The Lost Boys | A Chance Meeting
Sep. 2nd, 2025 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAn uncannily familiar stranger shows up at the Kaplan residence and is magically invited in as family.
"William! Can you get the door, please? Thaaank youuu!" Rebecca Kaplan called from the kitchen where she was finishing making dinner. Billy, from his perch on the living room bay window where he was marking up his summer reading assignment, looked out to see who would be bothering them at 6 in the evening. Probably one of the twins' friends who still had not yet learned dinnertime propriety, even at 10 years old.
He couldn't see the face of their visitor from his vantage point, but they wore an orange jumpsuit and had a head of shockingly white hair. Seeing that, Billy dropped his book and pressed his face against the window to get a better look. He knew that hair. He had seen it in his sleep almost every night for weeks now. It couldn't be...
The doorbell rang again, prompting Billy's mother to shout a reminder for him to answer the door. He flung himself off his seat, tripping over some wires, but kept his footing and ran to the door, which he nearly ripped off its hinges in anticipation of finally seeing who stood behind it.
"It's you!"
“Holy shit.”
Tommy stood in the doorway in shock, confused as to why he had come here, finger hovering over the doorbell. There was no mistaking the boy that had answered. It was the same face that had plagued his dreams.
Adrenaline caught up with him, and he was suddenly keenly aware that he stood in his prison orange in a nice suburban neighborhood that surely had nosey neighbors. In a flash he ducked past Billy and into the house, pressing a palm against his mouth. “Shut up shut up fuck. They can’t know I’m here. Oh my god.”
"Amfow! Gturaaaan offfmmao!" Billy's protest was muffled under Tommy's hand. He slapped it away then closed the door before Mrs. Steele across the street could roll up in her omnipresent pristine (ie, never used) Lululemon workout getup to kibbitz with his mother.
Turning his attention back to Tommy, he pointed a finger at him. "Who are you? How'd you get here? Why are you here? Who are you???"
Tommy took a moment to appreciate how nice this guys house was. Damn was it suburban. Were those framed family photographs on the wall?
The situation at hand thrust itself back onto his mind.
“I don’t know! I just ran and ended up here! I’m…. umm….” He figured his very distinctive face would be plastered all over TV screens soon enough. No use lying. “I’m Tommy. Who the hell are you and why have I seen you before?””
That name meant nothing. But Billy knew somehow this stranger meant everything. "I've dreamed about you," he said, forgetting to answer Tommy's question. "One time, we were walking to school together. There was one where I think we were little kids playing in a garden. Last week I . . ." Billy stopped. The cemetery . . .
“Someone was chasing us through the graves…” Now that was uncanny. Everything the boy described, Tommy knew. He looked at him suspiciously. “Are you… you know..?”
"Am I . . .?" Billy glanced at the front door and wondered if Tommy had noticed the mezuzah outside and was asking if he's Jewish. Then he looked down at his outfit and wondered if Tommy thought that shorts and a boxed crop tee a size too large and painted nails were queer indicators. Weird questions. Rude.
Tommy’s voice dropped into a hushed tone. “Are you a mutie, dorkface. Cause I can’t do mind shit like that. I would know.” He gestured at his head. “And if it is, why are you messing with mine? What’s even your name?”
Billy gasped at Tommy's casual slur, placing his hand over his heart in a dramatic gesture of surprise and discomfort. "A mu . . . you can't just say that word! And and and I'm not . . ."
His stuttering complaint was interrupted by his mother stepping into the front foyer. "William, baby, who was at the . . ." She froze when Tommy came into view. Her wide-eyed gaze traveled from the mess of white hair to the prison jumpsuit, and she grabbed Billy by the wrist to pull him away. "Ohmygawd. Jeff!"
"Ema, no, wait, he's . . ."
"Bec, what's wrong? Who's this?" Billy's father joined them now, interrupting his son. And if that were not enough, loud stomping down the stairs heralded the arrival of a pair of dark-haired tweens who looked a little like Billy and a lot like each other.
Tommy froze. Eyes darted between the door and the Kaplans. This was a mistake. He should’ve ignored the tug and never come here. “Ummm..”
