Zack made his way down Trinity square, passing by the hospital where his dad worked, ignoring the crowd that was gathered outside the gates and up to the bus stop on the next turn. He'd sat in his room by himself all day when, dad had left for some "mission" he'd overheard his parents talking about. And he hadn't returned since yesterday. Zack hadn't even bothered questioning them anymore. He knew they'd just evade all his enquiries in one way or another. So he'd stayed in bed all day, Nick's silver coin in his hand, eyes intent on the ceiling as he went over all the bullshit he'd taken from the adults all his life.

And he'd felt himself grow tired just thinking about it. So he'd stopped chasing that train of thought. His mind had eventually wandered over to the football match, to coach Grundle's words before the game. "Even if you don't like the rest of these boys, at least try working with them. You might find some friends in the process."

That was just more bullshit coming from another adult. All he'd got from the game was Arthur's clinginess and enemies instead of any friends. Not to mention the suspension from school and mom's outburst over it.

He tried to think of something else but his mind kept dwelling on the bullying incident. Or on Arthur more specifically. Zack felt weirded out by his involuntary fixation on the kid. He found the boy pathetic and weak. And Arthur was certainly weak, a lot weaker than the other kids at their school. But his weakness didn't come from his inability to throw a punch or outrun someone. Arthur was weak because he never stood up for himself. He let others take advantage of his shyness, his bumbling and timid nature. The world stomped on Arthur and he just kept his head down and kept moving. Zack couldn't help but feel like he could relate. After all, hadn't he let himself get fooled by everything everyone said?

But despite being the social punching bag at school, Arthur had still gone against his inherent timid nature. The boy might've never been in a fight before. But that day, after the game, he'd still intervened. He'd jumped into the fray when Zack was cornered. Whether or not Arthur was actually capable of helping out in the situation was a different matter. But taking the initiative for speak up for someone else still took some balls--especially if you were someone who got bullied at school everyday. And that called for respect in Zack's opinion.

He arrived at the bus stop and waited. He'd felt bad for yelling at Arthur after everything that happened. It hadn't really been the boy's fault. He was just an easy target as ever and Zack had lashed out at him. It didn't take much thought to conclude that the kid hadn't deserved it in the first place. And Zack he'd stepped outside, headed for the school, so he could apologize and ask the boy to forgive him.

Still waiting for the bus, he remembered the countless times his parents argued, blamed and yelled at each other--most of the times for mistakes that were out of their control, only to hug it out later. Zack cringed when he realized that he was about to do the same thing with Arthur.

He shook his head. This would be the last time he'd let himself act this way. He'd vowed to never become like his constantly bickering parents whose conflicts only lasted for one angry outburst before they reduced themselves to whimpering kittens as if nothing they'd said to each other meant anything. It was nauseating. And it was pathetic. Zack wasn't keen on becoming either of those.

#

The bus dropped him off at the station near his school. Zack walked the rest of the way. It was half past eleven--that meant it would be lunch time in about half an hour. Zack wasn't going to fool around for thirty minutes before he could get the chance to get inside the school. So he just climbed the perimeter wall behind the cafeteria. Then made his way into the main building.

He walked up to the lockers in the hallway, found the one that had Arthur's name labeled on it and stuck a note into the lock saying, Meet me at the bleachers on the field -Teddy. He hated that name but shrugged it away.

He still had fifteen minutes. He went out to the field and waited on the bleachers.

It took Arthur another twenty minutes to arrive where instructed. The boy was as timid as ever when he arrived. "Hi, Teddy," he said. "I wasn't expecting to hear from you...especially after last time."

Zack frowned at the kid. "That's what I wanted to talk about." He looked at the empty football field. A gentle gust of wind ruffled the grass. "I yelled at you. I'm sorry."

"O-Oh?" Arthur seemed surprised. Zack's frown deepened. Was this the first time someone was apologizing to him? "Y-You don't have to, Teddy. It was my fault th-that you got in trouble anyway."

Zack sneered at the boy. "Your fault? It's your fault that you were gonna have the shit beaten out of you?!"

Arthur was flustered, he looked down, smoothed out his jeans as if it was a skirt. "I mean...I should've stood up to them. Isn't that what other boys would've done? They would've fought for themselves."

