Book of Dark #1: Always Stand Up
Page 10
Chapter 7
An Insane and Ridiculous Coincidence
The wiry little boy—the one covered in dirt, the one with the black and blue face—finds a quiet corner, away from the ruckus, far from the other kids. A corner where he hopes no one will find him, where no one will bother him anymore.
It’s better to be alone, he tells himself. It’s harder to get hurt when you’re alone.
As he crams himself into the space between the pillar and the floor, bringing his black and red rucksack with him, he touches the bruises on his face.
They hurt like hell.
He knows that the pain will be even worse tomorrow. But he tells himself that it’s okay, because he’s made it through today. And that’s all that matters. That’s all that matters for now, he tells himself. Again and again.
Once he’s sure no one is around, he reaches for the secret fold inside his shirt, the one that he stitched himself, and pulls out his lunch.
As always, it’s nothing more than a thin sliver of ham between two slices of stale bread, though the sandwich is flatter today on account of the punches to his torso from earlier. He unwraps the thin plastic and takes a bite, striving not to eat too fast so that he can make it last. It’s dry and tasteless, but it’s food. And not one bit of it will go to waste.
After a few more grateful bites, though, he stops, feeling eyes on him. He looks up.
It’s the new girl. And she’s staring at him.
What does she want, he wonders, and then recoils on sighting the hideous floral dress she has on. The garment makes a valiant attempt to hide how chubby the girl is for her age, but fails. Magnifying the girl’s eyes to a size beyond human are the thickest glasses he has ever seen. At least they pull attention away from her crooked teeth, he thinks. Then immediately, he shakes his head, disappointed with himself. Who is he to judge?
Just a skinny little orphan boy covered in dirt and bruises.
He avoids eye contact and ignores her, hoping that she’ll get bored soon and go away, leaving him in peace. He sinks his teeth into the stiff bread with a crunch.
But when he looks up, she’s still there, now seated against the pillar just opposite him, watching him eat. He averts his gaze lest she take it as an invitation to prolong her stay, and uses only his peripheral vision to watch her. She, on the other hand, is looking straight at him. And smiling.
“Staring is rude. Don’t you know?” he says, refusing to look up from his sandwich. The girl seems to know exactly how uncouth staring is, but doesn’t seem to care.
“Why are you here?” she asks.
“What?”
“Why aren’t you with the other kids?”
He shifts uncomfortably.
“They laugh at me,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because of my clothes,” he replies, wondering why she doesn’t just ask one of the other girls. They’d be more than happy to tell her all about the weird, filthy kid who smells funny and eats alone.
“Hmm. What else?”
He tries to look offended at the implication that there’s more wrong with him. But he fails, mostly because he doesn’t entirely disagree with the implication himself.
Finally deciding to look, he lifts his head, only to see her grin expand. He flinches at the sight of the crooked teeth, but corrects himself, reminding himself that he cannot be one to judge.
Besides, there’s something about that smile, something unfeigned, something real…
He figures it out. It’s genuine interest.
His brows furrow as he studies the girl, as the reason for her interest remains unclear, but it does becomes abundantly clear that she isn’t going away anytime soon.
With a deep sigh, he puts down his sandwich and, from his trusty old red and black rucksack, pulls out his moth-holed textbooks.
“My books, too,” he says. “They’re junked.”
He shows her. She adjusts her glasses to see them better, and then looks back up at the boy.
“Why?”
“’Cos they’re fifth-hand, I think… Sixth-hand even?”
“Why?”
“’Cos that’s all they can give us at the orphanage.”
“Why?”
“’Cos they don’t get very many donati—” the boy stops mid-word, realizing that this way lies madness. “Are you always this annoying?” he asks.
The little girl squirms shyly. “Well, the girls sure think I am. That’s why I’m not invited…” She motions to something in the distance, past the labyrinth of pillars.
He cranes his neck to see. He can just about make out a handful of girls sitting at one of the playground tables. They seem to be playing tea party.
And that’s when it hits him. That’s when it all begins to make sense.
She’s one of the rejects. Just like him. And now she’s seeking a friend in him, in the only person who hasn’t shunned her away yet.
