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flyboytracy · 4 years

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Okay but what if Scott rly was Alan’s dad?

I was gonna post this for Earth & Sky week if I managed to complete it but it’s smol Tracy’s birthday and it’ll probably never see the light of day otherwise so why not :D

I’m always a ho for an AU so here’s one I started over lockdown called ‘Okay but what if Scott really was Alan’s dad’

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Long before International Rescue was a thing, the Tracy boys had lived on a farm in Kansas. It’d belonged to their late mother, God bless her soul, and these days it only grew crop for an environmentally friendly fuel because Tracy money came from technology instead of the earth.

The boys’ famous army father was gone for days at a time and there was plenty of rumours why that was. Mrs Wyatt who lived down the lane from the Tracys said she’d heard the man was alcoholic and probably had been for a long time because his teenaged son had been looking after the rest of them since his poor momma died. She saw them troop past her gate every day on their way to school and back, and then to the park on the weekends when their pa’s jet wasn’t on the drive.

Mr Colton, who lived at number fifty-four said he’d taken his son to the pool at the same time that the Tracy boys had been there without their father as usual. He told Vera that he’d overheard the youngest chattering away to the red-headed one about a rocket he’d called the TV21 until the eldest had overheard and shushed them. According to Mrs Johnson who was friends with Ms Hernandez at the school, Col. Tracy had budding engineers, astronauts and a future Olympic swimmer at the home he never seemed to return to. Instead it was Scott and Virgil who took their brothers to swim meets and galas and even to the Cosmosphere. Ms Hernandez could find nothing to complain about because all four of the Tracy boys grades were above average and threw off the teachers’ bell curves when it came to subjects like science and math.

That Scott boy sure had his hands full with three brothers, his own future and a possibly alcoholic father to look after, so the whole town was surprised when he went and knocked up the Austin girl after being crowned king and queen of their grad ball. Not much ever happened in the backwater towns of the sunflower state so everybody knew about it the morning after the night Pa Austin went round the Tracy’s farmhouse to have it out with the Colonel.

The rumour mill had been on fire for months after that because Mrs Johnson had been having her usual perm when she’d heard Ma Austin tell Shirley all about how her daughter’s boyfriend had been going to leave their small town after graduation. She’d seen the way the Tracy boy cared for his brothers and had expected he’d give up his plans to join the military if he had a kid of his own at home with her.

To the town’s surprise, it turned out that the Colonel was actually a long distance father and not an entirely absent one. Pa Austin had stormed to the farmhouse that night with his shotgun in hand, only to be greeted by a hologram of the great Colonel himself, sat eating dinner on a beach somewhere as his boys ate dinner round a table in Kansas. Austin had gone round with the aim of threatening at least one Tracy with his shotgun but hadn’t got that far because Colonel Jefferson Tracy could still dominate a room from over a thousand miles away.

According to Pa Austin, his fancy hologram was just as tall as the real thing and pretty sober which put paid to Mrs Wyatt’s theory that he was an alcoholic. In fact he was a Big Apple businessman now, and a darn good one at that because by the end of the evening it had been decided that his eldest son would join the GDF as planned and the child would remain with its mother but want for nothing. Tracys took care of their own and Pa Austin said he’d realised that when the colonel’s youngest boy had kept interrupting their conversation to show him trash he’d found in the pond at the park and Tracy hadn’t brushed the youngster off at all.

The big holographic man had promised they’d feed the ducks at the weekend, which meant half the town was hanging around the park come Saturday morning.

The youngest had appeared first, full of joy and enthusiasm that his older brother didn’t share as the red-head was dragged across the grass to the pond. The second eldest was close behind them and had a couple of toy boats in his arms which left the eldest Tracy boy and his father to bring up the rear.

They were deep in conversation when they appeared, the Colonel strolling along easily with his hands behind his back like an old fashioned gentleman. Scott was by his side and gone was the little boy always running to catch up. In his place strode a man and it was rather disappointing really.

The Tracys moved away shortly afterwards. Stan the mailman said he’d seen fancy suits taking pictures of the farmhouse and the Tracys had paid for their mail to be redirected but he couldn’t seem to find an address. The Austins had an address for the Tracys, but they also had a pretty hefty NDA in exchange for a very comfortable lifestyle and weren’t much inclined to break it just to satisfy everyone else’s curiosity.

It all died down after a while and people got bored of watching Sophia get bigger. Her old flame might’ve flown out of the picture but his presence sure was felt around town when Sophia got her own car and fancy place on the Tracy’s dime. Ms Hernandez said the colonel had insisted Ms Sophia continue her education alongside being a momma to his first grandchild and Shirley heard there was a job at the Tracy’s family business when she wanted to get out of Kansas.

Nothing exciting happened in their little backwater until the day a private jet landed on the main street and Sophia was whisked off to give birth at a very fancy hospital. According to Ma Austin, she had a private room and the colonel had parked his jet on the roof since his son wouldn’t make it back in time for the birth.

They did seem to be a good family, the Tracys, even if they’d disappeared off the face of the earth in the past eight months or so. The only trace anybody could seem to find of them was on the Tracy Industries website where each son had a mention in the CEO’s bio but real information was scarce. They disappeared off Ms Hernandez’s records and there was nothing about them on any government website. Nobody was truly surprised that the Colonel had chosen to disappear because they’d come to realise a few things after reading his bio. For one, the fella was a billionaire several times over and two, he adored those four boys of his more than anything because his words about his achievements had been clinical but the paragraph about each of his sons’ achievements had made old Mrs Johnson cry.

Of course everybody wanted to know what happened but the Austins didn’t have a lot to say. The Colonel was a very nice man who didn’t seem to have taken offence to Ms Austin’s actions. He’d offered her further education and employment instead of the lawsuit most men in his position would’ve filed. There were rumours the fella was working on a top secret project that’d change the world, but in their little backwater there were rumours about everything.

Alan Tracy didn’t pay attention to any of those rumours as he grew up with his momma in a sleepy little town in Kansas. The little boy loved many things including his momma and their house that had a big garden with a tire swing and a sandpit he used to re-enact grandpa landing on Mars. He loved ice cream and going to the park and he even liked Kindergarten ‘cause he got to draw pictures of his family and space.

But what Alan Tracy loved most of all was his daddy. He didn’t get to see him a lot ‘cause he was learning to be a pilot like grandpa, but every Friday evening a fancy car arrived to take him a little way out of town where grandpa’s jet would be waiting to take him to the island for the whole weekend.

