She made him a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, and he wolfed it down ravenously, for he hadn�t eaten any of the meals she�d brought to his room for the past two days.

�How are you feeling?� she asked.

He shrugged.

She ran her tongue along her lips and then produced an orange bottle of pills. She pushed it towards him. �You�re supposed to take these every day, honey.�

He scowled and blew his breath out his nose irately, but he took the bottle. He took out a pill and swallowed it dry, having had years of practice.

His mother reached across the table and clutched his hand. �I really missed you, you know.�

�I wish you hadn�t.�

�Why?� she asked.

�I�m not worth it. I�m just going to fuck everything up again.�

�No, you won�t, honey, it�ll be better this time, I promise. You�ll be happy again.�

�I can�t ever be happy,� he said, folding his arms on the table and laying his chin on them. �I�m not allowed to be.�

�You�ve been happy before, though, haven�t you?� Her eyes were glassy. �Earlier in high school, you were always smiling and goofing off. You looked pretty happy to me.�

�No.�

�Now, now, you�re just being angsty. We had some lovely times, you, your father, and I.�

�Dad died.�

�Yes, but we all loved each other very much while he was alive.�

�He was always mad at me.�

�He loved you more than life itself. I hope you know that. Even when you two fought, there was still no one dearer to him in the world.�

�It�s my fault he died.�

She clutched his hand. �No, honey, no. Please tell me you don�t believe that?�

She would never understand. She hadn�t been there the last time he talked to his father before that drunk driver stole him forever. If he hadn�t called his father from his cellphone, hadn�t yelled those things he did, his father never would have taken the same road as that drunk driver. Yeah, yeah, it was all his fault. Tears welled in his eyes, and a sob rose in his throat.

�Oh, Roger, shhh,� she cooed, getting up and putting her arms around his shoulders. �Don�t think such horrible things.�

�Don�t you miss him?�

�Yes. I do. But he�s still with me, and I know he�s watching us. Protecting both of us. After all, you�re home, safe, aren�t you? He knew I was lonely, so he sent my favorite person home to me.�

Groan. Religious-heaven-angel nonsense. And besides: �I�m not the same person. Sorry.�

She stroked his damp hair with her tiny, delicate fingers. �I know you�re still a bit�off, but I can tell my beautiful son is in there somewhere.� She laughed, twisting her fingers in his dark locks. �Under all this hair, maybe! I can�t believe it�s so long! It really makes you look different.�

No reaction from the owner of the hair. He stared blearily at the tabletop.

�Come on, honey, give me a smile,� she begged. �Everything�s going to be okay now, you�ll see.�

He closed his eyes and dug his face deeper into his arms.

His mother withdrew her arms and bit her lip, thinking and determined.

�I know what will cheer you up! Wait one second.� She scurried off into the living room and began fumbling through the bookshelf. Mildly interested, he watched lazily over the crook of his elbow. She found her quarry quickly, and bustled back to his side. He lifted his arms, and she dropped a large, heavy black book in front of him. She flipped it open and spun through it. Good times, marriages, birthdays, and parties flew past, twenty years of love and happiness captured in the plastic-coated pages of a photo album.

�I�m sure you can find something nice in here,� she said brightly. �So many wonderful times.�

�Well, no one takes pictures of sad times,� he muttered.

�Look at this one,� she said, pointing to a photo and ignoring his cynicism. The photo showed a red-haired lady in a cute sundress, one who looked much younger than the worn-out woman standing beside him now. She had a scrawny little boy held tight against her chest. She was smiling, her face cracked wide and deeply dimpled, her eyes gleaming with joy even through the dusty plastic photo covering. The boy was wide-eyed and pale, with messy dark hair that hung over his face. He had his thin fingers in his mouth, and he was staring at the camera as if he thought it might jump out and bite him. He was seven years old.

The happiest day of my life, she said. The day we adopted you. Took you home. Made you part of our family. Do you remember that day?

Not really, he lied. It would ruin her happy memories to say that he�d been scared out of his mind and cried all night when they weren�t looking.

Undaunted, she flipped the pages, pointing out more pictures. As the pages progressed, he saw the little boy Roger grow older and older, gradually smiling more and more�until he hit puberty and decided to sulk again. From the pictures, one would think the O�Donnell family was as perfect as the Cleaver family, the Brady family. Look at them smile and hug each other, look at how happy they are.

