“Chapter one. Chaaaapter one. Chapteeeeeeeer… one.”

“Bro, are you just gonna keep writing out loud like that or--”

“Damn it! Now my concentration’s ruined! Good job, Feather Bangs. Now I’ll never be able to tell the story of how I escaped rehab!”

“Uhh… you didn’t escape, Bojack. They kicked you out on account of you tellin’ racist jokes, hiding Lindsey Lohan’s underwear in the television, and making one of the nurses feel very uncomfortable.”

“I didn’t hide her underwear in the TV! I hid them behind it! God! That is so like them. Just because their television didn’t have a back panel and the wires were all sticking out doesn’t mean that I was using that as an excuse for her underwear to show up on literally every TV network… Besides, it’s not like they weren’t on literally every television network to begin with anyway.”

“OK, Bojack. OK.”

The travel back to Hollywoo was just like this, with Bojack consistently trying to justify himself for not making it through treatment and his cousin Feather Bangs doing everything he could to not say anything that would spark any more heated topics. The only thing that Bojack was right about, though, was that in order for him to leave the facility early, he needed to have a friend or family member being a direct line of sight supervisor for the next thirty days. Feather Bangs, son of Butterscotch Horseman’s sister, however, was never all too close to Bojack to begin with, having spent very little time with him growing up and mainly only knowing his name from the hit comedy series “Horsin’ Around.” The only reason he agreed to be his supervisor in the first place was that he really didn’t have anything back home other than a girl who wouldn’t even return his feelings, and possibly the fact that without him, Bojack wouldn’t have anyone left to be there for him.

“Oh! Take a left here!” Bojack said, putting his arm in front of Feather Bangs’s eyes, making him nearly swerve into oncoming traffic. “I know this sweet pub where I’m practically a celebrity. I mean, I am a celebrity, but here I’m, you know, a celebrity for other reasons.”

Feather Bangs sighed, debating with himself as to whether he should even humor the idea. “Bojack, you know you just got out of rehab, right?”

“Yeah, but that was for drugs. Good ol’ alcohol never hurt anyone, am I right? Besides, I’m meeting a friend there.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah. Is that surprising? I have friends, you know. They just couldn’t be my line of sight because they have jobs, which you don’t have. Seriously, how did you live in that town without paying bills? Does your mother not--here! Right here! Feather Bangs, you’re not… You’re gonna miss the turn aaaauuuugggh!”

With his eyes never deviating from the road in front of him, Feather Bangs continued to drive forward, passing the bar and heading straight to his house in LA. “We’re not goin’, Bojack,” he said, flipping his bangs. “You can tell your friend that he can meet you back at your place.”

“No he can’t, because he’s gonna be drunk, like I wanted to be!”

“This is why I’m your line of sight, Bro. Who is this friend of yours that you wanted to meet so earnestly anyway?”

“Uhhh... “ Bojack put his nails to his mouth, his face cringing in anxiety after having his bluff called out of nowhere. “Peter… Boyle…”

“Peter Boyle? You mean the grandfather in the hit comedy ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’?”

“Yes! Him! That’s exactly who I was supposed to be meeting, and because of you, now he’s going to be wondering where I went and what happened to me or if I even made it out of rehab alive or--”

“Peter Boyle is dead, Bro.”

Bojack blinked. “Really? Did that happen just recently, or…?”

“Nope. He died in 2006 due to multiple myeloma and heart disease.”

“...OK, now I know you’re making that up. There’s no such thing as multiple myeloma.”

Fortunately for Feather Bangs, however, it wasn’t much further when the two of them finally made it back to Bojack’s house, complete with golden gates and the best view of California a person could ever wish for. Of course, the trip to the door wasn’t without its ramblings, mostly still debating whether or not Peter Boyle was actually still dead, but once they got inside, they saw that the lights were already turned on with a gaggle of nuns sitting on Bojack’s furniture. Everyone gasped, but for some reason, Feather Bangs knew that something like this was going to happen.

“Who are all you people?” Bojack asked angrily. “What are you doing here? What the hell is going on here? How did you get into my house?”

“Bojack?” Suddenly, a man with a yellow beanie, red sweatshirt and gray sweatpants rose to his feet, contrasting with the black and white clothes from the rest of the group. “What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be in rehab!”

“What am I doing here? Todd, I live here. What are you doing here? Who are all these people?”

“OK, I don’t want you to freak out, but I’m thinking of converting to Catholicism. Sister Margo here has opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.”

Squinting his eyes and peering down at the group of women, he saw one face that he recognized, smiling and waving at him. “Todd, do you not realize that that’s just character actress Margo Martindale wearing a nun outfit? She’s probably just using this whole thing as a way to hide from the authorities so that nobody finds out she’s not actually dead.”

Todd looked back at the nun who he had been speaking to, suddenly realizing that the entire time she had been telling him that the Holy Ghost was revealing her familiarity through Christ, she was really just hiding behind another character. Then, looking back up at Feather Bangs, he asked, “Who are you?”

