Contents ( 42)
- The Art of Breathing
- Part One: How We Became Who We Are
- Prologue: Or, Where the Kid Hears the Word of the Day
- 1. Where Tyson Learns to Breathe
- 2. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
- 3. Where Tyson Graduates and Bear Freaks Out
- 4. Where Tyson Says Good-Bye
- 5. Where Tyson Gets the Mail
- Part Two: Coming Home
- 6. Where Tyson Comes Home
- 7. Where Tyson Gives a History Lesson
- 8. Where Tyson Attends the Most Awkward Party Ever
- 9. Where Tyson Plans Attends a Protest
- 10. Where Tyson Gets Arrested
- 11. Where Tyson Gets His Ass Handed to Him
- 12. Where Tyson Writes Bad Poetry and Gawks at Frat Boys
- 13. Where Tyson Decides to Man the Fuck Up
- 14. Where Tyson Asks Some Questions
- 15. Where Tyson Remembers Theresa Jean Paquinn
- 16. Where Tyson Learns the Benefit of Therapy
- 17. Where Tyson Meets the Man Who Becomes Helena Handbasket
- 18. Where Tyson Gets Screwed at His Own Birthday Party (And Not in a Good Way)
- Part Three: Just Breathe
- 19. Where Tyson Goes to Helena Handbasket’s Sex Dungeon
- 20. Where Tyson Beholds the Awesome Wonder That Is Paul Auster
- 21. Where Tyson Receives Advice from the Six Sages
- 22. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
- 23. Where Tyson Hears the Inevitable
- 24. Where Tyson Meets His Match
- 25. Where Tyson Says Hello, Where Tyson Says Good-bye
- 26. Where Tyson Touches upon the Inevitable
- 27. Where Tyson Faces the Music
- 28. Where Tyson Breathes
- 29. Tyson And Dominic
- 30. The Art Of Breathing
- Epilogue: Or, Bear’s Perspective, As It Were (Yeah, He’s Gonna Freak)
- Author’s Note
- Excerpt
- Prologue: Or, Where Bear Answers the Door
- More from TJ Klune
- Readers love the Bear, Otter, and the Kid Chronicles by TJ Klune
- By TJ Klune
“If it’s not me,” Julie said when I was five, “then Bear will pick him up.”
“I just came to see you,” Julie says when I am nine. “I came to see you because I missed you and I thought maybe we could talk. I thought maybe we could make it like it used to be, even for a little while. Wouldn’t you like that? Don’t you think we could do that?”
I back away and she must take it as an invitation, because she walks through the door and closes it behind her. “Where is your brother?” she asks, and I think, That’s why you’re here. That’s why you came back. Bear.
I was five years old when she leaned down in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders. I was five years old when she looked me in the eye and said, “You be good, okay?” And wasn’t there something in her eyes right then? Something so close to joy and freedom that it bordered on insanity? There was, but I was only five years old and I didn’t yet have the capacity to understand the sharp edges of the world. I didn’t yet understand that when you put your hand out, you could get bitten.
I am nine years old when I find my voice, and I shout for Mrs. Paquinn. I hear the worry in her voice as she calls back, and I run for her. I run for her even as my mother says my name behind me. Mrs. Paquinn has pushed herself up from the couch and opens her arms for me and I jump into them, because I’m just a little guy still, and things are changing. Once again, things are changing.
I was five years old while I stood on the porch of Anna’s house and watched my mother drive away. Her last words to me were I’ll see you later.
I am nine years old when she comes back for her own selfish reasons that I won’t know for years to come.
“Tyson,” she said when I was five.
“Tyson,” she says when I am nine.
I open my eyes and I am nineteen years old, lying in my bed, awoken from a dream, the dream I’m having more and more.
And for the first time in a long time, I continue to think about my mother long after the dream fades.
“YOU LOOK tired,” Corey tells me a few days later. We’re lying on the beach, a stretch of warm weather ahead of us, the sky a clear blue above. It’s the first sunny day we’ve had since I’ve come back home, and Corey’s not allowing me to wallow in my superimportant and totally reasonable angst alone in my room. He dragged me out, telling me that if he didn’t, soon I’d be pale, listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter, and writing sad poetry about how nobody understands my existence because nobody can understand the breaking of my heart like I was some overly emotional lovesick teenager.