear Spencer,
I know it may have been a surprise for you to receive this letter, but everything you are about to learn is completely factual, though it has been hidden from you most of your life.
First of all, you are not who you think you are. You were born Spencer Dean Bryar, on September 2nd, 1987 in Mercy Hospital, in Chicago, Illinois. Shortly before your second birthday, you were adopted by James and Ginger Smith, whom you now call your parents. You were not abandoned by your biological parents, nor were they in any legal or financial trouble. Instead, you were orphaned on March 13th, 1989, when your parents were killed by a drunk driver.
How do I know all this? I am your older, biological brother, Bob. I was ten when our parents were killed, so I remember you and our sister Patricia, though you may not recall us...
Bob sighs and crumples up the letter he’s been working on for the past fifteen minutes. Ray looks over from where he's sitting upright on the bed, flipping through a guitar catalogue.
“Bob, come to bed. The right words aren't going to come to you if you don't get any sleep,” he says, and Bob sighs.
“It's just- I've been looking for him all my life, and he doesn't even know I exist. It's not fair! I have to tell him soon, or it'll be too late, and he'll become... embittered or something!”
“Have you been reading Gerard's books again?” Ray asks, and after Bob sheepishly admits to it, he continues, “Don't rush it. It'll be a big shock to find out his parents have been lying all these years. You have to be delicate about it.”
“I guess you're right.” Bob sighs again and switches off the desk light. “You truly are my better half,” he says after he swivels the chair around and crawls into bed with his boyfriend. He can see Ray’s smile in the soft light coming from the window. They kiss, short and sweet, before Ray falls asleep, Bob not far behind him.
~
Patricia Stumph is not having a good day. In the middle of the night, her boyfriend turned off the alarm clock “in order to get some fucking sleep, Trish.” She was woken this morning by the manager calling in to tell her she was fired, and needed to return her uniform. She barely has enough time to put on clothes before she has to rush to campus, for her 10 a.m. Feminist Literature class. She doesn’t bother to look out the window before leaving, so of course she is running a few blocks in the rain without a proper coat or umbrella.
She finally arrives at the lecture hall, panting and soaked, and sitting in her spot is the bitchy British girl that Trish caught flirting with Pete the other week. The only available seat within hearing distance of her soft-spoken professor is behind the group of annoying tall guys that talk all class. She barely gets any notes down when all she can hear is the group talking about the Composition 346 professor's ass.
When the lecture is over, William, one of Pete’s obnoxious friends, corners her about a party going down over the weekend. She finally gets away, assuring Bill that she’ll tell Pete about it. She’ll do no such thing, but Bill doesn’t have to know. Her phone rings during Flowers’s class and she gets kicked out of the hall because the professor is a stickler about cell phones. It turns out to be Pete, asking where she hid the Lucky Charms. She calmly reminds him that he finished them off last night before going out, and he argues with her for another ten minutes about something else completely redundant.
When her day is over (and after she buys an extra large box of Lucky Charms at the grocery store), she checks the mail. She smiles when she sees that she got a letter from her biological brother, Bob. They’ve been writing since her eighteenth birthday, and she can’t wait to hear about what is going on with his life. She tucks it in the inside of her sweater, deciding to keep the secret of her adoption from her boyfriend just a little longer.
~
Bob and Ray’s house is close enough to Main Street that they walk to work. After Bob’s shower and fifteen minutes in the bathroom getting ready, he grabs a cup of coffee and walks to his bakery, in the dark chill of the early morning.
It’s a nice place, with a cozy store front and a roomy kitchen. He always opens and closes the shop, as he is the first to arrive and the last to leave. After finishing his coffee, he puts the dough he prepared the night before in the oven and moves the older goods from the glass case to the “bargain” shelf.
One of his assistants, Darren today, comes in around five-forty, to help him get the shop ready to open at six. They work in a pleasant silence, putting fresh bread, cookies, rolls, and muffins in their proper places. After Darren sweeps the shop front and Bob wipes down the counters, Darren flips the sign “open” and busy commuters slowly but steadily trickle in for breakfast.
