Content Warnings: underage drinking and smoking, homophobia, violence/bullying, mild domestic abuse

Even though she had a key to the house, and even though the Raneys usually kept their door unlocked anyway, Allison wasn’t in the habit of entering their house without knocking. So when she raised her key to the door, it was only because she wouldn’t be comfortable going back home if the door didn’t open. She fumbled with the lock—keys never went into locks easily for her—and had just succeeded at shoving the teeth through the lock’s cylinder when it swung away from her, leaving her fingers grasping air.

Matty Raney stopped just short of colliding with the person at the door, the anger on his face intensifying at the obstacle. When he realized it was Allison, he stepped out, slammed the door, and yanked Allison’s key out of the lock. She took it from him and followed as he stormed down the sidewalk and turned the corner. He waited until the house was out of sight to pull out his cigarettes and light one. Before his secrets grew too heavy and too many, he could still hide the small things. Matty didn’t want his mom to know he smoked.

Matty was used to silence in the company of others—Allison spoke economically, and G hardly needed words to communicate with him—but this silence was uneasy. Allison hadn’t wrinkled her nose or pretended to cough when he exhaled. Her hand was in her jacket pocket, fiddling with the key. And weirdest of all, she’d left her backpack on the porch. She didn’t have a book with her.

If Matty had known how far her thoughts were from books, he would have been even more surprised.

His anger stepped aside to let his concern take over. “What’s going on?”

Allison sighed, letting go of the key and instead picking at a hangnail as they strolled. She wasn’t sure how much to share. Since Matty’s mysterious injury last year, he seemed constantly plagued by his own thoughts. Not even G knew what had happened. She’d felt a little responsible for not being there.  

The three of them were almost through with their first year of high school. The twins were at a different school; her parents had paid for her to go to a private school she didn’t like very much. Mostly because her English and History teachers seemed to just be phoning it in until retirement. She couldn’t enjoy her favorite subjects and was constantly getting in trouble for reading in class. But Matty, she knew, had been getting in trouble, too.

“Being home has been weird,” she said. Her parents’ hostility toward each other had been steadily increasing lately. This was the first time she’d seen them almost get violent.

Matty exhaled away from Allison, but the wind blew the smoke down toward her. “Yeah,” he agreed, though for different reasons.

The two of them sat on the curb of an empty lot in front of a weed-covered For Sale sign. Matty rubbed some dirt off his black boots before knocking his foot against Allison’s. She smiled a little and closed her eyes, head tilted up to let the wind blow her long blonde hair out of her face. The weather was perfectly spring—cool enough to need a jacket in the shade but not in the sun. She kept her jacket on anyway, preferring to be too hot rather than too cold. “I think we’re a lot alike,” she said finally, opening her eyes to the sight of her friend stubbing out his cigarette.

Matty’s spine straightened. He was flattered by this comparison. Allison was one of the few people he held in high esteem. His brother was another, despite how Matty had acted toward him lately.  

Most people looked at the three of them and saw Matty as the one who didn’t fit in the trio, but it hadn’t always been this way. The three of them had known each other since the fifth grade, when Allison’s family moved a few houses down and she’d discovered that the twins didn’t mind her extreme introversion. They would often spend their time together doing separate activities in the same room—Allison reading a book, G teaching himself Photoshop, and Matty listening to music or painting. The twins sometimes joined Allison on her trips to Mr. Rutherford’s Rare & Used Books, after which they would all go to a café and talk about what they were reading. During this time, G and Matty still looked alike. Their hair was kept its natural ashy brown color and cut short enough to hide the slight wave to G’s hair. Like most boys, they wore T-shirts and shorts most of the time. So did Allison, but her short stature and long blonde hair distinguished her from them. For a while, she was the odd one out by default.

Now, Allison and G dressed more or less normally, though G’s propensity for wearing sweaters often made him look like an English professor, while Matty wore all black and adorned himself with chains and fake leather. Allison and G always found the right words before they spoke, whereas Matty bumbled through his sentences until he’d gotten close enough to what he’d originally meant to say. And when he disagreed with something, he said so—sometimes on Allison’s or G’s behalf.

The similarities between the three of them were getting fewer in number, but the important ones were still there. Which is why, even though he and G weren’t getting along very well lately, he suggested, “We should do a Bad Movie Night this week.”

