Almond Boy

Almond Boy - 6

Emma sits down and Elliot trails in after her. Elliot grabs his backpack and pulls out his bag of almonds, but leaves everything else inside. 

Emma grabs a bag herself that is full of trail mix.  

"Do you like any other nuts?" Emma asks, fishing to maybe grab a few for him. Elliot shrugs. 

"Yeah, but not as much as I like almonds." 

Emma drops the nuts back in the bag and grabs an almond and an M&M instead. She grabs his arm and twists it so his palm is up, and drops the two little pieces from her trail mix bag in his palm. 

"I think I've got plenty, and I don't need the M&M. Thanks, though." 

Elliot's zoning out as he sits on the bench. His doctor's appointment the other day only took away a pill and gave him another, and this one tends to make him a little foggy. 

He'll get used to it, he got used to all the other ones. 

"It's dark chocolate, heart healthy."

Elliot's attention snaps at that: heart healthy. He looks over at Emma who has a smile on her lips and her eyebrows quirk like she's the next Sherlock Holmes. 

"'Cause that's what it's all about, right? Being heart healthy?" she asks. 

"Who told you -"

"No one told me, Elliot. I figured it out. You cling to almonds like people going blind cling to carrots, desperately trying to change something. My question is, is it working?"

Elliot stares at Emma for a moment, blinking at her, unsure how to connect his thoughts going in his mind. He stares at all the almonds in his bag, and can't help but wonder how much they really are helping. 

Emma's eyebrows furrow and she takes one of his almonds and tosses it at his face. "I wasn't trying to make you lose faith in your almonds. I was just wondering, sorry." 

"No, it's fine," he says. He takes the almond that was thrown at him and eats it, then sighs. "I don't know if they are helping, Emma. I know that if they are, they aren't helping enough." 

Emma's face pales and she looks down at the ground before going back to her bag of trail mix. 

Emma never did like reailty, so having Elliot's reality eek into her mind seems to tear the ceiling of her world and create black hole sucking everything out of it, including her words. 

Elliot doesn't try to speak again, either.