Hannah and Carter are waiting for me again.
I miss them both so very much, and yet because I'm under the control of this stupid Pied Piper serum the only time I can see them is when I dream. When I'm awake, my body is forced to endure Dr. Knight's testing, and that alone is enough to drive anyone crazy.
Little details are starting to become hazy, like the way their voices sounded, and it scares me. I'm worried that the psycho witch is altering my memories, making me forget them. I fight it as hard as I can by focusing on the clear details.
Hannah's scent, for example, is fresh in my mind - a clean, bright smell, like a field of wildflowers after the rain. Carter's touch for drawing, the way he could perfectly capture anything on paper. He was an amazing artist.
Suddenly, I'm not in Dr. Knight's lab anymore. I'm in a memory, something I remember very well. The first time I ever met Carter.
It is about noon, a rare clear day somewhere in Seattle, Washington. Sunshine streams down on the playground behind an elementary school, gleaming off the play structures as the sharp ringing of a bell echoes across the schoolyard. Gray doors are flung open as a flood of children from kindergarten to third grade spills out.
Most of the students head to the playground equipment - swings, slides, monkey bars, merry-go-rounds, seesaws. One little boy, with an unruly mop of curly hair, heads over to the shade of a tree, sitting on a park bench, and finds a nice strong stick with a pointed end. Pulling a water bottle from his backpack, he sprinkles some on the dirt to dampen it and begins to draw.
Flowers and birds erupt in the dirt as a beautiful garden slowly springs to life under the little boy's unusually perceptive eyes. Sometimes he smudges things with his foot or pauses to re-dampen the soil. When he's finished, he traces a sloppy CK in the corner the way he was taught to in school and surveys his handiwork.
Good enough for the vault, he thinks, and takes a mental picture.
The ground quakes with the pounding of feet as a group of boys comes running over. He calls them The Pack, because they remind him of a book he once read about wolves and the way they always travel in a group. The leader of this group of boys is named Steven - he is the Alpha, the curly-haired kindergartener decides.
There are three other boys besides Steven, and they are all much bigger than the curly-haired artist. (He isn't surprised; they are in first grade, after all.) Steven takes a moment to study the drawing on the ground before he grabs the front of the artist's shirt.
"This is garbage!" he says disdainfully. "What kind of sissy boy draws flowers and birds? That's girl stuff!"
"Yeah, girl stuff," jeer the other members of The Pack. They all laugh as Steven pulls the kindergartener off the picnic bench. He doesn't even protest - this happens all the time. Steven and The Pack will laugh at him, maybe push him around a little, and then leave. It's normal, almost tradition.
But Steven breaks tradition today. He shifts his grip so that he is standing behind the artist, and they are both facing the drawing. Without much effort, he forces the curly-haired boy to his knees. One of The Pack's other members takes the water bottle and douses the ground, turning it into a muddy mess. Even so, the drawing is still fairly clear.
Then, without warning, Steven shoves the kindergartner's face into the muddy ground. The artist makes a soft grunting noise as he's shoved into the muck. When he's pulled back up, gasping for air, there is only a brief respite before he's being slammed back into the mud again. This goes on for a few more minutes, each member taking a turn to shove him, before The Pack grows bored. They throw him to the ground and run off to find something new to play.
The kindergartner doesn't move, he just lies there amidst the muddy mess that was once his garden. He doesn't cry, either. He just is, a muddy mess in the middle of a spectacular disaster.
More footsteps approach, faster and lighter. Another boy squats down and looks at the kindergartener. He's bigger than the artist is, too - clearly a first-grader.
"Are you okay?" the boy asks. He is wearing a plaid shirt open over a t-shirt with a car on it. The kindergartener doesn't respond. He simply closes his eyes and waits for the pain of a punch or a shove.
It never comes.
The other boy scoops him up and props him lightly against the tree. Then he takes off the plaid shirt and sets it on the picnic bench. He pulls the kindergartener's shirt off and turns it inside out, wiping as much mud as he can off of the little boy's face and out of his hair. Then he crumples the shirt into a ball and pulls the boy to his feet.
"Here - wear this," he says, and he's offering the little curly-haired boy his plaid shirt. The boy takes it hesitantly, and the first grader helps his fumbling fingers do up the buttons.
"Thank," the boy mumbles quietly. Most people think he is mute, because he rarely speaks. He can talk, but his grammar is very poor and so he usually doesn't.
"Of course, you're welcome!" The older boy ruffles the younger one's curls. "My name is Justin, I'm in first grade. Who are you?"
"Kin-der-gar," the little boy mumbles, and then holds up ten fingers.
"Kindergarten, then?" Justin says. "Cool. What's your name?"
The little boy points to the car on Justin's t-shirt and says, "Ter."
"Carter?" Justin asks. The boy nods, and his tiny face breaks into an amazing grin, revealing dimples that almost no one realized were there.
Justin smiles as well, slinging his arm around Carter's shoulder. "I think we're going to be very good friends, Carter," he says, and Carter's curls bounce crazily as he nods his head excitedly in agreement.
I snap back to reality when Dr. Knight stabs the needle into my leg. Bracing myself for the pain, I keep my mind fixed on that memory of the day I met Carter. I was his savior that day, and he looked at me like a big brother - a hero. And as the needle slides into my body, I decide that that's what I need right now - a hero.
But since I know that one isn't coming, I'll guess I'll just have to be my own.