Bob goes to the back, to check the still-baking foods or look over his taxes until seven-thirty, when Chris comes in to keep an eye on the kitchen. Ray comes into the bakery around eight-fifteen every morning, and Bob chats with him as he hands his boyfriend a cheese-filled croissant and a cup of black coffee. Ray pecks him on the cheek and then crosses the street to the music store where he works. Bob usually stays in the back to fill out paperwork, or test new recipes, but on the rare occasions when he goes to front, he can almost always spot Ray, hard at work, selling guitars or doing manager-like things.
Darren gets a break at ten-twenty-five today, so Bob mans the register and watches Ray across the street, in between customers. The morning rush is long gone, so he has a notebook to write in if something inspires him, when Ray is in the back or teaching lessons. Darren comes back at eleven-thirty, which is when Ray and Bob simultaneously take their lunch break together.
Bob grabs a loaf of French bread from the back, and then visits the deli next door for some meat. Ray meets him in front of his store, and they walk to the park and make sandwiches on one of the picnic tables. They laugh as they eat and hurry back to their shops for the lunchtime rush, which subsides around one-thirty.
Darren gets off after the lunch rush is over, and Other Bob (or “Morris” as everyone refers to him), comes in. Chris leaves after making three batches of cake batter, and the Bobs close the shop at six. They make the next day’s dough, and Bob catches up on more paperwork before leaving at seven-thirty.
He goes home, eats dinner with Ray, watches a bad sitcom with his dogs, and falls into bed.
~
Spencer gets the first letter during Winter Vacation. One of his chores is to get the mail, and normally when he flips through the pile, it’s all bills for his parents, random magazines, or fliers from desperate colleges in need of a higher student population. But when he sees his name and address scrawled out in blue pen, underneath one of those cutesy return address stickers with puppies and the name of the letter-writer, a Bob Bryar from New Jersey, he knows it is different.
He carefully tucks the envelope inside the music magazine Brendon ordered subscriptions of for his last birthday, and then at the bottom of the stack, and walks back up the pathway to his house. They live in an older neighborhood, with individual mailboxes instead of a big metal one for a large portion of the street. The houses all had grass yards at one time, before most of his neighbors converted to desert landscaping, which Spencer’s dad says adds to the quaint charm of their cul-de-sac. Spencer has been pleading with his father to make the switch, citing environmental reasons, but mostly he just hates mowing the lawn.
His sisters are watching TV with his mom as he steps inside. Crystal complains about the weather, and Jackie yells at him to shut the door before letting the heat out. (It’s been unseasonably moody this winter, the wind blowing clouds around and the temperatures varying from the mid 70’s to the upper 30’s, though snow is never in the forecast.) They’re watching a serial killer special on E!, something about supermodels being killed, and he can smell his dad cooking something cheesy.
Spencer walks into the kitchen, drops the stack (except for his magazine and letter) on the kitchen table, and then climbs up the stairs to his bedroom. He sits on his bed, and starts to open the letter, but his mother calls him down for grilled cheese. The letter will be for another time, then, he decides, and shoves it under his bed. He flies down the stairs to see Brendon sitting at his kitchen table, mouth stuffed with a sandwich.
~
Bob is trying to come up with animal product alternatives to use in his future line of vegan cupcakes when Ray walks into the bakery. Bob can tell it is Ray, because there is a Ray-shaped shadow over the notes he has carefully taken. Bob can also feel Ray’s fingers on his back, and he’d know those fingers blindfolded and underwater in the dark. “What do you want, Ray?” he asks, and turns around when he hears a coughing sound. “Holy shit.” Almost half the town is crowded into his tiny bakery. There are balloons.
Bob is maybe hyperventilating, a lot.