Sometimes grandpa flew it but he had lots of meetings around the world so other times he’d see Uncle Virgil through the window and squeal with excitement ‘cause his biggest uncle had the best toys. He was gonna be an engineer and could fix any of Alan’s toys, even the one that failed a moon launch. He had Alan’s undying love ‘cause the little boy could hang from his arm like a monkey and he had lots of fun stories about his daddy. They were best, best friends and Alan liked to crawl into that big plaid shirt and bug him ‘til Uncle Virg showed him pictures of when daddy was little.

Uncle Virg wasn’t always around though ‘cause he was studying in Denver but that was okay ‘cause Alan had two more uncles to play with. Johnny didn’t really like to play but when he was home he let Alan play with his telescopes and taught him all about space.

Alan loved his daddy but he thought he might love space even more. He loved it when Johnny took him up to the peak of the island in the dark and they sat for an hour to watch for shooting stars. Alan had fallen asleep once on the big fluffy blanket and the best thing of all was when he woke to find daddy had an arm around Johnny’s shoulders and Alan had been drooling on his shirt.

“Hey, sprout.” Daddy had smooched his forehead when he’d noticed bright blue eyes staring up at him with joy, “I love you. John says you’ve been learning about the stars some more.”

“There’s Ursa Major!” Alan had stood up to be able to point out the little pinpricks of light that made up the Ursa Major Constellation and he still hadn’t been taller than his daddy, “Johnny says Ursa’s a big bear like Uncle Virg.”

“Johnny told you that, did he?” his daddy’s laugh had made Alan feel warm right down to his bones and he’d dived for a hug. Impossibly long arms had folded around him and Johnny, drawing them both into the safest place in the universe for so long they missed most of the shooting stars and Johnny made them go away so he could see the rest. Alan didn’t mind ‘cause dad swung him up onto his shoulders and let him get wet on the rocky beach by the villa since it was bath time anyway.

Alan loved Sunday mornings on the island when daddy was home. Alan liked to wake him up by bouncing on the bed ‘cause the sky was awake so they should be too. And then they’d get dressed in matching blue swim shorts and go for a run around the island and if he ran faster than daddy on the home stretch he was allowed to jump into the pool like Superman. Gordon was usually in there by then and kept an eye on Allie doing the doggy paddle in the shallow end whilst daddy went to get breakfast out the fridge. There was something cool that beeped super loud that time he tried to moonwalk on the bottom of the pool like an astronaut and Uncle Virg had dived in like a bowling ball to fish him out. Gordon had laughed a lot but Uncle Virg hadn’t even smiled ‘til daddy gave him one of those hugs that made booboos stop hurting.

Alan really loved his uncles but he loved his daddy most and it was hard to stand on the runway with Uncle Virg to wave goodbye. Uncle Virg didn’t seem to like waving goodbye either so Alan always held his hand to make him feel better and did his best to be like daddy so Uncle Virg wouldn’t miss him too much.

He seemed to end up being more like John as a couple of years passed and everything in his life changed. Grandpa took him to London to get measured for a suit for daddy’s graduation and he didn’t understand why Uncle Virg kept frowning at Gordon for laughing about daddy’s graduation from big school. He asked Uncle Virg what was so funny, and then Grandpa and Grandpa’s weird professor friend who used big words Alan didn’t know yet, but none of them seemed to know and even daddy missed a step when Alan asked him on their way to the fancy dinner Grandpa was hosting at his penthouse in New York for his newly graduated son. Daddy never ever missed anything which was annoying when Alan was trying to get hold of Gordon’s cookies but he’d breathed air the wrong way and Uncle Virg had to thump his back a few times.

Daddy had talked about how cool Alan looked in his little gray suit and Alan had been so happy he’d forgotten about his question ‘til after dinner when they were still at the table and he’d pulled himself onto Grandpa’s knee ‘cause Uncle Virg and Gordon were being loud and he’d been a tired little boy by then. He’d tried one last time to find out what was so funny about daddy’s last graduation and Grandpa had rested his chin atop Allie’s head.

“Your momma and daddy had you after his last graduation.” Grandpa rumbled, “You were quite an unexpected surprise for your daddy, but a welcome one. Gordon likes to remind your daddy about what a big surprise you were.”

“Your daddy was a surprise too, as I recall.” Grandma Tracy was sat with Grandpa and Alan loved visiting her but sometimes she made him cookies and he didn’t love those.

“I love daddy, not cookies.” he mumbled tiredly and fell asleep right there at the table.

That meant he missed the way his Grandpa coughed to quieten his four boys because he had something real important to discuss with them. Scott knew what it was, and Virg had an inkling because it was difficult to disguise underground excavations from a highly skilled engineer. They were sat together with Virgil’s elbow resting on the back of Scott’s chair and blue eyes softened when he realised where Alan had got to.

Alan had managed to sleep through the inaugural meeting of International Rescue and life was never the same again after he woke up.

#idek #AU warning #dad!scott #i'm just such a ho for dad!scott #this is what happens when I watch things like Bridgerton

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lostboywords · 7 years

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Sample: Wild, Free, Lost

Original character. 9,000 words or so. Trigger warning across the board. Read at your own discretion. Read more with this character here. I’ve written roughly 16,000 words about this boy.

DECEMBERS IN MINNESOTA WERE as cold as you’d expect for the midwest. Only eight inches of snow had fallen since July but you’d think the ground was covered with it if you had to walk outside in seventeen degree air – while being nothing less than fit-to-burst with your second son.

“When is he gonna come out?” seven-year-old Jai asked behind his waddling mother.

“When he’s ready.”

“Is dad still in surgeries?”

Jasmit laughed in amusement at her own son. “Mmhm.”

“Can I see him come out?”

Another laugh – this one almost cackled, but still so sweet from a loving mother.

“No, no. Only Nānī will see. You can see him after.”

“Let me –” The sprightly and increasingly lanky boy ran in front of her to open the car door, little hands out like he was sure he could stop her if she lost her balance. “Dad said you shouldn’t drive, you know.”

“Dad doesn’t know anything except what’s between your ears. I drove when you were coming.”

“He says it’s dangerous.”

“Do you want to wait here?” she posed mischievously as he buckled himself into his seat.

“No.”

Of course he didn’t. He was going to be a big brother.

THE NOVELTY OF HAVING an infant brother wore off quickly after Jai had gotten his share of sleepy holds. He thought he was cute after his swelling had gone down, and he became cuter as his features became more defined. Sharing attention was difficult but Jai had always been an understanding boy. In fact, on the nights when Ravinder would cry, and cry, and cry, Jai would step sleepily throughout the hallway and tell his mother, “Maybe something is wrong. Maybe you should take him to the doctor.”

