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
I’m thinking about everything we’ve gone through to get to this point.
But I’m not thinking about her. Even though she was the catalyst for it all, never her.
She’s no longer part of my vocabulary. She doesn’t have the right to be.
Maybe there are days when she’s there, just skirting the edges of my thoughts. But I don’t ever allow myself to focus on her. Not now. Not after all she’s done. Not since the Kid came home from his wayward journey in Idaho to see for himself what she’d become.
So, no.
I’m not expecting this.
There’s a little girl standing on the porch of the Green Monstrosity. And maybe I’m a little distracted, trying to half listen to Otter on the phone behind me, but there’s something about her, with her dark hair braided down the back of her head, loose little wisps hanging around her face. There’s a smudge of dirt on her nose. She’s got a backpack slung over her shoulder, her hand tight on the strap. Her eyes are wide as she stares up at me. She looks exhausted, and there’s something familiar about her that I can’t quite place.
“Can I help you?” I ask, trying not to show this little girl that I’m pretty much a fucking lunatic who is capable of impregnating a woman with a serial killer baby who could be born with a tail.
“Slow down, slow down,” Otter says into the phone. “Say that again, Megan.”
“Man,” the little girl on the porch says. “He sure wasn’t kidding. The color of this house is like an abomination against Mother Nature.”
A buzzing starts in my ears. “Who wasn’t kidding?”
She rolls her eyes, and I take a step back as if I’ve been shoved. I know that look. “Tyson,” she says. “You must be Bear. Derrick.”
“Wait,” Otter says. His voice sounds rough, like he’s having trouble speaking. “What?”
“How do you know my name?” I ask the girl, gripping the door tightly.
She fidgets on the porch. Looks away. Back at me, then away again. She opens her mouth, then closes it. She sniffs and grips the strap to her backpack even tighter. “Ty said if I ever needed help, I could find him here.”
“He’s on a trip,” I say dumbly. “He’ll be back this afternoon.”
“You’re shorter than I thought you’d be,” she says as if it’s nothing. “How disappointing to know that’s what I’ve got ahead of me.” She takes a deep breath. It comes out shaky.
“I don’t…,” Otter says, and he sounds so unsure that I want to go to him, but I can’t seem to make my feet move. “What do you mean hidden behind the other one?”
It hits me then. This little girl. Even though I probably knew as soon as I opened the door and saw her eyes that looked so much like my brother’s, so much like my own, so much like hers, it still takes me by surprise, and it’s like the Kid and I are standing in the kitchen picking ourselves back up again. That’s what we do. We get knocked down, we spit the blood out onto the ground, and we push ourselves back up. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s who we are.