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[leggylegs]

Bluejays and Cardinals

Photo by @little-penguin-ozzie (Added with permission)

Oswald dodges his fellow classmates, feinting left and right as he maneuvers down the hall towards the lunchroom, hands clasped on the straps of his backpack and a determined scowl on his face. Despite the crowd, and his diminutive stature, he sees Ed quickly, towering above most of the other sophomores, one hand clutching the handle of his lunchbox and the other adjusting his glasses as Oswald comes into focus.

“Where’s Jim?” Oswald asks as he comes to a stop in front of Ed.

“He’s in the office.”

“Still!? You said he got called there during third period!” Oswald stamps one foot in irritation. “What did he do this time?”

“I don’t know.” Ed shrugs. “The student runner didn’t say, she just handed over the note.”

“Well, we’re going to find out, then.” Oswald grabs onto Ed’s free hand and starts dragging him along behind him down the hall. “He at least owes us an explanation.”

“You know, the minute he left phys ed I got hit in the head with a volleyball. I think intentionally. It’s a good thing I wear my old pair during class because if they’d broken-”

“Shh,” Oswald stops abruptly and pats Ed on the chest, “hold on a minute, Ed, do you see what I see?”

Ed bites his lip and squints, moving his glasses up to see properly. “Is that his mother?”

“It can’t be,” Oswald says. “She’s never the one to come in.”

But they can easily see into the office through the large indoor windows. She’s standing in the center of the open office, one hand scribbling at some forms attached to a clipboard. Currently Jim is nowhere to be found.

“Maybe he had an appointment?” Ed shrugs when Oswald’s eyebrows go up in question. Ed shrugs. “She’d have to sign him back in.”

“Well he could have warned us is all I’m saying.”

“You just don’t want to wait in line.”

“Do you blame me!? It’s a long line!” he shouts, drawing attention to the two of them. Mrs. Gordon glances their way, and upon seeing her son’s friends flapping about and making a small spectacle of themselves she smiles softly. Ed waves to her, a bright blush overtaking his face as Oswald rants about the inequality of making him wait in line for the crummy reduced cost lunches when everyone else gets the regular meals.

“And another thing, the quality of a student, no, a child’s meal, the fuel that helps them succeed, shouldn’t change just because my mother can’t afford the fancy, whole cost meals.”

“I think you already argued this in debate,” Ed says, “and I agreed with you then.”

“Well the point hasn’t reached the ears that make a difference, so I’m going to, oh, Mrs. Gordon!” Oswald calls out to her and waves frantically as she and Jim leave the office. She smiles back and Ed hides his face in his hands, willing to smudge his glasses if it means she won’t see the blush. “Jim! Jim, you were supposed to meet us by Ed’s locker.”

“Oswald,” Ed tries to pull him back. The regular lunch crowd is starting to mill about, filling the hallways and clogging the space between them and Jim. “Oswald stop calling from here.”

“Well if he’d just come over I wouldn’t have to yell.” Oswald grabs Ed and pulls him across the space to Jim and his mother. “Jim, you didn’t come to Ed’s locker for lunch.”

Jim shrugs, scowling at the floor and hunching his shoulders. He doesn’t appear to have been in a fight; his hooded shirt isn’t dirty or scuffed and his face isn’t bruised or scraped. “Not hungry.”

“I’ll go start the car,” Jim’s mother says, squeezing her son’s shoulder and patting him on the back before she goes.

“Oh, well,” Ed frets over his lunchbox and the uneaten food inside. “Usually you sit with us either way.”

“Are you getting suspended?” Oswald blurts out.

“No,” Jim’s scowl deepens.

“But you’re leaving,” Ed points out.

“Just go get lunch without me.” Jim says, curt, voice clipped and raspy.

“Jim if someone’s treating you unfairly you should tell us,” Oswald says. “Or you can get your dad to come yell at the principal again. Most of the time you’re just defending us, so-”

“Just leave me alone!” he shouts, fists clenched, “don’t be such a baby! You can survive one lunch without me!” Oswald blinks, backing away until he bumps his back into Ed, and Jim shouts something unprintable, angrily stalking away and out the door to the front drive.

Ed puts a hand on Oswald’s shoulder, and mumbles, “we can go eat on the back steps.”

“He snapped at me,” Oswald says, dazed. “He never snaps at me.”

-

They’re at Oswald’s tiny house, because they’re always over at someone’s, but right now Jim’s isn’t an option. Oswald’s been to the Nashton home exactly once in his life, and he’ll join track team before he even dreams of setting foot their again.

