Of Monsters, Of Men

Chapter 2

Fall 1936

Three months later, when Billy finally succeeded in beating him up, Harry could say with complete certainty that his separation from Tom hurt more than any physical wound could.

Billy Stubbs had always hated Harry, and Harry hated him right back. Even though they had always despised each other, Billy and his gang had never attacked him before─probably because they were too afraid of Tom to chance his wrath.

However, Billy and his little gang had noticed Tom's cease in protection and shifted gears. They bullied Harry with taunts, pranks, and malicious harassment. They ripped his clothes, broke his glasses, and stole his possessions, but Harry always fought back with his smarts and the Special Power. He had boundaries, and they were consistently being crossed. Every time Harry used the Special Power though, guilt inevitably flared up. He had something that they didn't, something magical and special and beautiful. How could they fight against something like the Special Power? And as much as Harry needed to protect himself, he didn't want to become like Tom.

However, Harry did wonder how much more of this he could possibly take before the guilt would drown him. Tom ignoring his existence only furthered the tipping of the scales, his cold disdain a stark cry from their past interactions.

Before Harry had learned he had the Special Power, he had lived by the motto "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"— an unspoken agreement to a truce between him and Tom, a necessity born out of the fact the overcapacity at the orphanage meant Harry shared Room 27 with Tom. Until Harry fundamentally changed his worth in Tom's eyes, the truce had been the law of the land for the past seven years. Harry followed the truce's one rule religiously: he never, ever bothered Tom. He turned a blind eye to all the terrible, heinous deeds Tom conducted, content to abdicate all responsibility in righting wrongs to maintain a comfortable and consistent peace.

Tom's side of the bargain was that he would return the favor. In those seven years, Tom had never once bothered Harry: neither taunting nor terrorizing him. The downside of this arrangement was that Tom never reached out either, choosing to just ignore Harry whenever the latter tried to talk.

In that time, they had never grown closer than mutual acquaintances. Prior to the change a couple months ago, Tom was still as unapproachable and aloof as Harry remembered for all their time spent together, even when they had no opposing morals prying them apart. Now, Tom had chosen a newer, more tortuous route of pushing Harry over the edge: he denied Harry access to his collection of books and ceased their somewhat arbitrary yet enjoyable games. Harry had taken to spending his afternoons without a single companion.

In the past, Harry had never needed another companion beside Tom due to his sheer clinginess. Without Tom's possessiveness, Harry knew he could have easily made many friends: he wasn't unsociable or unkind. Tom's feared reputation made it so that the other orphans had no choice but to withdraw entirely from interacting with Harry.

Harry was truly alone, and he was miserable. Tom abandoned him, Billy bullied him, and the orphans continued ignoring him.

Thankfully, Tom did not use the Special Power against him, but Harry would have preferred that over the continued charade of silence. The hurt was fresh each time. It whittled away at the fiber of his being.

The one mercy Tom allowed Harry was that they'd walk back together to the orphanage after school ended. Harry had no idea why this was the only occasion where Tom turned a blind eye, but he was quite grateful for it. He took anything and everything that Tom would allow him with greedy hands.

The school day began like any other. But that Thursday, after class ended, Tom stuck around for a few minutes to ask the English teacher a couple questions. Harry stood at the corner of the school grounds. He closed his eyes, waiting to hear Tom call out his name.