Chapter 9.11

I didn't go back to the children's centre after that. I stayed in the dormitory, but during the day I used one of the empty classrooms. I didn't want to go back, and I didn't mind being by myself but, after the first morning, that didn't seem to be an issue.

Luke introduced me to someone new after lunch. He came with a golden-haired boy trailing after him. He looked kind and a bit like Luke so I thought they might be related. His eyes were red, and he looked like he'd been crying recently, but when he turned to me and gave me a massive grin, I thought I must have been mistaken. "My name's Alex." He introduced himself brazenly.

"This is the boy I wanted to introduce you to. His father was a good friend of mine." So they weren't related.

"I'm Ezra."

"What's your favourite game?"

"I don't know any games."

He looked thoughtful for a few moments, "that's okay, I can teach you some." The exchange was kind of abrupt, but I didn't mind.

Luke brought some games in from the other room and Alex taught me how to play. At first, I didn't really get it, it seemed like you had to do actions in line with made up rules to achieve a goal. I kept forgetting the rules and I had trouble reading them because it'd been so long reading Reagen. Regardless, I think I started to have fun.

But there were times where Alex trailed off and stared into space for minutes at a time. I thought he was bored so I said, "you don't have to stay here with me, you can go back to the children's centre if you want."

"Its fine. To be honest, I don't really want to go in there either. Since my dad died people have been weird around me."

"I didn't know your dad died."

"It was his funeral a couple of days ago…" It must have been why I didn't see him before. I didn't know what to say.

"Don't be weird." He complained with a slight frown.

"Okay." He didn't want to talk about his dad, and there were things I didn't want to talk about either, so there was a gentle truce not to mention either of them. That suited both of us fine.

Over the first couple of days he taught me how to play a board game with black and white pieces that moved across a chequered board. He always played white, while I played black, and each of the figures had their own value and way of moving across the board. It was hard remembering what each of them did, and I lost badly most of the time. But I think it was fun.

I also asked him about the games I'd seen the other children playing with the fake food. "Younger kids like pretending to do stuff that adults do. Like shopping or cooking. They were probably doing that."

"Wouldn't real food be better?"

"Yeah but you can't play with real food. It won't be pretend that way."

"I don't get it."

"Neither do I." he laughed.

Alex moved back into the dormitory, his bed was a little way away from mine, his trunk was filled with toys and belongings that he sometimes took along with him during the day to explain how they worked to me.

When he made his grand return, I could understand why he didn't want to return to the children centre in the day. He was swarmed with children and he tried politely brushed them off when they tried talking to him about his dad, but I could tell he was getting tired of it. Thankfully, after what happened in the children's centre, I was a kind of child repellent, so when he came to talk to me, he was left alone by the others. So, we sat opposite each other discussing the things I didn't understand or the type of foods we liked.