Almond Boy

Almond Boy - 17

Elliot sits on the bench at school, munching on almonds. The day is quiet, a lot of the kids are gone on a field trip for the French V class, so it's a free day for most of them. 

Elliot's zoned out, waiting patiently for the whirring and clicking to notify him that Emma's there. 

His knee is bobbing up and down, he does that when he's nervous all the time - he used to get in trouble for banging his knee against the desk during tests. Why is he nervous? He can't quite tell.

He takes out his sketchbook and tries to sketch, but his pencil is wobbling, quivering as he draws. The drawing he starts he wants to erase almost immediately, and at the end of the sketch all he wants to do is crumple it up and throw it away. It's a portrait of a person he doesn't even remember, containing bits and pieces of people all over the place that's he's met. 

He recalls what Emma said to him about how he used to focus on drawing, how that meant he was good. He obviously wasn't focusing at all. He sees elements of people from all over, and it doesn't make much sense. 

In fact, it pisses him off. His mind was on Emma, it was on Emma a lot, and he thought at first he was drawing her. Then he wanted to stop drawing her, because she wasn't there and it was weird and it was off. 

And he put on a fucking oxygen tube on the girl he drew. Like that was the only thing that described Emma, in the whole picture of various faces combining together, the only element that was on there of Emma's truly was that goddamned oxygen tank. 

That is not her defining trait, Elliot thinks to himself. He writes an 'x' in the corner of the page to remind him to throw away the paper later. What an asshole, the picture bugs him very much. He takes his sketchbook and stuffs it in his backpack. 

Elliot takes out his binder and does his Medieval History homework. He's always been good at history, dwelling in the past is pretty simple for him and learning about it is even more intriguing. He gets done with it and sets it aside, and finds himself on his next assignment: Chemistry. He remembers what Emma said to him about questions for her if he found himself stumped, and he's about to open his mouth for a question, until he realizes that the whirring still isn't around him. 

That's when he checks his phone. It's half way through class, and Emma's still not there. 

He flips to her contact and sends her a quick text, 

"Not feeling well?" he sends her, hoping that assuming that won't offend her or anything. He knows she's not in French V which is where a lot of the kids are today, seeing as she took German as a language, so he isn't quite sure where she is at all. 

He does know that having the bench to himself isn't very appealing. How he was alone for so long before Emma he wasn't sure, he can barely remember how the days before Emma went. He got a lot more of his homework done at school, he supposes, but they were so... vague. Boring. They all blur together in a mass, whereas days with Emma stand out.

When she first came and sat down, the day she started calling him Almond-Boy, the day she got real sick and he found out she had Cystic Fibrosis. The day of Sarah Stykes, the day of the boy with the sprained wrist, the day Emma got hit in the face by a ball and it happened to land back so the kid could kick it in the goal, the day they went on a walk, the day she became the first person he willingly and thoroughly explained his condition...

The list has more, the list has memories within memories, memories of her laughing so hard that she nearly topples over, or when she snaps at people, or when she garbles up words, or when she changes subjects and asks weird questions. There are memories within memories and actions that stand out, it'd be a never ending mass of remembering.