Status Updates From The Evolving Truth of Ever-...

Oh my... did not expect that 😳

You are both nonbinary people in a world that doesn’t want to understand you, let alone romance you. You know this. Julian knows this. In some small way, you feel a surge of defiance. Triumph. Because here, in this cocoon of warmth and Korra and empty Sprite cans, on Julian’s black sheets with their silver pillows strewn around you,

You have one of those moments. You know the ones, where you are just kind of doing your thing and you realize your thing isn’t normal to most people, and it always sends you spinning because all you really know is your normal, so you forget.

Geezus Hannah

Frances is definitely haunting Will.. friggin creepy

You never really thought that a world of magic and danger and demons and ancient gods and sentient tectonic plates would be a place you wish you could literally escape to, but hey, at least in fantasy worlds, your choices seem to matter and actually change things.

What kind of kid feels grateful and relieved that they’ll never see their mom again? How many times did Frances justify herself to you with the words Blood’s thicker than water. Family comes first. What if she was right? What if you’re just that much of a monster? Much as you try to banish the thoughts, they won’t leave.

It’s such a bizarre thing, being at once too old for people your age and too young for people who are older. It makes you feel like you don’t fit anywhere. You learn to camouflage, at least as best you can, nodding and smiling when people treat you like a kid even though you’re looking at your peers feeling like they’re kids, simultaneously envying them and resenting them for it.

You like the library. It feels like a multiverse at your fingertips. You can open The Death of Jane Lawrence or Please Don’t Hug Me and poof, you’re in another world where the characters feel more like you.

You go into your room. It’s never really felt like yours. Anything that got put on the walls was at risk of getting torn down by an angry Frances, and anything you didn’t take especially careful pains to hide was at risk of disappearing (even things you did hide, which you always found out the hard way until you got better at hiding shit).

Everything should show up Monday, and you’re so excited. It’s your senior year, and you bought all your school supplies with your own money, and you live alone, and Frances is gone, and it’s only when the confirmation page for your last purchase pops up that you realize you, a kid, are feeling reckless and wild and exhilarated over completing a task that someone should have been doing for you your entire life.

"apologies are only for when you’ve caused someone harm. Not for existing.”

Just like that, your little illusions crumble and you’re Will the Monster again. You feel a familiar hunger gnawing at your stomach. Vacations. The idea of a night in a hotel overlooking the harbor before a trip to Disney World or SeaWorld or any of the other worlds Dana has taken Hannah and Matt over the years. They’re … you fumble for some sort of description. They’re Bert and Ernie in their nice home

The air in the room feels like there is a lattice of stretched, taut wire covering it floor to ceiling. Like everyone feels that moving risks cutting themselves to ribbons like a hardboiled egg in a slicer.

You both feel some vague sense of vindication and a quickly accumulating sense of dread and trepidation as you slice open the flap of the padded envelope. The vindication is because this confirms that you’re not nuts—that Frances’s “freelancing” was not answering internet surveys or focus groups or whatever other bullshit things she told you it was.

Are you even capable of wanting anymore, Will? You’re so used to your hand getting slapped if you so much as hold it out to look at your fingernails, let alone to reach for anything.

But this aches. It aches hard. Your whole body feels like you stepped into a human-size bug zapper.

The wave of helplessness crests in your chest so quickly that you feel like it washes you away. You’re swimming in it, surrounded by stinging salt water and grit.

Some people can’t pinpoint the instant their life changes. Even you’ve missed some doozies. You had no way of knowing that a knock on the door meant getting wrenched from another temporary family, or that when you came home from work on a normal day, Frances would be gasping her last breath.

"People make monsters out of what they fear or don’t understand, because they know it could just as easily be them.”

But most of all—more important than coffee or pancakes or privacy or nineties sitcoms—Raz helped you find your name. Frances had given you one, or someone had. But Raz knew how much you hated it, and not only did she listen seriously as you rattled off ideas, but she seemed as invested in it as you, firing off trivia about every name you suggested. Among the ideas: Raven, Imogen,

When you were three years old, Frances left you in a dumpster in Hagerstown, Maryland. Yeah, you know, you know. Usually that’s an ignominious honor reserved for babies, not toddlers, but Frances was always one to buck tradition. You spent the next six or seven years bouncing from (usually awful) foster home to (often worse) home until sometime around your eleventh birthday you landed with her.

You sit on the floor a safe distance away, insofar as there is such a thing—the surface of the moon wasn’t far enough to constitute a safe distance from Frances.

Right now you really wish Raz was here. It’s been years since you saw her and you’ve never been able to find her, but whenever you’re scared or freaked out or lost, you wish she was there. Like now. When you’re standing over your mother’s corpse.

You didn’t even attempt CPR. You remember Raz once telling you that freezing is a trauma response and doesn’t make you bad, but it’s hard to remember that.

Veiled, pronounced "vealed"
"Fright" (Freight train)
Headache: "heddik"
Milling: "mile-ing"
Twitterpated (referencing Bambi): "twitter-patted"