“Bojack’s cousin Feather Bangs,” he replied, flipping his hair. “Nice to meet you. Ha ha.”

“So what’s your story?”

“Oh, you know. I came from a small town where everypony knew everypony. Our Town’s leader was kind of a dictator who tried to make us all equal, and when she got chased out of town, I stayed for this girl named Sugar Belle. I ended up losing her to some guy from this place called Ponyville, but after that--”

“Yeah, nobody asked to hear about your shitty story!” Bojack interrupted. “And can you stop using the word ‘everypony’? It’s starting to weird me out that you’re still doing that. Also, Todd, why are you in my house?”

“Well…” Todd broke eye contact, rubbing his arm as his voice descended into little more than a somber mumble. “Things haven’t been going well rooming with Princess Carolyn, and with you being in rehab for a while, I--”

“Todd, I’ve been in rehab for seven days! Hold on.” Bojack then reached into his pocket and began fumbling with his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling Princess Carolyn so you can take your stupid nun party to her place.” Nobody spoke as the phone rang, despite the nuns arguing with Margo Martindale through their body language. “Yes, hello. Princess Carolyn?”

“What are you doing out of rehab?!” the voice on the other line shouted for everyone to hear. “Here I was thinking that you would actually follow through with something for once, but you proved me wrong yet again!”

Even through her loud voice blaring through the phone, there was still the sound of another voice ringing in the background. “Princess Carolyn… is that a baby in the background?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear? I’m a mom now! Can you believe that after all this time I--”

“Yeah, that’s great. Look, could you just invite Todd to come live with you again? He’s in my house with character actress Margo Martindale, and I don’t need him finding Jesus when I’m trying to recover from a traumatic experience.”

“Noooooo way!”

“Why not?”

“He’d smoke weed in front of the baby.”

Everyone then looked at Todd to see his reaction, but he simply shrugged and said, “She is not wrong.”

“Look,” Bojack continued, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I just need everypony out except for my cousin Feather Bangs. Can he at least take his weird ceremony over to your place? I promise, you can kick him out as soon as they’re done.”

“Everypony?” the cat on the other line asked in confusion.

“Damn it, Feather Bangs! Now you’ve got me doing it! Look, Princess Carolyn, I’m sending these guys over to your place. Do whatever you want with them.” Just as Princess Carolyn began to object over the phone, however, Bojack clicked the end call button and opened up the front door as wide as it would go. “Alright, people! The show’s over! The only person I want to see here is--”

“Bojack Horseman?”

Suddenly, Bojack’s eyes went wide from the familiar voice coming from just outside the door. “Oh, no. Oh, God, please tell me this is some kind of a joke.”

As soon as Feather Bangs turned around to see where the voice was coming from, he met eyes with a smiling golden lab wearing a black crew neck shirt and Top Gun sunglasses. “Bojack Horseman and Mr. Peanutbutter at the same christening? What is this, a crossover episode? No, I'm just kidding you, man.” Then, calming down his tone and placing a hand on Bojack’s chest, he asked, “How are you feeling, buddy? Do you need anything?”

“Yes. I need you and ALL THESE NUNS to get the hell out of my house!” Finally, after being told once again to leave, the women all stood from the living room furniture and made their way out of the house, all except for Todd and character actress Margo Martindale, who remained where they stood. “How are you even alive? What are you doing here?”

“I’m a maverick, Bojack,” she replied, sneaking her way out of the house. “Just remember, what you saw here never happened. It was just another one of your crazy hallucinations.” Then, just like that, she had disappeared, only to return whenever she needed a place to hide out again, but as soon as she was gone, Bojack turned his attention back towards Mr. Peanutbutter.

“Now you! Did Todd invite you over here or something?”

“Yep,” the dog replied heartily. “He told me that there was going to be a church service here and that it was going to be a ball!” Mr. Peanutbutter then began cracking up, holding onto his knees as the joke seemed to only get funnier. “No, but seriously. What are you doing here? Weren’t you supposed to be in rehab right now?”

Bojack put his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “Things didn’t really work out there. It’s actually kind of a long story if you wanted to hear about--”

“Hold that thought! I’m getting a call.” Then, pulling out his phone and turning around, the dog began to walk his way back to wherever he came. “Erica! Since when did you get your teeth back? You’re sounding beautiful right now!”

Finally, the room was devoid of everyone but Todd and Feather Bangs, leaving him exactly how he wanted to be: alone. With a sigh, he made his way over to his couch and fell down onto his back, his arm draped over the floor as he groaned with displeasure. “Feather Bangs,” he called lazily. “Can you get something for me? There’s some brownies that I’ve been saving in the fridge. Hopefully they’re still good.”

Feather Bangs was a little hesitant, seeing as how the typical Bojack would have hid drugs in the brownies so that they would be ready for him in case of something like this happening, but when he went over to the fridge and looked inside, he said, “Nope. Sorry, Bro. No brownies in here.”

“What?!” Bojack exclaimed, sitting up on his couch. “I made those specifically as a treat for myself for when I got back!”

