Chapter Text
A boy slept peacefully in his bed. It was a dreamless sleep, but the only time the boy’s thoughts could be considered peaceful anymore was when they were absent entirely. Unfortunately, this break from awareness never seemed to last long enough.
Senses slowly returned to Basil. First, the sound of the bathroom door opening followed by light footsteps told him that Polly must be in his house. His next inhale presented him with the smell of pancake batter, which made him either hungry or nauseous. He couldn’t really tell the two apart anymore.
Finally, one eye cracked open and his way-too-bright bedroom slowly came into focus while the other eye stubbornly refused to budge. Basil went to rub it, but an intense, dull pain shot through his eye socket the second he made contact with it. This reminded him of the bruises still covering his body.
Awareness now fully gripping him, Basil’s face contorted in anguish under the relentless assault of painful memories: the fight with Sunny, the hospital… Mari. Guilt wrapped itself around his chest so tightly he couldn’t breathe. His vision now heavily blurred by tears, Basil could almost make out a few figures standing around the foot of his bed. Two taller ones, one pink, and behind them all, jet black with a white streak. Or was it a bandage?
Basil was no longer in his room. The sickeningly sweet smell of cooking pancakes disappeared, along with all color from the walls. All that was left was Basil, a hospital bed, a completely sterile white room, and his four former friends.
Basil is just waking up. Sunny is apologizing. With words! His voice sounds raspy and his words are slurred in a way only years of disuse can accomplish, but he’s talking! Why is he asking for forgiveness? He did nothing wrong, did he? Suddenly, the jet black head of hair drops as if Sunny’s legs gave out and he’s fallen to his knees. Everyone who was standing is now huddled around the collapsed figure, telling him things like how it’s not his fault and that what he did was an accident and that they would forgive him.
Aubrey is obstructing Basil’s view of his best friend, so he tries to lift his head up to get a better look. A sharp crick in his neck foils that plan, though, and his head lands softly back on the pillow with a tiny whimper. Hero’s ears perk up. His head turns almost imperceptibly toward Basil for a second, then immediately back to Sunny.
“Come on,” Hero says, “let’s get Sunny back to his room so he can rest. He’s been through so much.” He says the last sentence quieter with a glance directly at Basil. The eye contact is short-lived. So short, in fact, that Basil isn’t entirely sure it happened. It throws off Basil’s train of thought so badly that by the time he realizes that everyone is leaving, they are already halfway out the door.
“Wait!” Basil tries, but all that comes out is a guttural noise from the back of his throat. Hero either doesn’t hear it or ignores it as he turns the corner with Sunny in his arms. Aubrey goes stiff for a moment before her stride widens and she’s quickly out of sight. Kel is the only one who turns fully toward him, but Basil wished he hadn’t. Basil had never seen such a hurt look on Kel’s normally smiling face. It conveyed a single word. Why?
Then, like the rest of them, Kel left.
Basil was yanked from the memory and thrown back into his bedroom. The smell of pancakes was suffocating. Light burned the retina of the only eye he could open wider than a squint. Basil couldn’t catch his breath. They knew. They had to know. What else could cause reactions like that? What else would Sunny have to apologize for? The secret must have come out. Everything Basil had been working toward these past four years to keep everyone together was for nothing. No, worse than that, it’s been actively pushing everybody apart.
If not for Basil’s bright idea, Sunny wouldn’t have hidden himself away all those years. Their friends would have forgiven him like they did in the hospital. It would have just been an accident. It wouldn’t have weaved itself into a web of lies with Basil and Sunny trapped in the middle. It would have been painful for a while, then everyone would have talked it out and stayed together instead of letting the pain fester and push each other away. The only thing that Basil framing Mari’s death as a suicide had accomplished was making the situation exponentially harder for everyone involved. Especially Sunny.
He just wanted to make everything okay. He just wanted Sunny to be okay.
He should have comforted Sunny and been there for him as he grieved the death of his sister. What he shouldn’t have done was tell Sunny that the way to make it all go away was to-
And now Sunny was in a different city, Granny was dead, Mari was dead, and the rest of his friends almost certainly hated him.
Unable to stay idle in his bed any longer, Basil threw off his blanket and stumbled to his closet for a comfy pair of overalls. He nearly knocked over a wilting peace lily when he caught a glimpse of one of the photos scattered around his room. It was a blurry picture of Aubrey trying to catch a grasshopper. She had pounced right as Basil took the photo, so there was just an Aubrey-shaped smudge in the foreground. Basil cringed at the once-pleasant memory and turned back to the closet.
Basil used to be afraid that once Granny was gone, his parents would have him move out of Faraway. Maybe they’d find someone else for him to live with, or maybe they’d even let Basil live with them, wherever that was. It used to terrify him, that one day he might have to leave his friends behind.
Fully dressed, Basil took one more glance at the blurry photo on his way out the door. There might not be anything here for me to leave behind anymore, he thought.
Each step toward the kitchen reminded him how sore he still was. Sunny could hit surprisingly hard for how small and adorable he was. Basil remembered the bandage he thought he saw in that brief moment at the hospital and hoped he hadn’t hurt Sunny too badly. That night was so hazy in his memory that he really cou-
“Oh, Basil!” Polly’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “I was just about to call for you. I made chicken and waffles!”
“Thank you,” he said softly, “I thought I smelled pancakes. It looks really good.”
Polly’s face lit up at the compliment. “Well, there’s some batter left over. I could make you some pancakes if you’d rather have that.”
“No no, waffles are perfect.” Basil made a plate and sat down, trying to suppress his nausea enough to take a bite. He wouldn’t want Polly to think he didn’t like her cooking.
“How are you feeling today?” Polly asked, “any better?”
Basil considered for a moment before answering. “A bit, yes. It really only hurts anymore when I move quickly or touch the bruises.”
