Thick sheets of rain fell like blankets as Keon splish-sploshed his way downhill towards the bus stop. He hadn’t taken a jacket and would probably wake up with a cold but right now, he didn’t care. He just wanted to go home, take off his stupid uniform and google the strange looking pendant that belonged to the pretty girl in the library. Man, he didn’t even get her name. What guy doesn’t ask a pretty girl her name? If he ever saw her again, he would ask her her name. Well, first he would say ‘hi’ of course. Okay, maybe not, ‘hi’; more like ‘hey’, but not in a sleazy way. Laid back. Not like he didn’t care, but more like ‘You’re cool, I just met you, but I don’t need you in my life.’ Wow. He was overthinking this way too much. And his socks were wet.
By the time he found salvation under the bus shelter, he already had five missed calls. Three from Mum, two from Dad. She must’ve told him what happened, and he must’ve told her what he said. Just the thought of it made him seethe inside. He was so angry. And yet, he felt a pang of guilt. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe they were all right. He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t help it. The quicker he got home, the better.
Wait, did he even have his keys? He had his keys. He was hungry though. Maybe he should’ve gotten Mum to buy him dinner first before he stormed out. He couldn’t cook worth a damn, though she’d tried over and over again to teach him. There was always something more important to do, whether it was reading about some new thing he’d discovered or working on a side project. Bella would routinely torture him with the fact that Grandma had taught her how to cook, so he had no excuses. That’s right. He owed her a slap in the pigtails. Maybe he could swing by Olivia’s first. It was on the way. Just ring the doorbell, ‘pap’ and run.
Nah. He just wanted to get home.
The 147 arrived about three minutes later. He took his usual spot up top, near the front. He liked to see where he was going and who was getting on. Just one of those things he did. You never knew what kind of crazy was getting on the bus, and he liked to be prepared.
Popping his earphones in, he began searching for the mysterious gold pendant on his phone. ‘Eight-pronged rotating crescent moon symbol’ turned up plenty on the lunar cycle, Islamic flags and the occult, but nothing on the pendant. Maybe he needed to widen his search parameters, but how else would you describe an eight-pronged rotating crescent moon symbol? He decided he needed a break.
* * *
The rest of the journey was uneventful. He got off at the same stop, rounded the same corner by the same corner-shop and made his way up and down the same steep hill. Cutting through the park, he hop-skipped over the same rickety bridge that crossed the same river. Mum would kill him if she knew he’d taken this route, especially this late in the evening. It wasn’t just the park, the muggings or the murders, it was the fact that the council hadn’t made any efforts to repair the bridge despite numerous petitions over the last twelve years.
He reasoned that it was reasonably safe, being lit by street-lamps and all. It was better than nothing. Besides, there were always a couple of cyclists or joggers passing through. He’d even given names to the regulars. There was ‘Miss Gaviscon’ and ‘Captain Antibiotic’ who always jogged as a pair in their blindingly fluorescent gear. Then there was ‘Never-Made-it-to-Tour-de-France Man’, cycling with this freakish intensity like his life depended on it.
Leaving the park a few minutes later, Keon turned onto his road, approaching the front door of their semi-detached house. Letting himself in, he flicked on the hallway light and scooped up three letters lying on the welcome mat. Walking through to the open plan kitchen, he added the letters to the growing pile of bills on the counter.
Dad had been gone for almost five weeks now. Mum was holding things together of course, but they were hanging by a thread. The leaky tap Dad had promised to fix four months ago was now dribbling constantly and the handle to the bathroom door had finally broken off after years of threatening to do so. Everywhere he looked, he could see echoes of his father’s absence. You don’t realise how much you need somebody until they’re not around anymore.
In hope, he opened the fridge in search of something that didn’t require major culinary skills to prepare. He settled on a ham and tuna sandwich with lettuce. Checking his phone again, there were four more missed calls. He stuffed it back in his pocket.
* * *
The remains of his sandwich sat on a plate by the side of his open laptop. Chin buried in one hand, he tap-tapped away with the other trying to finish his maths homework. He didn’t mind trig, but he was getting way too tired to exercise those mental muscles. He turned to his side project instead, the pendant. He’d had a sudden wave of inspiration and wanted to test it out.
A search for ‘cultural spiral symbols’ turned up two promising entries. One on something called the Borjgali, another on solar symbols from SymbolDictionary.com. What he was after looked a lot like the Borjgali, but the Borjgali had the wrong number of ‘wings’ as they called them. Seven, not eight; and it lacked the border around the edge. Apparently, similar ‘eternity symbols’ could be found in Norse, Iberian and Armenian art, so he decided to look them up. There it was! An ancient Armenian national symbol, commonly carved into medieval Christian art; the Ah—reh—vah—khach. Arevakhach. Was she Armenian?
When he heard the front door open and Bella running through the house shouting, “Ohhh, Keon you’re in trouble!”, he was already dressed for bed. He wasn’t sure what to expect; calm and compassionate Mum or rampaging She-Hulk Mum. He braced himself beneath the sheets, pulling them up underneath his nostrils. The handle turned. The door opened—and Bella stuck her head in with a smirk. Keon grabbed a pencil from his bedside table and hurled it at her pigtails. She yelped as it skimmed her scalp.
“GET OUT!”
“MUMMY! Keon’s trying to KILL ME!”
“BELLAAAA! LEAVE—YOUR BROTHER—ALONE!”
Calm and compassionate—well—compassionate Mum it was.
* * *
She came upstairs about thirty minutes later. He was laid back on his pillow, arm behind his head, swiping aimlessly through his phone. It was all he seemed to do these days. If he wasn’t tapping, he was texting. If he wasn’t texting, he was swiping. A young boy shouldn’t be so preoccupied with his phone, she thought, but such was the age they lived in. Parents were often forced to have a relationship with their children through bevelled glass.
She sat down gently on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor. After a few moments she placed a hand on his exposed foot, stroking it like she would when he was a baby.
“I’m sorry…I know you’re going through a lot. And I have to remind myself that this affects you as much as it affects me and that you’re not necessarily gonna process things the same way I do…or even how I’d like. But I’m here for you and I love you. And when you’re ready, we’ll talk about what happened.”
He paused, processed, and nodded.
“M’sorry, Mum.”
She pulled him into a hug before he could say anything else and kissed him on the forehead.
“Mum?”
“Yes handsome?”
“Is he ever coming back?”
She looked down, blinking back the tears again, “I don’t know,” she sniffed “But whatever happens, we’ll be ok. Ok?”
“How do you know?…”
“I don’t…but I have to believe we will be.”
He nodded.
Her mood instantly shifted as she wiped away the tears and slapped his knee.
“Don’t stay up all night reading that thing. You’ll rot your brain!”
She got up and headed for the door. He smiled.
“That hasn’t been scientifically verified!”
She grinned, closing the door behind her.
Such a smarty-pants.
Just like his father.
Comments (0)
See all