And mom would say, “Your parents are doctors, silly,” while on the verge of tears herself.

But that was different, he’d tell her, because they weren’t baby doctors.

“Check his heart.”

“His heart is fine, Jai.”

“There’s a staple in it!”

She laughed – softly over her crying baby – and looked at him in the doorway. “That means it’s fixed, Jai-Jai. Babies cry. You did, too.”

“Not this bad.”

“You’re right. You cried worse.”

And Jai would scuff his feet back down the hallway, feeling slightly insulted the way only eight-year-olds can be.

BEING A LITTLE BROTHER was often as bitter as it was sweet. In Jai, Ravinder found safety and protection – and he was very good at being a role model. He was stronger than most of the other boys. Taller than them all, too – and so Ravinder’s childhood bullies were few and far between. He was fast enough to win all the races he was dared to and brave enough to jump from the stupidest places. He was so kind he never killed a bug; he took them outside to make homes where they were more welcomed.

Ravinder knew that he would never be as strong, as tall, as brave, or as kind as Jai. That’s what made it so bitter. But he aspired to be that and Jai taught him – just in little lessons, like how to fold an airplane out of paper or how to climb a rope quickly.

Or how to build a fire.

“What if you can’t find… this stuff?” Ravi tapped on the edge of the little nest of dry grass and leaves. He was nine years old, curious about the world, and had the biggest eyes for the teenaged Jai.

“Where the hell would you be where you can’t find some leaves?”

“I don’t know… the desert.”

He laughed, and so did Ravi, even though his cheeks went red. “Then you probably won’t need a fire.”

Jai showed him how to spin the stick and then let his smaller hands take over. He told him to keep going even when he protested – it’s taking forever, it’s not working, shouldn’t it be on fire by now? I don’t think I’m doing it right.

But then it worked, and Ravinder was so amused that his mother had to bandage his blisters from spinning so many sticks that summer.

LIFE UNTIL JAI LEFT was so innocent and carefree that when he would look back on it years later, it would seem surreal. Fires were made in the heat of summer, tents were pitched in the cold of winter, burns were treated with tomatoes and olive oil and cuts were covered with the stickiest band-aids because they always had a tendency to come off.

Dad worked and was never terribly interested in the sun, or the snow, or the beach, or the outdoors. He worked long, odd hours and sometimes was heading to bed when his sons were off to school. He would always unwind with a spicy kind of wine that Jai and Ravi would steal sips from. Dad never noticed; he was always too buried in scans and x-rays and books with pictures of brains to pay attention to how much he’d been drinking.

Mom was much of the same way, but her hours were more regular and she preferred pictures of hearts over brains. Oftentimes the boys could tell if she’d had a bad day at work, because she became easily flustered with something as simple as not being able to close the door with her foot on the first try.

They would fight, when dad was home for dinner but didn’t want to come out of his study and mom had had a late appointment, or had to give bad news, or learned that one of her patients had had another heart attack.

It was Jai entertaining his little brother because the two had much more important things to do - helping him with his homework, which was always so confusing explained from a doctor’s mouth - teaching him how to ride a bike because dad would stumble every time he tried. They went to the skatepark or got lost on hiking trails or nearly drowned in the rough lake. They walked to school together and Jai always waited that extra hour after high school ended to bring his little brother home. And sometimes they wouldn’t go home at all – sometimes they’d stay out until mom got home in the evenings, jumping off swings or climbing trees and more than once breaking a few bones in the process of either.

Jai was always there for Ravi’s soccer games, sporting ridiculous face paint and screaming ridiculous cheers from the sidelines. Life was full of Jai’s favorite music or tough taunts from a little brother while they played video games or barking dogs when a new friend would come over. And laughter. There was always laughter. Every night Ravi went to sleep his cheeks hurt and his lungs ached. Life was busy and full and so loud.

They talked about trips they were going to take, how they were going to see the world - Italy, China, Iceland.

And then one day Jai was riding his bike behind his little brother on the sidewalk, and he told him, “I think I’m gonna join the military.”

There was only a month ‘til he graduated and ten-year-old Ravi was swept up in panic all at once.

“Why don’t you just go to college?”

“I will… afterwards.”

“I thought we were gonna go places together.”

He laughed. “Of course we will. But you’re only ten. We got seven or eight years ‘til you’re done with school. We’ll travel.”

But they never would.

Life became quiet.

SOMETIMES RAVI WOULD SLEEP in Jai’s bed while he was away. He was gone for months at a time, and would only come back for a couple weeks if they were lucky. He had been seventeen when he went away. Mom and dad had signed a form to give their permission, and they sent him off proudly, while Ravi had fought back tears when he’d been given that last hug. He remembered that day: he’d woken up early to say goodbye to find his brother writing him a letter because he didn’t want to wake him up.

Now Jai was twenty and their gap had never felt wider. Jai would Skype as often as he could but it was never like it used to be. There was no laughter anymore. They never had time for jokes.

He had been staring out into the dark of the window, his head on Jai’s pillow, as close to the fresh air as he could get himself.

‘I’m depressed,’ he texted his brother. It was blunt, and perhaps worrying, but they still knew each other well enough to trust that Ravi could send something like that and he would know that Jai wouldn’t respond right away.

But this time he did.

He called him, but Ravi didn’t feel like talking.

‘Answer.’

‘I don’t wanna talk.’

He called again, and Ravi answered this time. He wouldn’t say no to his brother twice.

And they talked. It was terribly early in Afganistan, and Jai hadn’t been able to sleep.

“Must be like we’re twins,” he joked.

They talked for hours – about how mom and dad were fighting more, about how boring life was now, about how he had no friends and he was worried he’d end up alone.

“You’re thirteen,” Jai told him. “Life sucks, but there’s time.”

They talked about those trips they’d take. Italy, China, Iceland.

“I’ve already been to ‘Parris’,” Jai joked.

“Marine camp doesn’t count,” Ravi objected. “Do you think we actually will?”

Jai assured him, “Yeah. We will when you graduate. Promise. It’ll be just you and me.”

THE DOGS BARKED AT everything. They barked at the mailman, they barked at anyone walking by, they bark birds, they barked at nothing.

Ravi was at the dining room table with his mother when they started. They were both frustrated: Ravi’s math homework was just challenging enough to need help, but Jasmit knew such complicated math that she had a tendency to explain it in complicated ways. It was nearing the end of the school-year and she would be glad to have the summer off of trying to tutor him.

“I’ll get it,” she announced, frankly glad to get away for a moment.

