"Oh! My baby boy!" Rue pulls Eli into the house before he can even fully open the front door.

"Careful, I'm holding something." Eli holds the covered pie away from her.

"You baked?"

"Patricia did. She called it payment for the stuffing.' Which I'm hoping you have, otherwise you'll need to clear out the

guest room for me to move in."

"I tripled the recipe this year. Those girls." Rue shakes her head, taking the pie. "God, this smells good. I love her baking."

"She's a wizard in the kitchen," Eli remarks, putting his jacket on the coat rack.

"So... you know I'm going to ask," she says, leading him into the kitchen.

Eli pauses at the door, watching as John steals a slice of ham from where it sits on the counter, as if he can't see what

she's about to ask coming from a mile away.

"Where is Peter? I was looking forward to him coming."

Eli winces at the mention of Peter. His chronically offline mother had no reason to ever hunt down the article, but she'd

managed to find it anyway, her coworkers "so proud" of Eli for making his debut at Vent before a phone call later that night when he explained he'd also quit. Even just her voice through the phone carried enough disappointment to still weigh on Eli.

"He's not coming," he tells her.

Her expression sinks. "I was hoping you would've made up by now."

"Yeah." Eli tries to hide his face. "I don't think that's happening, Mom."

"Well, I should say so." She sighs. "You really fucked the dog on this one, Eli."

"Fucked the dog?" He stares at her. "Do you mean screwed the pooch'?"

"Same thing." She waves her son off. "I'm sorry, Eli. But it's true. What you did was fucked up."

As if on cue, Les seemingly appears out of nowhere. "You have to put a dollar in the swear jar."

"Mommy's allowed one per month, and I haven't used it yet."

Eli winces. "Please don't call yourself Mommy.'"

"That's not the point here," Rue tells him. "I thought I raised you better than to do what you did."

"You did! I mean... I just..." Eli covers his face with his hands. "I was confused, and I felt desperate. Michael promised

me that writer position and I just..."

"Honey, if you were that desperate, I could've talked to my friends on the board at the press, looked around to see if I could

find you any work. Or you could come to them yourself—we have positions open, and there are apprenticeships in the foundry

and bindery that we need to fill." She picks up her glass of red wine. "Turns out not a lot of people these days know how

to operate printing presses built in the 1890s."

"Thanks, Mom, I appreciate it. But I don't want you to be the only reason I get a job. Besides, I'm not interested in commuting

to Berkeley every single day."

"Self-made," John adds as he walks in at the tail end of the conversation. "I like it."

"All the more reason to move to this side of the bridge!" Rue adds, but Eli ignores her.

"More like I could never live with myself if I was so pathetic that one of my parents had to step in to get me what I want."

Eli sighs. "I've got a job, anyway, and I'm working on essays. Fangoria 's considering some of my horror writing."

"Honey, are you sure there's nothing I can do to help?"

"Mom, please!" Eli doesn't want her to think he's angry with her, but the exhaustion has been setting in the last few days.

After what seems like a mountain of rejections for both his applications and his essays and articles, Eli can't help but start

to wonder if there's something wrong with him.

Something that he'd never noticed, something that other people noticed and they'd just never taken the opportunity to tell

him before. Eli's always tried to avoid being up his own ass about his writing, but at the very least he knows he has some eye for what he does. He wouldn't have survived the journalism program in school if he didn't.

Maybe he doesn't have what people are looking for.

Just like Michael said.

"I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean to overstep." Rue slides her hand closer to Eli's.

"No, I'm sorry. I'm just... exhausted."

"I know." She reaches up, brushing his hair behind his ears. "Maybe a haircut would help?" she says with a smile, trying to

break the tension. And Eli allows himself to smile for the first time in what feels like days.

"Maybe, yeah..." Perhaps it's a time for some changes.

Changes that Eli can make for himself.

***

It's in that post-Thanksgiving haze—after dinner has been eaten at three in the afternoon, and everyone's so full they fall

asleep in whatever couch or recliner they land in—that Eli finds himself in the guest bedroom of his mother's house.

It's hardly used for what it was redecorated for, serving as more of an office for Rue and John with their desks and computers.