Oh no. Oh no no no no no. This looked bad. Really really really bad. Billy's parents were going to call the police, Tommy was going to be re-arrested, and then maybe they would arrest Billy, too, for aiding and abetting. He had to do something to stop this from getting out of hand. Anything. But what? He could not think. Trying to come up with ideas was like grabbing fistfuls of wet sand that poured out between his fingers. Nothing stayed. He went blank.
"Cousin Tommy's visiting for the week, remember?!" he finally blurted out. Of all the lies to come up with, he could not possibly explain where that one came from. And the world seemed to shift as he spoke, turned blue and upside-down, before righting itself so fast that Billy did not notice the glowing concentric circles adorning his wrists or the fading blue circlet on his brow.
"Tommy, it's so lovely to see you!" Rebecca dropped Billy's hand and swept the other boy into a tight embrace, her previous alarm vanishing as if it had never happened. "Just in time for dinner. Why don't you clean yourself up and then we'll eat. Jeff, honey, open a wine. You’re 21 now, right, Tommy?" She laughed her upper Jersey laugh. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. We’re just having a little fun, right? Ha!”
Tommy stiffened in Mrs. Kaplan’s hug immediately. He’d seen what Billy had done and was confused as heck. Slowly, he wrapped an arm around the woman and gave her back an awkward pat. “Yes… I will do that. Thank you for having me.” Over her shoulder he made eye contact with Billy and mouthed the word mutie.
~*~
Things only get spookier after dinner.
To all of the Kaplans except Billy, dinner was a perfectly normal affair, just spiced up a notch with the presence of "Cousin" Tommy. Who had been kept from having to talk too much and blow whatever cover Billy conjured by the latter's younger brothers, who would not shut up about whatever it was 10-year-olds talked about; Billy had been far too nervous to pay attention. After being shooed out of the kitchen since the guest should not have to do the dishes, Billy took Tommy upstairs to his room so they could finally talk.
"Fine, I guess I am a mutant," he admitted, clearing off a stack of papers and notebooks from his desk chair so Tommy had somewhere to sit. He had clearly held onto that response for the last hour and a half.
The stranger ignored his efforts and flopped onto the bed, probably a bit too comfortable in the house of a guy he just saw brainwash his entire family. “Well duh. That was some spooky shit. So you have been doing the dreams then?”
"I haven't been making you have them!" Billy firmly insisted, even though he was fully aware of how unbelievable it sounded. "I don't even know you, so how could I do anything to you? And I've never hypnotized anyone before. I didn't even know I could do that. It's usually just . . ." Latching onto that increasingly familiar feeling of unease and confusion within him, he extended his right hand, and a pillow on his bed rose into the air, illuminated by a faint blue distortive aura. "Like that."
Tommy wasn’t convinced, but became distracted by the floating pillow. He swatted at it from his spot on the bed. “Sureeeeeee.” Getting off the bed, he began to poke around the room with his hands firmly out of his pockets, looking at all the posters and trinkets laid out. Geez did this kid like musical theater.
"How do I know you're not doing it to me?" Billy countered. "You're the one who came here, I didn't go find you. And you're a criminal, how can I trust you?" He pointed at the jumpsuit, which Tommy had discarded in the corner before dinner and replaced with a set of Billy's own clothes, which neither of them was too happy to share. "What did you even do, anyway?"
“Cause I know I don’t! They would’ve figured it out if I could!” Tommy began to pace, agitated, vibrating with a pent up energy. He hated this kid and his stupid emo clothes and his stupid perfect family. “I didn’t even wanna come here! I just needed to get out!”
He paused and counted to three, doing one of the breathing exercises they had him do at the lab. It wouldn’t do the speedster good to blow up this house. “I stole a bunch of shit and blew up my high school, okay? I didn’t even mean the last bit. It was an accident! I can’t- I can’t control it that well when I’m angry.”
Billy sat on his bed to give himself a chance to digest the information Tommy just fed him, but instantly grew restless and had to stand back up. If one looked closely, they might notice a slightly discolored line of carpet in front of the bed where Billy was pacing, like a patch of grass trampled down because people kept walking over it.
"Okay okay okay, let's try to think about this. You blow things up. I make weird things happen. We've had the same dreams. Something's connecting us. But what and why and how?"
“Not just blowing up. Watch!” Throwing a magic 8 ball from the shelf, Tommy was there to catch it in under a second. He demonstrated this a few more times, dinging back and forth across the space.
