bill becker never has been, and never will be, just a cactus.
hollis becker had been - actually, hollis doesn’t even remember how old he had been anymore - when he planted a cactus seed in a teacup. hollis didn’t yet know that the seed would sprout, or that the cactus that he accidentally grew would become his best friend, son, and the reason why hollis is still alive today.
but before bill grew into all those things for hollis, he was just a cactus.
when we-don’t-know-how-old hollis becker ecstatically showed his always sickly, frail mother the sprout coming out of the teacup ( let’s call hollis ‘baby hollis’ to minimize confusion ) he didn’t know what the sprout would become. to baby hollis, it was just a sprout.
but then baby hollis' mother got the disease. the disease - CME.
not-so-baby hollis and still-baby bill were present when hollis was holding his mother’s hand in the hospital, not-so-baby hollis’ glasses fogged up with tears as his mother’s heartbeat flatlined. still-baby bill was there when she was put into the ground, yet another victim of the CME virus.
It was that moment when not-so-baby hollis decided that bill would be his best friend.
all the other not-so-little boys ( and girls ) were afraid of hollis becker, whose mother died from the scary disease. hollis’ father withdrew, and for a while, it was just hollis, bill, and the oversized glasses that his mother had given him right before she contracted the disease.
When not-so-baby hollis’ father decided to send fourteen-year-old hollis to the london private school that he had attended during his youth, bill accompanied him. bill was there when nobody else was.
because, after all, bill was never just a cactus.
hollis smuggled bill onto the plane, into classes, took the still-stunted cactus with him wherever he went. a reminder, more than anything. that even when things feel like they’re going to hell, even when hollis became too broken to swear, to do anything - that things can still grow.
well, bill was stunted, but you get what I mean.
hollis becker grew too. unlike his prickly, green best friend, hollis wasn’t stunted, and shot up like a weed. he remembered his mother, with her dirty-blonde hair and brown eyes, her kind smile, the look on her face as she muttered expletives in french. he remembered his father’s laugh, his hazel eyes, the kindness he showed to hollis after they both lost his mother.
but hollis never forgot the tiny green sprout, the googly-eye adorned pot, and the hugely oversized glasses that he wore to this day. because he was only eleven years old when his mother died, one of the first recorded CME victims.
and even now, when hollis’ world tipped upside down again, bill was there. maybe not the same bill, the same sprout in the same pot - he grew too big for the teacup years ago - but he was there.
because bill becker never was, and never will be, just a cactus.