Red Right Hand

“Why?”

He muttered, “I don’t know.”

“Why are you sad?”

The younger boy’s eyes turned towards the elder at this question like little startled butterflies. He turned his head sideways towards her. “You think I’m sad?”

“You’ve got this sadness about you,” she’d said, “Didn’t you already know?”

His eyebrows furrowed and, if under other circumstances, would’ve looked away awkwardly but he didn’t feel like averting his gaze. He felt comfortable being inches from her looks-as-if-were-sculpted nose and being able to hear the carbon dioxide flow out of her lungs. And anyway, her eyes were nice to look at – all coffee coloured and speckled with black bits.

"I've never had a clear idea of what people expected of me," he mumbled with a self-pitying smile, "But I've always known that other people are firmly convinced that I am not living up to it."

"And who are those people?" she asked quietly, acutely aware of his own breathing and his chest falling and the prickling of the grass on her un-covered ankles and how big the boy's pupils were opposite her.

"Everyone," he said wearily.

"That's an awful lot of people."