lost_boy | (no subject)

It was my second night in Darrow and I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing.

The first night I had shown up so late at night that the staff at the care home had bombarded me with information before bringing me up to a bedroom that was already occupied by another boy. That was nothing strange to me, I was used to sleeping in the same space with at least ten other boys, most of them piled up on animal skins, half sprawled on top of one another. But the boy was sleeping in a bed and I was expected to do the same.

The staff had asked me not to wake him and so I had quietly laid down on top of the blankets, put my head on the pillow, and proceeded to stare at the ceiling until the sun began to creep over the horizon.

When the other boy began to stir, I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. It was unfair of me, but I hadn't wanted to talk to him just yet. The night before had been strange and awful and every time I thought about Charlie and Sal I wanted to weep. I was afraid if I tried to talk to another boy just then, I would end up crying and would be unable to stop.

I slipped out during the day and looked for a way back to the island. I had longed to go back to the Other Place so I could finally grow up, but it was something I had wanted to do with Sally. She and I were supposed to grow up together and we would have taken Charlie back to his mother and he would have been happy and with his family again. But Sal was dead and I had no idea if Charlie was, too, so I searched and searched for a way back to Peter's island so I could be sure Charlie was safe and end Peter once and for all.

I didn't find anything.

When I came back to the home, no one really tried to talk to me. Some of the staff made sure I ate something for dinner and one of them told me on Monday I would have to start going to school, but I just shrugged and picked up a book and pretended to read. One of the volunteers joked around with me a bit, but he seemed distracted and he didn't even tell me to go to bed when all the other kids went upstairs. I hung around the common room for a little while longer, hoping the other boy would be asleep when I went upstairs.

I stood at the foot of my new bed for a long time before making a decision.

Working quietly, trying not to wake the other boy, I dragged all the blankets off the mattress. I left the pillow where it was, then moved toward a corner of the room and began to make a nest on the floor. The mattresses were so soft, they were impossible for me to sleep on, and even though the blankets would never been deerskin and the wood floor would never be the dirt floor of our Tree, I knew it would be better for me than the bed.

I tried to be as quiet as possible, but I soon realized the other boy had been awake all along.

Threaded | Flat

The first night, Eddie didn't think much of it. The new guy obviously came in really late, and he'd probably been told to keep quiet. So, when he'd gotten up and there was somebody's stuff in the room, a curly head of hair sticking up from the top of the covers of the bed across the room, Eddie'd given the lump under the sheets a curious look and then gone about his business.

That day, he'd stayed mostly out of the Home. Things were really weird there lately, and who wanted to spend all day at an orphanage, anyway? He had friends, he had important shit to do.

When he finally came upstairs to crash, the room was empty, and he'd kind of wondered if the guy had already moved on-- it had happened before. But the thing about Eddie was that it took him a really long time to unwind enough to fall asleep, so he was only just starting to drift off when the door creaked open and someone tiptoed inside.

One eye cracked open, he watched the other kid shuffle around the room, expecting him to climb into his bed and sleep. Instead, he watched with increasing confusion as the kid stripped the clothes off his bed and... made a blanket nest in the corner of the room.

When he realized that they were peering at each other in the dark, Eddie sat up, stage-whispering, "Hey, what are you doing?"