When he finally stopped, his already messy hair was a bit of a whirlwind. “The blowing up is a… side effect I think. I dunno.” Shaking the ball he asked, “Oh magic ball, who the fuck is causing all this?”
"That makes zero sense." As if levitation, mind control, and flipping his car back to front during the parallel parking part of his driving test were any more logical. But Tommy was doing the most reasonable thing either of them had apparently tried so far: divination with a $10 children's toy. "What does it say?"
“Ummmmm, is this normal?” Instead of the usually vague messages of “yes” or “no”, a sigil was inscribed on the triangular shape, floating in the blue liquid. “I don’t think it’s supposed to say that.”
"No, it's not." But there was something familiar nagging in the back of Billy's mind. "This is weird. I am positive I've seen this before, but I can't remember. I just . . . Oh. The cemetery . . ."
Tommy carefully set the toy on Billy’s desk as if it might be contagious. “What the hell, you’re right.” His mind flashed back to the angel. This was creepy as fuck and he didn’t like it one bit. Too many coincidences happening at once.
“Do you have a phone or something? To take a picture of it.” Something actionable to stop his head spinning.
Maybe Tommy was not as much of a moron as he looked. Billy withdrew his phone from his pocket and took a photo of the looking glass. "Wait, did you shake it? It's not there . . ." He showed his phone to Tommy, and the little blue d20 inside displayed a blank face.
“Bruh, no I didn’t! It’s still there.” He pointed to the actual dice, where the symbol was still clear as day. “That’s…. try drawing it instead?” Whatever was afoot, Tommy didn't like one bit.
Billy did not reply immediately, still transfixed by the image and staring into the murky window of the fortune teller. It took a flick to his ear to awaken him from his reverie. "Yeah, right, sure, notebook." He sounded dazed, like he had just been pulled from a midafternoon nap. But he found what he was looking for in the pile on his desk and sunk back into a trance as he traced the figure.
It was beginning to sink in how absolutely fucked Tommy was. He was a fugitive of the law and potentially being haunted by something otherworldly, and the only help he had was Twinkle Toes, who didn’t seem all there.
Yeah, he was screwed.
But the Kaplan home was comfortable and his belly was full and he was in regular clothes for the first time in a long time (even if they were black and the jeans too tight). A week. He would stay a week and then figure out what came next.
"William! Can you get the door, please? Thaaank youuu!" Rebecca Kaplan called from the kitchen where she was finishing making dinner. Billy, from his perch on the living room bay window where he was marking up his summer reading assignment, looked out to see who would be bothering them at 6 in the evening. Probably one of the twins' friends who still had not yet learned dinnertime propriety, even at 10 years old.
He couldn't see the face of their visitor from his vantage point, but they wore an orange jumpsuit and had a head of shockingly white hair. Seeing that, Billy dropped his book and pressed his face against the window to get a better look. He knew that hair. He had seen it in his sleep almost every night for weeks now. It couldn't be...
The doorbell rang again, prompting Billy's mother to shout a reminder for him to answer the door. He flung himself off his seat, tripping over some wires, but kept his footing and ran to the door, which he nearly ripped off its hinges in anticipation of finally seeing who stood behind it.
"It's you!"
“Holy shit.”
Tommy stood in the doorway in shock, confused as to why he had come here, finger hovering over the doorbell. There was no mistaking the boy that had answered. It was the same face that had plagued his dreams.
Adrenaline caught up with him, and he was suddenly keenly aware that he stood in his prison orange in a nice suburban neighborhood that surely had nosey neighbors. In a flash he ducked past Billy and into the house, pressing a palm against his mouth. “Shut up shut up fuck. They can’t know I’m here. Oh my god.”
"Amfow! Gturaaaan offfmmao!" Billy's protest was muffled under Tommy's hand. He slapped it away then closed the door before Mrs. Steele across the street could roll up in her omnipresent pristine (ie, never used) Lululemon workout getup to kibbitz with his mother.
Turning his attention back to Tommy, he pointed a finger at him. "Who are you? How'd you get here? Why are you here? Who are you???"
Tommy took a moment to appreciate how nice this guys house was. Damn was it suburban. Were those framed family photographs on the wall?
The situation at hand thrust itself back onto his mind.
“I don’t know! I just ran and ended up here! I’m…. umm….” He figured his very distinctive face would be plastered all over TV screens soon enough. No use lying. “I’m Tommy. Who the hell are you and why have I seen you before?””
