Chapter Text
The phone sat in the same place it had always sat, menacing Sunny every time he had passed by it with every day that ticked by. Usually he could ignore it. It was just a visual reminder of the task that he had continued to put off even while knowing the deadline was approaching. The dark tendrils that seemed to creep off of it and reach for his wrist weren’t real, but he imagined that they were sometimes. Nowadays he was much better at telling the difference between his active imagination and reality. The lines no longer blurred even if he liked to pretend they did once in a while for amusement purposes.
He stood in front of the cordless phone today with palms that were unreasonably sweaty. He could hear the gentle whooshing of the fan as its blades moved lazily above him. Outside there was a single blaring siren from a police car or an ambulance before it faded out with distance. The apartment was quiet without his mother there with him filling it with the sounds of life. Sunny preferred it that way.
This really shouldn’t be that difficult, he thought. It wasn’t like it was the first nor the last time he would use a phone. He wasn’t scared of it, exactly. He wasn’t really one for talking, though, so he didn’t really use it much at all. The growing advancements in cell phones and the capability to text was quickly becoming his favorite means of communication even though he couldn’t really use his own phone too much. He only had a track phone, after all, and he couldn’t waste his minutes texting too much. Emailing took too much time as well. He knew he should just make the call.
Sunny pulled a folded note from his pocket and placed it on the spot next to the phone. The fold was thick and weakened from where it had been opened and closed repeatedly over the past year. The ink on the paper was a little faded as well from when Mewo had jumped up onto Sunny’s desk and had knocked his water bottle onto the paper the one time he had seriously considered utilizing the information written there. The condensation on the outside of the bottle had soaked into the paper. It was still legible, at least.
The dark, waving tendrils extended out from the phone once more, creeping closer to his body with each beat of Sunny’s elevated heart rate. He swallowed thickly. He was nervous.
He decided to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths to calm down. It wasn’t as scary as it seemed. He could do this. He just needed to focus.
He opened his eyes and the tendrils were gone. Though his expression hadn't changed much, he could feel the way his eyebrows had dipped a little. He wished Mari was there. He could clearly hear her voice encouraging him. Being afraid of his friends wasn’t something he wanted to do and she knew that just as well as Sunny himself did. He glanced over his shoulder as if she might be there, but instead only saw Mewo snoozing on the head of the couch. The tip of her tail curled slowly and released in calm intervals.
Sunny turned back to the phone. How long had it been since he had heard any of his friends’ voices, now that he thought about it? He believed that the last time they had spoken was in the hospital. Since then, communication has been scarce, but it wasn’t gone. Sunny was grateful that they chose to talk to him at all, if he was honest. He wondered if they would appreciate a call from him? Talking through text on a screen was so much easier. There wasn’t a need to worry about tone or facial expression. No chance to see the disappointment or anger or frustration on their features. But there was also no chance to see their smiles or laughter at jokes either. It was something that he had missed.
He had spent four years alone with only the imagined sounds of laughter and projected joy on his friends’ childhood faces. He had grown past the need for that now. He knew that if he made the call that at least one of them would be happy to receive him. The matter was who to choose, he supposed. He had all of their phone numbers but that only added pressure about who to make the phone call to. He could choose just one, but it felt wrong to do that. He sighed from his nose.
If he called Kel, then he knew the others would find out in no time that he had called, but he also knew that he might be on the phone for who-knew-how-long. If he called Hero, then he knew the other would gladly make small talk with him, but it was also kinda hard to face Hero considering... everything. Aubrey would like him to call and would probably keep him on the phone for the shortest amount of time, but she was one of the hardest ones to call now since she was so different from what he remembered. Basil would be the easiest to talk to, but Basil also had the hardest time talking with the others. They all had their pros and cons to them.
You have to make a choice eventually. Don’t be scared! You’ve got this!
