I Fell in Love with Hope(73)

Sam feigns deathly injury when I poke my stick between his ribs. He retaliates, his sword swinging at my leg. I jump over it, landing off balance and falling in the grass.

Sam laughs at me. He says I look like a ragdoll. Then he throws his stick aside and sits next to me, trying to catch his breath. Heat swelters beneath his mask on days like this. Sweat trickles from his brow, and his lungs beg for cooler air. Sam is careful not to touch his face despite that. He doesn’t take off the mask or fidget with it. Instead, he closes his eyes and lets the trees’ shady patches and distant construction sounds obscure his hard breathing.

Nurse Ella sits on the bench, back straight and iron-handed, giving us the occasional glance. All around her, people exist in a world I seldom see.

The park is full today of color and birds and people passing through, on bikes, on foot, in couples, with pets, and with joy.

A woman dressed in far too many layers throws bread crumbs in the path, pigeons gathering in a flock around her. An old man wipes his grandson’s crumb-ridden mouth with a handkerchief. Girls, in a hurry, canter with their arms interlaced and school bags bouncing on their backs.

Just behind them, a couple holds hands, the two leaning on each other, whispering affections, and smiling all the while. The girl spins in her dress, the boy twirling her by the hand. They don’t pay any mind to the park or the world around them. The path is merely a dirt road, and the civilians around them are merely background in their play.

The wind blows, leaves rustling overhead. The boy takes the girl’s face in his hands. Their noses brush. She presses a kiss to his lips. Pink dusts the boy’s cheeks.

It makes me smile that the girl gives him color.

I wonder if Sam feels the same way. Only Sam isn’t smiling at the sight. His mask conceals his mouth, but his eyes are lightless.

The woman throwing bread crumbs glances at him, leering at the mask and gloves. She shivers, quickly turning back to her flock. The old man holds his grandson’s hand. He picks up the pace passing Sam, leaving more room than he would with any other stranger. The running school girls pause, their canter slowed to a trot as they whisper to each other and stare.

Sam quickly turns away from the path. He hooks his elbows around his knees, hiding his face, making fists to conceal the gloves behind his pant leg. After a second’s fidgeting, he grabs me by the wrist and pulls me upright, dragging me into a hiding place behind the bushes.

“Sam?” I call. “What’s wrong?”

“People are looking at me,” he whispers. His thumb slips over the scar on his wrist, the one he was given years ago in the dim corner of a closet. “They all think I’m different.”

They. The children in his past? Some are dead, some have gone home. What they left behind is greater than a little white line on his wrist.

Sam lets me go, breathless, too aware of himself. Even beneath the shade, behind a cluster of hedges, he hunches, makes himself smaller. Like he doesn’t want to exist.

“You are different,” I say. Sam’s gaze drifts from the ground to me. I smile, just as the girl did looking at her partner. “No one else has suns in their eyes.”

Sam blinks. The sun sifts through the leaves casting shadows that flurry with the breeze as if to prove my point. They play on his face the same way rays of light kiss him in the mornings.

“You’re beautiful,” I say, my fingers dragging up to his face, trailing the jaw that’s become sharper the older he grows. “People like looking at you.”

The passerbyers past the brush going on with their days are left only with an empty space of grass. I wonder how blind they must be. To not notice all the joy that exists under Sam’s mask.

“Do you mean that?” he asks. The bush crams us together. Our knees brush, his hip nudging mine. He looks down at me as if all the people on the other side aren’t there anymore.

“Of course I do.”

Sam doesn’t smile. The skin around his eyes doesn’t crease. Instead, he smooths his touch down my arm, his pupils expanding. His curiosity explores more freely than before. The shame he used to wear when accidentally grazing my chest or my back or anywhere that clothes cover skin, dissipates. His inhibition fades with it.

Sam pulls down his mask.

I panic, reaching to put it back on, but he stops me. He takes both my wrists and bends down so our foreheads kiss.

“Sam, you’ll get sick–”

“I don’t care,” he whispers. His eyes close. He breathes me in, releasing my hands and cupping my face. His movements are awkward, unsure, but at the same time impatient.

I plant my hands on his chest. His pulse thrums fast and hard. It quickens as he leans in, so close that our noses touch and his lips just barely sweep across mine.

“Sam! Get out of there this instant!” Nurse Ella’s voice rings like a church bell. If church bells were terrifying, that is.

Sam pulls away, pulling the mask back over his face. He grabs me by the arm again, dragging me into a run.

“C’mon, c’mon let’s go!” he screeches. We almost trip over each other and the twigs, somehow making it out in one piece. Together we sprint, Nurse Ella marching on after us. Sam laughs all the while, jumping over the paths, through the trees, making sure I’m still with him.

The two of us skid to a stop right before falling into a puddle of mud, but the wind has other ideas. The two of us lose our balance and fall together. The mud sloshes around us, seeping into our clothes. Sam sits up to make sure I’m alright. Once he sees that we’re both only breathless and covered in dirt, that smile finally curves his face, creasing the skin around his eyes.