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.

Brittany is there.
Kurt is holding her hand under the table during Home Economics. Kurt is driving her out to the scenic overlook and putting a corner in the viewfinder machine. Fuck. Baseball games with dad, leisurely driving lessons, picnics. The stuff that's obviously an invention of Mayfield abuts up nicely to what he's pretty sure is real and it's starting to blend.

He tries to draw something powerful to mind. Finn. He's already begun to forget Finn since coming here, which is exactly what Finn would want -- a lot easier when he isn't being constantly barraged with the sight, sound and smell of him. (The smell was strangely important.) Kurt feels a little bad about it, but not really, given he's under more pressing stress. A strong memory, something that sticks out.
Redecorating. Oh, well, of course, it couldn't be coming out to Burt or his thirteenth birthday or watching The Sound Of Music with mom that recalled him to waking life, it had to be that. Or even within the particular bailiwick of Finn, it couldn't be when they first met, or any hundreds and thousands of little precious seed-bead gems of moments between them. It had to be that one. All right, so be it. Finn is there, and the room is there, but Finn's not shouting at him for making the place over like a Moroccan whorehouse. The furniture and wallpaper are all varying plaids. The scene's the same. The... word isn't.

He doesn't want to try and remember what dad does next.

Kurt looks like he has a migraine. He preemptively tries to be comforting:]

Tybalt, they're just fireworks--

[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.]