you're laughing too much

(i)

.

[a snapshot.

three little children, playing on the swings. one gets knocked off, and they laugh; the game repeats. the sun smiles in the shadows of their faces and everything is right with the world, for they will not allow the world to wrong them. they are happy. it is more than any of them ever wanted.]

.

[fast forward, three years later.]

Three children, they aren't as little anymore. One of them smacks the other on the shoulder, the one left out snorts at their idiocy. It's a routine they hope never break, internally, because everything that they are is held within each other's hands and painted in the colours of a dire summer.

[loop.]

The third one, the one left out, he stills.

He pauses, and he remembers.

He sees the grin lurking in the sweep of her blonde hair and the ease ridden in his wide shoulders. He recalls their voices, faded out by the passage of time and yet clear as the day he first heard them. He knows that they are watching him, but he knows that they are gone. They play back, over and over again, as if on a broken tape recorder chipped at the edges and creased out by the mud of a season long passed.

None of it is fair.

(but sometimes, he thinks, as he stares outside into the gray of a dry winter, some of it might just be.)

.

His name is Felix. If you ever met him, the first thing you would note about him would be his red hair.

The next thing would be his pallor.

If you asked the sixteen-year-old what he did to make it that pale, he would smile his soft smile and answer, "We never did go outside that much." And you would have to squint to see the forcedness of his smile in the clenched line of his jaw, the way his feet would begin to tap a seemingly random tune -- you would have to really know him to see the lie flashing in his eyes.

But that's the problem, wasn't it?

No one really knew him anymore.

.

There was one time in music class where Mr. Guinozzera would ask each of their favourite songs and make them explain why, in the best way they could.

When he asked Felix in that booming voice of his, the redhead simply gave a quiet smile and said that it was a song they'd named 'Three Little Children'. He said it was his favourite song as a child, and that he never bothered to sing to another one. Since nobody had heard of it before, Mr. Guinozzera asked him what the song sounded like.

"Three children, laughing in the grass," he would sing, a strange look in his eyes. "Three little children, playing on the swings. What do they see, in the corner? Is it the moon, or the stars? What they see, in the end, looming up afar; it is the smile of all their lies, yes, the smile of all their lies."

The redhead would laugh. "Three little children, sleeping on the ground," he sang, and it was as if he was challenging you with the way he looked around. "And none of them ever wanted to look back up."

Mr. Guinozzera didn't ask, after that.

.

Felix Thawson was a hard boy to find.

He would evade the smartest of bullies, skirting around unseen corners and other times hiding in plain sight, the smile on his face disarming anyone who happened to pass him by. His red hair was evening out to a dark auburn, enough to be distinctive but only when he wished it to.