“Robert Nathaniel Corey Bryar,” Ray starts and Bob just counts his breaths, trying not to die. He had a lengthy speech, about houses and love and their dogs and dear god he takes a discreet black velvet box out of his pocket and Greta has a huge bouquet of roses in her hands and Gerard is smiling at him all big and shit and Ray pauses. “Will you marry me?” he finally asks, holding the ring up for Bob to see.
“Y-yes, of course, Ray!” Bob stammers out and the nervous grimace on Ray’s face turns into a huge grin. Ray grabs him in an awkward hug over the counter and Bob kisses the side of his face before breaking free. He walks around the counter and holds his hand out for Ray to slip the slim gold band on his finger. Bob grabs Ray again and kisses him, roughly this time, until all they can hear is the beating of their hearts and the panting of the breath. “I love you so much,” he breathes, and then notices the whoops and hollers from their friends. “Thank you, guys!” he says to them, and then they descend upon the happy couple.
Greta’s gushing about how romantic it is at the same time Gerard is asking about the
date and Ian is blathering on about an engagement party. Bob can hardly discern
any of the conversations, but he’s never been happier to be so busy in his life.
~
The letter is kind of a big shock to Spencer. He doesn’t know if he should trust the information in it, so he googles it. Bob Bryar really does own his own bakery in a tiny New Jersey town. The name of the private detective is legitimate, and when he looks up the people who Bob claims are his biological parents, he finds a newspaper article about their tragic deaths. It takes a bit longer for him to finally work up the courage to sneak into his
parents’ files. While they are sitting in a filing cabinet in the office just off the den, he doesn’t want his parents to know what he is up to. So, late at night, he sneaks out of his room and into the office. He digs through the folders inside until he gets to one with his name printed neatly on it. Inside is his birth certificate, and he is shocked to find that it says “Spencer Dean Bryar” instead of “Spencer James Smith”. He sits there, staring at the folded paper for what seems like forever, until he sees something else in his file.
Adoption papers.
Multiple questions run through his mind as he scans the documents. Why had his parents never told him about his adoption? Did they ever plan on telling him about it, and the biological siblings he had seemed to lose? Did this affect how they felt about him in relation to his sisters? Were Crystal and Jackie adopted too? He sits in the office until he sees streaks of sunlight peaking in through the blinds. He feels numb, and while he can hardly think of anything else but his parents’ deception, he knows he can’t let them know about what he found out. Spencer carefully puts the files back where they belong and gets up, stretching. He barely makes it back to his room before he can hear the familiar sound of his father’s feet softly padding down the hall and the stairs. Spencer drops onto his bed and falls asleep without another thought.
~
When Trish gets home, after a long day of job-searching, she finds another letter from her brother in her mailbox and her boyfriend glued to his computer, typing frantically. The letter goes into an empty box of tampons under the sink (Pete wouldn’t dare to look in there), and she plops onto the couch next to him.
“Hey, sweetie,” she says and tries to get closer to him. Pete turns the screen so she can’t see anything and continues typing. “What are you doing?”
“I am advising a young soul on his troubled life,” Pete replies, completely serious.
“Oh, is it your internet boyfriend?” Trish teases, and Pete stiffens, looking up at her over the screen.
“No,” he finally states defensively, and then continues whatever he is doing. Trish sighs and gets up off of the couch.
“I’m going to take a bath, is that okay?” she asks, and he just nods vaguely.
Trish reads the letter as she bathes and when it includes a detailed description of Ray proposing she can’t help but squeal a little.
“Are you all right in there?” Pete asks, tapping on the door.
“Yeah, there was just a- a spider. It was really tiny. Don’t worry, I got it,” she lies, and is amazed when he actually accepts the lie.
“Just hurry up in there, I gotta piss,” he adds before she can hear him turning back to the living room, and the steady tapping of keys continues.
