Looking For A Legend (Book 1)

Looking For A Legend Chapter 21 - Elijah

            Eli had lived a moderately comfortable childhood.  As comfortable as a mute boy could have been, as long as his father wasn’t angry.  His childhood home was a small row home.  It looked smaller now.  Eli sat on the tacky mustard yellow couch awkwardly.  He felt like he was in a friend’s house, waiting while the friend looked for something.  He was a stranger in this house.  It wasn’t his home anymore.  Come to think of it, Eli didn’t have a home.  This small little house occupied by his parents wasn’t his home.  His dorm room wasn’t either.  Certainly not Levi’s loft, either. 

            Levi returned from wherever Levi had gone, bringing with him mugs of coffee.  Eli dared to hope that one of them was for him. “Hear back from her yet?”

            They had stayed up much later than either brother intended to craft the right message to Valentina.   While Levi called it a night at one, Eli insisted that he couldn’t go to sleep until he found the right words.  They finally came to him at two fifteen.  He didn’t expect a message back right away, but Eli was a little disappointed that he didn’t have one yet.

            “Not yet,” Eli sighed as Levi pushed a cup of coffee into his hands.  “But she’s probably sleeping and jet lag…“ Eli’s excuses on Valentina’s behalf felt lame, even if they were probably the truth.

            “Don’t worry.  She’ll write back.” Levi settled onto the couch beside his younger brother.  When they were younger they’d spend their afternoons on the same couch, playing video games or watching cartoons, or playing charades.  Eli and Levi were an unstoppable team at charades.  Now the couch felt tiny.

            “Elijah! Levi! Who is ready for presents?!” Mrs. Coates chirped, rushing into the sitting room, still wearing her dressing gown.  She was a round little woman.  She almost looked like a hen.  With the way she nagged at her husband and sons, she pecked at them like a hen too.

            Eli made two fists, and lowered them, then made a gesture in front of his face, ending with a closed hand at his chin.

            “No! You cannot go back to sleep! It’s family time, Elijah.  Why can you be more like your brother, Elijah?  Levi isn’t complaining about being up so early.” Mrs. Coates waved an arm at Levi.  His older brother was currently yawning.

            Eli rolled his eyes.  He made a sign, extending his index finger and thumb on his forehead, and bringing it down to meet his other hand, making the same shape pointing out.   He made a fist at his chin, sticking his thumb up as he shook his head, gestured at his chest with both hands, fingers bent from his palm at a near right angle and then put the back of his hand against his cheek.  Eli put his hands parallel, and then moved them to make a wall between himself and his parents.  He finished with an improvised sign, pushing his palms outward, then holding his fingers together and inserting them into his other hand, with which he’d made a ring of his thumb and index finger.  Elijah signed quickly, and his parents couldn’t quite keep up.

            “Eli, I’m sure Mom and Dad weren’t trying to be rude, waking you up.  But, you know, you decided to come last minute, so with you on the couch in the common room… You understand right?” Levi tried to make peace.  The lack of privacy was a secondary concern to Eli.  He wasn’t embarrassed about his parents seeing him in his sleep pants, but it was an inconvenience to have to wait for the house’s only bathroom to be unoccupied to change clothes.

            “Elijah, when are you going to just use your words?” Mister Coates grumbled as he settled into his arm chair.  His father steadfastly believed that there was nothing wrong with Eli.  Nothing that “tough love” couldn’t fix.  He was a stern man, athletic in his younger days.  Elijah’s mother always told Levi that he looked like his father, but neither Eli, nor Levi ever saw it.  In their eyes, their father had always been a paunchy, balding middle aged man with a bad attitude and a short temper.