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
Sure, Doctor, I’d say during the therapy sessions. Let’s talk about my feelings. Let’s discuss how betrayed I feel, though it’s not my right. Let’s talk about how embarrassed I am about my actions. Let’s talk about how he belonged to me, though he never really did. Let’s talk about how smart I am, how I can solve almost every kind of mathematical equation put before me, how I can tell you the chemical formula for caesium acetate (C2H3CsO2). Let me tell you that one day, I want to find a definitive intervention for strokes so no one can ever be taken from the ones who love them the most ever again.
But honestly, Doc? Let’s really talk. Let’s talk about how naïve I really am. Let’s talk about how there was this guy, this boy I knew. This boy I’d met when I was nothing but a Kid, who I thought was going to be there forever, who I thought was going to be mine forever. Can we, Doc? Can we talk about how, other than Bear and Otter, Dominic was the only other thing I needed in my life? I love Anna. I love Creed. I love JJ. They are my family. But Bear is mine. Otter is mine. Dominic is…. well. Dominic isn’t.
He belongs to Stacey. Sweet, innocent Stacey, whose last name I never bothered to learn until it was on a wedding invitation, because she wasn’t permanent. She was just a phase. I knew I was young. I knew that. But I also knew that one day, Dominic would look at me like I looked at him, and he would just smile and say, There you are. I see you now. I see you for what you are to me. Thank you for waiting. I’m sorry it took so long.
I would go to school. I would become something grand. I would change the world for the better. Animals would live! The elderly would live! PETA would become something other than the joke it has devolved into today (I never thought I’d see the day when PETA would be accused of killing animals. Fascists!).
And Dom? Dom would be by my side the whole way. We’d conquer the world together, and no one would stop us, no one could tell us no. I have Bear and Otter, because they are mine, but they also belong to each other. Dom? He belonged to me. I knew this. With whatever clear-eyed, rosy view of the world I had, I knew this. With all of my heart. With all of my soul. As a kid (Kid), he was my best friend. When I got old enough to understand such things, it became something more.
So, Doc. I may be smart, smarter than someone like me probably should be. I know things other people don’t. Hard facts. Science. Math. I know these things, but for the life of me, I believed in something I felt was real, that turned out to be anything but.