Yeah, a picture of his thirteenth birthday. His father had wrangled him into wearing a party hat, and he had his lanky arm coiled around his son�s neck. The son looked self-righteously indignant, but the father was laughing himself silly. Orange light from a multitude of birthday candles on the cake below illuminated both faces. It looked like a wonderful party.

�The next day, he�d had one of his episodes, a severe mood swing that made him take a nail clipper to his arm, and when his father tried to take it away from him, he went temporarily crazy and punched him. His father restrained him to the floor until he calmed down. They didn�t trust him with sharp objects for a long time after that.

Yeah, no one had taken a picture of that.

�I don�t want to look at these,� he said, pushing the book away and putting his head in his arms. �Please.�

She kissed his forehead. �Okay, honey.� She went to go clean his dishes from lunch and tidy up the counter.

He didn�t move for a long time, too tired and too bored to get up. He didn�t want to sit here and listen to his mother mew at him, but he didn�t want to go somewhere else and be alone. Ugh. He fiddled with his hair, twirling it between his fingers and tugging at it to see if the long strands were really his own. Honestly, his hair had grown at least a full foot.

The photo album taunted him from the corner of his vision, waiting patiently, smugly, for him to pull it back towards him. He glanced at it, gave it a scowl, and tore off the lining of two of his fingernails. He glanced over again. The glossy pages smiled at him. He looked away. His mother�s back was to him as she worked at the sink. He looked back at the book.

Well, it was nice to see pictures of his dad, anyway. He was afraid that someday he�d forget what he�d looked like. (Tall, lanky, little eyes, big grin, flyaway fawn hair.) Yeah. He wasn�t a man who deserved to be forgotten.

His mother wasn�t looking, so he tugged the book towards him and studied the photograph of his thirteenth birthday.

At least his dad had given him a hug after he peeled him off the floor, had given him a handkerchief to wipe his face dry of his sticky tears, had given him a pat on the back and told him he hoped that was the last episode he�d have for awhile. Yeah, his dad had been such a cool guy.

He flipped the pages. Ten photos of their fishing trip together at a lake in New Hampshire. He�d caught his first fish, a decent-sized trout or something. The canoe had tipped at one point, and both of them had fallen into the lake. They�d laughed about it at the time, and for years after.

That had been fun. They hadn�t even fought; he hadn�t even cried for a whole week.

He turned the page. Soccer photos from high school. He was amazed at how many photographs there were of him. God, how many different pictures of a teenage boy did a parent need?

He wondered if his mother had looked at these pictures while he was gone. He imagined that she had. Many times.

Next page. More pictures of him, and�

He gasped.

There was a photo of himself in tenth grade with his arm around a younger boy, who seemed to be nothing more than longish, thick brown hair and huge, beautiful eyes, hued pale blue like the sky.

Arik.

In the picture, Roger was grinning goofily, and Arik looked shy, but pleased, red blush in his cheeks. It was the first photograph of Arik, and it couldn�t have been taken much after they�d first met. Arik would have been fourteen. He looked so little!

Heart beating, he scanned the other photos on the page. Arik was in all of them, smiling, laughing, fooling around with Roger, looking surprised at being candidly photographed, looking so happy.

He flipped through the rest of the book, one hand over his mouth, his other hand tracing the outline of all the figures in the photographs. Roger stayed mostly the same, but Arik matured, his face filling out to fit his eyes, his shoulders broadening, muscles developing under his preppy shirts. The neurotic and nervous ninth grader grew into a shy, but incredibly compassionate and remarkably mature sixteen year-old. That was the Arik he remembered. That was the boy who had kept him sane for years longer than he would have been alone. That was the boy who loved him unconditionally, who always forgave him�the boy who had eventually saved his life.

That kid always was a hell of a man-ditz, though. Never in his life had he encountered someone who walked into as many doors, lost as many pens, or spent as much time in la-la land as that blue-eyed Arik Redde.

Tears filled his eyes and leaked southwards down his long cheeks, but they were a different sort of tears than the hopeless, sorrowful salt rivers he�d cried for so many years.

His mother watched him silently from the sink, the same sort of tears in her own eyes. It was the first time in three years she�d seen her son smile.

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