Ed’s on the floor, lying on his stomach while reading a book for school, and Oswald’s doing the same while lying in his twin bed, or at least he’s trying to read along with Ed, but he keeps seeing Jim’s angry face, the barely visible but still painfully there rage Jim keeps just under the surface directed at him, and he tosses the book aside without bothering to save his place.

“You should finish reading. We have a quiz tomorrow on chapter one,” Ed says, flipping the page into chapter five. “It’s about fifteen pages. The chapter, not the quiz. This book doesn’t even have enough substance for a fifteen page final exam.”

“Jim yelled at me today.”

“I was there,” Ed says, not agreeing or disagreeing, just reminding Oswald of his presence. “I don’t think he got in a fight.”

“That doesn’t explain why he left, or why he got so angry.” Oswald rubs his eyes. He’s proud to say he didn’t cry over this, at least not until they got to the back stoop where no one would see. But the stinging redness around his eyes decided to persist log enough for his mother to see, and to worry. He’d lied and told her his allergies were acting up and she gave him a wet washcloth to clear away pollen; Ed managed to wait until she was out of earshot before correcting her logic.

“Jim is always angry.”

“Yes but not at me. Not at us.” Oswald rolls so he’s on his side, watching Ed as he speed reads another set of pages before flipping to the next. “Why aren’t you scared?”

“I am,” Ed says. “I’m just better at hiding it.” Ed bookmarks his page at the end of the fifth chapter and sits up. “Can I sleep here?”

“You don’t have to ask,” Oswald says. He knows Ed usually sleeps at Jim’s house during the week. “My bed is getting a bit too small to share.”

“We’re just too big,” Ed says. He moves so he’s resting his back against the box spring. “Or I am, at least.”

“Hey,” Oswald fakes being offended and hits Ed in the chest with his pillow. “I grew half an inch last month. You’re just part giraffe or something.”

“I don’t think-”

There’s a soft knock on the door and Oswald’s mother pokes her head inside, smiling at the two boys and saying, “Oswald sweetheart, your little friend is at the door.”

Oswald sits up straight and looks at Ed, who’s also looking confused, and then back to her. “Okay?”

“I’ll send him in,” she says. She blows Oswald a kiss and he smiles briefly, then he turns to Ed.

“Do you think it’s Jim?”

“I can’t imagine anyone else it would be,” Ed says. “Perhaps, oh, hello.”

Jim stands in the doorway, just behind the seam separating Oswald’s carpet from the hallway. He bites his lip, keeping his head down as he says, “sorry.”

“You’re forgiven, obviously. Think nothing of it,” Oswald says as if he didn’t spend the entire afternoon agonizing over what he or Ed could have done to make him so angry.

“You aren’t in trouble, right?” Ed asks.

Jim shakes his head. “I wasn’t suspended.”

“You weren’t in English,” Ed says. “We have to read that book,” he gestures to his copy in the middle of the floor. “It’s painfully boring but a fast read.”

“I won’t be in class tomorrow,” Jim says. He’s still avoiding their eyes, and he still hasn’t actually entered the room.

“But you weren’t suspended,” Oswald clarifies.

Jim looks up at the two of them. His eyes are red and irritated, and now that he isn’t hiding under his hood quite so thoroughly they can see how blotchy and red his face is. Jim bites his lip and crosses the small space into Oswald’s room and shuts the door to the hall.

“Jim, are you alright?” Ed asks, standing, the pillow falling to the floor with a soft plop.

“My dad died,” he says abruptly, and he shudders, exhaling a raspy, choppy breath and sobbing. He doesn’t even try to hide, arms limp at his sides as tears stream down his face.

Ed reacts first, rushing to close the gap and pull Jim to his chest, one arm firmly around Jim’s shoulders and the other tugging his hood down and petting his hair. Oswald remains stunned on his bed for half a minute, then he jumps up, wanting to help, but Ed already has Jim wrapped up in a tight, comforting hug.

(Where did Ed learn to hug like that? Oswald wonders. Jim, he settles on. It must’ve been Jim, back before Ed started staying with either of them overnight. He’d needed plenty of hugs back then.)

He puts a hand on Jim’s back, feeling the shuddering, gulping breaths as he cries. He rubs his thumb across Jim’s ribs, unsure how else to include himself and hoping this is enough. As he rubs Jim’s back Ed’s hand slips down off Jim’s head and over his shoulder until long, spidery fingers are resting just barely on top of Oswald’s, and Oswald presses his lips together tightly when Jim sobs are no longer muffled by Ed’s shirt. He looks at Ed, at the sympathy and sadness in his eyes, and he moves a bit closer to Jim, pressing his hand firmly against his back and trying to absorb a bit of the sadness from him.

–