Trish sighs, and resolves to be more careful in the future. Pete is a pretty chill boyfriend, but he hates it when she talks to someone he either doesn’t know or like. She gets out of the tub and pulls the plug to let it drain while she hides the letter again. Trish gets back into the tub and turns the shower, washing her hair quickly, wincing at the cold water. She must have used all the hot water in her bath. She gets out again, wraps a towel around her body and leaves the bathroom.
Pete rushes in after she leaves, and she sees his computer screen move. Curious, she leans in to see. It’s an AIM conversation, between Pete (pweezy69) and some unknown person (grr182).
pweezy69: but while im waitin how bout a pic
pweezy69: herd u got a new cam 4 xmas
pweezy69: ;)
grr182: ty 4 it btw
grr182: here u go -> http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l58/grr182/sxy-3.jpg
pweezy69: lol i lyk ur style
grr182: ty I lyk urs
pweezy69: brb
grr182: ok
grr182: brb 2
Pete sent a stranger a camera? Trish is tempted to click the link, but she doesn’t have enough time, as she can hear Pete’s footsteps. She rushes down to their bedroom, and sits on the bed, realizing she probably dripped all over the couch, snooping on her boyfriend. She sits still, until she realizes he is probably too engrossed in his conversation with grr182 to actually care.
~
Spencer’s reply to his brother- it feels weird even thinking about the fact he has a brother- is short and simple, stuffed into a envelope taken from his father’s desk, and stamped with a stamp swiped from his mother’s purse. They’re not even his real parents, anyway, what does it matter?
Still, things grow extremely awkward, especially with Ryan stuck to his computer, probably talking to some perverted old guy with breathing problems. He hasn’t really been around as often, and with less Ryan, there is even more Brendon. Brendon has always practically lived at Spencer’s house, but now it is even more apparent. Spencer’s mom- adoptive mom, he corrects himself- doesn’t say anything, and just puts Brendon on the family chore roster. His secret is kind of hard to keep, and with Brendon pestering him every five seconds, Spencer is ready to flip.
“Spencer, what’s wrong?” Brendon asks him, one day after school starts up again.
“Nothing is wrong,” Spencer replies, gritting his teeth. Brendon is sitting dangerously close to a reply from his brother, and he is trying to figure out how to get him away from it.
“Something is wrong, Spence, I know it. I can feel it,” Brendon says, scooting closer to him on the bed. Spencer sighs in relief that Brendon won’t find the letter that he has yet to read, but then realizes the predicament he is in.
“Look, Bren, everything is fine-” he gets cut off by his phone ringing.
“Who is it?” Brendon questions.
“It’s Ryan,” Spencer answers, then flips open his phone. “Hey, Ry, what’s up?”
“Will you come outside for a second? I gotta talk to you,” Ryan answers, his voice sounding borderline impatient, which is pretty surprising because he normally just sounds bored.
“Brendon’s with me, can he come?” Spencer asks when Brendon jostles his arm, leaning in to eavesdrop.
Ryan sighs on the other end, but replies with a tentative, “Sure. Just, hurry.”
They race down the stairs, and Ginger tells them to “Slow down, or you’ll get hurt!” Sure enough, Brendon slips and hits his funnybone on the hand rail, but undeterred, they continue to Spencer’s front yard, where Ryan is sitting in the slowly dying grass.
“What’s up, Ryan?” Brendon asks, grinning like whatever they are about to be told isn’t going to be completely serious. Ryan rolls his eyes, but beckons them to come closer with his arms. They follow his directions, and then he speaks.
“I’m transferring to Chicago for my spring semester," he says, uncrossing his legs.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Brendon exclaims, but Ryan shushes him.
“You can’t be serious, what if this Pete guy is like 40, and a pedophile and-” Spencer adds, slumping down on the grass next to him, Brendon quickly following.
“I’m 19 years old, Spencer, I can make my own decisions," Ryan says, and when he sees Brendon's mouth open, he adds, "And besides, I’m not just going for him."
“Oh yeah, then what are you going for?” Brendon asks.
