Chapter 2: 2. The Half-Human Boy

Pak

(After the Incident)

My classmates give me a wide berth. Some of them whisper as they pass. They think I don’t notice, but my ears are so sensitive…

I hear everything.

…I heard he…

…do you think he really…?

…psycho…

It is high noon, and I am in the courtyard, sitting on my bench. I stare into the dirt. When I rock back and forth, the bits of sand look like they’re moving – patterns, organic mosaics, shifting pictures that tell stories only I can see. This is how I pass the time. Eventually, the bell will toll, and I will be made to return to the school. Until then, I am content with the dirt and the bench.

It would be peaceful here, were it not for the whispers.

Footsteps approach me from behind. My muscles tense up. I close my eyes.

“Hey.”

A boy’s voice.

“That scar is pretty badass,” he says.

I say nothing.

“Can I sit here?” he asks.

I say nothing. He sits anyway.

“I was rooting for you the whole time,” he says. “That kid had it coming.”

I open my eyes to steal a quick glance. He has sunshine-yellow skin, his ears shrouded by a mess of wavy hair, thick and red like blood. His features are soft, round, human – big eyes, horse teeth – but his nose is sharp, and it doesn’t seem to match the rest of his face. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, twiddling his thumbs. I’ve never seen him before. He looks at me. I look away.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

My chest feels tight and my arm muscles twitch. I try to relax them, but it only lasts for a second or two before they tighten and twitch again. I say nothing. He shifts.

“Well, I’m Kano,” he says.

“I thought they didn’t let humans in here.”

I flinch. I didn’t mean to say it like that. He sighs.

“Half.” He pulls his hair back just enough to reveal a short, pointed ear, then lets it fall. “So are you gonna tell me your name?”

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The thick vein in my neck quivers. The burnt skin around my eye pulses hot. The wound is healed, but sometimes it forgets, and the pain returns without warning.

“Pak,” I mutter through parched lips.

“Puck?”

“Pak,” I repeat, emphasizing the soft ‘ah’, the reason they call me ‘pockmark’.

“Pak. Cool name. It’s nice to meet you, Pak.”

He extends his hand towards me. It hovers for a few seconds before he retracts it and clears his throat. The sound sets off an array of nerves, tickling every inch of my greenish-gray skin, like a swarm of spiders. The air is thin. Blood rushes to my head. It’s warm. Too warm.

“So what are you, anyway? Half orc or something?”

He says it like he means it as a joke. I squeeze my eyes shut tight.

“Orcs aren’t real…”

BA-DUM BA-DUM BA-DUM BA-DUM

(The heartbeat fills my ears, pulsing red behind my eyelids. It’s haunted me since I was small, since before I could even speak. When I open my eyes, I find myself somewhere other than where I was, somewhere I never intended to be…)

Pip.

I don’t remember standing up, but I’m facing him now, and the skin is tight on my knuckles. My hand is shaking, heavy. He throws his palms up.

“Hey, hey, e-easy.” His voice quivers, a nervous eye trained on my hand. “I didn’t mean to—”

I stumble a few steps back. People are watching us, whispering. Sweat pours down my neck, my forehead, and my breathing is quick and I can’t slow it down, in out in out in out in out—

“Hey… Are you okay?”

in out in out in out in out—

“Pak?”

The students, the whispers, the sunlight, the red-headed boy all disappear in a blur. My feet thud against the ground, and my heart thumps against my ribs, and nothing else feels real, anymore. I run to the bathroom in the corner of the school where nobody goes and lock myself inside, where the voices in my mind scream and curse, and I rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…

Hours pass before I leave, before the voices quiet down and I drag myself to my room. But one voice won’t relent. The half-human boy repeats those words in my mind, over and over:

Hey… Are you okay?

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