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 open that door. I open that fucking door and it’s not Bear. It’s not Otter. It’s not Creed or Anna or even Dom (He wasn’t there then, I think wildly. He wasn’t even alive to me yet). No. It’s a woman, a woman standing there with a strange little smile that’s not quite a smile. Cheap dress. Cheap shoes. Tired hair and face and eyes. She is beaten, she is broken, but that smile that is not quite a smile widens and she says, Hi, baby. Hi, darling. Hi, Tyson. It’s me. It’s your mommy. I’m home. I’ve come back. How are you? Look how big you are! I’ve missed you.
I stare at her. For so fucking long. And all I can think is Bear, Bear, Bear, but he’s not here. He’s not here, and this is my life, my Greatest Hits, my Greatest Shits. And then? Oh, and then? I run. I run from her so quickly. I run and hide and don’t stop shaking until my brother holds me in his arms, until I know that she is nothing but a ghost from the past rising up and rearing her head because everything had been fine. Everything had been swell.
“Fuck you,” I whisper to those apartments even as my throat constricts. “Fuck you.”
We stop at a light. A Seafare Police Department cruiser pulls up next to us. It’s going to be him, I think. It’s going to be him, and he’ll see me and I will split in half. I’ll just fucking break. I hang my head as my breath rattles around in my throat.
Welcome home, Kid, it chuckles. Sure, you ran away once. But we all knew you’d come back eventually. Welcome the fuck home.
It’s not him. It doesn’t even look like him.
“Ty?” Corey asks me worriedly. “Tyson?”
“Stop,” I croak, though I should be so far beyond this. It’s not fucking fair. “Stop.”
“Kid?” Otter asks.
“Stop the car. Please.”
“Pull over,” Bear says. “Now.” He reaches back and squeezes my knee. “Breathe,” he tells me. “Just breathe. You got this, Kid. You know this. In and out. In and out.”
“I can’t,” I tell him. “It hurts.”
I claw at the door as soon as the car stops. I open it and am hit with a wave of sea air, salty and sharp. The rain has lessened—now more mist than anything else. But I can’t see, it’s like I’m blind. I push away from the car, and the only thing I hear aside from the ocean is Bear saying, “Stay here,” and then he’s lost to the waves.
No. I am not like this. I am better than this. I am more than this.
Panic disorder, it says, sounding eerily like Eddie, my former therapist. An anxiety disorder characterized by recurring severe panic attacks. In other words, you’re fucking crazy.
I stumble down a hill, clumps of sand sticking to my pants. Wind blows through the sea grass, a sound so familiar from my childhood that I almost scream.