24. Independence Day

[no_indoor_voice]

[A: MORNING AT 1651 ALBRIGHT LANE]

[Tybalt rises early.

After all, he has to take the ground beef from the freezer to make sure it's thawed in time for the barbecue this evening, before the fireworks. That's what his father always did for the 4th. Burgers and cola, and then they'd all drive out together, Tybalt and his parents, to Mayfield Park to

Comments

B

[tender_crook]

[He tries to remember the drive to school, and something in his head keeps superimposing it over the town instead. If the town wants to pretend he's always been here, fine. He tries to remember the choir room, but it's constantly shifting and moving in his memory like something just out of the corner of his eye.

He tries to remember Tina, first of all, electric blue eyeliner has a way of standing out in the mind and he can't. There's no Mike either. Mercedes. Mercedes wouldn't be caught dead here. She's not here, in his little fantasy of a Mayfield-McKinley. There's a void. And Rachel, of all people, should be stabbing through McKinley-remixed like a wrong note in a Celine Dion medley. There's no Rachel. No Santana. There's no Puck. There's no Artie. Well isn't that fucking quaint, first with the people of color and then everyone else who doesn't reek of peroxided able-bodied Gentile whiteness. The town doesn't bother putting his current classmates, other visitors here, into the fantasy

[no_indoor_voice]

[Tybalt turns to look at him, and the movement is a short jerk of the head, as though he's fighting off a seizure already. He's been feeling like this all day, though, so it's probably just part of the town fucking with his mind.]

...what?

[tender_crook]

Explosions going off. People haven't been waiting until it gets dark. You should come back to the house--

[no_indoor_voice]

...which house.

[tender_crook]

Tybalt, can you tell sometimes if you're going to have a seizure--

[no_indoor_voice]

[Wait, that's actually a potential litmus.]

...seizures, how long have I been having seizures-

[tender_crook]

[Kurt blinks.]

You were... you were eight.

[no_indoor_voice]

[Of course, how could he have forgotten, they started after he slipped from the diving board ladder at Julia's first birthday party and struck his head-

No, wait, that wasn't right, he was nine and he'd been thrown from a horse-]

How do you remember that-

[tender_crook]

You said nothing the doctor did helped.

Do you-- remember-- when mom got sick?

[no_indoor_voice]

-they drowned.

[tender_crook]

[shuts his eyes tightly, sounding a bit strained]

What do you mean, "they"?

[no_indoor_voice]

[He pauses.]

...she tied you to the mast-

[tender_crook]

My mom had a brain tumor, Tybalt. I was eight.

[flicking back his hair agitatedly]

[no_indoor_voice]

If you were eight I was fifteen- that's not right-

[tender_crook]

People don't sail a whole lot in Lima--

[no_indoor_voice]

[Tybalt sits heavily on a bench, clutching his head.]