Chapter Text
When people say they want to leave a mark on the world, they usually show that through their life's work, putting in hours of work just to let some people know that they were there, to show people proof that they existed. No one ever wants to be meaningless, it can eat a person up inside and tear their heart and soul to bits. People will do anything to feel content. It’s never about happiness, it’s always content. It doesn’t matter if you’re five or seventy-five, everyone wants to fit in.
It seems that no matter who you are, you can’t escape the feeling of wanting to fit in.
For eleven-year-old Clay Firestone, he wasn’t exempt from the notion of acceptance and finding your place in the world. He would bend over backward just to fit the mold of a perfect kid. To get the approval of his father.
But no matter how hard he tried, he would find himself sitting alone during water breaks at football practice, the other kids talking around him and laughing while he tried to keep up and chime in with something now and then, to no avail, and he found himself not being invited to his “closest friends” parties outside of their birthdays. He just couldn’t hold down a friend, a true friend.
During the summer before middle school, he was forced to do all sorts of summer camps that his dad insisted would “help him make some friends” and “make him a real man.”
So, he went to the sports camp. He went to the boy scout's camp. He went to the math camp. He went to the camp.
He went to so many camps that he barely had time for himself, barely had time to play his favorite games, eat his favorite foods— his diet for the sports camp made sure of that. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think, couldn’t even breathe without a schedule.
It wasn’t until his twelfth birthday that he got his reprieve. Two weeks before school started again and he was thrust into his work, after he blew out candles and was tucked into bed, his mother came into his room with something behind her back.
“Happy birthday Clay, I know your summer was harder than you wanted so I got you something.” She said, her voice soft and regretful. She sat down on the bed next to him and moved the thing she was hiding behind her to show Clay. Clay looked at it for a few seconds.
“What is it?”
“It’s a journal.” She smiled down as Clay sat up. “I’ve noticed that you tend to space out and I know you have a lot going on in that brain of yours so I wanted to see what was going on up there.” She tapped her son's forehead.
Clay frowned.
“So you got me a diary?”
“It’s not a diary it’s-” Clay cut her off
“People will make fun of me,”
“You don’t have to bring it to school, I just want you to have a way to express yourself and to be able to write all those brilliant ideas down.” Clay looked hesitant to take the journal. “Look, you’re so brilliant and I know you don’t think so but I can see that you are itching to get something out of you. Just indulge me this once and take it, you don’t even have to write anything in it.”
“Fine, at least it’s green,” He mumbled the last part, taking the journal and putting it on his bedside table. His mother smiled and pressed a kiss to his forehead, which he quickly wiped off, feigning disgust.
“Goodnight, my little dreamer.”
“Night mom.”
That night, Clay had trouble going to sleep, thoughts flying through his head like a jet and keeping him from his dreams.
Why would he want a diary? That’s for girls to write their feelings in and gush about their latest crush, not for a young man such as himself. It’s like his dad tells him, he isn’t a pussy. He wouldn’t even touch the thing. But why was it so interesting to him? Why didn’t he hate the idea of writing some of his daydream’s down? He didn’t really want to create worlds he could escape to and morph to fit what he wished his world was, that was just his mom planting ideas in his head.
Right?
The next day was torture for the boy. He was left home alone because his parents had work and his siblings were still in summer camps, so he spent the whole day wandering the house, always seeming to find himself back in his room staring at the journal as if it were his greatest rival. He would look at the small book and go over the pros and cons in his head. He couldn’t seem to find many pros, but the cons he did have just didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
You’ll get made fun of. He can keep it at home, besides, he has no friends to come over and potentially see it anyway. You don’t need somewhere to “express yourself”, you have– have what? Football? Where no one talks to him. A friend to talk to? Nope. You don’t want to ruin your life. Ruin it how? How will writing a few silly words in a silly notebook ruin his life? And anyway, he likes reading, always really liked getting into a story when he could find time to sneak away to his hideout under the stairs.
Without even realizing it, his body got up from the bed and he picked up the journal, walking over to his desk and opening it to the first page. He grabbed a pencil and looked down at the paper.
Empty.
Of course, it was empty, he hadn’t written anything yet. So logically, it would be empty.
Clay let out a breath.
Why and how was writing so hard? When did it get so hard to put down words on a piece of paper? Surely the words will come to him?
He looks around his room, realizing something. This isn’t the right place to write something.
