𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐈𝐒𝐇// 𝐄𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐗𝐎𝐂

𝐥. ✭ 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐒𝐇

JULY 21, 1975; CHANCE
1:04-1:10 p.m.

"Are you sad?" I asked the boy gently, not trying to spook him. He was sitting all by his lonesome on a picnic bench. The wind blew hot in the trailer park, swirling dust bunnies around my feet.

When I first saw the dark-haired boy, he was a hunched-over little thing. A crumple of dark dreariness really. His brown eyes were sharp when he shoved them up to my eye line. I had bugged him. I understood that.

Not that I particularly cared. I was a six-year-old tyrant set on finding a playmate and he was the closest thing I could find. My pickiness flew out of the door in the barren park. The plan was simply to make do and prod around the boy to see if he was worth a fun game or two.

I searched his face for potential, resulting in me only spotting his features. His face was soft and so was the rest of him despite his skinny little body.

He had a mop of black hair on top of his head, short but messy. He wore jean shorts that came to his knees and a wrinkled white tank top, soaked with sweat.

"What's all over your face?" He asked back, scrunching his nose at the brown spots flecked across my skin. "What are those?"

What are those?
Could you act more grossed out?
Geez.

My mama called my freckles angel kisses. My daddy said they came from splashing around the sun and that I ought to wear a hat more often. I wasn't so concerned with the small ones. My distaste stemmed from the ugly splotch that clung to the skin right below my temple.

A birthmark, my parents called it. They explained that I just came like that. No freak accident had caused the discoloration by my  right eye. One time a kid told me I had it because a mosquito had shitted on my face.

My daddy found me in the bathroom hours later, trying to scrub the damn thing away. The attempted erasing had only resulted in raw sensitive skin and half a bottle of citrus-scented hand soap missing from the bathroom.

Was it shit? Did it refuse to leave because an angel had latched its lips on a child's fleshy skull? Was it burned into me forever by the sun like the rest of my freckles? Or did the odd pigmentation occur because of overgrowth in my skin cells?

I couldn't answer those questions. I was six. All I knew was that I didn't like that stupid birthmark. Yet here was this boy, gawking up at me like he was trying to get a good look at a circus act. As if my face was his entertainment.

"What are you starin' at, Dumb Dumb?" My voice was harsh, meant to call him out. Kicking my jaw up, I leered down at the strange boy. "Don't you know starin' is rude?"

The scare tactics were working. He crumbled under my stare, his gaze falling down to the gritty dirt.

"Sorry," He fidgeted around in his seat, dropping his tone to a soft murmur. "I didn't mean to." Filled with a sense of achievement, I was fully prepared to turn back toward my trailer and play with my dollies by myself in my new room when he added. "I like your boots."

Grandma got me these boots
last Christmas.
They're my favorite.

The compliment changed things. It meant he noticed something about me other than that pesky smear of brown on my face. It meant that he wasn't all rotten and bad.