This isn’t the Seafare I remember. But then I’m not the same person who left all those years before. I’m worn and battle-weary. Shit happens. Things change. I know that now more than ever.

Otter must sense something off with me. “Revitalization project,” he says. “Bunch of taxpayer money funneled into restoring the tourist traps.”

“It looks so fake,” I mutter. Because it does. It’s all flash but no substance, all lights and fake smiles and shiny, happy people who want nothing more than to be out in the rain.

We move through the town toward the Green Monstrosity. I start to see familiar sights, things that pull my heart in a billion different directions, warring with the fact that I hate it. That I love it. That this is my home. That this place is a stranger to me.

Here’s the high school I graduated from, only a few years before, complete with a new building sprouting up near the football field.

Here’s the street I’d walk down almost every day off the bus.

Here’s the library that had become my shelter in my teen years when I realized that I was so very different than everyone else, and not necessarily in a good way.

And then. Oh, and then comes the memories, those damn memories that choke me, that throttle me. Here we are! they shout at me. This is your life, Tyson Thompson, Tyson McKenna that was. The Kid. Here’s your Greatest Hits all the way to your Greatest Shits. Because weren’t some of these things just awful? Aren’t they just terrible? Surprise! We’ve been waiting for you all this time.

Here’s the store where my brother worked to keep our heads above water.

Here’s the hospital where I lost Mrs. P, and almost lost Otter.

Here’s the cemetery where her marker lies next to her husband, the woman taken from me so unfairly. Her body lies as dust in the ocean. I’m sorry, I think as we pass. I’m so fucking sorry.

And here. Here. The apartments. Those fucking apartments. Those shabby brick apartments with cracked gutters and rusty metal stairs. With shitty cars in the parking lot. With people who look like they’re barely scraping by. Barely living. Barely breathing. We drive by them, and I swear time slows and almost stops, and my breathing must be heavy because Corey squeezes my hand and murmurs something quietly to me that I can’t quite make out. This fucking place. This horrible fucking place.

“It’s not us anymore,” Bear says. I look up at him. He’s staring at the apartments through the window. There’s an expression on his face that I can’t quite make out. It almost looks like fear. And hatred. “You know? Whatever we were, whatever it was to us, it’s not us anymore.” His voice is low and his words only for me.

I say nothing because all I can think about is hearing someone knock on the front door to that apartment. All I can hear is Mrs. Paquinn cackling at something on the TV. All I can do is jump up and say, I’ll get it, I’ll get it, I’ll get it, thinking all the while that maybe Bear’s come home early, or maybe it’s Otter coming over to hey, and I’ll reply with hey, yourself, because isn’t that what we do? Isn’t that who we are?