There was some muttering he couldn’t really hear through the walls and wasn’t listening to anyway, until he heard the sounds of his mother’s ragged breaths and sudden sobbing. Ravi did not hear that often. When she fought with dad, she yelled.

With a surge of adrenaline he bounded from the table and dragged a hand down the hallway wall. He stood in the doorway to the living room and looked on with dilating vision.

There stood two men, both older and ragged, jaws tightened. They were in full dress – the kind of uniform they saw Jai in sometimes, only when he went to ceremonies or parties. His heart was in his throat.

“Mom?” he squeaked out.

She turned to him, tears streaming, tanned hands pulling at black hair. She did that when she was nervous.

“Oh, Ravi.”

His lower lip quivered. “What is it? Is it him?”

“Oh, Ravi,” she repeated, voice breaking into sobs, soon crossing the space between them to take him into her arms.

Yes. It was.

Life was quieter. Silent.

JAI WAS BURIED LIKE a soldier, like he wanted to be. He’d told their parents that, at some point between going overseas and the last time they’d talked two weeks prior. He wondered what else they had talked about - what things were only for Jai and mom and dad.

His parents stopped fighting for a while. Dad stopped drinking for a while. Mom stopped getting flustered for a while.

A week after Jai died Ravinder slid a broken piece of glass across his skin. He graduated to using a stolen razor blade from his father’s tools.

Slow weeks later, Ravi was fourteen and it was summer. School would start again in two months. He had no one to text ‘I’m depressed’ to. Jai was gone, and the only friends he had were the kind that wouldn’t spend three-quarters of a dollar on you for a convenience store soda.

There was anger within Ravinder but it was the kind that made you cry first and pull your hair out second. Something had been building up inside him, something that made it hard to breathe and to swallow and to fall asleep at night.

He was fourteen, it was summer, it was dark and the air was chilled. He had gotten back from the park because he thought the clearest there, in the same swing where Jai would sit because it was the tallest, and they were fighting again. He hadn’t heard them fighting all summer.

They always fought in Punjabi. Ravi thought that was so anyone eavesdropping wouldn’t know what they were fighting about. But Ravi knew.

“I want a divorce, I want a divorce,” his mother repeated. He didn’t hear much after he closed the bathroom door.

Tonight was different. He was crying, as he usually was, his rusting blade uncovered. He sat on the edge of the toilet seat and held his wrist over the sink. Three little cuts of hesitation were made, but then he started something bigger – red leaked down into the drain and he ran the water to help it along. He cut deeply and over the same cut so much that the white of his tendon was exposed. It didn’t hurt - not really. And he thought of nothing – he wasn’t thinking about death, or suicide, or how much blood he was losing.

He was only feeling sad, and upset, and like the dam within him had finally broken and out spilled this red sea. That was all: he didn’t have anyone to text ‘I’m depressed’ to.

With his right hand, Ravi cleaned up the blood that had gathered along the edge of the sink. That was a mess he didn’t want anyone else to clean up.

He wrapped his wrist with a bright green towel and went out into the kitchen. Mom was drinking some of dad’s spicy wine and looked up to see her only living son disheveled, trembling, with eyes heavy from tears. She only had a moment to change her expression to confused concern.

He had no words, so he pulled his arm from the towel and showed her. She spilled her wine when she bolted up.

“Oh, Ravi,” Jasmit cooed in her way. She called ‘Danvir, Danvir’ and there was enough concern in her voice for dad to race out.

Ravi was fourteen, it was summer, and he had thirty stitches put into his wrist.

“YOU COULD BE A surgeon,” was the greeting the nurse had given. Ravi would look back on that and laugh. Imagine if such an event had been his call into medicine?

“Why did you do that, honey?” was another.

“Why do you think?” was his answer.

The doctor who gave him stitches was a friend of his father’s and not very good with English. In fact, his only reaction to the wound was a surprised, “Ooh,” when blood had leaked onto the bed.

“Your lip is trembling,” mom had whispered into his ear and he bit it. He hadn’t noticed.

He was being sutured (and that numbing shot was damn painful for what it was for) at his wrist and having blood taken from the other hand, dressed in nothing but a hospital gown. It was embarrassing and desperately he wanted to go home.

But he wouldn’t go home for another week.

Ravi was sent off to a behavioral hospital. They gave him pills and had him speak in group therapy. He discovered he liked art, even though he was very terrible at it. The adults complimented him anyway. The worst part had been at the beginning, when he’d had to strip naked so they could make sure he had no other wounds.

At fourteen, well – he would’ve rather died.

On Zoloft for depression, Adderall for his attention, Clonazepam for anxiety, and Seroquel for sleep (later to be changed by his second psychiatrist – Seroquel was an antipsychotic, he’d say, not for sleep) life somehow got easier.

BUT SCHOOL DID NOT. He was the product of two intelligent doctors and had once cried when he missed a single question on his spelling test. Prior to his freshman year he was in advanced placement classes. Now he was relieved when he received ‘D’s. And it was all made harder that he was torn between Ohio one year and Minnesota the next.

After they divorced, mom had moved to work at the Cleveland Clinic, best for cardiology, and dad stayed at the Mayo Clinic, best for neurology. Up until then mom had sacrificed a better job for him.

“But I won’t sacrifice anymore,” she had told her son, and he knew she meant more than just where she worked.

Jai and Ravi had been sent to private schools all their life but public school in Ohio became easier for the transition. It wasn’t terribly different, and Ravi liked especially that he didn’t need to wear a uniform.

Freshman year was spent in Ohio with his mother. She voiced her concerns for his grades but soon became just as appreciative when he just ‘passed’. She knew he’d had a tough time (she was reminded of it whenever she noticed his wrist) and worked less than she might’ve if she hadn’t regarded him.

She took him out to Lake Erie, even though she couldn’t swim and both her brothers had drowned years ago. She took him camping for entire weekends, even though she couldn’t stand to be without a shower for a single day. She took him hiking, even after she’d been on her feet already for fourteen hours. Ravi was reminded of how much he loved the outdoors and he was reminded of Jai.

Sophomore year was spent in Minnesota with his father.

But that was different.

He’d started drinking again.

“YOU ARE SO GROWN,” Danvir greeted his son with a hug at the airport. He couldn’t say ‘tall’, Ravi figured, because his peak height would only be five feet and seven inches.

“So are you,” joked Ravinder, noticing immediately the smell of spiced wine.

He led him to the car outside with a protective, fatherly hand at his shoulder. But that was a novelty; come two weeks, his son would wear out his welcome.