“Good,” Polly said between bites of waffle, “you looked like you were in a lot of pain on the ride home from the hospital yesterday. I hope they re-pave that road soon.” Just the memory made Basil’s ribs ache.
“Yeah. Thank you for driving me, by the way.”
“Any time!”
The two fell into a comfortable silence occasionally broken by clanking silverware. Basil mostly just poked at his now-soggy waffle. He hadn’t even touched his chicken strips. Polly must have noticed because she stood up and walked around the table to grab his plate.
“You’re finished with this, right?”
Basil nodded. “Can you please save the chicken though? I might want it with lunch,” he said, knowing full well it would probably just end up going to waste anyway.
“Of course!” The caregiver smiled. Basil wasn’t usually this talkative. Maybe he was finally opening up to her? Or maybe he just missed his grandmother and wanted somebody to talk to. Either way, Polly was happy to oblige. “Do you have any plans for today?”
Basil looked down at the empty table and muttered, “not really.”
“That’s perfectly fine! You need your rest anyway.” Polly quickly interjected. “And besides, your friends will probably come check on you at some point. They’re always so considerate like that.” The boy stayed silent, so Polly continued. “Did they visit you while you were in the hospital? I saw one of them in the hallway when-”
A sob interrupted her. She nearly dropped the container of chicken she was holding as she whipped around to look. Sure enough, Basil was crying. Hard. Throwing the container onto the counter, she ran up to the wailing boy and started gently rubbing his back.
“Basil, honey, what happened? What’s wrong?”
The only answer she got was a heaving sob that looked just painful. What could possibly have set this off? Everything was fine until she started talking about…
“Is it your friends?”
Basil nodded. Polly was almost speechless; she didn’t expect to get a straight answer. Every other time Basil cried like this, he would just lock himself in his room. At least she might be able to help this time. “Is this about your friend that moved away?”
Hot tears continuously dripped onto the table as Basil tried to steady his breathing. He held up his hand with his thumb and index finger close to each other. Polly took that to mean ‘a little bit.’
“A little? What’s the rest?”
Basil looked up. He was tired of having nobody to talk to. He couldn’t keep it bottled up. Even if this was just some nursing student his parents paid to pretend to care about him, she was the only person he could talk to anymore.
“They all h-h-ha-ate me now.”
Polly, for her part, was more confused than anything. Surely he wasn’t talking about the kids that slept over just to make sure he was alright, the same ones that saved him from drowning in a lake and carried him all the way home. Although, she never did ask what happened that night to land two of them in the hospital.
“What makes you think that they hate you?” She asked carefully.
Tears started flooding back to Basil’s eyes. Polly quickly hugged him before the sobs started wracking his sore body again. It must have worked at least a little bit, because the crying was much less violent this time. She slowly started rocking back and forth in a soothing motion while she waited for the tears to dry up again. Eventually, they did. Several minutes of silence passed with Polly taking deep, deliberate breaths and Basil trying to breathe in unison with her. Neither separated from their hug.
Finally, Basil broke the silence.
“I lied to them,” he rasped “for f-four years. I made them believe something terrible. I soiled the memories they had of someone beloved to them. I… I practically ruined Sunny’s life by making him carry the secret!”
Polly had no idea what he was talking about. Deceiving friends and ruining lives are two of the most un-Basil-like things she can think of. And how does one “soil” somebody else’s memories, anyway? She was at a loss about how to proceed, but she couldn’t just stay silent after Basil poured his heart out like that.
“Nobody likes being lied to,” she began, “but even if they’re really, really, REALLY upset with you for lying to them, They’re not the kind of people to abandon their friend.” Basil removed himself from the embrace and stared at the ground. Polly continued. “Those friends of yours are special. They all care so deeply for each other. They care so deeply for you. If they don’t want to see you right now, that’s okay! It doesn’t mean they never want to see you again. They probably just need some time to come to terms with the truth. You can’t give up on them so quickly.”
A tear-streaked face looked up at her. It was the first time since she took this job that she’d seen that much hope on the boy’s face. Polly couldn’t help but smile.
“Talk to them next time you see them. If you don’t see them around, reach out. Let them know how much they mean to you. Let them see how much you’ve grown. I’ve only known you for a few months and I see it clear as day.” Basil turned away then with the tiniest hint of a blush on his face. He was never good at receiving compliments. “And write a letter to Sunny. He’s the one that moved, right? I think he’d love to hear from you.”
Basil kept looking off to the side as he nodded. “I don’t have his address, though,” he mumbled.
Polly giggled at that. A confused Basil looked back to see a triumphant-bordering-on-smug grin on her face that almost reminded him of Mari. “I asked Kel for his new address the night we ate dinner together,” She said happily. “You seemed so upset about the move, so I thought I would ask for you. He wrote it on a slip of paper and stuck it to the fridge.”
Basil just kept looking at her with one wide eye as he processed what he'd just heard, then he bolted to the fridge. Sure enough, on the back of a crumpled up Hobbeez receipt was Kel’s chicken scratch handwriting.
7740 E Birch St
Apt 4
Nearby City
He could hardly believe it. Moments ago, Basil was convinced he would never talk to his best friend again. That scrap of paper, combined with a new sense of hope that maybe things aren’t entirely hopeless, sparked a feeling of determination in his chest that he didn’t know he still had.
Basil turned to Polly with a wide, genuine smile for the first time in, well, ever.
“Thank you thank you! This means so much to me, you don’t even know!” The boy with dried tear tracks down his cheeks ran back and hugged his caregiver as tightly as he could. Polly just laughed lightly and patted his head. She'd never heard so much passion in his voice before, even when he talked about his garden. She wanted do everything in her power to see this side of Basil as often as possible.
“Any time.”