White Crayon

Page six

I stared at the screen of my phone.
This recipe was to hard.
Also, I've made a huge mess. I laid the whisk down and sighed. It had been three days since Baley had started living with me. He had taken to my older brothers room, on the second floor. I rubbed my cheek to get the flour off, but more just clung on. I sneezed, and felt around for the towel on the counter. My hand knocked the bowls over, which was—to my horror—filled with flour. Also, to make the sound overall worse, the bowls were metal.
A loud clang resonated throughout the house, which made the doorbell ringing hard to hear. Baley came bustling down the stairs, holding a book in his hand, glasses perched on his head. "Whats wrong?" He ran into the kitchen and just stood there, speechless as I was.
The doorbell rung again to snap us both back to the unfortunate reality, and I walked over to answer it, covered head to toe in flour. Baley started to get the vacuum from the closet upstairs. "Yes?" I said, swinging the door open slowly. The boy on the other side of the door was really not who I expected to see. At all.
"Hey Rune, heard about what happened and I came to say—"
I held the door handle in my grip, flour falling like gentle snow onto the welcome mat. I stared past my friend, Freid Herring, to something behind him. My eyes latched onto the figure of something that wasn't even there. It's lips moved, forming the words that it didn't have a mouth to speak clearly.
Wisher.
"Hello? Rune? You in there?" Freid waved his hand in front of my face, and I shook myself. "Sorry, come on in.. Just don't go in the kitchen." I said with a forced smile, moving out of the way so he could come inside. Baley had finished cleaning the kitchen, flour was put away as well as the other ingredients. Baley turned around and wiped his hands on his pants. "Rune, my man, I'm sorry but your no longer allowed to use the kitchen to make food." He stated, and put his hands on his hips. I laughed nervously and took off the apron I was wearing. "I'm going to go clean myself up. You can just hang out on the couch or something, the TV's remote is over there on the coffee table." I pointed to the small remote sitting on the table in the middle of the living room, and walked upstairs.
✿
I pulled my red shirt over my head and sat down on my bed. Why were they all showing up? And Freid coming to apologize about the accident? I turned over on my bed, and closed my eyes in thought. I stood up and opened my door, turning off the light, I made my way back downstairs.
As I walked, a certain feeling came over me. Like I had done this exact thing before, but with different people. I crept down the stairs, avoiding the creaky one. I stood behind the wall that led into the living room, un-sure of why I was hiding. I heard Freid and Baley.
"Why won't you tell him?"
"Why does he need to know? He seems to be doing perfectly fine."
"Baley! How can you say that? He quit going to school for months!"
"He's been alright here. I don't see why we have to get involved."
"Get involved?! Baley, we are the reason why that happened! And he isn't taking good care of himself!"
"He's taking better care of himself than you are, Freid."
A moment of silence gripped the room, a tight chokehold.
I'm not sure when I heard Freid shout last. Maybe at a playground, when we had been playing together. Maybe when someone blew his candles out at his sixth birthday party. But even when those moments happened, they were nothing, nothing, like right now. Really, he didn't even yell, but that voice, it was something that should have been left alone. I didn't know someone could kill with words.
"I am taking care of myself, Baley."
I peered around the wall and my eyes widened at the expression I saw placed on Baley's face. His expression was contorted into a twisted wave of unexplainable fury and rage. His voice was louder than the man on the TV who spoke so calmly.
"NO FREID. YOU GAVE UP ON TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF LAST SUMMER."
The man on the TV spoke, like he had before school.
"Some content people may find disturbing for people under the age of thirteen."