Chapter Thirteen
Ellis stopped answering his phone.
It wasn’t a choice. Choices implied intention, a sense of direction.
This was more like sinking—slow, gradual, inevitable.
His phone would light up beside him, vibrating softly against the desk or mattress, and Ellis would notice it the way one noticed distant thunder.
Present. Meaningful. Too far away to touch.
At first, he told himself it was temporary.
He needed time. A day or two, maybe a week. Something inside him had gone offline, and he was waiting for it to reboot. He rehearsed messages in his head, composing and recomposing them without ever lifting the phone.
I’m sorry I disappeared.
I’m not okay but I don’t know how to talk yet.
Please don’t think this means I don’t care.
Each version required energy he didn’t have. Each one asked him to step back into a world that felt actively hostile now, full of sharp edges and unanswered questions.
His grief seeped into everything—his thoughts, his limbs, his sense of time—until the world felt muffled and distant, as if he were watching his own life through thick glass.
He slept too much and not enough, drifting in and out of shallow rest. When he was awake, he lay staring at the crack in the ceiling, watching light crawl across it, trying to remember what it felt like to want something.
This didn't happen to him almost ever. In fact it had only happened one other time, in seventh grade when Lisa Johnson accused him of being gay. He’d vehemently denied it, so much so that he threw himself into an embarrassingly loud tantrum that his class refused to let him forget about until graduation day.
There was nothing wrong with being gay, he knew that even at the age of thirteen, but the problem was that he wasn't gay.
Ellis could not stand when people lied. If they had accused him of liking both girls and boys, maybe it would have been different.
Instead he had thrown things and cried in his defense as they tried to tell him who he was.
It was no different when he had gotten home.
His mother was waiting for him with that same disappointed look she seemed to always have when looking at Ellis.
Their conversation had quickly escalated into a screaming match and he was sent to his room.
Ellis had destroyed it pretty similarly to how he had this time around.
He looked around his room and saw the stark comparison between now and then.
The evidence from the night Clyde died was still clearly present, and so were the tear stains on his cheeks.
He sniffed and looked around at the damage.
The dent in the wall where his fist had landed.
The bookshelf half-empty where books still lay stacked on the floor instead of returned to their places.
The overturned chair he hadn’t bothered to right.
The mess felt honest. Accurate. Like evidence, just like it did back then.
Down the hall, his mother continued to drink. Ellis noticed the sound first—the clink of ice against glass, the twist of a cap late at night. His brain logged it automatically, cataloguing patterns the way it always had.
By the third day, the smell had changed.
Sweet and sharp, stale alcohol layered over citrus cleaner and burnt coffee.
The apartment felt unbalanced, like the floor sloped slightly toward the kitchen.
He hated the smells and sounds, but worst of all, he hated how his mother hadn't come in to check on him. Not once.
Ellis didn't find it out of character, but it did make his stomach sour and the pounding behind his eyes nearly unbearable. He wasn't close to his mother, at least not since his dad died. Cindy Carter had stayed as far away from Ellis and emotions as she could get.
Maybe that's why she drank?
It didn't matter. What mattered was that Ellis had missed several days of work and he knew Issaky was probably worried sick. The first morning, he woke when his alarm went off and simply didn’t move.
His body felt impossibly heavy, like gravity had been turned up without warning.
The thought of the record store made his chest tighten painfully.
Every shelf, every counter, every quiet corner carried Clyde’s presence.
Walking in without him felt wrong, like violating something sacred.
He had texted Clyde’s number before he could stop himself, needing to feel some sense of normalcy.
I’m not feeling well today. I’m sorry.
The message was sent and delivered but there was no reply. Ellis stared at the screen until it dimmed, then set the phone face down and rolled onto his side, pressing his knees to his chest.
After that, he stopped setting alarms. Issaky’s name appeared on his phone more than anyone else’s. At first, it was texts—gentle, careful, spaced far enough apart not to feel like pressure.
December 5th
Issa: Good morning, El. Don't worry about coming in. I’ve got a friend coming in to cover your shift. Please text me.
