Child

Children

The next morning, Ramona gives you a beautiful outfit she has sewn out of the cuttings of her dress. You don't thank her. You don't speak at all. She knows you're thankful of everything she does for you.

You take a trip back to the police station to talk to the Chief of Police and to return her lent t-shirt. You thank her quietly and she compliments Ramona on your politeness. Ramona didn't teach you that. You came up with it on your own.

The Chief of Police is nice to you and she gives you a bunch more clothes, food and even toys. The Chief of Police puts flyers up around town. As if there's a chance your real mother is still in this city.

After a few months, Ramona decides to send you to school. You've decided to officially say you're ten years old and that your birthday is the 6th of February because that is the day Ramona found you at the train station. Going to school is difficult. No hair has grown on your body at all and your bones break much more easily than those of your peers. Ramona is fiercely protective of you, which you're okay with. The other kids should leave you alone. You did nothing wrong. You don't make any friends in the six years you go to that school.

***

You sign your own adoption papers. Before signing you think about what you should sign it as for a minute. Then you write it. Child in shaky handwriting. 

***

You're fourteen. You have a room in Ramona's house now. It's in the attic with an A-frame ceiling. You sleep on a mattress on the floor next to a shelf full of all the strangest books you've ever come across. The door is a trapdoor sort of thing with a ladder leading down to the rest of the house. It's a comfortable space. Ramona never invades it. She lets you tidy it when you want it to be tidy and doesn't complain.

Children at school say things about you. Untrue things. They connect your idiosyncrasies to other unrelated behaviours for no reason whatsoever. They know you can hear them. They want you to hear. You block out the sound of their whispering. Chanel what the teacher is saying from their mouth straight to your ears and put a wall between you and the gossipers. You used to think this was normal, but now you're wondering if you're the only kid who can bend sound like that.

There was a time when you made someone hear a car horn as if it were right next to their ear. There was a time when you made yourself hear a person talking on the other side of the courtyard about a prank they wanted to play on you. You stormed up to them, yelling and crying. You wanted them to feel pain, you wanted to put a big, heavy thing in between them and ever treating someone like this again. But it had failed. They didn't get anything. You did. You got all of your limbs broken in less than ten seconds. You got a trip to the hospital. You got a lecture from Ramona Vein about not getting into fights. They didn't get anything.

If you couldn't control sound like that, you wouldn't have gotten into a fight and gotten in trouble, but maybe the other kids would have messed with you more. You never know.

You try to listen to what the teacher is saying. You rub your arm. Trying to roughen up your skin. You know it won't work. It's not supposed to be rough skin. You know you're never going to look or feel like any of the other kids. You've never had a friend before, everyone you thought was your friend turned out to be something else.

"Child Vein." the teacher says, standing over your desk. "Where is your textbook?"

"I left it at home." you say, truthfully.

"Oh. you left it at home."

The class laughs.

"Well, if you left it at home, Vein, then you should be paying extra good attention to what I'm saying. Which, as I can see by your eyes, you are not."

The class laughs again. This time, you mess with them a little. You make it so that each one of them only hears their own laughter. They blush. They stop laughing quickly. They can see the others, but the others just look like they're smiling. The teacher doesn't notice what you did. Neither do the other students. When you leave school that day, there's a spring in your step that wasn't there before.