Chapter Text
He's standing barefoot in his street, tired and dazed in the early hours of the morning, when the news reaches him and his younger brother. Jay, the youngest of the four siblings, squirms and whines in his arms as his neighbour runs up to them; it's some guy from his History class that he can't quite remember the name of but their lack of friendship seems to be irrelevant by the wildly excited look on his face.
"The school- the highschool- it's burning man, flames are about fifteen feet high and there's all these firetrucks, it's so insane."
He's ran off to another guy their age before Tyler can respond and he's not even sure he can form a response with the way his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and his hands turn clammy, awkwardly gripping at his six year old brother to prevent the child from falling. He thought the collective chatter of their neighbours, all of them having gathered outside after hearing the sirens and seeing the smoke, around them had been loud before but it seems to double in volume upon the news and Tyler suddenly wants to go inside and hide beneath his blankets.
"What does that mean?" Zack, his sixteen year old brother, whispers. His face is sickeningly pale, just as pale as his own Tyler imagines, under the clinically white street lights.
"I don't know." Tyler responds quietly, staring thoughtfully towards the gusts of dark grey smoke that pollute the night sky. He can smell the ashes as though he's standing right beside the fire and he's hard pressed not to cough.
It doesn't take long before their mother walks up to them with his little sister, Maddy; his father had disappeared about an hour ago with a few of the other dads, likely going off to peer around the fire. The two youngest siblings are obviously exhausted by the way Maddy is swaying on her feet and how Jay has finally slipped into a light sleep, cheek resting against his shoulder. Zack and himself are a little more observant however, silently taking in the conversations taking place around them; this is their school, one of the mere two high schools in the area and the opposing school would in no way have the facilities to double their student population - where would they go?
"Let's go inside." Kelly, their mother breathes, forming a cloud of steam which rises up into the air, mixing and swirling into the smoke that's beginning to block the gleams of light emitting from the street lamps. "Hopefully we'll get some news in the morning."
They each make their way back into the large family home to Tyler's relief. The chatter from outside still permeates the room but it's distant now and he can't make out what they're saying which is enough for him to be content. His eyes follow his brother and sister who stumble upstairs to their bedrooms and his mom who retreats to the kitchen where he can hear her sigh and start pacing in a steady rhythm. Blinking slowly and trying to avert his imagination away from the seemingly endless possibilities of what's to come, he too walks towards the stairs and first makes his way to his youngest brother's bedroom.
It's still illuminated by the soft blue glow of his nightlight, setting alight the toys scattered over the floor and the crudely drawn pictures on his wall. He wishes he too could bask in the childish naivety his brother takes for granted, but with a grim frown, he lays Jay down and tucks him under his spaceship sheets before slipping away and creeping towards his shared bedroom with Zack. The aforementioned sixteen year old is kneeling on the chest by their window, squinting at the people below; were it any other occasion, Tyler would have laughed and teased him about looking like a kid on Christmas eve.
Instead, he drops onto his bed and groans, "Go to sleep."
"You think we'll stay off school until it's rebuilt?"
"Fire like that?" Tyler muses, "It'd take months, not a chance. They'll send as many as they can to Redsworth and the rest, who knows. They'll probably make a temporary school at Church or something like how they have us take classes in the Gym during floods."
Zack shrugs, "Just glad I'll be getting out of that Biology test."
The younger boy finally crawls under his sheets and Tyler switches off the lamp they'd scrambled to turn on upon hearing the chaos outside. His usually comfortable navy blue bedsheets feel scratchy and too warm with the knowledge that he won't be waking up tomorrow to a normal breakfast before walking to school. Instead of sleeping like his brother who snores obnoxiously, he thinks of the pictures he'd stuck to his locker and whether the fire had reached them, of the several desks he'd sat at over the past three years and whether they're now black and charred, of the gym where he's played too many basketball games to count and whether he'll even graduate in that building like he's supposed to in ten months.
He must drift off at some point because he awakes to Sesame Street playing too loud on the television downstairs and the smell of burnt toast which wouldn't normally churn his stomach to the point where he feels sick but on this morning, he finds himself swallowing one too many times as he stomps down the steps. The clock on the wall reads 08:54. He should be in AP English right now but instead he finds himself surrounded by the chaos of his family.
Jay is sat on the floor, shoving spoonfuls of Wheaties down his throat with his eyes trained on the television screen. Maddy sits on the couch behind him, reading a magazine he has no interest in identifying, repeatedly telling Jay to turn the volume down, and his dad is pacing from the kitchen to the living room to the dining room and round again with the landline pressed to his ear, yelling down the phone about something or another. Zack is throwing away the burnt toast he'd awoken to with an annoyed expression as he tries to interrogate their mom who is sending death glares towards him as she takes care of another phone call and all Tyler wants to do is to tell them to shut up.
"Why are they even home?" Tyler berates his oldest brother tiredly, pointing to the two youngest siblings.
"Elementary and middle schools called the day off." Zack responds offhandedly, shoving another batch of bread into the toaster, "Mom and dad are trying to find out what's going on, apparently half of the school's down, the cause was an electrical malfunction or something."
