The Heart of Stone

by Adam Knight

  *

  "Hey, Stone. Aren't you done yet?" Donald asked.

  Halen Marcus glanced up from the water fountain and regarded his friend carefully. He hated it when the other kids called him 'Stone'. They knew his name, after all. He never once called them by names that they didn't like.

  Then again, he never did say much of anything.

  Wiping his mouth, Halen straightened up and motioned his friend forward. Donald moved in eagerly as Halen shielded his eyes from the sun's bright light. It was going to be a hot day if the fog didn't roll in from the ocean too early.

  Halen watched as the other children began their individual treks home. Several boys were trying to get an impromptu game of rugby going over on the playing field. Briefly, Halen thought about asking if he could join the game before abandoning the idea. Most of the boys setting were older than him and probably didn't want an eleven year-old tagging along and getting in the way.

  Donald finally came up for air. Halen chose not to make a comment, though he had several that were right on the tip of his tongue. None of them really offensive.

  "Walk me home?" Donald asked between gasps of breath.

  "Sure," Halen replied with a faint shrug. It wasn't the first time Donald had made the request. The other boys tended to pick on Donald because he was smaller than them and too fat to run away when they chased him. Halen had tried pointing out to his friend that if he didn't always show off how smart he was in class that they probably wouldn't bother him as much.

  Donald wasn't really all that brilliant when you got right down to it. He just took the time to study.

  As they started on their way, Halen could see the other boys in his grade whispering and pointing in their direction. He ignored it without a second thought. If they were going to try anything they'd have done it by now.

  Since Halen and Donald had become friends Donald hadn't had a single incident with the school's bullies. Halen had broken an older boy's nose for pushing Donald into a mud puddle. They'd both been given a lot more respect from that point on.

  Halen had always been bigger than the other boys so it was rare when anyone even looked crosswise at him. It wasn't so much that the others were scared of him getting violent, Halen was normally very passive. It was just his complete indifference to anything they did to him.

  Everything from insults to mud-throwing to framing him for petty crimes in class just rolled off Halen like water. Quite simply, he didn't care enough about what they did to him to ever give it the attention it deserved.

  After awhile the others realized that they couldn't get a reaction out of Halen, so they left him alone. As a result, he earned the nickname 'Stone'.

  As they walked along, Donald rambled on about what he was hoping his mother was cooking for dinner. He rhapsodized about her roasts and vegetables before composing whole sonnets about her pastries and desserts. Halen smiled sadly, wondering what it would feel like to want to go home for dinner.

  "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" bawled a newsie on the far street corner. Over his head he waved a fresh copy of the newspaper's evening edition. "Hot off the press! Nazi Germany invades Poland! Churchill swears retaliation! Read all about it!"

  Halen barely glanced at the vast number of people rushing to buy a copy of the paper as he and Donald walked past. "I wonder what that's all about?" Donald mused, looking back over his shoulder.

  Halen shrugged minutely. "Who cares?"

  "It sounds important."

  "It's not like it'll effect us, Don." Halen explained patiently.

  Donald seemed to think about it for a moment before deciding to agree with his friend. They walked for a while longer, weaving their way through the veritable mob of older people in business suits and overcoats who were all in their own particular hurry from one place to another. At every street corner there was another newsie spouting pretty much the same thing as the first one had. People were clamouring to get a hold of that paper, almost desperately. Halen felt the faintest tug of curiousity forming in the back of his mind but easily forced himself not to think about it.

  It didn't take long for them to reach Donald's apartment building. It was an expensive place with four-bedroom flats on every floor. The doorman under the awning nodded politely to Donald and held the door open for the two boys.

  Halen spent a futile moment silently hoping that Donald would invite him in for dinner so that he wouldn't have to go home yet, but Donald turned to his friend and sadly waved goodbye. "I'd invite you up Stone, but my grandparents are coming over for dinner and my mother and father are going to want me to get all dressed up and stuff ..."

  Halen waved his friend off. "Don't worry," he said with a faint grin. "I got to go home anyway."

  "Maybe tomorrow, Stone? I don't think that there'd be anything wrong with ..."

  "Yeah. Maybe tomorrow." And with another small wave, Halen turned and walked away.

  Briefly Halen considered weaving his way home, deliberately taking the most roundabout route that he possibly could. But then he squared his small shoulders and forced himself to walk in a straight line to his own apartment building.