Imagining his sister’s voice wasn’t something that was completely healthy, his therapist had told him, but Sunny didn’t exactly feel like putting the effort into trying to stop it from happening either. He had spent a majority of his life seeing and hearing things that he only imagined, though the level and quality of how real they looked and sounded had changed after… after Mari’s death. Therapy helped with coping with reality, but in the end Sunny had always been someone who had lived half in his head when he was alone anyway. That wasn’t something he was looking to change entirely, but rather he was learning to get used to the real world once more. Headspace wasn’t what it once was, and that was for the best. There were other adventures he could be having. The first step was to make a phone call.
Okay.
He grabbed the phone then and made his decision. He dialed Hero’s number and brought the phone to his ear. The sound of his heartbeat was loud in between the ringing. It was just far too quiet in the apartment. Maybe he should turn on the television or something just for some background noise. He stared at the phone dock while he waited.
“Hello?” Sunny’s heart leapt to his throat briefly at the sound of Hero’s voice. Ah, he was even more nervous now. He blinked a couple times quickly. “...Hello?” Hero repeated, his voice still polite but confused when Sunny didn’t respond.
“Um.” Sunny tried to say. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t get the words out. It seemed he didn’t need to try too hard, though. Hero’s voice changed entirely as it filled with recognition.
“Sunny, is that you? Hey! How are you?” The warmth in his tone did wonders to ease some of Sunny’s worries. There was a part of him that still feared persecution from his friends after everything that had happened. Even after all this time, he doubted that fear would leave him anytime soon. That was part of the reason he was so determined to go through with this.
“H… Hi.” He said. “I’m… okay. How are you?”
“I’m doing great! Well,” he laughed a little, wry smile clear enough in his voice that Sunny could see it in his mind’s eye. Hero had changed since they were kids, but not too much, “as great as I can be. I’m packing up to head back to Faraway Town for the summer. You, uh, saw what happened last time I came home from college.”
Sunny remembered the exuberant family reunion in Kel’s loud household. It had been starkly different from the kind of household and family that Sunny had grown used to. The noise had been jarring but familiar. There was nostalgia to be found among how easily the family had communicated and how effortlessly Sunny had fit back into that picture. They had missed a majority of Hero’s welcome home dinner that day, but that didn’t mean that Sunny couldn’t tell what his friend meant.
“Yeah.” He said simply.
“Are you still planning to come visit?” It was asked without the pressure behind it that Sunny would expect any of their other friends would push onto him, unintentionally or not. Hero had always been good about that. He was the older brother that Sunny had never had but had always wanted. In a perfect world, maybe he really would’ve been family by now. Hero had that way of encouraging Sunny’s answers without putting the pressure of too much expectation upon him. Sunny still didn’t know whether or not that should be as big of a relief for him as it was.
“...That’s why I called.” He moved over to the couch so that he could pet Mewo while he talked. The cat murred as she was awoken by his touch before she closed her eyes again. Petting her always calmed him down. He felt a little bad for his sweaty hands, though. “My mom said it was… it’s okay to do that thing. I have money I can bring with me. Do… Should we… What we talked about before...”
“Oh!” Hero cried, surprised and delighted at the same time. Then he cleared his throat with embarrassment. The surprise had been too close to shock. “Yeah, of course! Yeah! W-Wow, okay. You never said whether or not you were interested, haha, so I wasn’t sure. No problem! Okay, we should let the others know! I’ll go ahead and pay for everything, so just make sure you bring the money to pay me back for your portion.”
Sunny’s hand buried itself deeper into Mewo’s fur. He felt guilty and ill. He had surprised his friend, huh? Maybe it had been one of those random suggestions that hadn’t been meant to be taken seriously. Kel liked to come up with ideas all of the time, but they had hardly followed through on any of them. Like that idea to do a secret Santa through the mail that they never actually did. Or for Sunny to commute to high school in Faraway Town despite the fact that he wasn't in the same grade as the others anymore and had to play catch up with his schooling. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up. Too late now, he guessed? “Th… Thanks. I will.”
“Hey.” Hero’s voice softened a little in mild reprimand and comfort at the same time. “It’s gonna be fun, I promise. Kel will be thrilled, and I’m sure Aubrey’s been looking to get away for a while too. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll take care of it all!”