Danvir had always been the type to openly slap his sons if he felt so inclined. He had hit his ex-wife a few times but she’d hit him right back and then there would be this standoff of him not wanting to escalate it and her completely ready to let him have it.

Two weeks in, and one until school started, dad was flipping over the couches and pushing papers off the table in an angry hurry. Ravi had come in from swimming in dad’s new pond and was dripping water all over the carpet.

“Get out of here,” dad shouted, shooing him with some papers.

“What’re you looking for?”

“My keys. I am late for work.”

“They’re in the silverware drawer. You were drunk so I put them there.”

He looked up. “I wasn’t drunk.”

“Yes, you were. You’ve been drunk every night.”

“What, so I am not allowed to have a drink? You sound just like your mother.”

As dad passed him, Ravi was hit so hard in the back of his head that his vision went black for a moment. He blinked, stunned, listening as the front door opened and closed. For the next two days he had a headache and felt like something behind his eye had been broken.

THAT WAS DAD’S REFLEX for everything. Either he had changed in a year or Ravi never really knew him at all. For a while he was always surprised. Growing up, dad had never hit them so often, because Jai was a good boy and Ravi was simply too young. But every day now he was being slapped in the back of his head, or punched in his leg in the car, or shoved into walls when dad was full-on drunk. His only solace was found in the boarding school his dad thought would set him straight.

The abuse was followed by apologies eventually. That’s how Ravinder came to acquire new hiking boots, his first iPhone, a two-thousand dollar watch he never wore (he climbed trees too often to trust himself not to break it), and his first car.

He never said anything to his mother – not because he was materialistic, but because he loved his father. He could tell the stupidest jokes and make Ravi laugh. He was kind when he wanted to be. He was insanely intelligent and was constantly telling him facts about the littlest of things. He was still his dad, regardless of the expensive watches or the bruises or terrible headaches he gave him. His injuries were never too bad.

…until they were.

Grades were something Ravi was good at keeping to himself. Dad would ask how school was going when he'd come home on holidays, he would say ‘fine,’ and he’d do the most barren amount of homework in front of him to reiterate that.

His mother had warned him that his father would not be so accepting of his failures. Unfortunately for Ravi, it was pretty damn hard to forge a doctor’s signature.

“What is this?” Danvir snapped, his tan face gone noticeably red.

“You just have to sign it.”

“You are failing? My son is failing?”

“Only one class. It’s an elective – it doesn’t even matter.”

Ravi must’ve been hit then, but he would never be able to recall the raise of his father’s hand.

He woke up on the floor, his wrist held in his father’s grip and those dark eyes staring at his own watch. Tracking his pulse. Just like a doctor. He’d tried to lift his head but it fell back to the floor with a painful thud.

“I wanna go home.”

“This is your home, too,” dad said, some kind of concern threaded throughout his voice – like he could be hurt that his son would dare think about leaving. “Your pulse is normal.”

“I’m gonna call mom.”

“Let’s just wait, okay? How about we go out for pizza?”

Tears welled up in brown eyes and slowly he let his father help him back up. He didn’t want to cry in front of him. Here he was, being picked up off the ground after being hit into the wall so hard he’d have to patch the drywall, but still Ravinder did not want to feel weak.

“Okay,” he nodded. It hurt to do that.

It was not so much the promise of his favorite food but the gesture of it; dad hated pizza more than he hated being disrespected by his wife, or American teenager’s fashion, or the way Ravi said Jai’s name in casual conversation.

The drive there was spent with his eyes closed, leaning against the door, struggling with a powerful nausea until he had his dad pull over so he could get violently sick on the side of the road.

They wouldn’t go for pizza, then. Danvir turned around to drive to the hospital.

“What do you want to tell them?” he would ask his son.

Like he had a choice. Danvir knew it would make him feel better if he felt like he was deciding it.

“I fell out of a tree.”

And so Ravinder had a head scan that revealed nothing notable, but they still kept him overnight – the sophomore telling this well-imagined story of how he’d slipped from a branch and saw his life flash before his eyes to every nurse who came in curious.

The next night he set up a tent in the backyard, claiming he just wanted to be out under the stars, but he didn’t return to the house until it was time for him to pack up and go back to that private school.

Even that did not stop his father completely. Ravi became smitten with a boy in school who had more witty comebacks than either of them did friends and soon he was inspired to pierce this and that, with River at his side every time. His father would threaten to rip them out whenever he saw them, so Ravi stopped coming around the house so often. He’d had his first kiss with that boy – and a ‘first’ few other things, too.

He was inching increasingly deeper into teenagedom and had the mouth to prove it, despite his father trying to fix it with the back of his hand. It wasn’t so bad, Ravi would tell himself, until a week before he was due to go back to Ohio. That night was a blur, but it involved the buckle of his dad’s belt, blood smeared all over the bathroom, and sleeping on his stomach for the entire next week. That night was something he would always keep to himself. The next day his father was in tears as he had to stitch his own son’s back at home, both too ashamed to go to the hospital.

He must be sorry, Ravi told himself, because he’d never seen his father cry.

Their goodbyes were full of unspoken words and relief mostly on the younger Mian’s part. Yet still, he loved him. Still, he was his father. No matter what scars or bruises he gave him.

He had promised he wouldn’t tell Jasmit about the head scan, either, but he didn’t have to.

“WHY DID YOU HAVE a CT?” she screeched, flustered from a bad day at work and the unexpected news.

“A what?”

“Why did you have a scan of your brain in Minnesota?”

Ravi nearly dropped the orange out of his mouth. Instead he moved it to his cheek. “How did you know that?”

“I looked at your records. I forgot when you last had an eye appointment. Why did you have a CT?”

“Is that legal?”

“I’m your mother.”

“That’s not a yes.” Ravinder wasn’t the most intelligent boy, but he was very good at being ‘smart’.

He looked at her, licked the juice from an orange slice, and answered, “I had a concussion.”

“From what?”

“I fell out of a tree.”

“What tree?”

Ravi grinned. “It didn’t have a name.”

She was furious and had no time for his games. “Are you lying to me?”

“No. I definitely fell out of a tree at dad’s.” That wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the truth she was asking for.

“Why would you not tell me? Is this why you’ve been having migraines?”

“I didn’t think about it. I dunno, I’m not a doctor.”

She scolded him for it for a while, but then Mark came home and she forgot all her troubles in the world.

MUCH HAD CHANGED IN the year since he’d seen his mother. They had talked on the phone a few times a week, and she’d told him whatever she had to tell him – including about Marcus Delaney.

