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It has been a year now. Exactly 365 days since it happened, and everyone expects him to have already moved on. To have found new friends, started living his life.
But how could he? That night turned all the bright yellows, blues, and reds into various shades of grey.
Losing Phil meant losing the sun, the world now completely covered in his shadow. Every place he goes is haunted by the ghost of the boy taken from him by something impossible; something that has no logical way of existing.
Teddy stands on the viewpoint of the standpipe, looking around at the little things he and Phil had put in there.
There's the hammock they put immidately after they had decided to make it their hide away, the tent they spent countless hours in reading comic books, the chairs they took From Phil's garage. All-in-all, if he was told to draw home, he would draw everything there in perfect detail, with Phil alive and well, smiling.
He doesn't know what to do now, alone in a home built for two. He doesn't draw or write anymore, that was their thing. Phil had been the one to make him intrested in doing them. Without him, there's nothing to tell that isn't about how much Teddy misses him.
Teddy can only sit around and reminisce silently. That's another thing he had to adjust to— silence. Most of his waking moments used to be spent with a boy who has so much to say. Teddy loved listening to a him talk about aliens and world war 3 and everything everything in-between, even if he never told Phil that.
He wishes he had told him how much his ramblings meant to him. How his incessant talking was the only thing that can lift his mood after a talking to fram his dad. How the words from his mouth filled the void silence left in his heart.
Now the void is bigger than ever. He tried letting other people's sounds fill it, but it only hurt him more, like taking the wrong medicine for an illness.
As he sits down on the hammock, he realises that he had been crying. He has no idea when he started, but it doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon. He lets it all out; this is the only place he can.
Teddy arrives home slightly later than he's supposed to. He needed time to not look like he had been crying. He walks inside his house to find his father sitting in the living room, reading some book.
His eyes drift towards Teddy, and they hold eye contact for a few seconds. Neither uris is particularly wants to have a conversation at the moment.
"Where have you been?" His father's tone doesn't sound angry, but it's not exactly happy either.
"Just- out, with a friend." Teddy responds. That's usually his excuse whenever he goes to The Standpipe.
"Which friend?" His eyes betrays a kind of suspicion, like he knows he's being lied to but isn't going to point it out.
"Will hanlon, from school." Teddy's eyes drift downwards.
His father sighs before responding with an 'okay' and continue what he was doing before Teddy interrupted him. His father never was a talkative man.
Teddy shuffles towards his room with a heavy feeling in his heart. He can feel the disappointment in his father's eyes— the quiet resignation. It's the look he has given him since his bar mitzvah.
According to him, Teddy had "embarrassed him" that day. He struggled reading the haftarah and anyone with eyes could see he wasn't having a particularly good time. How was he supposed to when the absence of his best friend loomed over the entire event?
His father told him he understands. That he doesn't expect Teddy to be happy everyday after what happened, but he needed to move on. He doesn't understand.
Teddy was never supposed to be older than Phil, and now Phil will forever be thirteen and Teddy will be however old he will be before he joins him.
He was never supposed to be taller than Phil. He was supposed to be teased about his height by Phil for the rest of his life. But with his recent growth spurt, he's taller than Phil had ever been. Ever will be.
As he was so close to reaching his bedroom door, he bumps into someone. He looks up to see his brother standing there, face annoyed for a second before softening into some kind of... sympathetic look?
"You okay?" He doesn't let out a lot of emotion, but Teddy can see in his eyes that he feels bad for him for some reason.
"What?" His voice cracks as he says it. It's been doing that for a while, but it's not puberty that caused it this time.
Teddy realises he's near tears again. The anniversary is seemingly getting to him more than he thought it would. It's the second time today he's crying without knowing.
"Sorry i-" His voice hitches. Before he could finish his sentence, Donald put his hand on Teddy's shoulders and pulls him into his room.
Once they're inside his brother's room, Donald closes the doors then sits him down on the bed and plops down beside him, arms still around Teddy.
