Outgrown (#OnceUponNow)

Stones

Oliver Razel lived in the smallest of towns in a house surrounded by gardens and towering trees. The high school was only a block away, but his mother had always insisted on home schooling. That was his adoptive mother of course, for Oliver had never known his real parents. He had no memory of their touch, their words or their warmth. Instead, he had spent the first seventeen years of his life growing up with just the woman who had adopted him in their tiny home in New England.

Oliver's mother was his best friend, granted most likely because he hardly knew anyone else. Occasionally, the neighbors from down the street would come by for dinner. There were two girls and their parents. One of the girls was Oliver's age, and the other was on the verge of turning eight. Oliver never quite knew how his mother had come about to know their neighbors so well. He figured they must have worked together at the brewery down the street.

"What are you up to?" his mother called from down the stairs. Half of Oliver's body was slumped off his bed as he lazily toggled with the controls on his Xbox controller.

"Nothing," he groaned back down the stairs before quietly adding with a sigh "like always." His room was dark, even in the middle of the day. There were blankets taped up over the windows and drawings hung on the walls that Oliver had made over the years, all of which were done using only various shades of grey. He had very few belongings. The video games that his mother had bought him only after he had basically begged on his knees lay in a rack next to his television.

Oliver was a relatively thin boy. His jeans were always ripped and his skin was paler than it should be, probably because he very rarely ever left the house to get a little sun. However, his pale skin and lanky body were not what people first noticed when they saw Oliver. It was his hair, the color of golden barley hanging just shy of his lower back. He kept it contained in one long braid that ran down and ended tied with a rubber band.

His mother's steps echoed through the thin walls of the narrow hallway as she approached his room.

"What would you like for dinner? I can go pick some of the vegetables from the garden outside and put together a salad. Maybe with some chicken?"

Oliver rolled his eyes and shifted in his bed so that his back was to her.

"I don't care, just anything other than salad from the garden. You've made that the past three nights," he snarled, clenching his jaw in anger at her.

"Why are you getting so mad Oliver?" she asked with concern in her voice, taking a step closer to him.

"BECAUSE Mom! I want to go out to eat. Like... to a restaurant? Ever heard of one?"

"Oh come on Oliver! I told you last month, there is no point in going out when we have perfectly good food here."

Oliver threw his controlled down and threw his blankets over his head.

"Its not fair," he mumbled. "I want to have friends. I want to go do stuff. I'm sick of being in this house all the time."

"Well I told you Oliver," his mother said. "I will bring you out to town to get a haircut if you want."

When Oliver had no reply, his mother sighed and left his room to go pick the vegetables for the salad. The truth was, Oliver had thought about his mother's offer to go to the barbershop for a while. He wanted to go to one because he had never been, but he absolutely could not cut his hair.

Oliver believed that his hair was what made him, well, Oliver. Having no friends and no one to talk to, he found it hard to find little things about him that made him feel unique. His biggest fear was being like everyone else, which was ironic since he longed so badly to be normal and do normal teenager things. His hair had become a comfort to him through all the years of being alone. It was his security blanket, and he knew he could never part from it. He would not be Oliver anymore without his long blonde braid.