“Well, the schools in the Midwest are so much better than the ones here,” Ryan says with a pointed stare, and continues, “Also, for my health. I would love to live in the Windy City. It would help get my respiration rates up.”
Brendon's mouth opens and closes as he tries to collect his thoughts. “Okay, that is utter nonsense. First of all, Chicago is even the windiest city in the US. That’s in, like, Kansas. And Vegas is a lot windier than Chicago," he finally blurts out.
“Not really, they don’t call Vegas the ‘Windy City’,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes, but Spencer can tell he’s getting defensive.
“Do you remember the time you got knocked over by the wind, and flew five feet when we were cutting through an empty lot to get to Big Lots? If you moved to anywhere windier, you’d have to put weights in your shoes," Spencer recalls, and Ryan's glare is mutinous.
“Not true-”
“And also, the wind spreads around pollen particles. Particles that you are allergic to,” Spencer interrupts.
“Well then, I’m moving to a place less windy for my health. So I don’t get thrown into the air by a tornado-”
“It wasn’t a tornado, just a particularly strong gust of wind,” Brendon replies and gets another glare from Ryan.
“Shut up, Brendon. Also, I have always aspired to see the Great Lakes.”
“You never have-”
“Drop it, I’m moving to Chicago, and you can’t stop me," Ryan says, finishing the conversation by standing up and walking back towards his house. Brendon looks at Spencer, dumbfounded, and for once, Spencer has no answer.
“Let’s go back in, I think your dad’s making fajitas!” Brendon says, after a few moments of silence and Spencer follows him.
~
“Ray?” Bob asks, feeling ridiculous. He shouldn’t be nervous about this.
“Yeah?” Ray is sitting at the table, rarely-worn glasses perched on his nose as he punches numbers into the calculator.
“Can we invite Trish and Spencer to the wedding?” Bob blurts out, before he can get too tongue-tied.
Ray looks up from his business calculations, with a worried look on his face. “Of course we can. Did you think I was going to say otherwise?”
“No, it’s just-”
“You don’t need permission from me to invite your family to our wedding. All of my cousins are coming, and you know how many of them there are,” Ray interrupts, looking back to his notebook and calculator.
“I know, just-”
“Oh, are you being nervous about inviting them? Don’t be, they’ll definitely accept. Trish has been writing letters with you for years, and Spencer has got to be curious about everything.”
Bob sighs, gets up and presses a kiss to the top of Ray’s head. “I love you.”
“I know,” Ray replies, his mouth curving into a slight grin.
“Whoa there, Han Solo,” Bob laughs and Ray pulls him close for another kiss.
“You’re too big to be Leia, though,” Ray smirks at him, and Bob grins, pushing away. “I love you too!” he calls as Bob leaves the room.
~
Brendon has been nagging Spencer for what seems like forever, and his persistence may have worked out. This is only because Spencer is tired, and Ryan is gone, and there is so much stress on him, that he feels like breaking down.
He finally does, in the grungy bathroom at the mall, and he feels ridiculous when Brendon has to cart him out of the stall to prevent him from hyperventilating. He takes in Spencer’s red eyes, and the tears dripping from his nose, and pops a pair of girl’s sunglasses on to hide them. “We can talk about this later, but for now, you have got to stop hiccupping,” he says, and Spencer nods soberly, trying to take deep, calm breaths. Brendon pats his hand, and a dirty skater in a tattered Misfits tee is looking at them funny, but Spencer doesn’t care.
Finally, when Spencer’s face has de-puffed enough that no one could tell that he’d been crying, they stroll out of the bathroom. Brendon buys him some Dip N Dots, and even though it’s even darker in the mall with his sunglasses, Spencer is glad he has them on. They sit on a bench outside the automatic doors, and Brendon shares his headphones with Spencer as they thaw out from the extreme air conditioning of the inside.
Eventually they search out Brendon’s car (on loan from his mother), and get inside. With the air conditioning blasting and windows rolled down, they make their way home.