December 6th
Issa: Just checking in. I haven't heard from you and I’m worried.
December 7th
Issa: No need to reply. I’m still here if you need me.
Ellis read every. Single. One. He let the words sink in slowly, the warmth of them almost painful in contrast to the numbness that had settled into his bones. Each message brought a spike of guilt sharp enough to make him flinch.
He should respond. He knew that. He wasn’t confused about it.
Issaky had been kind, patient, and safe.
He had held Ellis when the world cracked open and then let him go when Ellis asked for space.
Ignoring that felt like a betrayal. But responding meant admitting he was still connected to something.
That he still wanted to be reached. That he could still lose.
After a few days, the texts turned into voicemails.
Ellis didn’t answer when Issaky called. He couldn’t bear the idea of hearing his voice live, of having to shape words in real time. Instead, he waited until later—until the apartment was quiet, until his mother had passed out on the couch—and listened then.
“Hey,” Issaky said, voice low and careful. “It’s me. I just wanted to check in. You don’t have to call back. I just…wanted you to know I’m thinking about you.”
Ellis closed his eyes and pressed the phone to his chest afterward, breathing shallowly, like the sound itself had taken something out of him.
Another voicemail came the next day.
“I don’t know if you want space or if you’re just overwhelmed,” Issaky said. “I don’t want to assume. I’m here either way. No expectations.”
Ellis almost laughed at that. The feeling startled him so badly it disappeared before it could take shape.
The guilt piled up quietly, layering itself over everything else until it felt like a weight pressing down on his ribs.
But even that was muted, dulled by the numbness.
He could recognize it without fully feeling it, like identifying pain in someone else’s body.
His mother’s drinking had gotten worse in the last week.
She began to forget things. Left burners on.
Spilled alcohol and didn’t clean it up. One afternoon, Ellis found her asleep on the couch in the middle of the day, the television blaring static while an empty bottle lay tipped over on the floor, liquid soaking into the carpet.
He was angry. Angry that she wasn't even trying anymore.
Angry that she just expected him to care for her, like she was the kid.
He wanted to scream and throw things, wanted to tell her how terrible and selfish she had been.
Why hadn't she talked to him? Why didn't she check on him?
Why didn't she hug him? Instead, he cleaned it up without waking her.
That night, he locked his bedroom door and sat on the floor with his back against it, counting his breaths until his muscles stopped shaking.
Abandonment had a shape. It looked like empty rooms and unanswered questions. It felt like learning, again and again, that adults were unreliable, that love could vanish without warning. That even the people who were supposed to stay eventually didn’t.
Clyde’s absence pressed in from everywhere and Ellis began to think of him in fragments—his careful handwriting, the way he always waited for Ellis to finish speaking, the peppermint candies he kept in his pocket.
Ellis wished he had kept the letter Clyde had written him four years ago.
It was just him telling Ellis that he would be gone for the weekend visiting family in California, but that Ellis was doing an awesome job at the store and to keep up the good work.
At the time Ellis didn't find it special, it was just a little note from his boss afterall.
But now that Clyde was gone, now that Ellis wished for nothing more than to see the old man's curly writing, he realized he should've kept it.
He began to cry, his eyes burning and itching behind his lids. He should shower, maybe eat something. But instead he lay down, closed his eyes, and imagined he was fourteen, and the record store downtown looked open.
???? ━━━━??? · ???━━━━ ????
Ellis lost time in a way that frightened him—not dissociation exactly, but flattening. Monday slid into Thursday. Morning into afternoon. He ate when his body demanded it, grabbing whatever required the least effort.
Issaky stopped texting every day. That hurt more than Ellis expected.
The space between messages stretched, each silence echoing with possibility. Maybe Issaky was giving up. Maybe he was respecting Ellis's distance. Maybe he’d decided that loving someone who vanished like this was too much.
Ellis wouldn’t blame him.
One afternoon, there was a knock at the door and Ellis froze mid clean up. His mother was gone and had left empty bottles, cigarettes and strewn blankets all over the place.