"Any news about where we're going?"
"No news yet, mom says the governor's going to release a statement later this afternoon. They want us back in as soon as possible."
Tyler hums noncommittally at the response and walks back to the living room where he collapses into the armchair and gazes out of the window. It looks barren compared to the night before, only a guy walking his dog and two young girls running off somewhere. The smoke has cleared to his relief, though the sky still looks grey and looming as though a storm is on it's way which seems fitting with the way his chest constricts unnervingly and his foot taps out a steady rhythm into the hardwood floor.
It's not that he's upset about missing school necessarily, he found the institution to be just as much as a burden as the rest of the student body, but the sudden change he knows he's about to go through, potentially changing schools and having to adjust to a new routine is overwhelming. His siblings seem to be unbothered by the situation, if anything excited about all the commotion but all Tyler can think about is how he's either going to be stuck in the church where it'll be overcrowded and too loud and too much or the school on the opposite side of town, Redsworth. It's a forty minute walk, he'd have to take the school bus, wake up earlier than usual and meet new people and answer endless questions and deal with the pretentious rivalry between the school sports teams. Having been on Worthington Christian's basketball team, he imagines he'll be taking the brunt of it all.
He can't wrap his head around the logistics of it all, even if they're split into two or three groups, some students going to Redsworth and others to temporary schools, there aren't enough facilities in town to hold that many kids. His high school, being the bigger of the two, held just over two thousand kids and he can't see more than three quarters of them finding places in town.
The school year had only just begun, his mom had only taken them stationary and clothes shopping just a few weeks prior so he guesses the timing isn't horrible, especially for Zack who's a Sophomore. Tyler on the other hand, being a Senior, sighs worriedly at the idea of falling too far behind on school work. He may not have been the most social kid at school, but he got his work done and he did his best on the basketball team; his work is what he holds onto, as boring as it is, it stops him from falling into dangerous habits like the other kids.
He'd been homeschooled until the start of high school, his mom instilling a strict schedule from an early age that he still sticks reasonably well to even now. He'd be woken up earlier than the public school kids, sent out to the front yard to complete his basketball drills, shower and eat breakfast, then work until evening. He'd only have an hour of free time before completing his second set of more excruciating drills with the watchful eye of his dad, a coach at the local high school that he'd be enrolled into by the time Freshman year rolled up. Having only been used to socialising with the neighbourhood kids and the basketball youth group, he struggled to worm his way into one of the cliques unlike his siblings who had been in public school since elementary. So he contented himself with the basketball team and any free time he had outside of that was dedicated to practice or writing.
It dawned on him on school breaks, when his busy schedule cleared up and he found himself with too much free time that he didn't even know what to do with himself. The hours spent in his bedroom provided too much silence, too much time to ponder over what his purpose was outside of pleasing his parents. Writing helped, jotting down meaningless words until they filled the countless journals that now litter his bedside table, desk and backpack. But without the routine and his parents working long day shifts, and his siblings sent to summer camp while he was old enough to look after himself, he found he wasn't capable. He'd complete his basketball drills, would do his chores and everything else he'd been trained to do, but he'd fail to eat meals, would forget a shower or two, would sometimes stare into space and realise hours had passed. Simple tasks like doodling and peaking at the show Jay was watching would suddenly become of interest to him and he'd silently envy the childhood his siblings were gifted with while he was taught from too young an age that he was to study, practice drills, go to church, look after his siblings, and pray that he'd end up somewhere good in life.
Religion was an interesting topic that he preferred not to dwell on. He'd been raised strictly Christian from the moment he popped out of the womb, just like his parents and grandparents and great grandparents and whoever came before them. He recalls watching his neighbor's kids hunt chocolate eggs on Easter while his family piled into the car to head to church, and on Sundays when the kids his age would be sleeping in, he was dozing off in Sunday school. He'd even been an alter boy since he was six, and had practically begged his parents at fifteen to quit because although his voice was at an awkward pitch that still somewhat fit in with the younger boys, he was becoming embarrassed at how much taller he was than the rest and the gown he had to wear was frankly absurd. He'd been taught that Christianity, God and all that were his only hope, that everything he did was contributing to his pathway to heaven. God was all mighty and purposeful; every hardship he'd faced was sent down by the divine being and he should be thankful to be warrior to these battles, after all they'd pay off in the end, right?
His faith faltered when he reached his teenage years, when his mental health declined and he was in constant limbo with trying to keep his devout Christianity alight all the while, he was trying to find reasons to enjoy his time on Earth. He'd been loyal to God his entire life so why, when Tyler needed him most, did he seemingly disappear? He stopped praying, tapped an unnerving rhythm into the tiled kitchen floor at dinner time while his parents said grace, started scribbling messages bordering on blasphemy in his journal, screamed into his pillow when Zack spent the night somewhere else because he's so lost. Without religion, without routine, he doesn't know who he is.
Now he has neither and the prospect is more terrifying than he thought it'd be.