A flash fiction piece following a day in the life of a young boy through the perspective of his shadow.
Bellamy Fischer liked to make little origami sculptures and left them on a different student’s desk every day: a little red sword with pink roses on Tuesday, a golden swan with fluorescent swirls on Wednesday, or a blue boat with white clouds on Thursday. He carried a notebook full of patterned scrapbook paper everywhere he went and chose which pattern to use based on his mood that day. On Mondays, he preferred red for its liveliness and vivacity, while on Fridays, he’d use black for its emptiness and intensity. (I liked black the most.)
Today, Bellamy chose a dark green paper peppered with four-leaf clovers. Since it was almost St. Patrick’s Day, he would make four fortune tellers of varying sizes stacked on top of one another. He hadn’t yet decided who he would give them to. Bellamy pulled scissors out of his backpack and trimmed the paper into four perfect squares. He no longer needed to measure.
The teacher droned on at the head of the classroom. She talked about English or History. (I couldn’t really tell.) The teachers had grown used to Bellamy’s hobby and allowed him enough time to finish his folding before asking him any questions or handing out his quizzes.
Bellamy continued to fold his paper: four corners to center, flip, four corners to center, fold the points together, pop out the flaps, and repeat. Two minutes later, he had the fortune tellers stacked from largest to smallest in a neat pyramid smaller than his fist.
The teacher waited until Bellamy pushed it to the side of his desk before asking him to pass up his homework.
Bellamy looked at her with round hazel eyes and held out his essay.
“Bellamy,” the teacher said, examining his rumpled notebook paper, “this was supposed to be typed. If you don’t have a printer at home, you can type it and print it at the library.”
Bellamy shook his head.
“My computer broke,” he whispered.
“Broke?” she said. “Why don’t you ask your father to get it fixed?”
Bellamy shook his head, and the teacher noticed a purple splotch poking out over his collarbone.
She looked away.
“All right,” she said, her voice higher than normal.
(I rolled my nonexistent eyes, urging her to say something—anything. But, of course, she didn’t.)
The class remained silent, too, sensing the tension but not knowing what was wrong. Bellamy’s shoulders shrunk, making him look smaller than he already was, and the teacher didn’t call on him again for the rest of the day.
***
I loved the bus rides home when I could blend into the darkness under the seats. Bellamy lay across the navy seat above me to prevent others from sitting next to him. (Close contact made Bellamy uncomfortable.) He had grown accustomed to the previously unexpected bumps in the road, and braced one hand against the ripped seat and the other on his stomach.
Bellamy closed his eyes and listened as his classmates chatted about their day. He knew sleep was impossible, but at least for now he could catch a few minutes of rest.
Thirty minutes later, Bellamy walked around the back of his two-story house and entered through the kitchen. If not for the flies swirling the orange-tinted light, he wouldn’t have remembered the stench: a mixture of sharp and heavy scents that only a rodent could bear. (Well, a rodent or Bellamy, since he had long ago adapted to the putrid odor of his father’s house.)
“What do you think you’re doing?” Bellamy’s father demanded, emerging from the cramped living room.
His face was perfectly shaved, but his dark circles and blood-shot eyes were not from a lack of sleep.
We froze halfway to the stairs. A cold sweat tickled the back of Bellamy’s neck.
“Take out that garbage,” his father continued, “before I throw you out with it.”
“Yes, sir,” Bellamy mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Yes, Dad,” Bellamy corrected.
Still wearing his light blue backpack (who knew what his father would do if he left it), Bellamy picked up the empty beer cans off the coffee table and collected the trash bags throughout the house, before heading out front to squeeze them in the trash can. (The garbage truck came earlier that day, but he had better not tell his father that.)
When Bellamy returned to the house, he saw his father reclined on the brown fabric couch drinking his next case of beer. (He never could drink enough of that.)
“What’re you looking at?” his father grunted between gulps.
Bellamy jogged upstairs, although his stomach growled in protest. It was roughly 4:45 p.m. and Bellamy had a feeling he wouldn’t be eating anytime soon.
His room comprised a wide, half-empty dresser against the inner wall, mounds of origami materials piled on a thick windowsill overlooking the garage, and a twin bed with his mother’s old quilt laid neatly across it.
Bellamy wrapped the quilt around his shoulders and settled with his homework on the carpet in front of the windowsill. He drew circles around his sore collarbone as he tried to figure out how Mr. Wallace would get from point A to point C in the shortest time possible.
A few minutes passed and Bellamy heard a crash, followed by thunder on the stairs. His father stormed into his room, holding a belt in one hand and a notice in the other. Bellamy had forgotten to pay the bills last week.
The world had more than one kind of shadow; as his father beat him, Bellamy wished for nothing more than to disappear in his. (But there was nothing I could do.)
***
Bellamy’s limbs ached when he returned to school the next day. (I knew everyone could see the bruises, but no one said a thing. I supposed the hardest truths were better kept in the dark.)
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