"No!" Zack sprang to his feet. "It doesn't matter what others would have done. Don't you get what you did? You came to help me. Even when I ignored you the whole time and you still ran to my rescue. Do you know how ballsy that is? To run to help someone who doesn't deserve it and that too in an unfair match like that one!" He hopped off the bleachers and stepped up to the kid. He grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "You don't just have the balls, Arthur. You have a kind heart. That's a rare thing to find. Stop shooting yourself down."

Arthur's eyes were wide, his face still flustered, his mouth agape. "Teddy...that's..." he trailed off.

Zack let go of him. "You don't have to say anything. Just know that you did the right thing. A thing that no one else had the balls to do. I yelled at you because I was mad at something else. Not you. And for that, I apologize again. I'm sorry. Whether or not you accept that apology is up to you." He clapped the boy on his shoulder and started to walk away.

"Teddy, wait!" There was another, harder gust of wind this time.

Zack stopped.

"You're just gonna leave? Just like that?" Arthur asked in that soft voice of his, yet he sounded defiant, almost stern.

Zack cocked his head. "What else do you expect?"

Arthur stepped close to him, seeming a bit more defiant now. "I didn't intervene that day just to play the hero. I wasn't trying to impress anyone. I did it cuz I thought of you as my friend. I wasn't even mad at you for yelling at me. I was just hoping you'd give me another chance. To be a better friend."

Zack looked at him, frowning. "Why do you want to be my friend so badly?"

"Cuz I feel like I know you," Arthur said. "I feel like I understand what you're going through."

Before Zack could answer his stomach grumbled. The boy looked away, flustered. "Excuse me," he mumbled.

"When was the last time you ate?" Arthur asked.

"The night before the previous one," Zack said, still flustered. "I had a bit of falling out with my parents."

Arthur stared at Zack for a moment before saying. "Wait for me at the back gate. Let's go to my place."

"Don't you have any more lectures after this?" Zack asked as the other boy started walking towards the main building.

Arthur turned and smiled sheepishly. "We have physical education after lunch. I hate P.E."

#

Arthur's house was a twenty minute walk from the school. His mom's apartment was on the third floor of a weather-beaten brick and mortar building. Arthur unlocked the door and the two boys entered.

The living room had a small rug between a sofa, two foldable wooden chairs and a plasma television on a table by the wall. Another wall with a square window divided the kitchen and the living room. There was a propane gas stove, a toaster and a microwave on the counter. Glasses and dishes and cheap cutlery sat in the overhead shelves. There were two other rooms down a narrow hallway and a bathroom on the right.

Even though Zack hadn't been expecting much in particular, Arthur's apartment seemed even lesser than what he could've expected. Everything about it felt just too...sparse. A generic landscape painting hung on the living room wall and a fake bronze statue of a horse sat atop the television. Despite these attempts at bringing some personality to the living space, something didn't feel quite right.

It didn't really feel like a home. Zack tried not to dwell too much on that observation.

Arthur asked him to wait in the living room and walked into the kitchen. "You can turn on the TV if you want," Arthur called out from the kitchen. "The remote's control is on that other chair."

Zack turned on the tv. The only active channel was the news channel. All the other channels just had war documentaries and discussions on the ten year war and history of Ardvenia. Zack settled on the news channel. They had a panel discussing Eli Hodges' medical condition and speculating on who might've been behind the attack.

By the time Zack put the remote control back on the chair, Arthur returned with a bowl of cereal and handed it to Zack. "It's not much but that's what I can put together quick without making a mess."

Zack said he didn't mind and thanked his host. He took the first bite. It didn't taste too bad. Arthur had mixed in pieces of banana and chopped up some almonds with the cereal and the milk. It all made for a pretty good combination. In Zack's state of hunger, it almost tasted delicious. "It tastes so good," he said as he took another bite.

Arthur blushed. "Thanks."

"Are you home alone, most of the time?" Zack asked.

"Kind of." Arthur shrugged. "Mom's mostly at work. She'd been working longer hours for the past couple of months. She says everything is more expensive now."

Zack took another bite of the cereal. "What about your dad?"

Arthur paused, frowning at the television. The panel was still discussing Eli's importance to the Ardvenian politics.

Zack leaned ahead. "Arthur?"

The boy perked a little. "Huh?"

Zack looked at him in concern. "Everything okay?"

Arthur looked away. "Yeah, I think," he said. "You asked me about my dad."