“Oh, did you mean those dark chocolate brownies on the third shelf?” Todd asked as the answer began to dawn on him. “I ate those.”

“Damn it, Todd! Those had drugs in them! Wait, are you telling me you ate all of them? I made a batch of twenty!”

“Yeahhh,” Todd said with a smile, signaling that he had probably finished them off fairly recently, but as soon as Feather Bangs closed the fridge door, he took a seat on the couch next to his cousin.

“Listen,” the pony with the beautiful mane said, placing a hand onto Bojack’s leg. “I know that treatment must have been hard for you, and I know you just want to go back to your comfort zone, but you need to realize that your life is never going to change unless you do something about it. That is what you want, right?”

“Oh, yeah?” Bojack asked defensively. “Like what? Move to a no-name village where everyone is the same and have no job?”

“Bojack… you don’t have a job either.”

“Ohhhhh! So the pot’s calling the kettle black now, huh? What, are you going to give me relationship advice too? How’s Sugar Belle, by the way? Is she happy? Why couldn’t you make her happy? Oh, that’s right! Because besides a few one-liners and a Justin Bieber haircut, you have nothing special about you, and if you did, then maybe you wouldn’t have lost out to some farm boy whose only talent was planting apples!”

“Whoa. Bojack…” Bojack looked back at Todd, who was trying to calm him down, then back at his cousin, who was now cowering in fear at Bojack’s loud voice.

Then, with a sigh, Bojack dropped his arms over his knees and leaned forward, too embarrassed at his outburst to look at anything other than the floor. “I’m sorry, Feather Bangs. You know I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Bojack?” Feather Bangs asked, putting a hand to his shoulder. “You alright, Bro?”

“No… I’m not… I couldn’t last more than seven days in rehab, and when they finally let me out, the only person left for me was my cousin who didn’t know two things about me other than my name and TV show. I thought that when I got out of rehab, I would be a completely different person, like something inside me would have changed that wouldn’t make me as much of a shitty person anymore… but it didn’t. I’m still the same shitty Bojack.”

A brief silence passed as Todd took a seat beside him while Feather Bangs patted his leg. “That’s because you’re not giving yourself the chance to change, Bro.”

“I have, Feather Bangs! I really have! I guess… maybe I’ve just run out of chances. Maybe when you get to be my age, who you are is who you’ll be forever. You’ve created these habits in life that are too hard to break, and so you don’t even fight them anymore. When your comfort zone isn’t even comfortable anymore, though… what do you do then?”

“I dunno, man,” Todd replied with his hands in his sweatshirt. “What did they tell you in rehab?”

“They told me that the first step in overcoming addiction is to admit that you have a problem, which is bullshit, because I’ve known that I had a problem since I learned how to use alcoholism to avoid my problems, yet somehow, I’ve never gotten any better.”

“OK,” Feather Bangs said. “What about the second step?”

“...The what?”

“You know, the step after the first one?”

“Hmm… I guess I never really thought about it. After our group therapist introduced the first step I either fell asleep or started singing the theme song to the Brady Bunch so that I wouldn’t have to hear her voice anymore.”

“Then how about we make one?” Todd chimed in again. “How about this? Learn that forgiving yourself is a process and that true self-improvement happens over time? That way, whenever you mess up, you know that it won’t define who you are?”

“Todd, you realize that you’re telling me this after you’ve eaten brownies mixed with marijuana and painkillers, right?”

“What can I say? Livin’ la vida loca.”

Bojack didn’t really understand what he meant by that, but then again, he never really took anything Todd said seriously… which may have been his problem all along. As soon as he began to see an epiphany light up in his head, Feather Bangs patted him on the back, and looking up at his cousin, Bojack finally saw a smile, not like the phony ones he saw in treatment, but an actual, genuine smile.

“Will you at least try, Bojack? I promise I’ll be here to help you for as long as you need.”

“I…” Bojack began, still unsure as to whether or not anything could fix something as defective as him, but at least now, just like Todd had said, he could learn from his previous mistakes and make a small improvement from the last time. “I can try.”

Then, for the first time in the longest time that he could remember, Bojack himself smiled, bringing confidence to not only the other two who were there to support him, but also to himself. He could feel a new warmth in his heart as for the first time in his life, he legitimately believed that he himself had the power to feel good about himself, and nobody was going to force that on him. The best part about it, though, was that he didn’t need to do it himself. He had friends and family there to support him, just like they always had, and this time, he wasn’t going to let them down.

Then, suddenly, all of their eyes turned towards the door, which was still wide open, revealing a delivery man with a dolly stacked with boxes. “I have a delivery of eight pounds of cocaine for a Mr. Bojack Horseman.”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhh……. What are you doing here?”

Back in the 90’s, I was in a very famous TV show...

Author's Note

On the 9th day of Feather Bangs, Princess Cadence gave to me:

Nine catholics praying, eight pounds of cocaine, seven days of rehab, six matching questions, five seasons in, four main roles, three big names, two answered calls, and a new start for Bojack's story.