"Sorry, it's just- it's been a year since Phil and-" Donald pulls Teddy into a hug, tucking Teddy's head onto his shoulder.
"You don't have to explain." So he didn't. He cries harder than any other time since Phil's funeral. His brother hugs him tighter.
He doesn't know when he stopped crying, but he pulls away once he realises he had. Teddy avoids looking at Don's eyes, too embarrassed about crying like a little kid. He hadn't been comforted by his brother like this in years.
"Go to sleep, you have school tomorrow." Is what Don says after a minute of silence. Teddy looks up at his brother's eyes, still giving him a sympathetic look.
He wouldn't say they're close, haven't been in years, but after Teddy came home with an injured leg and a missing best friend, his brother has been nicer, more protective.
Teddy stands up and walks away towards his own bedroom. He looks back to see Don with a small smile on his face, and Teddy gives him one back. Teddy steps out and quickly walk towards his own room.
Teddy knows he's supposed to be asleep by now, but he can't bring himself to end the day. Looking for something to do, his eyes dart around his room until he finds it.
His sketch book, one of the books on his desk, left untouched for a whole year. Teddy picks it up and grabs a pencil. He starts moving his hand, drawing and erasing lines over and over until he's happy with it.
By the end, it's over midnight, his hand aches and he nearly fell asleep on the desk, but it's done. The beginning of his new comic.
It's about a boy, who died and is brought back by a god. (Who's in the form of a turtle. Teddy has no idea why he thought of that.) He comes back with various superpowers that he uses to fight against an alien invasion. For anyone else, it would be a weird way to memorialize someone, but this is definitely what Phil would've wanted.
"Hey Phil, how are you?"
Teddy stands in the graveyard, right in front of Phil's grave. He studies every detail of the gravestone. It's a basic gravestone, really. No different than the ones surrounding it.
'Phil Malkins' had been carved on the stone, and right below it '1949-1962'. He studies every bump, every mistake on the gravestone as if Phil himself is standing in front of him.
Teddy looks to the left, where Susie's grave lies. The girl who only wanted some milkshakes. She didn't need to be there. There was no reason she had to come with them to investigate a missing boy she didn't even know. If a Single babysitter was available, she wouldn't have died.
Teddy wonders what it'd be like if it was him who died, or if he died with them. How would Phil deal with it if he survived and Teddy didn't? Would he be as sad as Teddy is a year later? Would he still get nightmares of the day he lost Teddy?
Teddy sits down on the ground, cross-legged, not caring about dirtying his pants. "Sorry I couldn't come yesterday. I just couldn't bring myself to."
He tried. He really tried to bring himself here, but he couldn't. The Standpipe was their home; the place they could be themselves without judgement. He likes to think Phil's soul is there, not here in the bodyless grave, and not down in that godforsaken sewer. He deserves to be somewhere better.
A rustling of leaves interrupts Teddy's train of thoughts. It came from his left. Teddy knows, realistically, that it could be anyone. The clown is gone; it's just another poor soul here to grieve a loved one, but that doesn't stop his heart from going overdrive. Footsteps goes towards him, growing louder and louder.
Teddy focuses his eyes on Phil's grave. This is it. He's joining Phil, wherever he is. Teddy hopes his grave will be next to Phil, even if his body isn't-
"Hey Teddy, mind if I sit here?" Teddy's head snaps towards the person next to him, which happens to be Marge.
They lock eyes for a second, Teddy's wide with surprise and Marge with a look of sympathatic understanding.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you like that. Should've worn a bell." She says it jokingly, though Teddy can hear sincerity in her voice.
"You didn't didn't scare me. Just surprised is all." Teddy shifts his eyes back to phil's gravestone "You can sit if you want."
