The Gray Youth

The First Ring

                                         |extra|

"Cadie! The television stick again!"

A recently turned seventeen-year old Arcadia groaned as she swung out of her bed to tend to her grandmother. She plugged out an earphone and strolled down the stairs to her grandmother. 

The woman sat in her favorite chair and worked on knitting a sweater in preparation for the up-coming winter season. Nana always loved making clothes - it helped with saving money anyway. She grabbed the control from under her nana's leg on the couch and pressed the play button, then placed the remote on the table.

"Next time, don't sit on the remote nana. It could get broken and we'll have to buy a new one."

Nana squints her eyes, then smiles when the movie begins to play again. 

"I kaax gunalchéesh yéi ax toowú yatee", Nana says in her native Alaskan language, Tlingit. Although Arcadia never really learned much from her family history - or family at all, she knew this phrase was her nana saying she was grateful for her being around.

"Of course, nana." She smiled. Her nana held her heart and planted a kiss on her cheek. Arcadia turned and headed back to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

                                          *****

There's a sharp rap at the window, a stone tapping against the glass.  Immediately, Arcadia scrambles out of bed and lurches towards the window because there's only one person she knows dick-ish enough to throw rocks at her window at stupid-o-clock in the morning and it's never a good sign when it happens.

She pulls back the curtains and sure enough standing on the lawn, glowing amber-soft in the street lamps, is Alfie, looking like the poster child for desolation. He's shivering in his white t-shirt that covered his broad, bony shoulders. He looks as beautiful as ever, honeyed shadows cast over the sharp planes of his face, but his eyes are hollow and blank and Arcadia is hit with a jolt of worry.

It's bad this time, Arcadia can tell. Really bad.

Not even bothering to put on a jacket, she tiptoes as fast as she as can down to the front door, almost tripping over her own feet in her haste. She all but throws the door open. The tall boy stands in the porch, head bowed, but it does nothing to hide the red mark that blossoms on his cheek.

"Alfie." She whispers. His bottom lip trembles but his eyes remain hard.

Wordlessly Alfie holds his arms open in invitation and Arcadia flings herself into his embrace with a strangled sob. He buries his face into the crook of her neck and they stand there like that for a while. 

At the beginning of the relationship, Arcadia remembered the times when the boy would flinch in what seemed to be sudden anger and revulsion whenever she tried to touch him. A defensive wall that took multiple attempts until they were chipped away completely to the point where he could show up at her porch at 4am.

Alfie was wracked with the force of unvoiced cries and Arcadia held him, heart aching for her  tormented boyfriend.

"Come on, let's get you cleaned up and then we'll talk about it." She whispered, caressing his shoulders.

The boy froze but slowly remembered she was someone he could trust. He nodded and the two headed in.

She was trying not to stare at his bruise but she kept finding her eyes had diverted to it. One moment they were obediently on his red-rimmed eyes and the next they were rested on the bloody mess that had been a perfectly ordinary cheek only hours before.