boys will be bugs — andal & rowan

[fox]

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Ma thinks Andal isn't eating well.

It's seven in the morning, and Rowan's barely awake, groggily opening the door for Andal Jr to go do his thing. She's in the kitchen, he's sitting there at the table with the new runner that's patterned with lemons, and she's saying something about how his brother's too skinny. The clamouring of pots and pans muffle her words, and he just nods along until Ma drops a bag in his lap.

He looks up from counting the embroidered lemons.

It's peach season, and there's half a glazed pie and a basket full of pink and orange, tree-ripened fruits piled into his arms, gorgeous and sweet. But then, Ma gives him a whole pecan cake, a potato casserole, tupperwares of stew, and he thinks his bones might break under the weight of it all.

In three minutes, he's somehow in the foyer, putting his shoes on.

He hasn't said a word yet, but now he's hugging his mom goodbye, now he's grabbing his keys.

And then he's outside.

He kinda just stands on the porch for a while, in a daze.

Andal Jr.'s leash is around his wrist, bag of food slung over his shoulder, his free hand holding the basket of fruit. A sparrow chirps idly above him. The fresh air wakes him up a little bit more.

Trying to shake off the sleepiness, Ro turns to the road ahead.

All the fields are brushed green in the depths of summer, and there's a laziness in the air, a kind of languor that smells of fruit and light. The sun's still soft and muted in the early morning, and it's a little cooler than usual. He likes it when the days are long, sunsets at nine p.m., warm, hazy nights that buzz with crickets and the distant howling of coyotes. He spent so many years of childhood out by the creek catching fireflies and cooling off on the loamy banks.

Most of all, he likes that he's off from school. No more funny glances, no more whispers in the halls. It's a reprieve.

He passes by a neighbour, man smoking on the porch who nods at him, and he nods back.

It takes forever to get to Victor's Village.

Andal Jr. tugs on the leash like every three seconds to look at a bug or get spooked by a twig, but he makes it to the neighbourhood eventually, shoulders stiff with the weight of a week's worth of meals.

Ma wrote the address down for him, tucked the little slip of paper into his pocket with directions, and he spent a very long time looking at it, figuring out the letters while his dog tried to chase a kestrel off a branch.

He glances at it again, crumples it up, shoves it back into his pockets, and starts meandering through the paths of stately manors.

It's not that difficult – most of the houses are empty, colossal skeletons of architectural feats, eerily quiet. He just picks through the ones that give off some feeling of life until he ends up on a doorstep that looks familiar from the homecoming party. He remembers the home well enough, how big and empty it was, how the ladies from church admired the pretty facade from the patio and he'd stared at it too.

Rowan puts his hand up to his eyes and squints at the number on the door.

Well, that's the one.

It's hotter now. He can feel his cheeks flushed with warmth. The basket's burning in his hands, and the bag is really getting too heavy.

There's an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach, a kind of anxiety that twists his insides when he reaches for the bell and thinks of his brother, with his new face, answering the door. He stares down at the basket, gaze getting caught on a slight indent on a peach, ghost of a bruise.

The fruit is cool in his hands. He turns it gently and hides it.

Maybe he could just put the stuff down and walk away. Maybe he could say Andal wasn't home.

Andal Jr. sees a bird and barks very loudly.

Oh.

He goes ahead and rings the bell.

[gunner, d9 ₊⊹ 👹 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

I don’t think I’m eating well.

Or sleeping. Or doing anything I should be doing as a victor, as a brother, as a son.

It was easy to be an animal in some ways. To stretch the jaw and thirst for the dark-red pleasure of a hunt, of a pulse between two rows of sharp teeth. I dream about it on some nights. About moonlight, a wild and yellow god on the branches, and about worshipping it with a rage and intensity so bright it lit up my whole world, like I was another moon borrowing light from this one. But my calls to the moon were never answered, and there were other things to pray to.
There were other things to eat.

The sheets are too warm, I changed them hours ago. The house is too quiet, I asked Ma to move in a month before.

I think I’m getting used to it. Somewhat and somehow, the quietness is now a reprieve instead of loneliness echoed back. In the evening, the sounds of forest and fields fill the empty rooms. I leave the back door open for stray dogs. The bird houses in the porch sag heavy with feed.

It’s just not the same.

But does anything ever remain the same? An old Andal would have wanted it to. I have been always been shackled to routine and a lover of schedule. My barber is the same one I’ve been going to since I was a year old. I eat the crust off pies and get sick when it’s too much filling. It’s why Ma bakes special pies for me, and why Lena jeers at her whenever she does it. He’s your favorite, she’d say.

A part of me wants to believe it to be still true.

I sit up on the bed, tug at the real shackle around my wrist. Special made with tempered iron, it is strong enough to withstand melting and serves a good protective measure against … well, whatever shred of wolf is left within me. On most nights, the beast doesn’t prowl anymore, but there are nights where I wake up with scratch marks in the bed and the pillows torn. That’s always, uh, hard to explain.

After rummaging for the key under the bedpost, I unlock it and stretch my legs.

There’s a sponsorship meeting at ten for the new tributes. The attire has been handpicked already, a skin-taut moment with no sleeves, but for now I relish in the warmth of sun on my bare skin, feeling wrapped up in sleep-worn clothes from last night. I walk downstairs and have a momentary disappointment at the kitchen being absent of Nana. Back on that nature retreat, maybe.

I go to make coffee. They offered a helper for it in the past, a personal chef, but I politely declined. Call me a mother’s boy, but if Ma isn’t the one cooking breakfast, I’d prefer it to be no one at all.

A dog barks loudly by the door. Huh. “Thought I left that one open,” I whisper.

Opening the door, I invite in the smell of baked goods. And Rowan. I look left and right, see if anyone else has tagged along but it’s only him and the dog.

He looks much taller than before. Sharper, too, and unruly in a way only a Searley can be.

”Your dog looks nothing like me,” I say with a grin and sidestep, gesturing him in.

“Ma made you?” A quick sniff of the air. Pies. “Of course, she did,” I sigh, half-disheartened at how she hadn’t come herself and half-ecstatic at how good it smells in the kitchen now. The bag Rowan sets down gets rifled through quick.

I eat the pie without any utensils. Chew off a part of it clean in a way Ma would scold me if she saw, but it’s fine because it’s just Rowan here with his tattered mess of an older brother. Lapping at the cherry filling around my tongue, I clear my throat and lean against the granite kitchen counter. “How’s, uh, how’s fifth grade? Or is it sixth now?” I tilt my head. It’s embarrassingly dog-like.