Almond Boy

Almond Boy - 25

"Elliot?" 

Emma is prepared to tell Elliot to go home. His face is only paling evermore to show the blue veins that decorate his cheeks, and he has red blotches crawling up his neck. His breath comes out in shudders and he brings his knees up to his chin only to kick his heels down off the leather seats moments later - a process he keeps repeating. 

Then he smiles at her. 

"I'm okay." 

"Elliot, really - "

"No, I'm good." 

Elliot keeps smiling at her, and it isn't even a reassuring smile. However, it's a smile telling her that no matter what she says, he's staying. 

Emma looks at her reflection in the window. She wanted to make a good first impression, but she realized that the only impression she is able to make nowadays is a sick one. Mascara does not cover up the blue in her eyelids, tinted chap-stick doesn't conceal the welts on her raw lips, and her hair is so wilted that there is no style that will make it look pretty. 

Sometimes she looks at herself in the mirror and wants to scream. She looks so lifeless nowadays, but she wants to assure the world that she isn't lifeless. She still is herself, the same Emma, the same band geek who reads too many books and has too many guilty pleasures. The girl who will just about kill for chocolate and enjoys Mathematics and Chemistry and was excited to take Physics. She used to see these things in herself, in her strawberry hair and her big eyes and her Einstein T-Shirts and corduroy shoes. 

Now all she sees are red ends of her nostrils where her oxygen tubes stick in and the pale quality to her waxy skin. 

"We're here," Elliot says. Emma jumps up, only to bring herself back down in her seat when she sees Elliot. 

Elliot is huddled against the corner, looking outside the car window but at the same time hiding behind the frame of the door. Like a little boy, almost, when they know they've done something wrong. 

"Elliot -"

"Emma, you keep looking at me like that and I'll lock you in the car and go by myself just to prove I can do it." 

Emma furrows her eyebrows. "How stupid do you think I am that I'd allow you to lock me in the car?" 

"That's what you get out of what I just said?" 

Emma smiles and looks at her mom. 

"You try to have fun, make friends - "

Emma stops her mother with a kiss on her mother's cheek. "I'll have fun. We'll have major booze parties with the kids with liver problems and then I'll smoke cigarettes and give Elliot here a double cheeseburger."

"Sounds like a good time," Emma's mother rolls her eyes. "Elliot, watch out. Make sure she doesn't smoke any cigarettes." 

"If she does I'll just jab her in the ribs, huh?" Elliot smiles wickedly. Emma's mother, despite sighing, smiles. 

"Do I need to come in with you two?" 

"Nope. Have fun, my parental!" Emma says. She grabs her travel oxygen-cart from the back of the car and sets it on the ground. Elliot shuts the back of the car for Emma, then the two walk around the front of the car and bang the hood, telling Emma's mother she can leave. They make it to the sidewalk and Elliot stops, his gaze glued to the building. 

The community building is a massive building, and it doesn't look very warm and inviting. It's a washed out white, like the color of an aged sheet. It has windows all across, which Elliot was sure would be comforting from the inside but from the outside it just seemed frightening - like it was watching him panic.