Merge sits beside Teddy, about four inches to his left. The two stays silent as they stare at the siblings' graves. The silence is momentarily broken by a muttering from Marge about how young Susie was, but then they return to the silence that's not entirely uncomfortable, though not exactly comforting either.
"Do you wanna say something to Phil? That's... usually what I do when I'm here" Marge turns her head towards teddy for a second, before looking at Phil's grave
"Hey Phil, sorry we never really talked before. I wish I know you better. Teddy showed us your drawings, they're really good."
He did. It was a week after they banished the clown, at the Standpipe. He was laying on the hammock when Lily, Will and Marge showed up unannounced. They wanted to hang out there, and he let them despite his reservations.
They asked what he was holding, so he reluctantly showed them Phil's sketchbook, full of drawings for the various comics they never really finished making before jumping to a new one. They didn't stay long after, feeling his discomfort with them being there.
Teddy never really became friends with the others. While the others' friendship became fortified after their shared tragedy, Teddy never let them get close. Any attempt at talking about anything deeper than homework got promptly shut down.
This is the first time he let one of them close enough to see just how much he misses Phil.
"If... what happened didn't happen, you would've been a great comic artist." He doesn't disagree with that. Phil was always the better artist of the two, there's no doubt he would've had a bright future.
"Yeah, he would have." Teddy smiles, slightly.
Teddy looks at Marge, eye watery with a sad pout on her face. Phil and Marge was never friends, so it can't be him causing her to almost cry like this. She's probably thinking about Rich.
Looking at Marge, he sees a girl who lost someone she loved; taken by an incomprehensible evil. A girl with a familiar sense of longing. Longing to hold the hand of someone who no longer can bring her warmth.
"Were you visiting Rich, earlier?"
Marge turns to him, her red eye looking at his. "Yeah, I was." She says, voice weak.
"I know I should be over him by now, he's been gone longer than I knew him, but I can't," Tears trails down her face, finally free from being held in. She wipes at it with her sleeve.
"how can I? How am I supposed to forget the boy who saved me? I love him; i don't know if I'll ever stop loving him."
"I... I think I know how you feel." She looks at him expectantly. "I think Phil saved me too. Not in the way Rich did with you, but I don't know if I could've survived a life where we never became friends."
He realises, this time, that he's about to cry, and he let himself. The tears fall down calmly. It doesn't make him sob or struggle to speak, just rolls down peacefully.
"He knew me better than I do sometimes." Teddy continued. "Whenever i felt down, he would immediately notice and throw out his most stupid, outlandish theories about cats being vessels for aliens or something, just to distract me." Teddy chuckles, and so does Marge.
"I wish i wrote them all down, so i can read them whenever i need to hear him again." Teddy realises this is the longest he's talked about Phil. He never realised how badly he wanted to someone to remember Phil like he does.
The ache in Teddy's heart eases the slightest bit. It doesn't disappear— maybe it never will— but the hole in his heart grew smaller every word he said about Phil, like how Phil's words used to. He wants to do it again, share everything he misses about Phil, talk about every trait good and bad.
He thinks about Lily, Will and Marge. They had wanted to be friends after everything, and he pushed them away. Maybe if he didn't, the past year would've been easier.
The sun has taken its leave, and the stars are now visible. Maybe letting a constellation light his way is better than walking in the dark.
"Hey, do you guys wanna hang out tomorrow? Maybe... At the Standpipe?"
Marge's eyes widen with surprise. "Yeah, we'd love to." She smiles at him, and he smiles back.
They end up staying for a while, joking and sharing memories of the people they lost. Laughs and sad smiles accompany them as they talk until the sun nearly set. They know they'll have to leave soon, no matter how much they dread the thought. They can't stay here forever.
They look up at the darkening sky, and Marge sighs. "It's weird, how much I love him. Sometimes I think I love him too much for my own good."
Teddy looks into her eye, and it's evident that despite her better judgement, she doesn't regret loving him more than the sky above.
"Yeah," Teddy mutters. "Me too."