PEACH PIT :: ETHAN DOLAN

DIX-HUIT

July 13th

I've been thinking a lot lately.

Most of my alone time is spent thinking, but specifically i've been thinking about why i love Phoenix and Alondra so much.

I was friends with both of them first. we spent time getting to know each other with no pressure. Things always felt... easy with them both, I guess? Feelings snuck up on me. We were close friends, until one day I realize I'd fallen for them.

Phoenix liked me. As simple as it is, she was just fucking nice to me. I didn't have many friends back then - not that i do now - and she and I just grew really close. We talked about everything, and we didn't need to do anything to have fun. I just liked being around her. Phoenix taught me how to love. We've been through so much together now. We've seen each other at highs and very low lows - I held her when her moms almost got a divorce, she held me when Grayson and I were fighting for weeks. She's just been there for me. Phoenix and I are really different, but I think I like that.

Alondra showed up when I didn't know I needed her. I think that we're really similar, and it's always been easy to get along with her. She was there for me when I felt alone, and she... taught me how to love again. Alondra pulled me out of my head and helped me through a really rough time. We spent almost every day together for months, getting to know everything about each other.

I still feel connected to both of them, but I'm feeling freer. I think I want to return home soon.

--

"Moooom, stop," Ethan laughs, shrugging her off. "It doesn't hurt that bad, really. I promise I'll be fine."

"Ethan, you're dripping blood!" Lisa sighs, dragging her son toward the kitchen sink. He winces when running the cut on his arm under the water, nose scrunching up to keep from complaining. "What were you even trying to do?"

He shrugs again, glancing at the time. "Mom, really, I'm okay. Was just skating."

His entire left forearm is scraped, dirt and rocks mixed into it. It stings a long more than he's letting on, especially with the water running over it. The injury is mostly surface level, he truly will be fine, but when he walked back into the house covered in blood he definitely worried his mother.

She sighs, cleaning the wound and bandaging it, shaking her head at her son. She'd be more stressed if she knew exactly how it happened.

Ethan was skating, that wasn't necessarily a lie, but he also wasn't being careful. In fact, he was being stupid because it was fun. It's common in certain, more urban areas to skitch--grab onto a car while skateboarding and let them drag you--but not really in his hometown. That didn't stop him, but he also didn't account for the speed limits on sharp turns and was promptly flung off of his board, into a ditch filled with rocks.

About a mile from home, he skated back, and by the time he arrived it had bled quite a bit. Now that it's been cleaned and wrapped up it seems to have stopped, and Ethan takes an aspirin for the pain.

"Thanks, mom. I'll be more careful." He doesn't promise--he still had fun and would do it again. But he doesn't want to worry her, so he gives her a hug before grabbing the car keys to leave.

Alondra and Grayson are off somewhere doing who knows what, so he drives toward Phoenix's house. They all have plans to meet up later and go to the drive-in, but for now he's bored and needs to hangout with someone. Lately, he's put off finishing any of the books Christine gave him--partially because some of them were hitting home, and partially because he doesn't feel ready to.