So, he got up and walked out of the room and down the stairs, ending up in front of his favorite place: under the stairs. There was a small door on the side of their stairs that nearly completely blended in with the wall. It led to a tiny room decked with some blankets and pillows, a lamp, and a portable desk along with some other knick-knacks here and there. It was a safe haven of comfort and an escape to a new world. Clay’s older sister, Heather, had shown it to him one night while the loud and angry voices of their parents rang throughout the house and he had been coming there as a way to escape from it all ever since.
When he got to the room, he turned on the light and set down the journal on the desk, staring at it while it stared back. He sat there for a few moments before opening up the book again and picking up a pencil to write something. He started with one sentence, a simple “Once upon a time…” type sentence, and soon, one become two became five, became ten. His mind helpfully supplied words while he diligently wrote them onto the paper, only stopping to shake his hand out when it started to cramp.
The rest of the day went about the same, before Clay’s family came home, the boy spent most of the day writing his dreams and his ideas into the notebook. He poured his heart into it and soon hours had passed by without even noticing it. He hid the book when his father got home and pretended like he was doing something productive. Writing wasn’t something that his dad wanted for his future.
So, over the course of the next year, Clay developed stories and plots in secret, saving up his own money to buy more notebooks to fill the pages with his thoughts. He would get home from school and head straight to the nook under the stairs and start writing or reading in hopes that he can become a better writer. But that was only on the days that he wasn’t at football practice.
His dad said that joining the team would help him with his social ineptitude and that it would be good to have him put himself out there. He didn’t mind it though, he liked the sport and was good at it so that was enough to keep him on the team. He would lie to his parents about having friends, giving vague details about them and not going into specifics. But he knew he was alone.
No one on the team talked to him all that much. It wasn’t because they didn’t like him, it was more that they just couldn’t see him, almost like he was invisible. Clay didn’t mind, he dealt with it for years, what’s a few more?
Eventually, football season came to an end and Clay was able to get home from school earlier than before, and once spring came around, he was able to walk home with his sisters and brother. But one day is all it takes for everything good and nice to come crashing down on you.
All it took was Clay’s dad finding the journal that he had accidentally left out. All it took was Clay getting mad and accidentally shouting back. All it took was one small hit, one small slur, and suddenly his parents were divorced and his dad was moving out. Suddenly he’s known as the kid with divorced parents at school. Suddenly he’s in therapy and talking to someone he doesn’t know about things he doesn’t understand.
He keeps playing football and stops writing. At least he does that for a few years before his sophomore year of high school when he starts online school, only then does he pick up the pen again and set down the ball. He finds it calming, though it’s hard to get his father’s words out of his head. He’s not disappointing anyone. He’s not a failure. He’s not anything his father claimed he was. What he is, is a young writer who wants to do something for the kids who are like himself, the ones who feel alone and who have no one to turn to. He wants to be the one they turn to.
He learns not to blame himself for his parents separating, and he learns how to improve his writing. He spends years perfecting his stories and his voice. He studies literature and creative writing in college and realizes that he might not be as straight as he thought. He finds himself in a relationship for about two months before he finds his boyfriend flirting with someone else, a little too close for comfort. He doesn’t mourn the loss, they were mostly just hookups and therapists to each other.
What does hurt him though, is a letter that came from a publisher that he got a year after he graduated. He had been working on the outline of a story throughout all of college and decided to take a year to work on it, and soon enough he had sent it out to an editor who helpfully made it a comprehensive book. He had sent the manuscript and an online copy to a publisher and waited. He didn’t have to wait that long before he got an email from the publisher.
Dear Clay Firestone,
We regret to inform you that your story was not picked up by us and we will be sending you back the manuscript you sent us, though we do encourage you to continue writing-
He closed out of the email after that and slumped into his bed, dejected. After about 5 minutes of sulking, a wave of determination set over him and he sat up and walked over to his computer. He started doing more research on different publishers and after a few hours, he had even more emails sent out, hoping one of them would reach out to get his book published.
He waited, and waited, and waited. He waited for what felt like months but was probably only two weeks for an email or a phone call, something to show his work had been seen. Soon, the emails came flooding back to him, all of them having the same message.
We regret to inform you-
We appreciate your effort, but-
It hurts our hearts-
We apologize-
All of them were the same, just different wording. All of them. Maybe even his father, his first critic, was right. Maybe it was fruitless to pursue a career in writing. Maybe it wasn’t too late to get back into sports or maybe even doing something with computers. He can’t be a failure.
He let the idea slip into his mind unknowingly, and there it would stay for the next few weeks. Weeks of depression and loneliness that consumes and destroys until nothing is left, and weeks of genuine sadness that can’t be contained.
Nothing was all he knew.