“Thank you,” Spencer says, as they roll up their windows before turning onto their street. Brendon’s mom calls it “wasting gas” when they have the air conditioner on and the windows rolled down, and rolling the windows up gives them at least a sense of privacy.
“Are you ready to talk about it?” Brendon asks, as they pull into his driveway.
“Yeah, but, I-”
“You didn’t get a girl pregnant, did you?” Brendon babbles, and Spencer can’t help but give him a look.
“Brendon…”
“Are there drugs involved? If you’re trying to quit meth and having withdrawals or something, you always know you can tell me, though I don’t know how much help I could be. I think the church has a program for addicts and-”
“Oh my god, it’s nothing like that, it’s just-” Spencer’s carefully rehearsed speech is interrupted by sticky fingers knocking on the window.
“Are you ever coming out of there?” Jackie asks, her eyes barely reaching over the
“Maybe never!” Spencer shouts back at her, but he’s grinning underneath the bug-eye sunglasses that swallow his face.
~
Trish is rubbing the sore spot on her shoulder from the huge bag she’s had to carry around, all freaking day, and answering her brother’s letter, as best she can, when there’s a knock on the door, followed by a shout. She glances at the clock, and sighs when it reads 2:30 p.m. Pete left the night before at 6:30, promising it’d be an early night. She gets up, puts on a brave face as she pads over to the door of their apartment and peeks into the small glass hole in the door. Pete’s standing there, with his clothes rumpled, his hair mussed and a mark blooming on his neck. He knocks again, shouting at her to let him in.
Trish sighs again, and opens the door. The grin he flashes at her is a bit manic, but her heart warms when she sees what’s behind him. A new guitar! She practically dances, but as Pete wouldn’t approve, she just smiles at him, and opens her arms wide, as if to hug him. He prances into her arms and plants a sloppy kiss on her mouth.
“Where were you?” she asks, once he’s gotten settled back in, and she’s opened her gift. “You said you’d have an early night.”
“I had to pick my friend up from the airport, and then we met this really awesome dude who owned like, a music store chain and then we got totally wasted and we crashed at his place. He decided to give me a guitar half-price when I woke up, but we had to break into his store, because he’d lost his key. We almost got arrested, but when the police saw his ID, they just laughed and took us to IHOP for lunch.” The slight limp in Pete’s step speaks otherwise, but he got her a shiny new Gibson to add to her guitar collection, so Trish ignores it this time.
“I love you,” she proclaims after playing around with the strings a bit.
Pete grins up at her, like she’s the moon, so she tries to forget how much he smells like sex. It doesn’t really work, but she can drown out the distaste with the sound of her new guitar, plugged into one of her many amps. She almost doesn’t notice that he doesn’t return the sentiment. Almost.
~
Spencer and Brendon are sitting on the patio in Spencer’s backyard, drinking iced tea in awkward silence.
“I- I was adopted,” Spencer blurts out, and a little tea dribbles out of Brendon’s mouth.
“What?” he asks, choking.
“Ever since Winter Break, I’ve been writing letters with my biological brother, Bob,” he adds, staring straight forward, trying not to make eye contact with Brendon.
“Are you sure this all checks out? What if it’s all a big lie and-” Spencer cuts Brendon off with a glare.
“I’m not stupid, I made sure to check it all out, before I believed it.”
“How?”
“Well, I googled everything his said, and it all checked out-”
“You can’t always trust the internet!”
“-and then I checked my file in my dad’s office. There were adoption records in there, with my name on it.”
“Oh my god, Spence, I’m so sorry-”
“Don’t be,” Spencer says, and they look in opposite directions
“Can I ask what happened to your r-biological family?”
“My parents were hit by a drunk driver, but there’s a lot more than that.”
“What do you-” Spencer’s mom knocks on the glass of the door, hoisting a large pitcher of iced tea. Spencer sighs, but smiles at his mom, after a quick look at Brendon to tell him not to say any more. Brendon nods, and Mrs. Smith refills their glasses.