That name meant nothing. But Billy knew somehow this stranger meant everything. "I've dreamed about you," he said, forgetting to answer Tommy's question. "One time, we were walking to school together. There was one where I think we were little kids playing in a garden. Last week I . . ." Billy stopped. The cemetery . . .
“Someone was chasing us through the graves…” Now that was uncanny. Everything the boy described, Tommy knew. He looked at him suspiciously. “Are you… you know..?”
"Am I . . .?" Billy glanced at the front door and wondered if Tommy had noticed the mezuzah outside and was asking if he's Jewish. Then he looked down at his outfit and wondered if Tommy thought that shorts and a boxed crop tee a size too large and painted nails were queer indicators. Weird questions. Rude.
Tommy’s voice dropped into a hushed tone. “Are you a mutie, dorkface. Cause I can’t do mind shit like that. I would know.” He gestured at his head. “And if it is, why are you messing with mine? What’s even your name?”
Billy gasped at Tommy's casual slur, placing his hand over his heart in a dramatic gesture of surprise and discomfort. "A mu . . . you can't just say that word! And and and I'm not . . ."
His stuttering complaint was interrupted by his mother stepping into the front foyer. "William, baby, who was at the . . ." She froze when Tommy came into view. Her wide-eyed gaze traveled from the mess of white hair to the prison jumpsuit, and she grabbed Billy by the wrist to pull him away. "Ohmygawd. Jeff!"
"Ema, no, wait, he's . . ."
"Bec, what's wrong? Who's this?" Billy's father joined them now, interrupting his son. And if that were not enough, loud stomping down the stairs heralded the arrival of a pair of dark-haired tweens who looked a little like Billy and a lot like each other.
Tommy froze. Eyes darted between the door and the Kaplans. This was a mistake. He should’ve ignored the tug and never come here. “Ummm..”
Oh no. Oh no no no no no. This looked bad. Really really really bad. Billy's parents were going to call the police, Tommy was going to be re-arrested, and then maybe they would arrest Billy, too, for aiding and abetting. He had to do something to stop this from getting out of hand. Anything. But what? He could not think. Trying to come up with ideas was like grabbing fistfuls of wet sand that poured out between his fingers. Nothing stayed. He went blank.
"Cousin Tommy's visiting for the week, remember?!" he finally blurted out. Of all the lies to come up with, he could not possibly explain where that one came from. And the world seemed to shift as he spoke, turned blue and upside-down, before righting itself so fast that Billy did not notice the glowing concentric circles adorning his wrists or the fading blue circlet on his brow.
"Tommy, it's so lovely to see you!" Rebecca dropped Billy's hand and swept the other boy into a tight embrace, her previous alarm vanishing as if it had never happened. "Just in time for dinner. Why don't you clean yourself up and then we'll eat. Jeff, honey, open a wine. You’re 21 now, right, Tommy?" She laughed her upper Jersey laugh. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. We’re just having a little fun, right? Ha!”
Tommy stiffened in Mrs. Kaplan’s hug immediately. He’d seen what Billy had done and was confused as heck. Slowly, he wrapped an arm around the woman and gave her back an awkward pat. “Yes… I will do that. Thank you for having me.” Over her shoulder he made eye contact with Billy and mouthed the word mutie.
~*~
Things only get spookier after dinner.
To all of the Kaplans except Billy, dinner was a perfectly normal affair, just spiced up a notch with the presence of "Cousin" Tommy. Who had been kept from having to talk too much and blow whatever cover Billy conjured by the latter's younger brothers, who would not shut up about whatever it was 10-year-olds talked about; Billy had been far too nervous to pay attention. After being shooed out of the kitchen since the guest should not have to do the dishes, Billy took Tommy upstairs to his room so they could finally talk.
"Fine, I guess I am a mutant," he admitted, clearing off a stack of papers and notebooks from his desk chair so Tommy had somewhere to sit. He had clearly held onto that response for the last hour and a half.
The stranger ignored his efforts and flopped onto the bed, probably a bit too comfortable in the house of a guy he just saw brainwash his entire family. “Well duh. That was some spooky shit. So you have been doing the dreams then?”
