it's my feeling we'll win in the end

Chapter 5: inside and out

"Mike, wait!"

As Will scrambles over the rain slick ground, trying to reach Mike before he can ride away, his mind is doing some scrambling of its own. How can he possibly fix this? And how did he even fuck things up so bad? He tries to imagine the scene Mike has just walked in on from his point of view: his best friend and his very newly ex-girlfriend, who is also his other best friend, kissing and looking at each other tenderly. Fuck fuck fuck Mike's gonna hate him forever!

"Please, Mike!" he calls again, a little desperately. Mike has almost reached his bike. If he rides away and Will doesn't get a chance to explain... that could be it for them. And Will doesn't even want to think about what his life would be like without Mike Wheeler in it.

* * *

It's the first day of kindergarten and a boy is sitting by himself on the swing set. He's shuffling his feet back and forth in the sand and trying very hard not to cry. School is new and loud and scary and he's starting to think that maybe he'd like to go home now. All the other kids here seem to know each other somehow, but not him. He's all alone.

"Do you want to be my friend?" he hears a small, bright voice say. He doesn't look up. They must be talking to some other kid. Someone worth being friends with. "Do you want to be my friend?" comes the voice, a little louder. This time, the boy shyly raises his eyes to the speaker. It's a boy that he recognizes from his class, but who's name he can't quite remember. He has black hair and a nice smile.

"...Me?" he asks uncertainly. Could this boy really be talking to him ?

"Yes," comes the squeaky answer.

"...Okay," he tells him, after thinking it over for a minute. He could use a friend and this new boy looks nice. Even more important than that: he's alone too.

"Okay?" He almost looks surprised.

"Yeah," nods the boy on the swing set. "I'll be your friend." Then he remembers what his mom taught him about meeting new people and being polite, so he stands up and offers his hand. "My name is Will." The boy takes his hand in his and they shake, both feeling pretty grown-up.

"My name's Mike," he tells him with a smile. And then Will isn't alone anymore. Neither of them are.

* * *

They're seven years old and lying on the floor in Mike's bedroom. The carpet is covered with crayons and sheets of paper and both boys are scribbling furiously.

"Look at this one! Look at this one!" shouts Mike. "It's a dragon!" he proclaims, holding up a drawing he's just made that looks very little like a dragon.

"Woah, nice!" Will says sincerely. With his own drawings, Will takes a slightly different approach than Mike's quantity-over-quality speed doodling. He's been working on the same picture for half an hour now and Mike can't understand what's taking so long.

"Can I see it yet?" he whines.

"Not yet," he answers, moving to hide his paper from Mike. "You can see once it's finished."

"But you've been working on it for like a thousand years!" he proclaims. Will checks the watch he got for Christmas.

"Thirty minutes, actually." Mike looks bewildered. In his little kid brain, a millennium and a half hour were practically synonymous.

It takes fifteen more minutes before Will finally consents to sharing his finished picture with Mike.

"Okay... I guess you can see it now."