Ruth Writes Stories

Meet Henry

There was a boy at the Academy who called me Mouse. 

I wasn’t supposed to be around the boys, they were older than me and being taught to fight, but no one seemed to notice when I was on the periphery watching them train. They mostly just beat each other up, but there was a dance to it, a choreography. I spoke the word to myself, feeling the shape of it in my mouth. Chor-e-o-gra-phy. I’d learned it while Reading another one of the doctors. She used to dance. I liked Reading her, feeling her arms stretch and glide to music. 

The boy’s name was Henry. He found rocks and acorns and bugs, leaving them in secret places for me to find. I lived in the big house on the hill, and he lived at the campus down the road where Mother and I went every day to work with Grandfather. 

Some days were boring. Mother went over notes with Grandfather, and I sat out of the way and played with toys in a room next to Mother’s office. Some days I sat and Read memories of other people who worked at the school. I liked learning new things from them. It was easier to understand some ideas when I could see and experience them, rather than being told. 

A year into my training, Mother and Grandfather had a fight in the big house. Mother stormed upstairs, slamming drawers and throwing clothes into a suitcase on her bed. I knew better than to ask what was wrong. Her hands were too busy to sign an explanation, and communicating via touch would be overwhelming for us both. Instead I watched from the hallway, then backed away, down the hall to the library. 

Shelves filled with books deaden noise, so I often went to the library when I wanted to get away from Mother’s outbursts. She was mute, but that didn’t stop her from making a lot of noise when she and Grandfather weren’t seeing eye to eye. At some point I knew there would be broken glass on the floor, which meant I wouldn’t be going barefoot in the house today.   

A breeze met me at the doorway. Grandfather kept the library windows closed to keep out insects, dirt, and rain, so this transgression caught my attention. I pulled a chair up to the window to close it, then noticed something on the sill. Henry had left me a present; a rough, muddy-brown spiral-shaped fossil. 

“It’s an ammonite.” Henry’s head came into view. He stood balanced on a rock outside, just below the window. 

I rubbed my fingertips over the ridges of the fossil. “Mother says we have to go away.” 

“Oh.” He dropped down for a moment, then popped back up again. “Why?”

“She’s mad at Grandfather. I’m mad at him, too. He’s mean.”

Henry was thoughtful for a moment. “He’s doing his best.”

“Then he should be nicer to us. We’re special and he’s not.” I knew it was wrong of me to say that, but Mother’s anger was contagious.

“You’re special because he made you that way, right?” 

I shrugged. 

“He wants us all to excel at what we do. That’s why he pushes us so hard.”

My stomach clenched. “I don’t want to go away.”

“Don’t worry, Mouse,” Henry whispered. “We’ll still be friends. I’ll see you later.”

Hearing the sharp clap of Mother’s hands calling for me, I took the ammonite and ran.

---