Right. He needed to trust his friends. This conversation was going well, after all. He was looking forward to this. He wanted to do this.
“Hm… How about we tell everyone in person when you come back to town?” Hero suddenly asked before Sunny had a chance to respond to his assurance. “Let’s keep it a secret until then. Knowing Kel, he’ll get way excited before we even have a chance to get everything settled. We don’t need to worry about him or Aubrey, but maybe you should be the one to talk with Basil? He’ll probably need the extra time to get everything confirmed with his parents.”
That was just how it was between everyone now. Despite everything that had occurred, Sunny could tell there was an irreversible scar that covered their friendship because of his and Basil’s actions. It was only made worse for Basil when the boy had taken on a little more of the burden of their friends’ shock and horror in response to Sunny having been the one to finally expose the truth. It wasn’t said with as many words, but Sunny knew that he was the one closest to Basil after all this time out of anyone in the group. There were some things that couldn’t be completely repaired even if they can be worked around.
“Sure.” He said.
“Great! Alright, I’ll leave it to you.” A silence hung between them filled by dead air. Sunny could hear Hero moving around on the other side of the line. There was the sound of a zipper opening or closing and the shuffle of clothing brushing against skin. He really was packing, then. Sunny wished he was a better conversationalist, but he had never really been one to take the lead and Hero was usually too polite to completely dominate a conversation without either Kel or Aubrey there to bounce off of. Luckily for him, Hero knew this as well. “I’m gonna let you go then. I’ll give my parents the heads up about you coming over. Just send us a message on the time you think you’ll show up, alright? We’ll be sure to have a bed set up for you. Sound good?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Cool. Bye then, Sunny! It was great hearing from you!”
“You too.”
They both hung up, and Sunny’s heart felt lighter. He walked back to the phone dock and put it away. His brow softened as he folded the paper with his friends’ numbers on it once more and pocketed it before he sat down on the couch with a sigh. He grabbed the television remote and turned on the TV to some kind of colorful cartoon movie, though he didn’t pay much attention to it. The noise was nice. He closed his eyes and simply listened.
His fears were different now, a year later and a year older than he had been the last time he had faced his phobias head on in his mind. These fears weren’t nearly as easy to defeat. His therapist said it was anxiety, but Sunny still felt his feelings were well-founded. The paranoia that his friends secretly hated him was not one that would go away anytime soon, not the least of which because Sunny still hadn't fully forgiven himself and didn't feel like he deserved forgiveness despite how much he knew that Mari would want him to. But that paranoia was also the main reason why he was simultaneously fearing and looking forward to going back to his hometown and seeing everyone once more. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that confining himself to only his mind and his thoughts would allow that darkness to grow and poison what memories he had until he wasn’t sure where the shadows ended and reality began.
His fingers gently touched the edge of his eyepatch and traced the edge of it. The only way he could learn the truth was if he trusted his friends and faced what was to come. For better or for worse, life went on. The fact that over this past year all five of them had managed to slowly but surely communicate more over messages proved that. It had been stilted at first, and at times there were large gaps between when some of them would respond to their group chat, but now there was a relatively steady flow of conversation. Basil, Kel, and Aubrey still went to school together, so Sunny could only assume they did most of their talking in real life. The one person he talked with the most over text was Basil himself. Basil was the only one that Sunny felt like had forgiven him entirely. Sunny wished he could say he felt the same towards Basil, but there was a part of him that still resented the other boy and probably always would. Sunny would still say he was his closest of the friends, though. They were tied by fate together.
He was sleepy. The air conditioner and the fan was on, but the couch was so soft and comfortable and warm. Mewo stretched as she got up before she hopped onto the seat next to Sunny. He laid down on the couch and the cat curled up in crooks his arms. Her purrs filled in the gaps between the noise of the television as she butted her head under his chin before she settled down in preparation of another nap. Sunny closed his eyes. He had plenty of time left in the day, after all, and he wasn’t going anywhere at all. He’d contact Basil after a short nap.