“Who’s choosing?” Allison asked.

Matty smirked. “G.”

Two nights later, the three friends gathered at the Raneys’ house. They settled into a familiar rhythm. G popped the popcorn while Matty prepared the hot chocolate, and Allison set up the movie and other snacks. Matty added an extra scoop of powder to his mug and some marshmallows to the others’. G split the popcorn evenly into three bowls. And Allison set up the TV with captions so G didn’t miss parts of the dialogue.

Once G and Matty settled on the couch, bowls and mugs on the coffee table, Allison settled on the floor with her back against the empty chair. She noticed the twins were as far from each other as possible, each leaning against an arm of the couch with their legs tucked against the corner.

Then Allison and Matty turned to look at G, the master of the evening. “Batman: The Movie, 1966. Robin hands Batman shark-repellant spray while hanging upside down on a helicopter ladder.”

Allison laughed in anticipation of the ridiculous scene, glad to have friends like Matty and G, who would allow her a night of reprieve from the tension at home despite the tension in their own home. She turned on the TV screen and pressed play on their bad movie.  

As hot chocolate was drunk, popcorn was eaten, and laughter was shared, the twins and Allison relaxed into their routine. G was satisfied by the others’ reactions to the aforementioned scene, vindicated in his choice of movie, which he always worried wouldn’t amuse the group. Matty had leaned forward to scrutinize the campy special effects, and Allison didn’t reach for her book at all. By the end of the movie it felt like nothing had changed between them. Until Matty stepped outside to smoke, and G turned to Allison with a rare sense of urgency. She pulled her blanket more tightly around her shoulders.  

“I got into VM,” G said quickly and quietly.

“The arts school?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. “I didn’t even know you applied. Congratulations.”

G smiled a little before his eyes darted toward the back door. He fidgeted with his sleeve.

Allison understood and nodded. “Matty doesn’t know.”

G shook his head, pulling on a string dangling from his sleeve’s hem. His brother had been distant ever since his hospital stay last year. He knew his mom was keeping something about it from him, and he knew Matty was keeping something about it from their mom. But this would be the first time the brothers hadn’t been at school together. Matty would feel abandoned, on top of whatever he was upset about. And G wasn’t too jazzed about going to school alone, either. If Matty hadn’t stopped painting, he could have joined G at the Vivian Maier Academy of the Arts, but he hadn’t painted anything in almost a year. VM required a current portfolio.

“You should tell him,” Allison said without asking for more details. She knew enough. “He’ll be more upset if you don’t.”

With a shrug, G dropped his hands from his shirt sleeve. “I don’t know how.”

Allison opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again when she had an idea. Just then, the garage door opened and Lauren Raney, the twins’ mother, entered through the kitchen. G shook his head again, and even without acknowledgement, he knew Allison understood.

Lauren Raney slipped off her shoes and hung up her keys, not bothering to modulate her expression until she noticed her son and son’s friend in the living room. Lauren Raney’s hours at the hospital varied, but as her sons had gotten older, she’d taken more and more night shifts. Insomnia ran in the family, and night shifts meant more pay, so she figured she would take advantage.

She usually came home to a quiet house. Her sons weren’t always home—they would go to a coffee shop together when they couldn’t sleep—but even when they were, they weren’t usually making a lot of noise. She hadn’t seen the twins together with Allison in months, so she smiled in surprise, attempting to erase the exhaustion from her face. “Allison! It’s good to see you. Will you be staying the night?”

Allison and G exchanged a look, after which Allison shook her head no. “Probably not. School tomorrow. I didn’t finish my homework.”

This seemed odd. Allison almost always finished her homework during school. Lauren had spoken to Allison’s mother about Allison’s tendency to work on homework during other classes. She’d told Mrs. Gillespie that she should just be glad Allison did her work and did it well. This was an increasing rarity for the Raney twins.

The back door swung open and Matty entered, shoving his cigarettes into his pocket at the sight of his mother. Unfortunately, he forgot that his pajama pants had no pockets. Instead of hiding his cigarettes, Matty dropped them on the ground for all to see. Shit.  

