by Erin Leger

Created on: April 11, 2009   Last Updated: April 12, 2009

Fingertips cooling slowly, he twitched forward and away, tracing the image of a downturned mouth in the mirror before him. Hurming to himself he imagined who it could be looking back so curiously. The eyes, brown and almost familiar, caressed his innermost thoughts looking frightened and beautifuly melancholy.

A sigh escaped the onlooker's lips and seemed to startle them both and something told the boy to turn away before anything bad happened. The same that always steered him from danger, keeping him in this bubble of isolation and complete security.

Five strides across the room and six more to another corner. Touch dresser, smooth, slide fingers along rough wall five paces and take a seat on the edge of a once white sheet slumped across a creaking matress. Someone reminding him of his mother whispered closely that he should make his bed but it was not enough to move him. He only listened with two fingers on his temple. More voices chimed in gently prodding. A mexican man and a brittish woman argued over the boy's use of the early morning hours with a mildly condescending edge to their echoing voices.

The unmistakeable sound of a latch and hinges moved the boy's eyes upward to rest on creased and caring features.

"Will you be going to school today, Justin?" Her voice trailed off and blended with the echoes inside the boy's head as it moved mechanically up and down.

The door clicked closed and disappeared into the fog that inevitably rolled in at this point. The boy thought it odd that his parents would not have taken care of it and wondered momentarily if it would be worth it to collect tropical plants.

Distant brown eyes searched the floor slowly, automatically, settling on an always-packed black heap of a bag that was robotically hoisted onto a premanently hunched shoulder. Another glance into the mirror as the door moved into view.

In the kitchen, not hungry, the smell of coffee is detected and followed.

"You're. Late."

Nobody spoke. But the voice had been noted and nodded at. The floor shook slightly in the way it often did when the boy was late to force him toward the door. He wondered when his parents had installed that and tried to steady his cup on his way out.

On the bus. Noise meets noise in an uninteligable social cacaphony blurring function trailing. The hum blends into the hum in the boy's head. Blackout. Trees flow by. Blackout. Diesel smeel assaults the boy's senses, his eyes blink blindly, stinging.

Fingertips trace an odd jagged opening on an empty bus

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