Marcus Delaney was a cardiologist on even playing field with his mother. He was nothing like Danvir Mian – he was blonde, blue-eyed, only as tall as her and had skin mom had described dreamily on the phone as ‘white as pearls’. They had been dating for only eight months before they got engaged, then married, with Ravinder giving his mother away in a very Christian ceremony.

She didn’t have time to go to the beach, or take him camping, or go hiking with him. And so Ravinder began to do these things by himself, and learned to like them that way – just he and the whistling birds, or the swaying trees, or a flooding stream.

Ravi didn’t like Mark. Not because he was an intruding father figure, or because he was jealous of his mother’s constant affection – but because he had asked the wrong question at dinner one night.

“What would you like to do when you get older?” had been his attempt at conversation in their first week of knowing each other.

Ravi didn’t bother to stop eating to answer his question. “I don’t know.”

“Well, do you know where you want to go to college?”

“No.” In truth, he had no idea what he was going to do in life.

Mark was all pearl-white smiles and pearl-white skin and Ravi just wanted to go drown himself in Lake Erie.

“Think you might like medicine?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, haven’t you ever thought about it?”

“I was gonna travel with my brother,” he said, standing and picking up his plate, “but then he got blown up.”

And he left he and his mother there in a silence, feeling both smart in the way a teenager could feel and aching at the truth of it: with his brother died all his hopes.

Junior year was less eventful than his last -- mom let him go to that public school he went to in freshman year, where kids liked to whisper the word ‘terrorist’ at him like a witch’s curse. He’d had a few more first kisses and fooled around carelessly. His mouth was getting him in trouble in more ways than one and by the time summer came around, Jasmit could not hide her relief that he’d be leaving for his father’s again soon. Days were spent skipping class, and nights were spent on the phone with River.

Ravi had stopped taking his anxiety medication that year, suffering through it daily because he knew he’d want those pills next year if dad was still drinking. He started lifting weights. What he lacked in height, he thought, he could make up for in strength. That, too, was in preparation for if his father was still drinking.

And he was. Of course he was.

SENIOR YEAR WAS BITTERSWEET. He hadn’t taken a plane this time; instead he’d driven the car his father had bought for him from Cleveland to Rochester, taking his time and stopping at gas stations or rest stops or pretty views. It took him a week to drive seven hundred miles but that was the best week he could remember having since he was ten.

On the porch of the house he’d grown up in sat two buckets full of empty bottles. Wine and beer and whiskey. He kicked one as he opened the door. Ravinder slowly stepped through the familiar house until he found his dad half-asleep on the couch.

“Hey,” he slurred.

“Hey,” Ravi replied and sat down by his feet.

They hadn’t talked much beyond a few phone calls since he’d left. He’d changed. If his dad had noticed his many new piercings and unconsulted tattoos, he didn’t say anything. Not yet, anyway. In the year to come he’d tell him how much of an ‘American punk’ he was, how he was ashamed of him, how any father would be ashamed of him.

Dad had changed, too. The only time he ever looked put-together was when he was at the hospital. The only time Ravi ever saw him there was when he broke a bone doing something stupid with his friends or needed stitches if dad’s belt hit him the wrong way. And he had taken a liking to using that, after the first few times he’d raised his hand and Ravi would dare raise one back.

Mom stopped asking what all his hospital trips were for. He was just being rebellious, she must’ve thought. And that was true: more often that not, dad would only hit him after he’d said something disrespectful, and Ravi could always find the words that cut the deepest.

Ravi never slept a night in his dad’s house. For an entire year that tent was in his backyard – although Ravi was rarely in it, because that was the year he found love.

HE DIDN’T WANT TO date anymore. He had gotten his fill of that in Cleveland – girls (and a few boys) came and went at the drop of a hat because in all honesty, he was not a good boyfriend. He needed his space to go off into the woods (building fires until he got blisters again) alone and he needed a lot of it. That was a hard thing to put up with, and he never asked them to stay.

And so he became a novelty – a punk kid who seemed off in his world so much that he was failing private school miserably and came back with new tattoo work every other week. His toning may not have deterred his father from giving him new scars but that attracted all sorts, too. He kept his friends as close as he could handle and he could party with the most reckless of them – but those nervous and sometimes awkward kisses never amounted to anything more than fleeting teenage lust that was driven mostly by whatever pills he’d taken. And he found he liked pills.

River was always different. ‘Determined’ would be a better word. He sought after him even after he turned him down a hundred times, fearful of venturing past their brand of complicated friendship -- after all, he’d lost his virginity to him sophomore year. All River needed, though, was a hundred-and-one tries.

River was sweet around him, witty around others, and had a steady stream of money from two caring parents. He was sure he would be nothing more than something-to-make-mom-and-dad-mad – but he was eighteen. ‘Life sucks,’ Jai had said once, ‘but you have time.’ And so he went for it.

It was as toxic as teenage love could be. They loved intensely and sporadically. Nights were either filled with bodies slippery with hot sweat underneath open windows or tears and empty, aching arms. As much as his own father disliked him, River’s parents disliked him more. They grew more and more protective of River, despite protests from their rebellious son, until they contacted that money-hungry private school and made them separate the boys at every turn. No longer were they roommates or even in any of the same classes. Ravi only saw River in passing once a week -- if he was lucky.

That was just the first domino.

SUMMER WAS COMING AGAIN but Ravinder could not find any excitement to return to his mother’s. He’d stopped taking Zoloft and Adderall and his sleeping pills and he’d long since run out of anxiety medication. He’d been taking four, five, six of those at a time. He stopped going to therapy. The school-year was winding down and with it came the excitement of all the other seniors: graduation was coming.

Again came questions: What do you want to do when you get older? Where are you going to college? You think you’d be a doctor like your parents?

His answers were always the same: I don’t know.

He’d been talking to his mother less and less, because he never called her and she would often forget to call him. With impeccable timing she did – and it would be the last time they talked for a very long while.

“Mark and I were talking, and–” she took a breath, and so did Ravi, staring up at the ceiling of the tent that still had River’s name scribbled on it, “–we think you should look into the University of Minnesota. What if you went to Mayo Medical School?”

He said nothing for so long she asked, “Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“I don’t have the grades for medical school.”

“We have friends,” she assured right away. “You’re a smart boy. You could get good grades there if you just applied yourself.”

“What if I wanted to come back to Cleveland?”

There was silence. And that’s when his mother told him that she and Mark were having a baby. A girl, she said, and he might be happier to stay in Minnesota so he wouldn’t hear a baby crying all the time.

“I’m gonna be a big brother, too,” he whispered to the ‘River’ written on the ceiling, blinking tears away after he hung up the phone.

LIFE WITH JAI WAS so far away.

