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Contents ( 42)
  1. The Art of Breathing
  2. Part One: How We Became Who We Are
  3. Prologue: Or, Where the Kid Hears the Word of the Day
  4. 1. Where Tyson Learns to Breathe
  5. 2. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
  6. 3. Where Tyson Graduates and Bear Freaks Out
  7. 4. Where Tyson Says Good-Bye
  8. 5. Where Tyson Gets the Mail
  9. Part Two: Coming Home
  10. 6. Where Tyson Comes Home
  11. 7. Where Tyson Gives a History Lesson
  12. 8. Where Tyson Attends the Most Awkward Party Ever
  13. 9. Where Tyson Plans Attends a Protest
  14. 10. Where Tyson Gets Arrested
  15. 11. Where Tyson Gets His Ass Handed to Him
  16. 12. Where Tyson Writes Bad Poetry and Gawks at Frat Boys
  17. 13. Where Tyson Decides to Man the Fuck Up
  18. 14. Where Tyson Asks Some Questions
  19. 15. Where Tyson Remembers Theresa Jean Paquinn
  20. 16. Where Tyson Learns the Benefit of Therapy
  21. 17. Where Tyson Meets the Man Who Becomes Helena Handbasket
  22. 18. Where Tyson Gets Screwed at His Own Birthday Party (And Not in a Good Way)
  23. Part Three: Just Breathe
  24. 19. Where Tyson Goes to Helena Handbasket’s Sex Dungeon
  25. 20. Where Tyson Beholds the Awesome Wonder That Is Paul Auster
  26. 21. Where Tyson Receives Advice from the Six Sages
  27. 22. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
  28. 23. Where Tyson Hears the Inevitable
  29. 24. Where Tyson Meets His Match
  30. 25. Where Tyson Says Hello, Where Tyson Says Good-bye
  31. 26. Where Tyson Touches upon the Inevitable
  32. 27. Where Tyson Faces the Music
  33. 28. Where Tyson Breathes
  34. 29. Tyson And Dominic
  35. 30. The Art Of Breathing
  36. Epilogue: Or, Bear’s Perspective, As It Were (Yeah, He’s Gonna Freak)
  37. Author’s Note
  38. Excerpt
  39. Prologue: Or, Where Bear Answers the Door
  40. More from TJ Klune
  41. Readers love the Bear, Otter, and the Kid Chronicles by TJ Klune
  42. By TJ Klune

Here are the places of my youth.

Here are the things I’ve tried to forget.

Here they all are, spread out around me, and it’s like I’ve never left.

Here is where it began.

And here is where it begins again.

I know what you’re thinking. This is just like Bear and Otter! A homecoming after a long absence! A reunion destined to happen! Everything will be as it was and as it should be. It is, after all, inevitable. It’s like our word of the day, or like our ability to breathe. To just breathe.

But, in reality, life happens.

Paths that seemed convergent instead split apart.

It’s no one person’s fault. It just is.

Some things, no matter how much we wish, no matter how much we hope, no matter how much we beg for them in our secret hearts, are not meant to be.

I am here to say good-bye.

Nothing more.

8. Where Tyson Attends the Most Awkward Party Ever

“MY GOD,” Corey breathes as we pull up to the Green Monstrosity. “Photos do not do justice to this house. This… this is beyond epic.”

It is. It always has been. The Green Monstrosity is way past epic. A two-story piece of offensive architecture that rises out of the suburbs like a big fuck you to the rest of the neighborhood. It’s weird, really, the feeling that hits me when I see it again for the first time in close to four years. It is epic yes, the green so grotesque it should be illegal, but it’s still just a house like any other. It has walls and a roof and a yard.

So why then, when we pull up next to it, the driveway already full of cars I don’t recognize, does a lump form in my throat? Why is it that I can feel heat prick my eyes? It’s just a house. That’s all it is.

But that’s a lie. It’s more than that. The Green Monstrosity was the first time since I could remember that I knew that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay for Bear and me. We said good-bye to the hole-in-the-wall apartments with the gross carpets and the peeling walls. We said good-bye to a life where we existed merely by floating along. We said good-bye to the life where I wasn’t sure we’d make it, though I tried to put on a brave face, at least as much as a nine-year-old ecoterrorist-in-training could do. I was just a little guy, but I would have torn the world apart with my bare hands for my brother if called upon to do it.

It’s just a house, yes, but it’s also more than that. It’s a sign that things could get better.

“Please tell me you’re never going to paint over that,” Corey says. “Seriously. It’s like the Jolly Green Giant masturbated all over your house.”

“And there’s an image that will never leave my head,” Bear says.

“Would his semen be green?” Otter wonders out loud. “That seems like it could be true. And very gross.”