All day at school, the youngest brother worried. He chewed his lip in his anxiety, finally making it bleed. As he applied toilet paper to it in the bathroom, he squinted into the mirror. He saw his own huge eyes rimmed with long, doe-like lashes but he also saw something, a shadow overlaying his image and he spun around nervously. Nothing was there and when he looked back into the mirror, the shadow was gone.
Kindergarten was usually a happy place for him. The small boy felt so safe and welcome by all his classmates. When he showed off, more often than he would admit to his father, they all yelped in amazed delight. He would always guess the numbers they were thinking of or what color they were imagining. Here, the combined joyful innocence of five-year-old boys and girls enabled him to slip into a comfortable and safe place within his own mind.
But when Indie had broken his heart he suddenly did not want to be in class with the rest of the children. What if they didn’t believe him either and they were actually making fun of him? If he could not trust his closest friend, his own brother, how could he trust these strangers? The little boy cried all day in school, prompting his teacher to pull him aside.
“Son, what’s wrong?” he asked softly. “Did something happen?”
“No, sir.” The student replied. He was about to continue and let his heart spill out to his kindly teacher, but he stopped himself. He lobbed his gaze around, looking for an excuse. His eyes lit upon the newspaper on the table near him. “No, sir. I’m just worried about them people missing.” He nodded at the picture on the front of a ten-year-old boy from their own town.
“That’s a scary thing, isn’t it? But you have a lot of very strong brothers and a mommy and a daddy to protect you. Stay inside after dark and don’t talk to strangers and you’ll be ok, I think.” The teacher wiped a tear that was streaming down the student’s small face. Now that he recalled them, the boy really was crying about the missing people. His teacher ruffled his hair and stood up. He clapped his hands together once and called to the class, all doing different activities around the room.
The little boy joined his classmates and tried his best to be a good, normal boy for the rest of the day. When one girl, so pretty with her reddish-blond hair and dimpled cheeks asked him to guess the next page in the book she was reading, his eyes lit up. Then he remembered he shouldn’t do that. He scrunched his face up and held his breath, willing away the picture of a stylized cartoon basset hound that flicked into his head.
“Puppy.” He finally burst out, his breath a whoosh of hot air. The girl giggled in disbelief and flipped the page.
“Yes!” she said, her tiny girl voice rising even higher. “Wait, did you already read this one?”
Elated to have an out that he didn’t have to work for he just nodded.
“You got me.” He winked both eyes in what he hoped was a sly way and turned back to coloring his rainbow.
He kept his head down for the rest of the afternoon and wouldn’t answer when anyone other than the teacher called his name. The final bell rang at three-thirty and he felt his shoulders relax. He had made it one whole day with only one slipup. Indie would be so proud…
No, he wouldn’t.
Indie didn’t believe him. He frowned and shoved his crayons into his bag angrily. As he stomped out of the school building, he felt the rain start to fall again. It was the perfect end to a perfectly terrible day and did nothing for his sore feelings. He sat down under the oak in the front yard of the school and waited for five o’clock to bring him his traitorous sibling.
The rain decided to become a deluge and the boy got very wet very quickly. He knew his mother would probably be upset about his new shoes being soaked but there was really nothing he could do about it. Unless…
No.
He was not allowed to do anything special. He would just have to be wet and maybe get a spanking or a loud scolding. No help for it. He sat in the wetness and sighed.
Not long after the sky opened on him, the school door opened, and an older student came running out. She shrieked as the rain hit her, immediately covering her glasses with water. She jerked the book in her hands up over her head in a makeshift umbrella and started to jog on the pavement. Her shiny shoes splashed water up her bare legs in her school uniform and she groaned. The boy watched as she beelined for his tree.
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Once under the relative shelter of the large oak leaves, the other student lowered her book and tucked it under one arm. She pulled her glasses off her face, wiped the back of her hand across her face and shook her wet hair out of her eyes.
“Aww, granny’s gonna be so angry at me!” she bewailed, looking down at her wet and muddy shoes. She wiped her glasses off as best she could and looked back down at her shoes, readying herself to clean them off. They were spotless. She bent down and touched the toe of her black shoe. They were also dry.
She seemed to notice the boy sitting there for the first time. His eyes were filled with a twinkling glee and he was trying to keep a smile from slipping onto his face.
“What’s so funny, dummy?” the girl said, clearly annoyed at what she thought was his smirk making fun of her.
“Nothin’. Just…” the boy stopped, letting his grin flick onto his lips. Small white teeth bit at his lower lip. “Nothin’,” he repeated and looked away. The girl shook her head and frowned.
