You're small — not just because you're a kid, but skinny for your age, too. You're four and one-quarter years old, almost but not quite four-and-a-half, and the difference is frustratingly important. You want to be five: you don't want to have to spend all day in this big room with all the other kids anymore.
(It has windows, but they're small and high up; a big, unfinished basement. There are slightly crooked rows of bedrolls everywhere, pulled out now for naptime — everyone else is asleep right now — but taken across to stack by one of the walls for lessons.
The thought of lessons fills you with boredom and irritation. They go on forever and it's so hard to focus. Besides, you already know most of it, but there are new kids all the time so you can't complain.)
Speaking of new kids:
You hear the door on the floor above open, and with it muffled sobbing. You're immediately a little less tense than you would've been — the new kids who are jerks and bullies mostly don't show up crying — but you're still ready to be wrong; ready to show this new kid that you're not someone to mess with and that he'd better leave everyone else here alone, too.
But the footsteps and the sobbing reach the door to the big room and pause, and when you strain your ears you can hear Ms. ▒▒▒ telling the kid, very quietly, that she knows he's sad about his mother but he can't wake everyone else up. He'll have to go sit in the backyard if he can't stop crying.
And that's obviously not fair, the kid didn't ask to get brought here in the middle of naptime, so when he can't stop crying, you pretend to be asleep and then creep out the backdoor to join him.
There's not much in the backyard, just a sandbox and a rusted swing set, but the new kid is sitting on the latter. All you can see from the doorway is that he looks about your size, hair short and blond and spiky. He's crying too hard to hear you, so when you sit down on the swing next to his, he jumps. It makes his swing spin a couple times and you get the impression of bluish-green eyes, but they and his nose are mostly red from crying.
"Hey," you say.
The new kid hiccups and doesn't say anything. He scrubs his face with a fist, then squints at you.
For a moment, you can't think of anything else to say. The two of you just stare at each other. Then his face crinkles up and he opens his mouth and you're suddenly sure he's going to apologize for crying, and you can't stand that, so instead you blurt out the first thing you can think of.
"Dead mom, huh?" The kid gapes at you. You look away from him, kicking off to start swinging. "Yeah, we all got those here."
And you can only kind of see it starting from the corner of your eye, but a few seconds later the new kid is laughing, wet and soft, and you're maybe a little glad that you aren't five yet.
Memory #1 [cw: mentioned parental death]
You're small — not just because you're a kid, but skinny for your age, too. You're four and one-quarter years old, almost but not quite four-and-a-half, and the difference is frustratingly important. You want to be five: you don't want to have to spend all day in this big room with all the other kids anymore.
(It has windows, but they're small and high up; a big, unfinished basement. There are slightly crooked rows of bedrolls everywhere, pulled out now for naptime — everyone else is asleep right now — but taken across to stack by one of the walls for lessons.
The thought of lessons fills you with boredom and irritation. They go on forever and it's so hard to focus. Besides, you already know most of it, but there are new kids all the time so you can't complain.)
Speaking of new kids:
You hear the door on the floor above open, and with it muffled sobbing. You're immediately a little less tense than you would've been — the new kids who are jerks and bullies mostly don't show up crying — but you're still ready to be wrong; ready to show this new kid that you're not someone to mess with and that he'd better leave everyone else here alone, too.
But the footsteps and the sobbing reach the door to the big room and pause, and when you strain your ears you can hear Ms. ▒▒▒ telling the kid, very quietly, that she knows he's sad about his mother but he can't wake everyone else up. He'll have to go sit in the backyard if he can't stop crying.
And that's obviously not fair, the kid didn't ask to get brought here in the middle of naptime, so when he can't stop crying, you pretend to be asleep and then creep out the backdoor to join him.
There's not much in the backyard, just a sandbox and a rusted swing set, but the new kid is sitting on the latter. All you can see from the doorway is that he looks about your size, hair short and blond and spiky. He's crying too hard to hear you, so when you sit down on the swing next to his, he jumps. It makes his swing spin a couple times and you get the impression of bluish-green eyes, but they and his nose are mostly red from crying.
"Hey," you say.
The new kid hiccups and doesn't say anything. He scrubs his face with a fist, then squints at you.
For a moment, you can't think of anything else to say. The two of you just stare at each other. Then his face crinkles up and he opens his mouth and you're suddenly sure he's going to apologize for crying, and you can't stand that, so instead you blurt out the first thing you can think of.
"Dead mom, huh?" The kid gapes at you. You look away from him, kicking off to start swinging. "Yeah, we all got those here."
And you can only kind of see it starting from the corner of your eye, but a few seconds later the new kid is laughing, wet and soft, and you're maybe a little glad that you aren't five yet.