Ethan Gray was standing in front of his house with no real idea of how he had gotten there or how long he had been standing there. Presumably he had taken a cab. Presumably he had also paid the driver, as it had vanished and he was standing there, alone, with his keys in his hand, facing the door as if it were a monster and he was trying to decide if he just wanted to let it kill him.
It made no move towards him, so he vanquished it with the key, pushing it open and stepping across the threshold into a place that should have been home. It was the same place it had been and nothing had changed. Not the jackets in the hallway closet or the blanket on the couch or the little gray stuffed elephant, sitting patiently on the floor and waiting, because it couldn't be brought to the park in case it got lost.
It was the elephant that undid him.
Time was lost again, and at some point Ethan Gray was sitting on the floor with an elephant in his lap, his eyes red and his throat scratchy, the remnants of tears on his face and snot on his sleeve, because none of this was pretty. It wasn't supposed to be pretty. Pretty was - gone, with so many other things. He hurt. Everything hurt, body and soul. Every muscle ached and he was pretty sure that he could feel his bones, and he could definitely feel the stitches and the staples and the silence, because the house wasn't supposed to be quiet, it was never quiet - sometimes he thought they had a whole herd of elephants in there instead of just-
Meep.
Its name was Meep. He had never really understood why it was Meep or how it had come to be Meep, but at some point, the elephant had been named Meep, and it had stuck like peanut butter on carpeting. There was undoubtedly some of that-
He couldn't stay here. It was too quiet, too empty, too painful. He had to get out, before - he didn't know what it was before, but it was certainly after, and he couldn't stay here any longer. There was a backpack in the closet with the jackets, half packed already because Ethan was still a Boy Scout at heart, even if he'd never quite made Eagle and always regretted that. He'd thought maybe next year there could be Tiger Scouts and new beginnings and he had to get out of here.
First aid kit, poncho, flashlight and extra batteries, pocketknife, phone charger, already there. In another pocket, some protein bars that tasted mostly like chocolate mud - truly abhorrent, you'd have to be desperate to eat them, which was why they were in the backpack. A package of goldfish crackers and emergency fruit snacks, because they never went anywhere without fruit snacks these days. One of Ali's silk hair wraps and a little bottle of her lotion, one that would say something like Sun-Tempered Kiwi Blossom, because they all had names like that. He'd told her once that the people who named them had a little spinner wheel and just did it several times at random. He'd made her a little spinner wheel to prove it and she'd called him an idiot, but he'd caught her with it the next Thanksgiving, laughing over it with her sisters.
What was he going to tell them? The - someone would have called them, let them know, but he'd have to talk to them sometime, and he'd have to - have to - have to get out of here. Ethan stuffed a jacket into the backpack haphazardly, then took it out and tied it around his waist to add the blanket from the couch and a bottle of water - two bottles of water, from the refrigerator, crammed in.
Carefully, gently, and with much more reverence, he added the elephant, tucking it into the blanket, then shouldering the bag - left shoulder, which felt strange, but his right side was all stapled up at the moment - and maybe he wanted it to feel different, feel strange, because none of this was normal and it wasn't supposed to be. He slammed the door closed behind him, and time faded out once more, until he realized that the sun was setting and he was sitting on a bench at the park.
For a moment he thought it was probably time to go home, and wondered if Aidan was hiding under the slide again and how many M&Ms he'd have to promise to get him out, and then reality occurred to him once more and he sat back on the bench, silent as the house, unzipping the backpack and taking out the elephant, holding it in his arms and wondering, not for the first time or the last:
Why?
