Part Two.

“Thank you, thanks.”

Is everything okay?

Flustered, he tensed his neck and walked off towards his grandmother. I saw her whispering to him, apprehensively stroking his arm with a concerned form of sadness in her touch. Shuffling his way through the crowd, guiding his grandmother, Ellard Smith appeared untouched, as if this wasn’t the first time he’d been greeted with misfortune. For the first, and last time, he was exactly as he seemed.

After breaking my stare, I gradually proceeded down the hallway towards the outside. It was a crisp chilled day, the kind that reddened your nose with its frosty glazed air. Walking home through the stabbing cold, I recalled Ellard’s jade-stricken eyes. It was then that I realized.

There’s something about those eyes.

And there was. It was as if someone precisely blended each shade of green to the perfect degree of beauty, hidden behind a sea of lashes perfectly arched that granted one the privilege to look inside. Ellard’s eyes were soft and kind as they looked out upon a world that merely looked past him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just wandered; whether or not he knew where he was going was hidden behind his eyes.

The frozen winds blew through my jacket striking my ears, forcing a red tint upon my skin. Normally the cold would have irritated me, but today was clearly much different than the rest. Approaching my street, I turned the corner keeping my eyes focused on the sidewalk avoiding the gusting cold from reaching them. It was only until the winds settled down that I glanced up at place that I called home. I called it home, but it was merely a house. Most of the kids in my school would classify me as one of “them”, them meaning more fortunate than the rest, but they were wrong. Since when did the size of a house determine someone’s fortune? Our fortunes tell our futures, and if my house is any indication of what is in store for the rest of my life then I want no part of it. Hollow and empty; if that’s more fortunate than the rest then there must be some sort of housing problem in this town.

There wasn’t much conversation within my household. I usually retired to my room to toil over the mountainous stacks of homework until dinner, which we forcibly ate around our large mahogany dining room table. Until then no one disrupted each other, just continuing to live our lives. No questions asked, no questions answered.