Indelible - Phan

2. folded arms and i felt your heart hum

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Title from: It Never Ends by Bad Books

Three weeks had passed since I met the sun-splintered boy and so I tried to forget him. I pushed his glinting eyes to the back of my head and continued to go down the same road I had encountered him on every day on the way to work and life returned to normal and remained normal, until it didn't.

Because he was there again on the twenty-second day. His clothes seemed more or less the same; his legs shook under his own negligible body weight. This time there were tears on his face before he even looked at the sun and his arms were wrapped tightly around himself like his body was close to shuddering apart; I found myself wondering what had happened in his absence, what was responsible for the sharp and hacking cough that wracked him as I watched.

He had not seen me yet and I found myself slowing, not wanting to frighten him. I was planning on just slipping past as quietly as I could when suddenly his body jack-knifed, his long pale hand curling around his mouth as his knees hit the pavement - the most delicate shiver ran through his skeletal frame and scarlet flowered on the concrete, dripping from his lips like liquid roses. 

I could feel myself moving, a stammered exclaim living and dying in the air between us before I knelt beside him. He was oblivious to me until I put my hand on his bony shoulder and then he moved out of my grasp, making an angry desperate noise like a crazed animal. This close, his irises looked like gold pulled out of the ground - this close, anyone could see the strange stumbling pulse in his neck, the grooves of his collarbone shining stark in the sun like Morse code dashes, the bruises at the corners of his mouth.

"Are you all right?" I asked uncertainly, and then cleared my throat to disguise the worry in my voice. I reminded myself that I needed to remain detached, no matter what was wrong with him; there were thousands of homeless people in the city and if I allowed myself to care about just one of them, I'd have to care about all of them. "Do you want me to call your parents?"

His eyes flashed, and he did not speak for a while. His lip rose and fell like a warning snarl and then, in a low rough mumble, he replied, "Don't have any."

Orphan, then. No difference. "How old are you?"

He drew back further, the ground tearing his knees and making me wince a little on his behalf. "Why do you want to know?" he growled, suddenly an animal, the flash of his teeth warning me to stay away. 

I simply rocked back on my heels and waited for him to answer; I knew he would crack and then I could dump him at some state home and be done with this whole mess, even if the idea made my chest hurt a little. I knew children's homes around here didn't have great reputations, that teenagers that left them left curiously hollow. 

Then, finally, as I'd expected, he muttered, "Fine. I'm...I'm eighteen." His hands twisted against each other, grimy and shaking, and his chest heaved once like he was holding in another lung-shredding cough.

"Are you lying?" 

He ran. 

He didn't get far; his body jarred like he'd run to the end of an invisible tether not ten feet away from me and he lurched forwards, staggering impossibly across the street. I felt sick to have been a cause for such fear, but as I stood to follow him he scrambled over a low wall and disappeared as quickly as he'd come - a bloody-mouthed ghost, all scraped knees and gaunt face, gone from me again. It was approaching midday and the heat would only rise; I hoped that he would find some kind of shelter, especially with his cough, but I doubted it. 

I wanted his name. I wanted that tiny piece of his life to keep and conceal, and I wanted desperately to at least attempt to help - despite my better interests -  so I turned my back on the glittering silver of the upper city and followed. 

btw phil is 20 in this and dan is 17