He left school a month before graduation. Every hallway was filled with whispers of college excitement. All his nights were spent awake wondering how life had gotten so complicated.

He remembered camping in the backyard, learning how to make a fire with nearly just his hands, bike rides around the block a hundred times, jumping off swings and landing hard on his knees. He wondered if Jai had ever been in love or had his heart broken. If he had, he never told his little brother. There were a lot of things about Jai he would never know.

It was only during that time that he realized what he wanted to do with his life. He didn’t want to go to college. Didn’t see a point in having a job. Certainly didn’t want to stay here, in Minnesota, with dad and River (who was now completely apart from him, and probably just as broken up about it). Couldn’t go home to mom and Mark and the new baby. I’ll travel, he thought to himself in the dead of night, when he couldn’t sleep because he had no pills left. I’ll travel, just like I was gonna with Jai.

He had no plan, but he wouldn’t have to make one.

Dad didn’t notice for a couple weeks that he’d dropped out. There was no exchange of words once he did. He was greeted instead by dad’s belt across his face the next time he walked into the house. It cut his cheek and sent him down out of shock, and dad had raised it again but the man was drunk and it was easy to kick his feet out from under him. Ravinder hurried off to pack his bag in haste, listening all the while to slurred threats and insults.

“The only son I have left is a disgrace,” was the last thing Danvir said to him to this very day.

Ravinder knew that. The moment he stepped out of that house for the last time, he made peace with it.

THERE WAS NOWHERE FOR him to go. He had no plan, but that was okay. He hadn’t said goodbye to anyone, but that was okay, too. There was this aching feeling in him to go call his mother or arrive without warning to River’s house. He thought he might beg his mother to come home, tell her he’d be a good kid and he’d be a good brother. He thought he might try to get a reunion with River, give him a goodbye, and hold him one last time. But when he was nineteen Ravinder was rash and did none of those things.

He wouldn’t do them now, either, but he wouldn’t be crying as he thought about it.

“That’s legal?” Rav had asked his brother once.

“Yeah, man. You just can’t block the road. Most hitchhikers don’t kill people. People do it all the time. I mean, less, nowadays, but it was really popular back in mom and dad’s time.”

“Where do they go?”

“Wherever they want. Big cities… wherever they have family… maybe out to California to chase those star-dreams,” Jai had answered. “I’d like to do that someday. Not California. Just… go everywhere in the States. Cheap. People backpack through Europe, too.”

“You just stick your thumb out?”

“Yeah. You just stick your thumb out.”

And Ravi just stuck his thumb out.

THE HARDEST PART ABOUT it, at first, was the people. He learned he couldn’t take it to heart when they sped past him or honked or yelled something out their windows. He learned he had to look as unintimidating as possible. He learned to wear bright colors and make sure to keep wiping his face and to flash a friendly smile whenever he could. And he learned that people tended to pick you up more if you were eating a banana. That was strange, but it seemed true.

The first couple weeks were surreal, full of anxiety attacks and stretching his money as far as it could go on gas station food. He learned to accept absolutely any handout he could, even if it was just a couple quarters from someone’s dashboard.

Sleeping outside was never hard. He could easily find safe places. He’d lived in a tent and the woods for the last year and not even bugs bothered him.

He settled into this rhythm of walking and hitching and he was almost comfortable with it. He was already in St. Louis now, and it took no time at all for him to get someone to stop.

“Where ya headed?”

“Wherever you wanna take me,” he jested, and perhaps that was his first mistake. The driver, an older man with streaks of grey in his well-groomed beard, reached over to open the door, smiling the whole time.

“Hop in, kid.”

“Thanks, man.”

And so began the array of usual questions: What’s your name? Where you from? Why’d you leave? Where do you wanna end up?

He’d been lying since the beginning about everything except his name. Rav, he’d tell them. I’m from Maine. Just wanted to see the world. I think I’d like to end up in Alaska some day. That last part usually got a laugh.

But this was different. He thought nothing of it at the time but he kept glancing at him, eyes lingering until the last possible moment he ought to look at the road. The driver’s idle hand had been resting in the middle of the console and in one swift motion he’d slid it across Ravinder’s thigh and gripped the inside of it so hard it hurt. Immediately he became dizzy with nerves and swallowed. Rav tried to push it away as casually as possible but it only tightened. There was nowhere to go when you were in a car on the highway.

That wasn’t all to say Rav wasn’t open to sleeping with someone he met on the road – but only by his own decision. He had never been gripped like this. The aggression of it all made him worry about what his reaction might be to rejection. So he wouldn’t reject.

“Think you could do with a shower. What d’you think?”

There’s nowhere to go, he told himself. So go with it. “Yeah, I probably could.”

He glanced at him, willed his own smile to not look nervous and brushed his arm against that hand. He didn’t know what he was thinking – maybe that he’d ease off a bit, but he only squeezed harder and made Rav shift in his seat with pain.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” he lied, but only by over a year. “You?”

Out came a burly laugh. “Much older than that. Think you could do for a place to stay, too?”

“Sure.” Nowhere to go, so go with it, he repeated silently.

“And a little money? What would you do for that?”

Nothing, he thought. “How much?” he asked.

“Depends on what you’re willing to do. Or what you’re willing to let me do to you.”

Rav had no answers in this situation – was he to lead him along, or would that lead to something worse than this?

He settled for something in the middle. “Well… I mean… everyone’s got a price, don’t they?”

“A thousand?”

His mouth was dry and he cleared his throat. “For a thousand? All the normal stuff. Ah, got water in here somewhere…” he trailed off, leaned down and opened his bag. A moment later he exclaimed, “Goddammit, man.” And held up a wet hand. His shirt was wet, too. “You got napkins?”

Finally that hand was taken away from his aching thigh.“In the compartment. You spill somethin’?”

“Yeah. God, dammit. Is there a gas station coming up? I wanna rinse off.”

“Gonna rise off water with water?”

That was a good point.

“It’s juice,” he lied. “Gotta keep my energy up.”

A breathy sort of laugh exhaled the driver. “For me, you will.”

A few light-hearted jokes later, another grip on Rav’s thigh, and they were pulling into a gas station.

And it was there Rav got casually out of the car, held his wet bag out like he didn’t want to touch it… and then darted ‘round the corner the moment he realized he was being followed to the bathrooms. He ran for a while, self-sabotaged backpack making his back wet.

“Gotta keep my energy up,” he panted and shook his head, grinning at his own expense. Rav gripped Jai’s dog tags through his damp shirt. “Sounded pretty ridiculous, eh?”

“DO YOU GOT ANYTHING in your pockets I need to know about?”