“Yeah, nothin’.” An old white car pulled up at the curb in front of them and she pulled the book back up over her head. “Stay dry, weirdo,” she called over her shoulder as she ran to the car.
The boy kept his silence, but he felt the lightness in him bubbling up. Her surprise and confusion were so funny to him. He delighted in seeing people look at him in wonder. He could hear them thinking “How is that possible?” and it made him feel like a giant balloon filled with sunshine was going to burst in his chest. He opened his hand and wiped a glob of icy mud from his palm onto the wet grass beside him. He couldn’t wait to tell...
Indie? He doesn’t even believe you anymore, stupid.
The sun was hidden by the dark storm clouds, making the late afternoon feel more like a late evening. The boy looked up into the sky, past the tree’s leaves, and felt a chill inside of himself that had nothing to do with the wet weather. He perceived a slight alteration to the air around him and closed his eyes and felt around him with his special self. Someone was behind the tree he was resting against. Using his imaginative hands, he pushed them away and turned to see who it had been, but no one was there. He felt his stomach do flips in anxiety and wished Indie would hurry.
Five o’clock seemed to take longer than usual to roll around. Toe and Two, the eighteen-year-old twins were the first to arrive. Shorter than even Indie, the twins were each twice as wide as their youngest sibling. Toe, Joe on paper, and Two, christened Ben, were both in their last year at the high school and the little boy wondered if their daddy would make them work at the agency or the steel mill this summer.
“Where’s Indiana?” the little one called, using his full name to show his displeasure with his elder sibling. The twins glanced at each other and grinned.
“Is he in big trouble, Rat?” Toe asked. He roughly jerked the boy’s hood up on his jacket and grabbed his hand.
“Where is he?” repeated the small figure. Images of his beloved brother being taken by strangers flashed in his mind and he felt tears prickling in his eyes. “Is he ok?”
“Guess he isn’t in that much trouble, Toe,” Two said as he brushed the little boy’s behind off. “You’re filthy. Momma ain’t gonna be happy.”
“He’s meeting up with Lissie,” answered Toe finally when he caught sight of the tears in the enormous eyes of his brother. “He’ll be home a little late is all.”
“Momma won’t like that, either,” fretted the small brother. His anger at his favorite brother melted in his concern. “Maybe we should get him and make sure we all get home together.”
“No way, Ratty. We’re going home, the three of us, and Indie can find us. He knows his way home,” Toe said, leading them away from the oak. Two looked first left and then right before hauling on his brother’s hand and trotting across the street. When they reached the other side, the little boy shook his hand free.
“No, Toe. No way. We find him first or I ain’t moving.” He pulled his arms to his sides, sure that it made him look sturdier and thus harder to move. Two sighed and handed his twin his own backpack. He nodded, understanding what his twin had in mind and slung the bag onto his back. Two bent and took his tiny brother around the knees and swept him over his shoulder, his slight frame nothing on his wide shoulders.
“Then I’ll carry you home and tell Momma what a little shit you are.” The twins laughed in unison, their indistinguishable voices creating a weird echo effect. “Don’t worry about Indie. He’s happy doing exactly what he’s doing, you can count on it.” They laughed riotously and the little boy knew they were being dirty just by how they sniggered. Images of Indie pressing his lips to a girl’s bright red mouth flashed in his youthful mind.
“You guys are gross. He ain’t making no kissy faces with Lissie. He likes that one girl, Ella.” He had stopped struggling once he had realized that if he wiggled too much, his brother might drop him to teach him a lesson.
“Well liking one girl and getting to tongue wrestle with another ain’t got nothin’ to do with each other. Kissy Lissie might not be very pretty, but she’s willing to kiss anything with lips, including Indie.” Toe and Two cackled again and an image of their topless neighbor flicked across the small boy’s awareness, making him blush and squirm uneasily.
“Stop it, Two. Leave Lissie’s shirt alone,” he said quietly and pushed aside the mature ideas. He might not want to do those things, but his brothers sure did, and they weren’t hiding the thoughts. Two hitched his brother up on this shoulder, jiggling him roughly.
“You stop it, Rat, or I’ll tell Momma you were doing it again.” The boy didn’t talk the rest of the way home, draped awkwardly and uncomfortably across his brother’s shoulder. Knowing that Two and Toe probably still believed him made him a little happier, but he was still pining for the loss of the trust in Indie. He would forgive him, he knew, but he allowed himself to be angry for at least one day. He would figure out a way to make Indie believe him again.