“So what are you two boys talking about?” she asks, happily.
“We’re talking about our plans for the future, college and stuff,” Brendon quickly lies and Spencer feels indefinitely grateful to his best friend.
“Ooh, how exciting! Have you decided on anything? I know you got accepted to some pretty good business schools, but I don’t want you going all the way to the east coast, so have you reconsidered BYU or ASU? I worry about you not being close enough to home,” she chatters, obviously not paying attention to her son.
“We were just discussing the pros and cons of everything, although I still want to go somewhere farther than a border state,” Spencer says, his glare mutinous.
“I know that Brendon’s going to BYU, and you two are awfully close,” Mrs. Smith says, and Brendon laughs nervously.
“There is the internet,” Spencer replies, staring at her and trying to telepathically tell her to go away.
“Oh, there is that,” she replies, and sensing she is unwanted, goes back inside.
“I’m buying tickets to go visit him, in June,” Spencer says after a few more minutes of sipping tea in silence.
“What?” Brendon asks, nearly elbowing Spencer in the side.
“He’s getting married, to this wonderful guy, Ray. And my sister, Trish, will be there too,” Spencer replies, his voice nearly a whisper.
“You can’t go!” Brendon exclaims.
“That’s not for you to decide, Brendon.”
They’re quiet until dinner, where they both put on fake smiles. Spencer’s been doing it so long that it feels almost natural to him, but Brendon looks like he’s about to crack.
“Mom, can Bren sleep over tonight? We have a big project for Government,” Spencer decides to ask after a slight nod from Brendon.
“Sure thing, do you want me to ask Grace?” his mother inquires after instructing Crystal to eat all of her peas.
“No, we’ll ask her when we go over to get his stuff.”
“I’m pretty sure Brendon has left some clothes around here. He does have his own toothbrush,” she says, winking and Spencer’s dad laughs.
“Yeah, but he always leaves dirty clothes,” Spencer retorts, and Brendon rolls his eyes.
“Then bring those ones home and trade them for something that won’t stink up my house!” Spencer’s dad chimes in.
“Will do, sir!” Brendon says, and salutes him before running upstairs. Spencer had forgotten that Brendon was such a good actor.
~
Bob is a bit nervous about telling Ray’s family about the engagement via invitations to the wedding.
“It’s seems kind of tacky,” Bob complains.
“My mother knew I was planning on proposing, and since we live together, I doubt it’s that big of a surprise to my other family members,” Ray replies, flipping through another newspaper’s classified ads looking for somewhere to buy their tuxes. He is about to ask Bob what he thinks of renting, when Bob opens his mouth.
“But what about your poor grandmother?” Bob asks, and Ray just brushes it off.
“You’ve met my Nana, she’s worried that we’re living in sin and she won’t have any grandbabies with a proper name.” Ray says, circling a tuxedo rental place that looks vaguely promising.
“She does know that we can’t make babies, right?” Bob asks, scooting a little closer to Ray so he can see what his fiancé is doing.
“Of course!” Ray replies, his tongue sticking out a bit as he concentrated. “But I think she was thinking of some adopted baby or maybe a surrogate or something. Not right now of course.”
“Not right now?” Bob asks, his voice quiet.
“Well, we’re obviously now just getting married. We can think about babies a little bit farther ahead.”
The remark is so offhand that Bob just has to ask, “But… you want them?”
“Well, do you?” Ray’s actually looking at him now, brown eyes questioning.
Bob spits out a quick “Yes,” followed by “But do you or don’t you?”
“Of course I do!” Ray takes his hand and rubs his fingers in quiet circles, and Bob presses a kiss to his temple. “Well, I’m glad we’ve had that talk. It’s much better then always wondering about it and silently going crazy.” Bob laughs, but gets quiet again.
“I want to adopt, a younger kid at first, but maybe an older kid later. I want to give them the chances that I’ve never had,” he says, after a few moments of deep consideration.
