These Summer Sons

01: New Arrival

   ❝Oh, I was never lonely till the day that I was born. ❞  
-  It's Just My Skin, George Ezra 

There was something off about the boy on the bus. Carl didn't know much but he was sure of that. It wasn't just that his hair seemed far too bright a white to be natural - probably obsessed with dyeing it like the Darby's kid - no, it was more than that. He had felt something off as their eyes met while the boy was handing over change for his ticket.

Carl eyed him in the rearview mirror, trying unsuccessfully to hide his nosiness behind his sunglasses. The boy was his sole passenger and he sprawled arrogantly across two seats, fingers drumming against the chair in front of him. Edging out into the gangway was a threadbare rucksack, looking like one good tug would have it coming apart at the seams. Indeed, the more Carl looked at him, the more he suspected that all his clothes had seen better days.

As if feeling Carl's gaze on him, the boy's eyes snapped up. Carl flushed and cleared his throat. "So um... what brings you to Belladonna then lad? There isn't much up here for someone your age. You staying with friends or something?"

"That's right."

"Anyone, I might know?"

"Probably not."

Carl knew near enough everyone in Belladonna but he decided not to push the issue. "The name's Carl," he said "An' what should I be calling you?"

The boy smiled and there was something foreign and sharp about that smile, like a stray dog baring its teeth. "Di," he answered "Di Moreno."

"Di," Carl mused, rolling the word about on his tongue "Is that short for something?"

"Yes."

He didn't elaborate, instead going back to staring out of the window at the trees blurring past. The sun burned down, tearing the early morning mist into tatters like a rotten funeral shroud but never piercing the ranks of the sentinel trees lining the road. The ghost of that sharp smile still played about his lips. Carl shivered, though exactly what disturbed him he couldn't say.

Di leaned forward, almost touching the tip of his nose to the glass as he stared out at the road ahead. The bright acrid red of a road sign loomed out of the forest gloom before them: Belladonna five miles away.

"Hey Carl," he called.

"Yeah son?"

"Fancy making an unorthodox stop?"

"What? Here?"

At Di's nod, Carl swung into the side of the road. The light filtering in through the windows was now tinged a greying forest green and Carl shivered in the sudden chill. Di, however, seemed unaffected, shouldering his rucksack on and making for the front of the bus.

"Are you sure about this kid? I can take you all the way into town if you want. Heck, you're my only passenger, I can drop you off right at your door."

"I'm sure."

"Well then, mind if I ask where you're going? There's nothing out here."

"Actually I do mind," Di replied, an edge behind his courtesy. He turned to Carl and a brilliant thrill went through the older man as he noticed the eyes staring into his own. One was normal, a warm brown. The other held no iris or pupil, just a pale blue expanse. And yet, he felt certain that this boy saw him more clearly through that eye than anyone else ever had. 

"Oh, and more thing," Di said, almost as if it were an afterthought but he never dropped the gaze of those mismatched eyes for even a second "Forget me."

And try as he might, even as he watched the figure growing smaller behind him in his rearview mirror, Carl never could remember more of the boy on the bus than the uneasy impression he had left behind him, like a ghost caught in the background of a photograph.