49*
Red Skys and Royal Cards
My eyes grew wide and I shot up from where I was sitting, spinning around to see who the intruder was. I wasn’t expecting anyone to come up here. They were all busy talking. I didn’t think I would be missed much.
“You scared me.” I said to the boy a little breathless.
“Sorry.” Came his immediate response as he walked over to me.
He has been here less than a day and already he acts so casual, like we’ve known each other a long time. But no matter how casual he is, his walls will not crumble so easily. He doesn’t show emotion and even the small flashes of emotion that cross his face are almost impossible to detect.
What was he even doing up here? I don’t think any of the boys even know about this place, so how did he find me? What was he doing up here? And why was he apologizing?
“What are you doing up here, Kris?” I asked him as I took a seat on the bench again.
He didn’t reply right away. Kris walked over to the ledge and looked down before looking up at the vast red sky. He didn’t once look back at me as he looked around the roof. His face never changing from the scowl he kept on and the dark eyes that looked over at everything.
He didn’t seem to even be listening to me, he was in his own world as if I didn’t exist here. He wandered around the roof just looking around, no words or sounds at all. I smiled as I watched him; he liked it up here, that was something I knew for a fact.
He stopped walking when he came to the ledge right in front of the bench where I was sitting. Turning around, his cold, dark eyes met mine and held me in them. They conveyed more emotion than I thought they would. Hate, hurt, helplessness and sadness. Something had happened to him. Something that made him feel things he never wanted to feel. His eyes told more of a story about him then I had gotten in words.
“You have made a difference to each of the boys in this house. You have made them see things and understand things they might never have known before. You, Sky, have gotten into a place where no one else has ever been able to go to before.” He said matter-of-factly. No emotion for me to understand how I was supposed to take this comment, no hint as to what he was trying to get to.
“I want them to be happy, I want all of you to be happy. Is that something bad?” I wanted to know what he found so wrong about all of this.
“It will only be bad if someone gets hurt. Things can be like this, but in the end someone will get hurt.” He answered, “And I can tell you that there is nothing you can do to ever make me happy like those boys inside. No matter how much you try, there is nothing you can do to mend what has already been done.”
Whatever I thought in the past about what could have happened to these boys was nothing that could have prepared me for the amount of pain that unknowingly leaked through Kris’s voice at this moment. Whatever happened to him was so much more than anything I could even think of.
He wasn’t just hurt physically. Somehow, someone managed to damage him emotionally, someone took away the one thing he cared for the most. Someone destroyed his spirit beyond repair.
I can only make someone feel safe if I act kindly and caringly. I can only make someone feel happy if I show them the joy in the world. I can only make someone feel like they belong if I include them. I cannot take away pain, or memories; I can help someone forget them by making new memories that outshine the old ones.
I cannot heal a broken spirit. No one can. Only the person whose spirit is broken can repair it of their own free will. No matter how much I want to help Kris, I know I can do nothing if he doesn’t want help. I can’t do anything if I don’t know what happened, and even then there is very little I am able to do to help him. I want these boys to be happy and have a life they never thought they could have, but from what I have gotten from Kris, helping him will be close to impossible.
He didn’t let me talk, he spoke up the moment I was about to give my reply, “Don’t bother trying to do anything.”
“I won’t.” I stated to him. And for the first time, I
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