Almond Boy

Almond Boy - 30

Emma had never spent time in another boy's room. 

Wait, that was a lie. She was supposed to play seven minutes in heaven when she was in eighth grade and found herself locked in the host boy's bedroom with Benji Gomez (who was not to be her partner) who had also ran away from who he was supposed to be with. Benji was crying. She crawled out the window and ran home. 

That was when Emma became determined to always have an escape route. However, Stitch made that impossible. Its wheezing, its clicking, its overall weight. It would be escape and die or stay and suffer if she were ever caught in something like that again. Glancing over at Elliot, who was uncomfortably straightening pictures and shutting his closet door, she didn't feel the need for an escape pod. 

For starters, she didn't think anything was going to go too wrong. 

Secondly, though, it'd be a pretty pathetic display, two sick kids, one trying to go, one trying to stop the other. Anyone healthy in the area would probably be unsure whether to laugh or cry. 

She made herself laugh at that sight. 

Elliot's room was dark and cool and calming. His mom had surely hung the curtains which were black-out curtains, the kind of material Emma expected to see where the sun stayed out at night. It was the first time she didn't feel the Florida sun beat in and make her heart race. It was, however, a little dusty, and she found it slightly difficult to breathe, but she didn't want to tell Elliot that. 

Papers were everywhere. Lots of them had math problems done in pen that had been scratched out, and after looking over them for a moment, she realized it was at her suggestion because these were the homework pages that he had done with her over the phone. Over the phone he was calm and collected when she corrected him, but these were angry scribbles, almost as if he was trying to black out the mistake entirely. 

He never switched to pencils, however, and she could see why. They were precious, devoted to his sketching. Sketches hung on clothespin above the spot on the floor he did homework at, with a lamp plugged in taken from the nightstand she supposed. Methodical but fluid, the pencil lines in the paper did not seem like practice sketches, rather an artistic style that he preferred. Her favorite she saw was that of a bird. Elliot told her that was his mom's favorite too. 

Even with all of the papers and the furniture, it still felt minimal. Hung items did not seem to suffocate, but appeared to fit naturally. There was no clutter, but that seemed impossible anyways, because there were four trash cans in his room. Nothing inside of them smelled or anything. Three were filled with pages, pages among pages of failed sketches and broken pencils. One was filled with medical equipment, bandages and compressors and a broken cooling pad. 

"Sorry for the mess." 

"S'okay." 

Patting the curtains to peer outside, she realized he had a prime people watching view. His room peered into the kitchen of his neighbors. However, it also managed to get quite a bit of sunlight. She shut the curtain and sat on the bed. 

"Making yourself comfortable?"

The joke fell without a fight, she only reacted with a breath. Looking over to see what he was doing, she found her gaze on his palms and fingers as he picked his pill case apart. 

His dresser was not a typical boy's dresser. He had several prescriptions lined up in a row, as well as a pill crusher that appeared to have not been used in years. There were also plastic cups and liquids, and Vick's Vapo Rub. The mirror behind it only made it worse, looking like the boy ran a back-alley drug clinic. 

"Emma." 

His tone was dark, low like his laugh but without the breathiness. It commanded attention, but Emma didn't believe he meant it to.