reached under, but all I could grab was one of his arms, and I pinched it until it bled, blood pounding in my ears. He yelped in pain. I had murder on my mind for a moment, but then, looking at his face, I felt guilty. I blinked twice. The fog in my head was lifted somewhat. He was in tears, and whatever else I wanted, I didn’t want that. I sighed and got to my feet. “Get out of there,”
After a moment, sheepishly, he crawled out, and he took many steps away from me; afraid. “I can’t go back there. You have no idea…”
“Why?”
He wiped a tear from his eye with the back of his hand. “I’ve run away before, and my mother never came looking for me. I was gone for a whole month before I finally got hungry and came back.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “What do I have to do to get you to leave? Can your life really be so bad?”
“At least then someone will hear my pleas for help! I can’t live one more day of my life in that prison!”
I stared at him. I hadn’t felt anything but anger for a long time, but now I felt sympathy—for someone I hardly knew—and I did not know why. He may not know what true pain was, but I had to realize that some people were sensitive, and even small insults could be traumatic for them. But this wasn’t a small insult. Being ignored by his parents showed they did not care, and that was the biggest insult of all. But of course, I did not know the whole situation because I did not know his mother.
I was still angry. “How long to you plan to drag this out? If you don’t like your life, move out.”
“You know I haven’t got money for that… please, let me stay one week. I’ll go home after that. I promise.”
“You can’t stay a week. You’ll stay for as long as I can stand you,” I told him adamantly. I had to meet him half way in some sort of way if I wanted him gone.
He sighed and then nodded reluctantly. He then looked up at me hopefully. “Do you think—I mean—there’s another reason I came up here. My biological Father died, and Mom said it happened at the top of this mountain. I wanted to give him a proper gift. Do you think you could show me the way?”
“Your Father is dead. He would want you to move on, and keep whatever belonging you wish to give to the snow.” I said realistically.
He nodded. “I’ll go alone then. I need some peace on this manner.” He said, heading for the door.
I grabbed his arm. “I’ll come. I don’t need your death on my hands.”
“You don’t have to,” he said hastily.
“You’ll fall and die.” I insisted.
I led the way, heading east up the mountain. I had a pinching feeling in my stomach that something was not right about any of this, but I could not put my finger on it. At the back of my head, Blue was buzzing. It shot into my eyes and suddenly, I saw in the man in my memories holding a baby.
“Ezra?” Micah said quietly. “You’ve stopped in your tracks. Something wrong?”
I turned around. “I feel… strange,” I said confusedly. “Sick, even.”
He smiled almost fearfully. “Maybe you ought to go home.”
I shook my head. “No need…” I changed the subject. “Tell me about your mother. Doesn’t she notice you at all? It seems to me that it’d be hard to ignore someone like you.”
“She left me for a whole week when I was six. Then Dad died and I was all on my own... I could tell she never liked me. She was always yelling at me….” He trailed off thoughtfully.
“Rough.” I replied absently as I travelled up a very skinny, narrow ledge of the snowy mountain. “It’s never been easy for me but at least my parents loved me. Anyone else, though… I’m no good with--”
I heard him scream. I turned around. He must have slid on the snow and was hanging of the mountain. My eyes widened. I dashed to his side, but he’d been lagging behind a bit, so it took me a minute to get there.
His eyes were closed, hanging on with exertion, gasping for breath at the rather high altitude. He was about to let go when I reached out just in time and caught his hand. I pulled him up, and he crashed onto my stomach. I had a flash of the man, presumably my father, holding me in his arms. We were laughing and he put his hand on the back of my head lovingly. Blue got louder and louder in my head.
In reality, I pushed Micah off of me with an angry grunt. “Be careful. Watch your feet.” I pressed a palm against my head in frustration. I got to my feet slowly. “We need to get to a place to take a break,”
The place I wanted was just five minutes ahead. The mountain was wide here, and it would be difficult for an idiot to slide off. I sat down tiredly. Blue was leaking out of my skin again, and I clutched the snow angrily.