There are boxes too, stacked in the corner near the large window that looks out onto the gorgeous back garden.

His mother's asked him a few times to come by and go through some of the boxes that Eli knows are his. And with everyone else

in the house either asleep or sorting through the leftovers, Eli figures now's as good a time as any.

He cracks open the first box with his name written in black Sharpie on the top, pulling out piles and piles of the school

newspapers that he'd saved. He can see the years pass before him, starting off when he was the page designer, printing out

articles in various sizes and plotting where they'd go, making sure they fit and the margins looked good. There's the issue

where he had to draw the weekly comic strip—a complete rip-off of a Garfield that he read somewhere—because the artist had a kidney infection.

He spies the first issue where he was made the secondary editor under Louise Davidson, effectively taking over the duties

of an actual editor because she'd chosen to be part of nearly every club at school to boost her extracurriculars for college

applications.

They'd made the story of his promotion front-page news.

Underneath the papers are some old clothes he should probably donate.

And in another box, there are his LEGO sets, the City sets because he thought those were the most fun, even though his father

constantly tried to get him into the other "more interesting" characters.

"Look! These guys are pirates!" his dad had once said in the toy store.

Eli had just pointed to a bus set, complete with a little stop for the minifigures. "That one."

His father sighed with a smile on his face, and he bought Eli the LEGO bus. There are a few books, mostly ones he had to read

for school. Worn copies of Romeo and Juliet , Giovanni's Room , The Crucible , The Lord of the Rings. There's a copy of a John Green book checked out from the school library that he never returned, and he tries to not feel guilty

about that. Maybe he can mail it back without much consequence?

The boxes bring back loads of memories from Eli's time in high school and college, his yearbooks, his deadname scratched out

of the first few because he hadn't yet decided on Eli, signed by people he hasn't spoken to in over ten years. People that

he'd once thought of as friends he'd want to keep for his entire life, but the simple decision to go to different schools

had led them down drastically different paths that had never intersected again. There's even a small locked box labeled eli pre-t photos . His mother had locked them away after Eli voiced his discomfort at seeing some of the old photos of himself around the house.

She'd taken them down without a second thought.

He reaches the last box, surprised to find a collection of used DVDs and VHS tapes. His father's collection, that much is

obvious to him. He recognizes all the titles as ones that his father showed him. The animated movies that he tried to get

Eli to watch instead of the more mature PG-13 films that he thought it was too early to show Eli.

There are the original Star Wars VHS tapes and Kill Bill: Volume 1 , which his father had showed Eli far too early in his preteen life but which he'd loved nonetheless.

There's the DVD of Who Framed Roger Rabbit that his father bought when he was scared Eli would wear out the VHS.

There's the 2005 Pride & Prejudice , the movie that instilled a love of romances in Eli, and even convinced him to give the book a chance, leaving Jane Austen

as the only author of fiction that Eli ever willingly gave his time to. There are also folded and rolled posters, movie magazines,

old Oscar- or Golden Globe–themed issues that Eli had pored over despite the ceremonies having long passed by the time he

was reading them.

Then, at the bottom, there's one last box. A cigar box, which is odd because Eli knows that his father never smoked a day

in his life.

He grabs it, flipping open the cardboard lid with ease to stare at the pile of paper slips. Thicker than expected, yellowed

because of their age, with ink that's nearly completely worn off in some places. But he can still read the information on

the first ticket he picks up: The Exorcist , 9:30p.m., Victoria Theater.

"Movie tickets?" Eli mutters to himself.

He finds the tickets with text that's still legible, which is more than he'd expect. Perhaps sitting in a dark box for decades

helped preserve them?

There are titles that Eli recognizes: American Graffiti , Paper Moon , Magnum Force , the first two Godfather movies, Young Frankenstein , Rocky , The Shining , The Empire Strikes Back , Tim Burton's Batman.

It's a tour through the decades of his father's trips to the movies, some of the films having multiple tickets from different

days because his father just had to see them again.

"Eli? You in here?" A soft knock on the door pulls Eli's attention, and over his shoulder, he sees his mother standing there

having long since changed into her sweatpants now that the holiday dinner has been cleaned up. "Whatcha got?"

"I was just going through some things," he tells her. "Found these movie tickets."