Alternatives

Chapter 22:Getting Used To It

Winter of 1882, Paris

The boy spent the first month avoiding Antoinette as much as possible. He didn't seem to avoid her so much as desperately tried to find a way to be alone. She spent every free moment she had with him, trying to get him to talk, trying to get to know him, trying to make him eat more than once a day, and so on. He obeyed whatever she told him without a word, but refused to answer any questions. After she spent more than an hour at a time around him, he seemed to space out completely and stop listening to her, only coming back to his senses from time to time if she made a sudden noise or movement.

After a while, Antoinette gave up. The boy was incredibly hard to be around, to be honest. He never displayed any kind of emotion aside from fear, never talked, and rarely responded to the outside world and Antoinette was, quite understandably, at her wits' end already. She came to see him in his room as soon as Meg was asleep every day - weirdly convenient, he seemed to be naturally leaning toward being awake later in the evening and sleeping through most of the day - but after saying a few words and asking a few questions, she would simply go about her business, cooking or cleaning, whatever she needed to do for the day. She went to work and when she came back she'd visit him again, talking some more and letting him be when he didn't answer.

After a week of that, the boy was still silent. However, he seemed to listen to her words more attentively, and Antoinette wasn't sure if he was growing bored of being alone or if he was simply getting used to her.

In any case, one day as she left his room and went into the kitchen, she turned around thinking of what she had to do only to notice him standing in the doorway.

"Oh, I didn't hear you", she let out a surprised laugh, and he tensed slightly.

"Do you need anything?" she asked gently. The boy shook his head. He was starting to feel stupid, considering if he should maybe go back to his room and stop bothering her.

Antoinette smiled slightly, realizing what was going on. "Would you like to sit down?"

The boy didn't answer, he just kept staring at her with piercing yellow eyes beneath the mask. It was hard to tell what he was thinking at any given moment, and the mask didn't help. Neither did the silence. Neither did the staring, to be honest - for someone who grew agitated whenever she looked at him for too long, he certainly didn't have a problem with staring at others (aside from whenever she tried to talk to him, in which cases he suddenly looked everywhere else). She would have to talk to him about it someday.

Antoinette pulled out the chair closest to the door and turned around to start cutting vegetables for tomorrow's lunch. When she looked again, the boy was sitting on the chair, looking at the knife in her hand with slight unease.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked, smiling at him. He shook his head, still staring at the knife. Antoinette saw the fear in his eyes and wondered what to do. It wouldn't be very practical to just dump whole onions into the stew so she wouldn't upset him, but she wanted to find some way to make him less tense.

"I'm making some stew for tomorrow. Would you help me?" she asked.

Much to her surprise, the boy nodded for the first time that week.

"Alright, then", she looked around. She'd have to be smart about this. The boy's arms and hands still lacked the strength and precision that a normal person would have - one month with her would not make up for years of malnutrition and abuse, and so his limbs were still weak and shaky. Cutting things was not a very good idea.

"Here. Clean these peas", she said, handing him a paper bag full of green beans and a bowl.

The boy looked at the bowl, then at her.