“Ezra? Is there something…” Micah began.
“Be quiet!”
He sat there, just looking miffed. A lot of people never took how badly Blue hurt seriously, it was one of the many reasons I chose to cut ties with other people. My first and only girlfriend tried to be understanding at first, but then she grew impatient with me. She began to convince herself that I was using Blue as something of a crutch—to get out of things, to not see her—she never could grasp, I found, what it might be like to live her life as one always in pain. But she made me feel ugly; made me feel like someone who could not be loved. It still made me feel embarrassed just thinking about it.
Micah was the same way. I knew he didn’t understand just how bad it was—but I also knew he was a child, and least had an excuse. Adolescents always thought they were invincible, and of course they were often selfish. I didn’t want special treatment, and I never would; all I wanted was that he attempted to understand what it would be like to constantly live with a scratchy mind.
But the way he looked at me…. Or more precisely—didn’t—look at me… I knew he had zero respect for me. He thought my pain was a joke.
After a moment, the cloud left my mind. I was about to get up, but to my surprise, Micah said, “you can rest a moment more if you like. It’s my fault you’re up here.”
Quietly I said, “thank you…”
After a minute or two, Micah asked, “How does it feel?”
“I don’t wish to talk about it… you wouldn’t understand anyway.”
He crossed his arms. “Why not?”
“Because you’re just like everyone else.”
“Says who?” He asked, offended.
“Says me. You think of no one but yourself, dragging me into your problems, making your parents worry, making a melodrama out of a small family conundrum. You ought to be ashamed.”
He was about to come up with a retort, but found none. The cold whipped his hair, and he seemed as one in a trance. I had hurt him, which I thought was what I wanted, but I knew that making someone else hurt never resulted in happiness, however much you wanted it to.
Sometimes, there was nothing else to do but suffer by yourself in your own pain. Eventually, it would subside, but it would never be completely lifted. It was what I had always done.
As we walked along, almost to the top, I kept getting colder and colder. I wrapped my arms about myself and shivered.
“Cold easily?” Micah asked.
“What do you think?” I said with a testy sigh.
He laughed. “You are so bitter. Have you always been like that?”
I shot him a glare, he cringed. Then I surprised him with a smile. “Of course I wasn’t. I was relatively happy as a child. Blue still made things hard, but with support from people you love…” I blinked wistfully. “Anything is possible to abide. When I really became bitter is when they died. I had a step brother who was always kind to me until they were. After that, he made fun of me when I cried because of the pain—he told me to grin and bear it, he told me I was melodramatic—there is nothing so agonizing, I have found, as one who makes light of your pain when they have not walked in your shoes. At first, I had thought he had made a change for the worse, but I quickly realized that this was no change—this was who he w
as.”
“Do you think people change?” Micah asked curiously.
“No. I don’t. Their personalities might tweak a little bit over time, but… nothing major changes. I’m living proof of that.”
“I changed… from my past life, anyway.” He countered.
“You were a different person back then. It doesn’t count.” I told him as we approached the top of the mountain.
Micah ran the rest of the way. I crossed my arms and watched him from afar. But I felt a pinching in my stomach and dryness in my throat as I watched him bury the compass and fall to his knees in prayer, his cloak blowing backwards in the wind. I heard him whisper, “I’m so sorry… so sorry. Please, forgive me.”
When we came back home, I told Micah I was going to take a nap, and his response was to throw a snowball at the back of my head. I turned around with rage; he was grinning like an idiot.
He laughed awkwardly. “I thought… it might cool down your head.”
I blinked twice, thinking I would get angry. But instead, I grinned, tossing a snowball his way.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had so much fun. But by the time we were done, I was laughing and smiling and out of breath—and I had forgotten about my affliction. I was—happy.
But it was short lived. Blue was pouring out of my skin and nose at a very quick rate. I fell down, breathing harshly. Micah’s eyes widened. “Hold still… this is my fault.”
He was moving a hand towards my forehead, and I moved backwards, not wanting to be
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