“I think that is a great idea. Maybe we can look into it after the honeymoon?” Bob kisses Ray again, this time on the lips.
~
It isn’t as common now as it had been when they were younger, but sometimes when Brendon would sleep over, he’d crawl into bed with Spencer and spread his limbs like a blanket or cling like a vine. Nowadays, Brendon only does it in times of stress (like after school dances or before major tests). When his problems at home get really bad, Brendon will sneak over to Spencer’s house and sprawl out all over Spencer. It’s getting harder for Spencer now, too, because when he wakes up with a boner in the middle of the night, he has to check for Brendon. It would feel less creepy to rub one out if it wasn’t Brendon who caused it in the first place.
It’s really a lose-lose situation. When Spencer wakes up with Brendon curled around him, nose buried into his neck, he gets a sickly flutter in his stomach. When Spencer wakes up alone, he shivers from the cold (Brendon is a portable heater, built into a person) and tries to ignore the feeling of loss and the stab of pain that accompanies it in his heart.
Ever since Spencer told Brendon about the letters from his long-lost brother, Brendon’s been sneaking into Spencer’s room more often than not. Spencer thinks it might be Brendon’s way of keeping Spencer in Vegas, and maybe a little jealously, but nowadays, Brendon is surprisingly hard to read.
Spencer is mulling over the last letter from Bob when he hears the familiar creaking of the side wood and the squeak of his window. Brendon kicks his shoes off and tosses his jacket onto a chair, then flops onto the bed. He mumbles something, then wraps his arms around Spencer and buries his face in Spencer’s side. Spencer waits until Brendon falls asleep before wiggling out of his arms and shuffling the blankets so they cover Brendon. He feels a pang in his chest when he looks at Brendon, but gets up to write his letter anyway. Once he’s done, he carefully places the letter in an envelope, addresses and stamps it, then tucks it into a small box under his bed before climbing back into it. Brendon nuzzles his arm and Spencer closes his eyes.
~
Trish walks into her apartment after a hectic day to what sounds like a very noisy porno being played at just the right volume on their high-def speakers that it sounds real. “Pete, would you turn that down?” she calls, and sets her keys on the table before hanging her coat up. The soundtrack doesn’t do anything, so thinking he didn’t hear her, she says it again, louder this time. The noises pause, and then she hears a rustling sound, complete with a few faint curses. Pete must be cleaning up, now that she’s home.
She pours herself a glass of water in the kitchen, and waves at Pete, whose total nudity isn’t uncommon. What is uncommon is the condom wrapper, torn open at the edge, kicked under the coffee table. Trish decides not to comment, and instead walks toward the bathroom to get some Advil from the medicine cabinet. Pete lunges toward her, but is too late, because when she opens the door, a half dressed teenager is attempting to leave through the window. Trish screams at the top of her lungs, causing the boy to fall off the toilet he had climbed on top of. She kicks him before she sees his face and the stream of hickies trailing down his chest. She whirls around to glare at Pete.
“It isn’t what this looks like,” he says, walking steadily toward her.
“Oh yeah, then what is it? A teenaged, naked burglar who looks a lot like the kid who you’ve been talking to online for months?” She turns back around, and feels a punch rather than sees it. “What was that for?” Trish asks the kid, her voice now borderline shrill.
“You kicked me!” the kid defends.
“I thought you were robbing us!” she cries.
"But you knew who I was!” he claims, rubbing at his shin.
“That was before I saw your face!”
“All right, we should probably put some clothes on and sort this matter out,” Pete tries to reason.
“No,” Trish says, angrier than ever. “I’m going to my brother’s place, and I’m not coming back.” She storms past Pete to get the bags she’s packed, throwing a few extra things into an old backpack. When she leaves the bedroom she shared with her boyfriend, she can hear Pete and the boy going at it again. They could have at least had the decency to wait until she left.
~
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