i. caramel boy
he was eight when he met him.
rossi was six. and small. and thin. and he had just moved from korea to america and his english vocabulary was narrowed down to a very shaky, very unintelligible hello.
conversations with six year old rossi went typically like this:
"hello, rossi, how are you?"
in which he would reply with:
"hello!"
the conversation would pause, the other person would frown, or shake their head, or mumble, or try again.
"how old are you?"
in which he would reply with a slightly confused and vaguely disinterested:
"hello?"
it went on like that for two years, until his parents had found a preschool that would take rossi in, even for his lack of the english language.
on rossi's first day, he said, "HELLO!"
the teacher smiled and coaxed him inside, all the while he mumbling hello to everyone and everything he saw. the teacher was saying something, but all he could focus on were her thin lips and red stained teeth. she smelt like apples and something crisp. like burnt toast.
she sat him down on a yellow─or was it purple?─square in the outer edge of the circle. he crossed his bony knees beneath himself and picked at a scab on his ankle. my mother always told him to never pick him his scabs, because with every scab he picked, a flower died. rossi loved flowers.
he stopped picking the scab.
rossi wondered if the teacher knew he didn't understand what she was saying. it would be three more months until he grasped the letters of the alphabet. two more until he could say, "hello, ass."
(which he then adapted from saying 'hello' to 'hello, ass' which wasn't very nice, his mother told him later that evening when rossi yelled it to his father )
and then, one day, there was a new boy.
rossi could now say more than twenty things in english and count to ten, which he thought was pretty cool.
anyways, the new boy came in. he had a head of really thick and curly black hair and skin like rossi's favorite candy, melted caramel. he wondered if it tasted the same, so when the boy sat down next to him, rossi leaned over and bit his shoulder.
"ow!" the boy shrieked, tumbling back. tears welled in his eyes. he started to sob.
rossi screamed. "YOU ARE NO CANDY!"
the teacher scuttled ( that's really the only way to explain her walking ) over and picked up the caramel boy with his chocolate curls. rossi was sent to 'let's cool down and take a break with fun cube!' ( which was really a time out station where one stared at a cardboard ice cub for thirty five minutes )
"h─he bit me. i'm dying. i'm dying. i'm DYING." rossi could hear the caramel boy scream.
no, rossi thought. he dead!
but the caramel boy didn't die. he got an ice pop and two minutes later took a 'well needed' nap, his bottom lip wobbling even in his sleep.
rossi sat in the corner, picking at his scabs, and sucking on his own bottom lip.
the boy tasted better than caramel, rossi thought.
NOTE;
this shit is unedited.