He smiles sadly with the knowledge that, soon, she’ll figure out that he is just as pathetic as her, and then she’ll be gone too. It’s okay, he tells himself, because then he’ll be alone—and it’s better to be alone. It’s harder to get hurt when you’re alone.
With a curt nod to the girl-who-will-be-leaving-soon, he returns to his sandwich, disappointed to see how little is left. He takes another dry bite and chews. And chews. And chews some more. On the way down, it scratches his throat.
When he looks up again, he sees the girl, now sat at a pillar even closer to him, unpacking her pink lunchbox.
“You don’t have to sit here, you know…”
The girl stops unpacking and looks up nervously.
“I-I know,” she says.
The boy instantly recognizes the look on her face—a dash of the fear of rejection, a dollop of the terror of abandonment, and a sprinkling of general dread to top it all off. It’s a look he’s only too familiar with.
“But I want to…” she continues anxiously, pushing back up the telescopic glasses that have begun to slip down her nose. “I-Is that okay?”
Well, that’s a first, thinks the boy. No one has ever wanted to sit with him before. Nor eat with him. Nor, in fact, even talk to him. Not even the boys from the orphanage, their reason being that associating with him tends to turn them into targets to be picked on. It’s true, thinks the boy. He’s bad news.
He responds with a weak smile and half a nod. The girl’s face floods with relief and lights up with a huge smile.
Only now, as she takes her glasses off, fumbling as she attempts to clean them on her unsightly floral garb, does the boy see her eyes properly. He contemplates them thoughtfully, wondering how odd a color honey-maple gold is for eyes to be. And then he can’t help but think about how pretty a color honey-maple gold is for eyes to be.
As the girl replaces her glasses on the bridge of her nose, she spots the wedge of cardboard parading as a sandwich hanging off the boy’s fingers and her smile inverts. Appalled and shaking her head, she unpacks her pink lunchbox and pulls out her own sandwich.
It turns out to be a gourmet work of art—two slices of soft rye that can barely contain the fresh chicken, avocado, and bacon, topped off with mayonnaise, and dripping with creamy blue cheese. She offers him one of the two triangles that it has been cut into.
Despite his watering mouth, and his growling stomach, the boy starts to shake his head, but before he knows it, the girl has yanked what remains of his sandwich off him and thrust half of hers in its place.
“Too much for me anyway,” she says, struggling to take a bite. “Really.”
He hesitates, but her hearty nods assure him that it’s okay to tuck in. So, he does, and the flavors simply explode in his mouth. There is no way, he thinks to himself, that the two foods—what he brought and what she brought—should both be allowed to go by the same name of ‘sandwich’.
He stops chewing and looks at the girl. No one has been this nice to him, ever. He feels himself choking up, but fights not to turn into a complete
mess. Not in front of the new girl, he tells himself.
When she looks at him, with her head tilted and her lips curled into a questioning smile, as if to ask if everything’s okay, he simply nods, unable to speak anymore thanks to the lump in his throat.
They eat in silence for a while, watching each other between delicious mouthfuls.
She grins at him as he chews. He watches her tuck locks of hair behind an ear. She hands him a paper napkin to wipe the blue cheese now smeared all over his mouth. He smiles, marveling at the unpredictability of life, and at how quickly a bad day could turn good…
His joy is short-lived.
The dragon that lands between them is a monstrosity covered in menacingly black scales that click together threateningly. The serpentine body sways this way and that.
The boy with the bruises kicks away from the pillar. He looks around for the girl, but she’s gone. The pink plastic of her lunchbox lays crushed under the dragon’s claws.
The creature whips the air with her forked tongue. Glowing amber eyes within the swaying head dart left and right, searching for something. Then, the bottomless pit-like nostrils flare as she sniffs out her target.
The boy can feel the ground shake with the low, bass rumbling of the growl that churns in the beast’s chest.
Her scaly mouth draws back into a snarl, revealing long, chipped, dagger-like teeth.
The boy claws at the ground in a bid to scramble away as fast as he can. Away from the horror unfolding before him.
He had just wanted a quiet corner in which to eat his lunch alone. A corner where he hoped no one would find him, where no one would bother him anymore…
The black dragon’s nostrils sniff him out.
She turns to him. She sees him—the wiry little boy covered in dirt, the boy with the black and blue face.
And then, before he can blink, she advances…