The clock struck 3:00, and the school bell rang rhythmically, opening the doors to the summer holidays. Six years old David took his bag and shouldered his way out of school, lowering his head. While people never spoke with him, even his teacher hesitated to look at him and made him sit in the corner of his class, avoiding any contact. – Maybe for his color? – He got used to this treatment. Outside the school gate stood three of his friends who never took notice of the way he appeared or his skin color. Before disbanding, they all agreed to meet at the beach at a specific spot to execute the sketch they drew beforehand.
His sister had been waiting in their van, who was several years older than him. They chatted about their day on the drive home. Once they changed their clothes appropriate for the beach, she drove in the cool evening summer breeze. They live in a small town famous for its coastline and clear blue water. People around the world have made it into a vacation spot every year.
His hand clutched his sister’s while she walked in the warm sand. People of Ohara town got used to his presence, but he’s quite a sight for new eyes. Contempt, surprise, David could tell the difference at such a young age. After his parents went missing in the sea, his world changed. The wall protected him from the sharp words, and prying eyes suddenly shattered exposing him to the world. Now, his sister is all he got.
He raced to his friends once they were in sight and showed his new plastic equipment to them. They started to build the sketched sand tower. While his sister sat in the sand overseeing their work. They giggled, laughed, and time flew as the sun sank into the sea on the far end of the horizon. Gradually the crew disbanded along with fading light, and all left was David and his sister anna.
‘Can we go home now?’ Anna asked, looking at David.
‘Almost done…in a minute, ann.’
He decorated the sand lighthouse with shells, marbles and plastic colored papers he brought with him.
‘If they lose their way at night, this will help them find us.’
His sister could tell he was tired from his two-hour work in the sand. His breathing through the gills from the side of his neck was heavy, and he had no strength left in his fin legs.
‘Ann, I’m tired’ David looked through his ocean blue eyes. They are clear as a blue diamond without a pupil or sclera. She lifted, rested his head on her soft shoulder, and carried him to their van. He dozed off before they reached their van. She looked back at the empty shore over her shoulder; the lighthouse he built was barely visible, but the papers he decorated radiated in the slipping light and glowed its presence. It was their parents’ invention for the fishermen who would go into the sea. They would tie the papers to the mast, and it would glow even in pitch black and point towards the shore.
She gently placed her brother in the van’s back seat, put a blanket on his sea green skin, and took the engine to the road. She glanced at her textbooks on the passenger seat ’Marine Biology. When they reached their home, she opened the van’s back door, and her eyes caught sight of the label “Emily and Dickenson research files.” She reached the top of the pile and flipped the pages. She’s been through them countless times but couldn’t shake the feeling ‘Am I missing something?’ between the pages stood a photo of Emily, her mother, with the same eyes and skin as her brother, and Dickenson, her biological human father. Her fingers gently stroked across her parents’ photo. She whispered under her breath.
“I’ll find you guys.”
She placed the files back. Reached for her half-brother, gently lifted him into her arms as her mother used to, and shouldered him home.