  It was quite a ways from Donald's building. Halen's home was in the older, poorer area of London. Where there were cobblestones missing in the street and where the lampposts were malfunctioning every couple of blocks, when they even worked at all. There were small groups of young toughs or thieves hiding down the alleyways. Some could be seen, the better ones couldn't.

  Halen ignored them. He had nothing they wanted anyway.

  He shuddered as he walked along, hugging his arms to his chest and watching the sidewalk directly in front of him. A sudden breeze had rolled in and was taking away any extra warmth the sun could have provided. In truth, it really wasn't all that cold. Halen just felt a sudden chill running up his spine.

  The long bangs of his shaggy light brown hair kept drooping in front of his eyes. Halen had to repeatedly blow it out of the way just so he could walk without being too irritated. Besides, the effort kept him from thinking about the lingering sting of pain from the welts on his back.

  Absently, Halen noticed that there was a crowd forming in front of his seven story building. Most of the people were shouting and pointing up into the air. Mingling with the crowd, Halen started to follow their gaze, looking up at the sides of his building.

  Up on the ledge to the sixth floor stood a woman of approximately middle age. Her blond hair was mostly grey now and she was dressed in some very worn clothing. The shoulders of her blouse were ripped in places and the seam up along the side of the skirt was mostly split. She was clinging to the side of the building and she appeared to be crying.

  There was a slight breeze that flapped her skirt about her legs and tossed her hair out of her face. Halen's breath caught tight in his throat as he realized that the closest window to the woman was the one to his own flat! And the closer he looked at the terrified woman the more he recognized what she was wearing and how she shuddered in the cold and how she ...

  "Mom," Halen breathed disbelievingly.

  For too many long seconds Halen stared, unable to think clearly. Then someone in the crowd jostled him slightly and his gaze was broken from his mother's form, settling upon the building's entranceway.

  He moved without thought, sprinting for the door with his heart in his throat. He passed the people crowded around the stairs and practically flew into the building. Halen hit the staircase at full tilt, taking the stairs two at a time, silently cursing at himself every time he stumbled in his haste.

  He burst through the doorway to the sixth floor landing and staggered down the ill-carpeted hallway to the flat that he shared with his parents. His book bag lay somewhere back on the staircase, forgotten in his frantic plunge. His breath came in shallow, painful gasps and his legs burned from the exertion he'd put them through.

  Reaching the door to his flat, Halen prayed that his mother hadn't locked it because his keys were back in his book bag and
would do him no good now.

  The door was partially open and off one of it's hinges. Halen frantically shoved the obstacle out of his way and stumbled into the flat, falling to his knees and elbows.

  The shouts of the crowd could be heard through the open window as he scrambled towards it awkwardly, his hands trying to push him up as his legs propelled him forward. The tattered curtains flapped in the breeze and obscured his view outside.

  Finally reaching the window, Halen placed his hands on the base of the sill and stuck his head out, crying out for his mother as he did so.

  But he was too late

  As if in slow motion, Halen watched his mother take the fatal step away from the wall onto insubstantial air and begin the plummet downwards to the unforgiving cobblestones.

  Halen screamed, uselessly reaching out his hand to her as she fell. Every twist and turn of her rapidly descending body burned into his mind, never to be forgotten.

  When her thrashing body struck the street, it made a sickening sound and, grotesquely, bounced. Then it remained still, never to move again. Her bright blood seeping out onto the street under the too bright sun.

  People quickly crowded around her, obscuring her body form Halen's view. Absently, Halen realized that he was crying. But it was detached, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just seen. His body was going through all of the motions, the tears rolling down his face and so on. His mind - his tortured, abused mind - refused to let him feel anything except cold, angry thoughts.

  Pushing himself away from the window, Halen forced himself to look around the flat. There were signs of a struggle everywhere. The sitting table and two of the chairs had been turned over and there was broken crockery covering the floor in places near one wall.

  Letting the tears fall down his cheeks unchecked, Halen woodenly walked through the rest of the flat and stopped in the kitchen.

  On the counter right next to the stove was a sheaf of paper with hastily scrawled writing on it. Without curiousity, Halen picked it up and passed his gaze down over the words.

  Halen, the note read. I'm sorry for everything that's happened and everything. I tried, God knows I tried. This isn't your fault, don't let him tell you it is ... I just can't take it anymore. This morning was the last.

  He replaced the note on the counter and walked into the living room. With a bit of effort, Halen managed to pick up and settle the big easy chair in it's proper place. He stared at it for a brief moment before he sat down, facing the open door to the flat.

  He waited.

  His father could be home any second.