What We Stay Alive For

Chapter Two: The Foreign Feeling of Being Sixteen

30 August, 1959

"Todd!" His mother shakes her head, "pretending you don't know what day it is won't get you out of school. Now, come eat. You don't want us to be late for the opening ceremony. Welton Academy is not the place for tardy students."

'It's a dream. It has to be a dream.' Todd thinks to himself, a shiver of familiarity crawling up his spine.

"Be downstairs in the next two minutes," she smiles warmly at him, "All right, honey?" She pushes a strand of her short blonde hair behind her ear.

"Uh, um, yeah!" Todd nods in urgency because, even if this is a dream, he won't dare let his mother see the evident fear in his eyes. "I'll be right there."

"Two minutes," she repeats and kindly shuts his door. Todd listens carefully to the clicking of her heels against the hardwood floor of the Anderson home. When he can no longer hear the clicking, when it's silent, he does what anyone would do the moment they believed that they were dreaming something that felt all too real: he pinches himself. He pinches and pinches until there is a large group of angry red nail indents staring at him. The marks bounce off of his skin and he stares back, eyes squinting long enough for the damage to disappear.

Then, Todd raises his hand to his scalp and touches it like he had meant to just before his mother had interrupted. It's covered, his scalp, in thick layers of hair. Hair that Todd has not felt since he was in high school. He jumps onto his feet and practically sprints (and almost makes it without tripping) to what he recognizes as his old bathroom; a small room thankfully connected by another door in his bedroom.

Now, he stands at his sink, meeting his own eyes in the mirror- the one he once spent every morning staring into for an abundance of his formative years. There he is.

Todd Anderson at sixteen years old.

He's sixteen and the pinching didn't work and he can clearly see himself in the mirror. He's here and he's real. And he's sixteen.

"Oh, God..."

Todd can't stop the bubbling in his stomach that rises up his throat in a thick bile. He spins on his heels and falls to his knees, heaving into the open toilet. Retching, face hot and nose running, tears start to well up in his eyes. He can't tell if he's crying because of the forceful hurling or because he's so scared. Probably both.

When the vomiting stops, a long whine escapes him. Even though he is alone, this embarrasses him enough to shut his mouth and stand back up.

"Okay," Todd breathes, knuckles turning white with how hard he clenches his fists. He tugs the hand towel by his sink off the hook and wipes his mouth. "Okay, Todd, okay, focus," he begs himself, leaning close to his reflection and wagging his finger. His face is red, blotchy, puffy as a result of the vomit and the tears. Slowly, he lowers his hand and looks into his eyes again. There's an eyelash out of place on his left eye. Somehow, this small, fixable issue feels like the worst part.

His breath causes a slight fog to form on his mirror. He draws a smiling face in it and this causes him to chuckle. This is the first step, isn't it? Acceptance?

He can't help but be impressed with what his younger self looks like the longer he looks in the mirror. Not that he thought he was particularly handsome or anything truly special, but he likes that the bags under his eyes aren't as prominent as they are when he's twenty-seven. The city hasn't had the chance to age him yet. Todd looks down at his hands, undamaged with perfectly trimmed nails. He raises them and awkwardly contorts and tugs at his features with his fingertips.

Five minutes of this pass before Todd decides that it is safe for him to leave his bathroom. Before he can, however, he catches sight of the clothing his mother has hung upon a hook screwed into his bathroom door. If he didn't remember how itchy the fabric was, he might have missed the clothing completely. There, hanging, is that poor brown suit and white button-up that his mother had ironed and had cleaned specially for that day. Todd laughs at this for two reasons: