"Holy shit! Way?"

The tone of the person's voice startles me and I jump back, my head snapping up in their direction. When I see them, my mouth falls open.

Raven is stretched out on the couch with their feet up on the low, unsteady looking coffee table in front of it. Their eyes just as wide as mine, their mouth just as gaping.

"No fucking way... Raven?"

In a frenzy, they try and prop themselves up on their hand, but it slips and they fall off the couch with a thud. Ryder steps forward to help them up, but they simply brush the hair from their mouth and jump onto their feet with a wild look in their eye. "This can't be happening right now, this is too much of a coincidence."

I consider asking if they're okay after that fall, but they seem just fine to me, so I ask the more pressing question instead. "What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? Way, what are you doing here?" Raven asks, approaching me as though they need a closer look at me, like they don't think I'm really standing in front of them. I thought maybe they'd go as far as poking my face to make sure I'm not just a figment of their imagination.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Ryder asks, standing in bewilderment, his eyes jumping between the two of us with a look of utmost confusion on his face.

"We know each other!" Raven and I blurt out at the same time. And although the circumstances in which we met weren't great, and to call the way our brief friendship abruptly ended simply "not great" would be a hilarious understatement, they hug me. The past doesn't matter in this moment. Not even the way we were forced to leave it off, with Frank yelling with fire in his eyes, spitting words that must've cut like knives, "You three should just go back to wherever the fuck you came from and stay away from Eve, or as you call her, Way. Okay? Just fucking leave right now."

"What happened to you? I was so worried, and then eventually I had to accept that I'd never see you again." They speak into my shoulder. "And when'd you get taller than me?"

"That is a long story," I say. "And the getting taller thing just kind of just happened naturally, I guess."

Raven and I sit at opposite ends of the couch, and Ryder shoves the coffee table aside and sits on the floor in front of us. He seems to have completely forgotten about the whole "going exploring" thing, and leans forward, watching us with that intent look I've already gotten used to, ready to hear whatever this long story I've got to tell is all about.

At first, I do nothing but wring my hands in my lap and trace with my eyes the rings left on the surface of the table by cans and mugs of coffee. My gaze flits across the room at a sudden movement, a flash of black and white. "Kitty!" I burst out like a child might on Christmas morning.

"That's Jersey," Raven says, and Ryder crosses the floor on his hands and knees to grab the cat. "And keep your voice down, cause I'm not supposed to have pets in this apartment."

"I'm pretty sure I saw a dead mouse on the stairs on our way up, but you can't have a cat?"

Raven shrugs and mouths, I know right, with wide eyes just as Ryder gently places Jersey in my lap. I stroke her soft head and she leans into me, purring.

"I can't have a cat at home cause my dad— Gerard— is allergic."

"I'd love to hear about your dad's allergies, and all," Ryder interjects, "But I'm still really fucking confused, so if you could get on with the story that'd be rad."

"God, you remind me of Frank," I say, shaking my head.

"I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks that!" Raven exclaims. "Lip ring and all."

"Now, if Frank bleached all his hair and grew about three feet we wouldn't even be able to tell the difference."

"Who the fuck is Frank?" Ryder asks.

"Frank Iero, Ryde," Raven explains impatiently. "From—"

"Yeah, yeah, from the band you always talk about. Romance In Chemistry Class, or whatever."

I burst out laughing, but Raven seems to lose their patience with him even further. "You know damn well it's My Chemical Romance."

"I'm just messing with you," he waves his hand in the air, then turns to me again. "You're obsessed with them too?"

I bite my lip. "I'll get into my story now."

By the time I'm finished explaining to Raven about what happened after that fateful day in the park— and enlightening Ryder a bit about my fucked up life— about half an hour has gone by. I've gone over details I'd forgotten about (like how it only took a couple weeks for Emerald to ignore her father's orders and come visit me while I was in the hospital, where she explained everything and we reconciled), and I've had to hold back some tears.

Holding the cat in my lap helped. She brought a calming energy and now I really wish Gerard wasn't allergic, or I wasn't too stubborn to cave and ask Laura for a cat. I guess I'll be over here pretty often, if not to hang out with Ryder and Raven, to cuddle Jersey.

"So, yeah, that brings me to a week ago when I was ripped away from Gerard and Lindsey, and my girlfriend and everyone else I love, and brought here to live with my mother, A.K.A. the woman who ruined my life." I say the words casually, if only to mask my pain, but the two who have been listening to me speak for the last thirty minutes are left speechless.

"Well, shit," Ryder says eventually, running his fingers through his hair and letting out a long, slow breath.

The sinking feeling that comes immediately after over sharing begins to grow in my chest, in my stomach, and I think maybe I shouldn't have told them all of that. Maybe they've now realized how fucked up I really am, and that my friendship comes with reminders of a past I'll always be trying to heal from. They won't want to deal with me, they won't want to be connected to all of this, and maybe, what's worse, they'll pity me. They'll pity me and the only reason they'll hang out with me is because they won't dare turn me away.

Then Raven says, "Well, shit, is right. If you ever need to get away from her, you're always welcome here." They gesture broadly around the small apartment. "Even if it is kind of a shit hole."

"I mean—" I look around. The cracks in the linoleum floor in the kitchen, the creaky floorboards, the windows with the chipped frames and glass that rattles with every gust of wind. Down the hall, I spot three doors; they must be two small bedrooms and a bathroom. "—it could be worse."

