Reclaiming the Sand(17)

Your face is pretty.

I want to draw it.

I like looking at you.

I shook my head. The space behind my eyes started to pound. I should leave. Go home. Forget about this horrible mistake of a day.

But I couldn’t move.

Flynn’s concentration was absolute. His hands swift and sure. The lump of clay forming into something else under his adept fingers.

Then he looked up. As if sensing I was there.

His eyes met mine.

Dark green. Deep and endless. Sucking me under.

I expected him to look away. He always looked away.

This time he didn’t.

The flutter in my chest progressed to violent spasms the longer we looked at each other. I had never stared into Flynn’s eyes for so long before.

I waited for him to start rubbing his hands. It was his tell. How I knew he was upset or angry or ready to detonate.

But he didn’t. And his eyes continued to hold mine.

I was finding it hard to breathe.

And then he lifted his hand in a tiny, little wave, acknowledging me.

I turned on my heel and hurried down the hallway, slamming through the door I had entered through and into the oppressive afternoon heat.

My feet never slowed as I headed back to my car. My fingernails digging into my palms as I fled.

My heart exploded in my chest in a million tiny fragments. All because of a glimpse of dark green eyes that I hadn’t realized I missed.

Not until now in the span of a moment I remembered the people we had once been.

In that flash of seconds I missed those people.

I missed him.

I missed me.

What was I going to do?





-Flynn-

Many years ago…



She’s so pretty.

I really like to look at her.

Her name is Ellie McCallum. That’s what the teacher calls her when he says the names every morning.

Her hair is blue today. Not purple like the first time I saw her.

I don’t like the blue. But I still like looking at her face. Even with the hoop in her lip and the piece of metal in her nose.

But she doesn’t like it when I look at her. She frowns at me a lot and calls me names. Her friends say nasty things to me when I leave class.

Last week a guy with a big nose took my lunch. I was really hungry. My mom made me my favorite chicken salad sandwich. It was my lunch, not theirs. I hate it when they’re mean to me.

It makes me really angry.

I yelled and told him to give it back. He laughed, though I didn’t think it was funny.

But he didn’t give it back.

And I was really hungry.

I ate a whole bag of potato chips when I got home.

“Stop looking at me, freak!”

Ellie is talking to me again. I was looking at the new ring in her nose. Why did she put it there? Her nose is pretty without it.

I point at the ring. “That’s ugly. You should take it out.”

Ellie touches her nose. I want to touch her nose. But I can’t.

I don’t like touching people.

But I want to touch her.

Ellie didn’t call me any more names. She turns around so I can’t look at her face anymore.

Her hair is all over my desk again. It upsets me.

I push it off with my pencil and then start to draw. I had been reading a book about the history of the Eiffel Tower last night. I can draw things after seeing them.

I would count the lines. I would measure the spaces. And then I would draw it.

I could draw anything.

I am drawing now. I will draw something for Ellie.

Maybe then she will be my friend.

When she is nice, I’ll give it to her.

I wait for her to look at me again so I can give it to her.

I keep the drawing.



“Freaky, Freaky Flynn!”

That’s what everyone calls me now. I know it is bad name. They say it before they do something that makes me angry.

The boy with the big nose is the worst. And the girl with the black hair that Ellie talks to a lot.

They took my notebook after school yesterday. They took my pictures of the Eiffel Tower and tore them up.

I yelled. I threw rocks at them. They laughed.

My mom had screamed at them when she came to take me home.

I had cried and Mom had tried to hug me.

I hit her.

Then she cried and I knew I had hurt her. She told me I shouldn’t do that. That I should talk about what makes me mad.

I didn’t say anything.

But I still liked looking at Ellie.

She had a pretty smile when she laughed. She liked to laugh when I yelled.

She laughed a lot.



The teacher tells me to work with Ellie for a paper in class.

Her hair is purple again. I like it more than the blue. But I still hate it.

“Why is your hair purple now?” I ask her.

“Why are you so weird?” she asks me.

“I’m not weird,” I said back.

“You’re a freak,” she said.

I don’t like that word. Freak. It makes me so mad I want to break my pencil.

I throw my book on the floor and start rubbing my hands. Fingers smoothing down over the back of my hand.

Up and down.

Over and over again.

Ellie looks at me and I can see her eyes are brown. Like my bedroom in Massachusetts.