“No,” Rav lied. What else was he supposed to say?

“No weapons or anything that might hurt me?”

“Nah, man,” he told the cop as he was patted down. He knew he’d find it, but he couldn’t bring himself to own up.

A large hand dove into his pockets and pulled out a clear bag with white powder. “And what’s this?” he asked, rather rhetorically, because he had to know what it was. Rav didn’t answer so he repeated. “You wanna tell me what this is?”

“Dope, man.”

“How old are you?”

“Just turned twenty.” He didn’t lie, this time.

“What’s a twenty-year-old doin’ with dope? How long you been using?”

“Couple months.”

Drifters had a way of finding each other and Rav had been only slightly surprised that so many were addicted to something. He’d met a few, been offered pills like they were candy, then met plenty more who would ask if he ever tried anything harder. Two months ago he did, and for two months he’d been hooked.

And it was by chance that the old building they’d all chosen to sleep in was raided the first day Ravi had gotten to Pittsburgh.

There was some pity for him from the officer, but perhaps only because he was so young and had not yet developed any of the more obvious signs of addiction.

And there was more pity from the judge, who looked down upon him as the son of two doctors, as the brother of a war veteran, as a first-time offender and a young, lost boy trying to find a home.

At least, that’s what she told him when her sentence was community service and house arrest.

He could imagine no worse punishment than house arrest. But at least he got to meet his baby sister.

SHE LOOKED LIKE MARK. Terribly so. She was the cutest baby he’d ever seen, but he hadn’t seen very many babies and this was, after all, his own sister. She had the brightest blue eyes and fine, curly hair that was always unkempt, even when mom sat there trying to fix it for twenty minutes. She looked like one of those dolls you buy for some little girls, freckles and all.

Last time he had talked to his mother (before he was in jail, anyway) she’d told him to stay in Minnesota. He wasn’t upset about that anymore, but she seemed to be. He didn’t dislike Mark anymore, either. He was an alright guy, if a little overbearingly cheerful sometimes.

For them it was uneasy at first. They knew him as a smart little teenager, but he came back to them smiling - helping with dinner - saying ‘thanks, man’ (‘like a hippy’ Mark would joke) for little things like it was a reflex.

But he’d been arrested with heroin. That wasn’t something you could be comfortable with, even if it was your own son, if you had a baby in the house.“

I don’t know if I want you to invite any friends over,” mom had said after his first week back in Cleveland, her in the doorway of his bedroom and his fingers digging under his ankle bracelet.

“I don’t have any friends here, mom.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Well, I’m just saying. If you do.”

“Alright. How far does this span out, again?” he asked, tapping the device on his ankle.

Mom looked uneasy. “Almost to the property lines. Why?”

“Wanted to put a tent in the yard.”

Uneasy, still. She shifted her feet. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Just wanna be outside. Used to live in a tent at dad’s place.” And then there was more questioning, because Ravi had never told her what he was like. He still wouldn’t. “The tent just reminded me of Jai,” he half-lied and it stifled all her other questions. “How is dad, by the way?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since you… well, since I went to pick you up. He hung up on me. And before that I never talked to him about anything except you… he wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

“Sorry. He didn’t really know. Shoulda said goodbye.”

He set up the tent in the yard, did his community service quickly and enthusiastically, eventually got his bracelet off – and then left again. His goodbye this time was in the form of a note on the refrigerator: ‘On the road again. Picked up your milk first, though. Thank you for taking me in. - R.’

“I’LL BE HEADIN’ NORTH from here. You might wanna find someone else to take ya along,” Richard, the forty-year-old Southerner (who was traveling a thousand miles to pick up his kids from his ex-wife for the summer) had told him when they pulled up to a gas station.

“I’ll probably walk a bit from here. You sure you don’t want any money for the gas?” a sunburnt, well-weathered and dark-haired boy asked as he opened the door and slid from the passenger seat.

Rich laughed. “Nah, brother. Your stories were enough. You sure you don’t want any money? Maybe get ya some shoes?”

He was already digging into his wallet before he could protest.

“Nah, no shoes. Makes me feel free. Might get me a sandwich, though.” That was a lie; he’d use it for drugs. But he smiled politely as he took the two twenty dollar bills and an unexpected card from a hairy hand. “Thanks, man.”

“My card’s in there, if you’re ever down near Houston lookin’ for some construction work. Pay’s under the table for you.”

“Yeah. For sure. Thanks again.”

They shook hands through the window and he turned to walk away.

“You be careful, kid. And good luck on your soul-searchin’ journey,” Rich called after him.

“I told you I don’t believe in souls,” was shouted back in jest behind him before leaving the man in his car to meet the ground of Wichita, Kansas – almost where he’d been dropped off after his first couple rides.

He’d gone from Rochester to Des Moines, to Kansas City, to St. Louis, down to Nashville, then up to Louisville, then to Columbus (he almost thought about swinging by Cleveland to say hi to mom), on up to Pittsburgh (then back home for a while) and to the heart of New York City. He had his fun there and started back down: to Philadelphia, to Washington, to Richmond and Charlotte and Atlanta. Eventually he met Richard in Dallas, just starting on his journey to get his kids.

He would walk as long as he could until he could find a ride toward the direction of Colorado. He’d been traveling west for the last two years, staying in a place for a week or a month or two, working odd jobs, then finding a ride to the next place.

The worst thing he’d encountered so far was that man who seemed very interested in trailing a very firm hand up his thigh – and left him with a deep bruise – but he’d gotten far away from that. He’d never been robbed or raped or shot or stabbed or killed or anything people expected.

Sometimes he met someone he wanted to stay with for a few days. Sometimes that person was River. He simply felt for him in the dark and held him for a few days, and then he would be on his way to somewhere - someone - anywhere else.

Sometimes he’d spend days in the woods with nothing but two sticks, some leaves, and enough heroin to kill an elephant. He’d walk out with those blisters on his hands and track marks on his arms.

He always came back to the road eventually. Wichita and Rochester were only six hundred miles apart. He’d traveled far more than that, always zig-zagging all over the place, but within the last month he’d made a mission to go west. His goal was Phoenix, though he thought he might like to hike around Colorado first.

What was in Phoenix? Well, nothing in particular. Just heat and people, and Ravinder Mian had grown to like them both.

Hours of steady walking later and he stuck his thumb out, turned around to smile at the cars, banana in his hand. Worked every time. Soon he was being picked up and he leaned down into the window.

“Hey. Headed anywhere west, if you can take me. Name’s Phoenix.”

He belonged here.

He belonged only here.

#sample

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