“Matty Raney, are those what I think they are?” Lauren stepped forward, exhausted from her nursing shift but unwilling to let this go. Her boys had always been generally good kids. At least she’d thought they were.

Matty squeezed the lighter still clutched in his hand so its sharp edges dug into his palm. He fixed her with the glare he’d been perfecting and decided to take a page out of G’s book. Silence was the best policy, not honesty.

“I got into VM,” G blurted from his spot on the couch. “And the scholarship.” Even though he and Matty hadn’t been getting along lately, G didn’t want him to get in trouble. G had decided to take a page out of Matty’s book and just say what was in his head before thinking.

“You did?” Lauren was startled by this role reversal more than G’s news. She’d never doubted either of her sons’ talents, even as she found herself rethinking their personalities.

“You did?” Matty echoed quietly. Instead of taking the chance to grab his contraband, Matty tried to make eye contact with his brother, but when G refused to look in his direction, it was Allison who confirmed his suspicions with a small nod. She’d begun to feel like her nods held all of the twins’ answers. It was a lot of pressure.

Matty’s two closest friends had been keeping secrets from him on purpose. G and Allison—the people who knew him the most even in light of the secrets he’d been hiding—they’d betrayed him.

Even as he thought this, he knew it was dramatic, but he could no longer pretend life wasn’t dramatic.

He’d had a crush on a boy in his class for most of eighth grade. After Matty crashed his bike in front of his crush, a different classmate helped him wipe away the dirt on his hands and apply Band-Aids to his wounds. Matty had never been cared for by another boy that wasn’t related to him. From then on, the two boys would meet after school to hold hands or share earphones or whatever else the two boys could think of to show affection without crossing some sort of societal line. Until they’d gotten caught by some older kids. The other boy ran away, and Matty stayed to fight. Or more accurately, Matty stayed to lose.

He hadn’t looked back once, hadn’t said anything, and avoided Matty the rest of the year. Matty was left with a broken arm, bruised and bloodied face, and a mandatory hospital stay after talking with a psychiatrist.

This just confirmed what he’d learned while watching his bike-crash savior flee. People couldn’t be trusted. Especially not the people you show yourself to.

G was abandoning him to go to the pretentious arts school with the kind of people who would take one look at Matty and assume he was stupid and untalented.  And maybe he was untalented. He’d stopped painting, after all, so who knew if he could make anything worthwhile anymore. All G could do was point a camera.

And Allison had known. She’d known that G was leaving. She’d already left the two of them to go to a private school. It wasn’t her fault, but it still hurt. Allison had never needed anyone around her, and G was content to live in his own world. It was just Matty that needed people. It seemed to be the only thing about him that hadn’t changed.  

Marching toward the front door, Matty stomped on the cigarette pack with his bare foot. His mom called after him to stop, to stay, to talk. Instead, Matty picked up his boots and slammed the front door behind him. He didn’t look back.

Allison excused herself and went home, where her parents were arguing violently about the librarian her mother spent a lot of time with. Allison heard her dad throw things at her mom for the first time. She tried to read in her room, escape behind a door and between the pages, but she couldn’t focus. So Allison stared out the window, wondering what was happening in the Raney house so she didn’t have to think about what was happening in hers.

The Raney house was quiet. After his mom had thrown away the cigarettes and half-heartedly congratulated him on his impressive achievement, the remaining Raney twin had gone to bed. More accurately, G sat on top of his comforter and stared at his reflection in the blank desktop computer screen, wishing his brother were there to be awake with him.

Matty did not return until morning. With some school acquaintances, and for the first time, he got drunk to distract himself from his own thoughts. If needing people was part of the Matty personality package, he might as well hang around with people who didn’t care to find out who he was. If they didn’t know him, they couldn’t betray him.

All three friends wanted to be together. All three friends were alone.

Author’s Note

These are characters I’ve been writing about for a long time—at least a decade. Matty and G have gone through many iterations, and Allison replaced a previous friend of the twins that I didn’t like as much. If this short story seems to have some random information dumps, it’s because this is the first time I’ve tried to write concretely about this time in their friendship—the period in which they begin to drift apart—so I was figuring stuff out as I went along.

Anyways, even though this story is a little info-dumpy, I hope you enjoyed getting to know my favorite characters a bit better. I know I did!

-Ryn PB