Message in a Bottle [LGBTQ+] [ONC 2024]

Chapter Fourteen

The paper from Samuel's letter rustled in Eli's shirt pocket as he fidgeted in place. Across the table, his parents watched him and Victoria in the silence that settled over the room like a blanket. Eli looked at his parents, noting the small furrow in his mother's eyebrows and that same look of concern he had seen every day for the past few weeks. His father didn't show the same concern. He sat as stoic as ever, looking past Eli rather than at him.

"I just don't think it's a good idea," his mother said. She placed her hands on the dark wood of the table in front of her. "You're still recovering, Eli. What if something were to happen?"

"Victoria can go with me. I need to do something other than sit in this house or watch the chickens roam around outside. It'll just be for a few hours, that's all."

"I think a change of scenery might help, and he could do with walking a little further than the farmhouse."

"Please, Mama? Just a few hours?"

"Maybe give it another week at least, just to be on the safe side. You're still struggling with your walking and I don't think you're ready yet."

Eli sighed, slumping against the wooden chair of the dining table. Despite the bruises having faded, his vision returning to normal, and the headaches fading to nothing more than a dull ache, his mother wouldn't relent to a short trip to the pond. He understood why, at least he thought he did. It had been a trip away from the house that led to his attack in the first place, but those responsible were imprisoned. They weren't around to hurt him anymore.

All he wanted was to go out to the pond, to the one place he ever really felt calm, and to finally be able to sit down and talk with Samuel. He wanted to do something normal for the first time in weeks. The opportunity to sit down and talk with Samuel was too good of one to miss, but he didn't want to go against his mother, not when she had spent so much time helping him recover from the bruises and nightmares that the attack left behind.

His eyes met his fathers for the first time in several days. They might never have been on the same page, a fact that Eli was all too aware of, but he hoped that he might at least support him with his endeavour to go beyond the house. Eli's heart drummed against his ribcage as he kept his eyes focused on his fathers, neither of them wanting to look away.

The door to the house slammed open and Constance ran into the small room with the force of a winter storm. She barrelled into their mother, wrapping her arms around her.

"How was school?" their mother asked, hugging her back.

"Good. Mr Fredricks gave me a letter." Constance shuffled through the books tucked under her arms and produced a white envelope. "It's about Eli."

Eli frowned. In all the weeks he'd been away from school, he hadn't heard anything from Mr Fredricks. "What is it?"

"I don't know." Constance shrugged. "He just said to give it to Mama."

Their mother opened the envelope, the frown on her face deepening as she read the scrawled words. From across the table, Eli couldn't read a single line, but he reasoned that it couldn't have been good news by her face. Her eyebrows drew together and her eyes flickered towards his father for a split second, a movement he was the only one to notice.

Eli looked at Victoria, who sat in silence and looked a little out of place at the dining table despite being the only frequent visitor to the house. She had been there as a voice of reason and support to his trip to the pond, but neither of them had expected the request to be shut down so quickly.

"What does Mr Fredricks want?" his father asked, his voice gruff. He didn't want to be there anymore than Eli wanted him there.

"It's about the exam." His mother placed the letter on the table, running her fingers over it. "The one he wanted Eli to take."

Eli swallowed, his heart drumming against his ribcage and a slight tremble settling into his fingers. Were it not for the exam, he never would have run out of the house that day and up at the stream. He never would have been on his own when he bumped into Peter Upton and his friends. He'd all but forgotten about it, knowing he wouldn't be able to take it and thinking too much time had passed.

"He needs to know if Eli will be taking the exam, or if he needs to get someone else. We have a week to inform him of our decision," she said.

A thick, heavy silence settled over the room. Eli waited for the explosion, the anger that his father had displayed the night he first heard about the exam. His father had been dead set that Eli would be leaving school and spending his time working on the farm, yet he had no issues with Victoria helping him study the material he'd been missing.

But the explosion never came.

His father stood up with an air of calm that Eli didn't think him capable of. He tucked the back of shirt into his trousers, readjusted the braces that kept his trousers up, and grabbed his dark brown jacket from the back of his chair. Eli watched him pull the jacket on, his fathers eyes looking over everyone at the room, including Constance who was unaware of the tension.

"Let the boy go fishing tomorrow."

With that, his father left through the still-open front door and disappeared across the yellowing-grass towards the upperfield. Eli's heartbeat echoed in his ears in a repetitive drumming sound that broke the silence followed by his fathers sudden departure.

When he was angry, his father could be scary to the point of Eli wanting to run and hide like a child, but there was something even more menacing when he didn't raise his voice. His calm tone was somehow all the more frightening.

Eli looked at the letter from Mr Fredricks resting on the top of the table with his untidy scrawl staring back at him. Everything started with a letter.

~~~

First Published - April 21st, 2024