The Boy Under the Coat

Nathaniel Anderson, girls would giggle at the sound of this name, boys would tremble and crumble with jealousy, and teachers and parents would have fits of anger and even confusion. As for me, I would just cringe. Nathaniel is one of those boys you always knew growing up, he was that kid around the block. I was never close to him, I just watched him from afar, I was always intrigued by him although I never liked him. Nathaniel and I grew up in the same small Catholic school, we had gone there all of our lives. Usually at Lyndhurst kids just went along with what the nuns told us, we never went against their word, we just took what they said as law and didn't question it. Not Nathaniel however, ever since we were young he always would ask the taboo questions of "but how do you know for sure?", "is there any real proof?", oh and my personal favorite "how can god just exist?" They always just brushed him off, now if this was anyone else's kid who's parents were working middle class and struggling to pay the 10,000 dollar a year tuition, their kid would be expelled. Luckily in Nathaniel's case his parents owned basically the entire city with all the banks in it. Rumor has it Nathaniel lives in a huge mansion, although no one really knows. See Nathaniel was always that kid who would disappear at lunch, swing by himself at recess, and when school let out every Friday he was history until we returned to school Monday. He was very much of a loner. No one had ever actually been to his house. It was locked up behind acres of trees and a huge iron fence, custom crafted and imported from Italy of course.

Now that I think about it I don't actually think Nathaniel had any friends to begin with. His head was always in a different book, or he was always plugged in with his head phones listening to who knows what kind of music. No one knew much about that boy, but that he was quite odd and always went against any kind of rules set in place.