Benji

It was a normal day at work – a slow morning with only mindless cleaning to do until the regular lunch crowd turned up. It was completely normal, nothing out of the ordinary. However, all of that changed around mid-morning.

The bell over the door jingled, signalling that someone had walked in. I continued to wipe down the counter before turning to greet them, and a small smile slid onto my face when I finally did so.

He hadn’t seen me yet; his back was to me as he sat at a table in the corner, but there was no mistaking his small frame and blond hair. I frowned as he pulled his backpack off; why wasn’t he in school?

There were no other customers in the shop and I’d finished the majority of the cleaning, so I figured Priscilla wouldn’t mind if I sat down for ten minutes.

“Hey,” I greeted him as I slid into the seat opposite him.

His head jerked up, surprised to see me, and it was then that I realised there was something wrong. Huge black sunglasses covered the upper half of his face and the corners of his mouth were turned down. Immediately, I wanted to reach over and wrap my arms around him. I wanted to hold him until everything that was causing him sorrow disappeared.

“Hi,” he replied, so quiet I almost missed it. His fingers went to the edge of his sunglasses, as though he were checking that they were still on, or making sure they didn’t fall, and he tried to smile.

There was something wrong.

Normally, when Benji smiled, it brightened the entire room. His blue eyes would light up and his pink lips would stretch wide, sometimes revealing flashes of his white teeth. Every time he smiled I’d get a fluttering in my stomach. When Benji smiled, I smiled. When Benji was happy, I was happy.

But Benji wasn’t happy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, frowning. My fingers itched to reach over and take his hand, but I stopped myself, grabbing a packet of sugar from the container on the table and playing with it instead.

“Nothing,” he said quickly.

“So, why aren’t you in school, then?”

He just shrugged and put his head down, his blond hair falling like a curtain in front of his face.

I sighed, tapping the sugar packet against the table impatiently. “Benji,” I said, trying to ignore the pleading tone in my voice, “can you please just talk to me?”

“I am talking,” he muttered defiantly. He turned, glancing around the room quickly then back to me. “Do you… do you work here?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell Kyle or Mum. I’d rather they didn’t know.”

He nodded, fidgeting with the edge of his sunglasses again.

“That reminds me,” I said quickly. “Would you like anything? Coffee, hot chocolate, cake?”

He shrugged. “Could I maybe have an apple juice, please?” He asked timidly.

I grinned and got up, walking swiftly over to the drinks fridge to grab a bottle of apple juice. Placing it in front of Benji, I sat down again. “Don’t worry about paying for it; it’s on me.”

He grasped it in his small hands, carefully undoing the lid. “O-oh, thank you,” he said quietly, before taking a sip. As he set the bottle down with one hand, he fixed his sunglasses with the other.

“Okay, seriously,” I started, kind of fed up with him not talking to me. “What’s wrong? And don’t give me this ‘nothing’ bullshit. Why aren’t you in school? And what’s with the sunglasses?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked down at the bottle in his hands. I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he reached up and took off his sunglasses.

I froze. I completely froze. My mind blanked and I don’t even know if I was still breathing.

His left eye was slightly swollen, his eyelid not completely open. The skin underneath and around the outside was bruised, a mottled red and purple. He wasn’t saying anything, but he had to be in pain.

Something in my chest tightened. How could someone hurt Benji? He was so small, so pure and innocent, so absolutely gorgeous; what type of person would want to ruin that?

“What… What happened?” I asked, my voice shaking.

He refused to look at me, ignoring my question and hiding his face with his hair. I watched as he sniffed and swiped something from under his eye.

“Oh, God,” I muttered. I reached over, clasping his hand in mine and squeezing it. I wanted nothing more than to make everything better but I didn’t know what to do; seeing Benji in pain, seeing him hurt and broken and bruised, caused an ache in my chest. “Benji, I… Just – Wait here.”

I got up, reluctantly releasing his hand, and ran out the back. Priscilla turned from her position at the sink, watching me pull off my apron with raised eyebrows.

“I’m so sorry, Cilla,” I said, trading my apron for my jacket, “but I have to go. Something’s come up and I wouldn’t do this to you if it wasn’t important.”

After a tense moment, she sighed and relented, shooing me out of the kitchen. Pulling my keys from my jacket pocket, I ran out to get Benji.

He wasn’t there. The only sign that he’d ever been sitting at that table in the corner was a half-empty bottle of apple juice.