I Understand Now

Three

I drove home that day still feeling my back being probed with a pencil eraser. It pissed me off and gave me worse road rage than I usually had. Some asshole flipped me off and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

But that anger dissipated when I saw the little boy.

He was on the curb curled up in a ball with his hands clutched against his chest. There was mud smeared all over his skin and dirt was crusted into his blond hair. He was sobbing. I panicked. And this was an illogical conclusion to jump to, but my first thought was that he had gotten hit by a car.

I swerved to a stop and leaped out of the drivers seat. "Kid, hey, kiddo! You okay?"

I didn't know if he had heard me because he didn't respond. He was a child of probably five or six. I scrambled over to his side and yanked out my cell phone. "Kiddo, are you all right?" I asked.

"Yeah." His voice was weak.

"Oh God, you're okay." I blew out my breath. "Are you hurt at all? What's wrong?"

"She's crying and it's sad." His hands quivered. I realized that I probably looked like a complete pedophile to people driving by and I glanced around, paranoid. No one was going by. I helped pick the boy up to a sitting position and he looked at me with big teary eyes. His little shoulders were racking. "She's really sad."

"Who's sad?" I asked softly. "Is she all right?"

The boy hiccuped and then opened his hands. A large beetle, the biggest beetle I had ever seen, was sitting in his palms. Its hairy antennae waved. "She's sad," the boy whispered. "She told me she wants to die."

I didn't know what to say. The horned bug looked anything but depressed. But tears and snot were rolling down the boy's face in a constant stream and dribbled off of his chin and I didn't have the heart to say anything. "Would you like me to do something?" I asked quietly.

"I-I don't know." The boy sniffled. "Will you- will you hold her?"

I didn't know what possessed me to say this, but I said, "Yes, of course I will," and then the boy gave me the beetle with his shaking hands. The bug crawled into my fingers. It was as long as my palm and was bigger than both the little boy's hands combined. Its black exoskeleton shined like a stone in the light. It was heavy. At least heavy in bug standards. The boy wiped the snot off of his face. "Should I say something?" I asked.

"M-maybe," he said. "I don't know."

I looked down at the big-ass beetle in my hand. It sat there unmoving. Maybe it was depressed. It kind of made my heart sting to look at it, despite it all.

I swallowed and stroked the beetle's back with my fingers. "You're going to be all right, okay?" I said. "You're beautiful and there's no reason to be sad. This little boy really loves you."

But in reply, it spread its wings and took off in a bolt of black.

The boy shuddered and began crying again.

"Hey, hey, it's going to be alright," I said. I felt terrible. The poor kid and that beetle really hit me in the heart. "She'll be fine, don't worry about it, okay?"

"O-okay." His breath rattled. Then the door to the house he was in front of swung open. A kid in a ratty T-shirt and pack of cigarettes in his hand stepped out. That was when I realized it was Gordon.

"Liam," he called, but then his eyes fixed onto me. A grin spread across his face. "I see you met my friend Mason."

The boy rubbed his eyes and wobbled to his feet. "Bigbro, LeeKee is upset. This boy tried to help but she's still crying."

"Oh Liam, I'm sorry." Gordon looked genuinely hurt about that. The grin he had on his face when he saw me vanished, and he shoved the cigarettes in his pocket and walked through the gate to pick up the kid, who stumbled over to him. Gordon swung the boy into his arms.

"I'd better get going," I said and stood up. Now I really felt like a creeper. Of course that kid had to be Gordon's brother. Of course this had to be Gordon's house.

"Okay, that's fine." Gordon grinned at me, but he seemed bothered. "Thanks for stopping by and helping out. See you in math class."

"Yeah, see you," and I got the hell outta there.

I couldn't stop thinking about the boy and the beetle.
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I've finished this story already, so I'm just going to randomly update. Merp.