"Um, we don't have to talk about it if you don't–"

"He abandoned me," Arthur said. "All he ever cared about was his work. He didn't care when mom fell sick. He didn't care when we got seperated. All he ever did was work, work, work and work!"

Zack watched the boy for a long moment. On the television, Eli Hodges' medical condition remained a topic of debate. Zack put the bowl of half eaten cereal on the chair next to him and wiped his mouth.

"I'm sorry you went through that," he said gently. "I understand what it feels like getting pulled apart like that."

Arthur turned to him, incredulous. "No you don't. You still have your family. You are still with them. You get to see your father's face everyday. You can give him a hug whenever you want. You–"

"No I can't," Zack said quietly. He looked at the television where the panel was still busy discussing Eli's condition. On a small window within the picture, they had the shot of the crowd gathered outside the hospital where Eli was admitted. "My dad's in there." he pointed at the small window on the television. "He is the one treating Eli Hodges. He's been there since yesterday morning. And that's all I know. Neither of my parents tell me anything about what's going on." Zack paused and let out a sigh. "It's been less than a month since we got here but we've only been distancing ourselves more and more from each other. When we were coming out of the Sector, mom and dad said life here would be way easier. And we'd be able to live like a normal family but that hasn't happened at all. None of us have spoken what we're actually thinking. Even though we've all been sad for one reason or another, we keep going on like nothing happened. And even though we are together, we've never been more apart."

Arthur was shocked, he stared at the boy, agape. "Y-You came out of the Sectors?" he said. "I thought your father was a military doctor. And you grew up on some military base."

Zack shook his head. "I grew up in the sectors," he said and then he paused. This was the first time he'd said something true about himself in the past month. He realized he wasn't afraid of sharing the truth with Arthur. And whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing, he didn't care. So he kept going. "I've lived in sectors throughout the last ten years of the bombings and the attacks. My family and I had been barely getting by. If you asked us how we survived, we wouldn't be able to give a straight answer. We saw a lot of terrible things. Sometimes we did a terrible thing or two ourselves. And we kept living like that. Somehow we got lucky and were given a chance to come down here. All we had to do was give up our old identities. My parents took the chance and this is where we ended up."

"Old identities...?" Arthur was still reeling from taking in all this information. "Does that mean..."

Zack nodded. "Teddy Chambers isn't my real name."

Arthur gasped. He leaned in close to Zack. "Then...what is it? Would you tell me your real name?"

The boy smiled softly and said, "It's Zack. Zack Harris. Nice to meet you."

#

After letting the revelation sink in, Arthur smiled at his friend. With a rather playful glint in his eyes, he leaned in and whispered to Zack, "I'm so glad you told me your secret. Now I wanna tell you mine."

Zack raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Okay."

Arthur kept smiling as he took Zack's hand and led him down the small hallway next to the kitchen. Arthur's grip was surprisingly soft and his often awkward gait seemed somehow a lot more graceful in this moment. He led Zack into a small, dimly lit room with boxes cluttering the floor. Dusty curtains covered the windows. Arthur pushed the curtains and raised a new curtain of dust. He coughed, smiling sheepishly. "We don't come down to this room much," he said, letting go of Zack's hand. Arthur walked into one corner of the room and hauled over a hefty metal trunk. He laid it down on the floor, in a rectangle of sunlight that was pouring in from the window.

Arthur entered the combination into the dial of the lock on the trunk. After unlocking it, he blushed again. He looked at Zack. "Come here," he said, his voice was playful now.

Zack walked over and crouched next to Arthur in front of the trunk. "Only Daisy knows about this secret. But now you'll know it too."

Zack was unsure why Arthur was calling his own mother by her name. But now his curiosity had certainly spiked. Arthur finally opened the trunk.

Inside, were a pile of dresses of all colors. They could've a girl in Zack and Arthur's class. Other than the dresses, there was a yellow handheld mirror with a tiara painted on the back, a glass bottle of perfume, a hairbrush and several bottles of nail varnish. Zack didn't know the names of all these things but it looked like something his mother might've owned when she was his age. "What about it, Arthur? Why are you showing me all this?"

Arthur giggled. He leaned in again, this time a lot closer. "This stuff is all mine, Zack," he said, his voice was even softer now. He almost didn't sound like himself anymore. "This is my secret. I'm not a boy, Zack. My real name is Aaria." 

(to be continued...)