Battle Scars

thirteen

The rest of Wednesday, and all of Thursday and Friday consisted of shitty therapy sessions, card games, dirty looks from Emily, and gross hospital food.

Emily's annoyance still bugs me, but not as much as prior. As far as I can see, she's getting over the fact that Ethan enjoys my presence over hers.

Connor ended up being right about the flashlights in your face at night. Damn, it's annoying. As if anxiety doesn't help enough with failure to fall asleep.

But overall, I can say I'm fairly happy.

Happy.

It's been forever since that word could fit into the category of my mood.

Why, you may ask?

Well, the answer is simple,

There's a boy...

.     .     .

"And that's how to play solitaire. The correct way."

Ethan looks at me with that sideways grin on his face.

He's been teaching me how to play multiple different types of card games. He told me two days ago that card games are really the only thing we can do around here when we have free time, besides, you know, playing basketball or thinking ourselves into a bad mood or something.

"Now you try." Ethan shuffles the cards and places them in front of me.

I remember exactly how he set them up. Seven cards out in front of me. Numbers of cards counting down from five in each row, then the rest of the cards in my upper left corner.

"Hell yeah, you got that part down! Now begin playing. See if you remembered what I taught you."

Ethan is different. Different from any other boy I've ever met. He's caring and charming, but also likes to set goals for other people.

Like what he told me yesterday..

~

"Tomorrow, I'd like you to share in group."

"Share what?"

Ethan shrugged. "Something. Anything. Related to you, though."

"Soooo...my little sister?"

He looked down and smiled, shaking his head. "Very funny."

"I know, right. I should be a comedian." My sarcasm made him chuckle.

He took a few steps closer to me until his face was about a foot away from mine. My heart rate grew, seeing his naturally glossy green eyes look slightly down at me. His defined dimples resting in his cheeks.

"I want you to open up to us. Tell us all a little about yourself, your life...maybe even what brought you here."

I half-smiled and looked down.

"Nobody's going to care about my life, though. Everyone in here seems so... self-absorbed."

Ethan gently put his hand on my left arm.

"I'll care." He said.

"Time for dinner!" A nurse, Mary, yelled, interrupting Ethan and I.

"Are you gonna make your first move?"

I snap back to the present. Ethan sitting across from me, with cards stacked in front of me.

"Are you okay?" He asks.

Whenever he asks that question, he has this look on his face. The same exact expression every time.

I'm used to people asking me that question. My mom, my teachers, the nurses. But they don't actually care. They don't actually want to know if I'm okay or not. They just feel like it's the right thing to do as an adult.

But Ethan...

Ethan actually cares. He actually wants to know if I'm emotionally alright.

Like I said, Ethan is different.

I give him a smile and nod my head. "I'm good." I say softly.

Another thing,

He knows when I'm lying.

"It's lucky if you start your deck with as many aces as possible, remember?"

Ethan flips the cards nearest to me on the front side. Random cards show, except one ace on the far right.

His eyeballs move up to look at me and he smiles. "It's a good start! You must have a little bit of luck in you."

I raise an eyebrow as I count this to be the sixth time I've heard him talk about luck and being lucky. "Why are you always bringing up luck?" I ask.

Ethan sits back and adjusts his lip ring, as if he was getting into story mode.

"I'm a believer of luck. And karma. If you've performed positive actions or had positive intentions in the past, it'll eventually catch up with you in years time. Or in a few seconds. Same goes if you perform negative actions."

I snicker, half mocking him. "I'm not quite following you on this one."

Ethan takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes, jokingly sighing at my ignorance. "Let's say when you were ten, you helped an old lady cross a busy street, but it made you late to get to school."

I nod.

"You're going to carry that good feeling around with you for the rest of the day."

"What does this have to do with good karma?" I ask.

Ethan slips his glasses back behind his ears and places his arms back on the table.

"Once you do something nice for someone else, it may backfire on you in a good way. Let's say on the rest of the way to school, you find a ten dollar bill on the ground, or you end up not being marked late for school that day. That's an example of good karma."

I slowly nod, starting to understand his point.

"Karma could boomerang back to you later on in life, or it could be right there in front of you. Karma could be amazing, or it could be deadly, either way, it exists to teach you a life lesson."

"Deadly...do you mean if you pushed the lady in the middle of the street and then ran off, you could be hit by a car in that second?"

Ethan laughs. "I mean, that's one way to put it."

His theory still isn't one hundred percent clear to me, but I get the idea. At least he's creative.

Ethan moves the ace to the upper part of the table. "Aces in solitaire are good, remember?"

I smile and nod. "I guess I'm lucky."