"It's better than living in the street," Ryder points out.

I catch the sympathetic look in his direction coming from Raven and I ask cautiously, remembering when earlier today he called himself an open book, "Are you speaking from experience?"

He nods. "My parents kicked me out for being gay, but Raven here found me. That's all there is to it."

"That's all there is to it? You were—" Raven covers their mouth quickly, cutting themselves off before they say too much when they see Ryder narrow his eyes at them. I raise my eyebrows. The room has gone silent, full of tension, a staring contest between the three of us.

Then, Ryder finishes the sentence quietly, casting his gaze to the floor. "I was starving and freezing in an alley."

I clear my throat, ignoring the way my heart skipped a beat. "You're lucky to have a friend like Raven."

"Damn right," he agrees, then he changes the subject. "So, Raven, your turn to tell your side of the story. Way still doesn't know how you got here."

My heart swells when he refers to me as "Way," just like Raven has always done. They've both refused to call me Barry, for which I'm glad. I send him a grateful smile which he may have just taken for a normal smile, not knowing how significant hearing that one little word was to me. I turn my attention to Raven, who shifts their seating position and clasps their hands. "Everything fell apart when you left," they say.

I'm shocked.

"I was hardly the glue keeping your group together, Raven." Despite being afraid of the reply I might get, I ask, "What happened?"

They heave a sigh that makes me even more afraid and go on to tell me that when Frank and Ray dragged me away from the park the three went back to The Box. They got in a fight there. Pointing fingers at each other, arguing over who was to blame for what had happened. Krash insisted it was Zero because he was the one encouraging my behaviour, Zero insisted it was Krash because he was the one who invited me to The Box in the first place. He said I never should've gone, said I didn't fit in with a group of high school dropouts in a shack in the woods. The only person who blamed Raven, was Raven.

Looking back, sure, maybe Zero was right. Maybe The Box was no place for a fragile, vulnerable fourteen year old. But at the time I really thought I fit in there. I went as far as beginning to think of them as friends, The Box as the only place that was safe for me to go because I didn't need to hide anything from anyone. It wasn't school, a building full of teachers that droned on and on about concepts I wasn't capable of grasping, and it wasn't home where I was stuck in a deep pit of lies I was unable to craw out of, where I could barely look Gerard, Mikey, Frank, or Ray in the eye.

But they were never really my friends, and The Box was never really a safe haven. I was just desperate.

They went on to tell me that Zero went back to The Box that night and burned the place to the ground, which explains the state in which Emerald and I found it when we went to the park not too long ago. Raven told me he was known to have dramatic and unpredictable bursts of anger, he wouldn't think his actions through. The group fizzled out then and they stopped meeting, not only because they no longer had a place to meet, but Raven realized that what they were doing was unhealthy, it was pointless. They went back to school, caught up, graduated, and moved away to someplace no one would think to follow them as soon as possible, and got a job there where they found Ryder in the alley on their way home from work one night. And that's how they ended up here, in some town in Rhode Island, where I happened to show up to.

"And your parents just let you leave the state?" I ask. "Just like that? And don't you miss your little sister?"

"'Course I miss her, and I miss my parents. But when I told them what I wanted to do they were super supportive. They always are— well, they weren't when they found out I hadn't gone to school in months, but we worked it out."

Impressed with Raven's relationship with their parents, I nod. "So... what happened to the other two, Raven? Where are Zero and Krash?" I remember the time Krash told me bluntly, the same way he said everything else, that he lived on Zee's couch.

"We stopped talking pretty soon after Zee burned The Box down. Which was a big thing, by the way. Everyone in town wanted to know why the fire brigade was in some park in Jersey in the middle of the night. I don't know if they were relieved or disappointed when it turned out to just be some stupid seventeen year old."

"But, don't you know what they're up to now?" I persist, feeling as though Raven might be keeping something from me.

Raven purses their lips and their eyes start flicking around the room, landing anywhere but on me. "Well, uh, I assume Krash kept on living with Zee's parents cause they got pretty close, you know? But, uh, Way... Zee's dead."

I suck in a breath with great difficulty, as all the oxygen in the room has suddenly vanished. "Shut up, no he's not," I say weakly.

Raven shakes their head, still not meeting my eyes. "He- he got into some... bad stuff. He overdosed. That was the one time me and Krash spoke since we initially stopped talking; when he called me to let me know he was dead."

I feel as though I should be crying, but the stinging in my eyes isn't coming, the lump in my throat, the quivering lip... I'm emotionless. Something about Zero gave off the vibe that he was indestructible, but obviously he wasn't. No one is and I'm constantly being reminded of it.

When I tell Raven and Ryder I need to get home before Laura has a fit, Ryder offers to walk me back. I decline. It's not dark out out yet and I want to be alone even though that's all I've been for the last week. I'm about to go home and isolate myself in my bedroom even more. I guess I'll take the time to unpack those last two boxes even if I know seeing the contents inside will hurt.

When I get home, slipping past Laura who's reading a book on the couch, too immersed to notice me, I feel more alone than usual. I dig through a box and find the black heart-shaped necklace Emerald gave me, put it on, and hold the pendant tightly as I hold in my tears.