"I haven't been making you have them!" Billy firmly insisted, even though he was fully aware of how unbelievable it sounded. "I don't even know you, so how could I do anything to you? And I've never hypnotized anyone before. I didn't even know I could do that. It's usually just . . ." Latching onto that increasingly familiar feeling of unease and confusion within him, he extended his right hand, and a pillow on his bed rose into the air, illuminated by a faint blue distortive aura. "Like that."
Tommy wasn’t convinced, but became distracted by the floating pillow. He swatted at it from his spot on the bed. “Sureeeeeee.” Getting off the bed, he began to poke around the room with his hands firmly out of his pockets, looking at all the posters and trinkets laid out. Geez did this kid like musical theater.
"How do I know you're not doing it to me?" Billy countered. "You're the one who came here, I didn't go find you. And you're a criminal, how can I trust you?" He pointed at the jumpsuit, which Tommy had discarded in the corner before dinner and replaced with a set of Billy's own clothes, which neither of them was too happy to share. "What did you even do, anyway?"
“Cause I know I don’t! They would’ve figured it out if I could!” Tommy began to pace, agitated, vibrating with a pent up energy. He hated this kid and his stupid emo clothes and his stupid perfect family. “I didn’t even wanna come here! I just needed to get out!”
He paused and counted to three, doing one of the breathing exercises they had him do at the lab. It wouldn’t do the speedster good to blow up this house. “I stole a bunch of shit and blew up my high school, okay? I didn’t even mean the last bit. It was an accident! I can’t- I can’t control it that well when I’m angry.”
Billy sat on his bed to give himself a chance to digest the information Tommy just fed him, but instantly grew restless and had to stand back up. If one looked closely, they might notice a slightly discolored line of carpet in front of the bed where Billy was pacing, like a patch of grass trampled down because people kept walking over it.
"Okay okay okay, let's try to think about this. You blow things up. I make weird things happen. We've had the same dreams. Something's connecting us. But what and why and how?"
“Not just blowing up. Watch!” Throwing a magic 8 ball from the shelf, Tommy was there to catch it in under a second. He demonstrated this a few more times, dinging back and forth across the space.
When he finally stopped, his already messy hair was a bit of a whirlwind. “The blowing up is a… side effect I think. I dunno.” Shaking the ball he asked, “Oh magic ball, who the fuck is causing all this?”
"That makes zero sense." As if levitation, mind control, and flipping his car back to front during the parallel parking part of his driving test were any more logical. But Tommy was doing the most reasonable thing either of them had apparently tried so far: divination with a $10 children's toy. "What does it say?"
“Ummmmm, is this normal?” Instead of the usually vague messages of “yes” or “no”, a sigil was inscribed on the triangular shape, floating in the blue liquid. “I don’t think it’s supposed to say that.”
"No, it's not." But there was something familiar nagging in the back of Billy's mind. "This is weird. I am positive I've seen this before, but I can't remember. I just . . . Oh. The cemetery . . ."
Tommy carefully set the toy on Billy’s desk as if it might be contagious. “What the hell, you’re right.” His mind flashed back to the angel. This was creepy as fuck and he didn’t like it one bit. Too many coincidences happening at once.
“Do you have a phone or something? To take a picture of it.” Something actionable to stop his head spinning.
Maybe Tommy was not as much of a moron as he looked. Billy withdrew his phone from his pocket and took a photo of the looking glass. "Wait, did you shake it? It's not there . . ." He showed his phone to Tommy, and the little blue d20 inside displayed a blank face.
“Bruh, no I didn’t! It’s still there.” He pointed to the actual dice, where the symbol was still clear as day. “That’s…. try drawing it instead?” Whatever was afoot, Tommy didn't like one bit.
Billy did not reply immediately, still transfixed by the image and staring into the murky window of the fortune teller. It took a flick to his ear to awaken him from his reverie. "Yeah, right, sure, notebook." He sounded dazed, like he had just been pulled from a midafternoon nap. But he found what he was looking for in the pile on his desk and sunk back into a trance as he traced the figure.
It was beginning to sink in how absolutely fucked Tommy was. He was a fugitive of the law and potentially being haunted by something otherworldly, and the only help he had was Twinkle Toes, who didn’t seem all there.
Yeah, he was screwed.
But the Kaplan home was comfortable and his belly was full and he was in regular clothes for the first time in a long time (even if they were black and the jeans too tight). A week. He would stay a week and then figure out what came next.
