Altruistic

The first time was an accident.

There was no flash of light or shower of sparks. He just showed up there, wide-eyed and terrified. He pressed himself against the wall once Sean's gaze met his, slid slow to the ground as Sean mulled over the right thing to say to the kid that just. Appeared.

"Hi," he said quietly, easing over to the stranger. "How'd you get in?" He couldn't find it in himself to be afraid, not when the boy opposite him looked both harmless and horrified. The boy's heavy breathing melted with the muted music coming from the paused Mario Kart session Sean had abandoned to investigate, giving their encounter an odd, almost uneasy feel. "Who are you?"

"I wanna go home," muttered the stranger, sitting on the hardwood with his knees to his chest. He couldn't stop staring at Sean, couldn't wipe the terror from his face or the welling tears from his eyes. "I wanna go home!" He had begun to whine, his body tensing up in preparation for sobs.

"Hey, you can go home," Sean said with a dash of hesitance. He thought that keeping his voice low would help the boy hold onto some semblance of a calm mind, but it didn't seem to be working. The boy's face had started to turn red and tears were spilling and he was sniffling and ready to cry out again. "You can! We can call your family and they can pick you up! What's your name?"

Sean had taken to sitting before the stranger now, pulling on the stranger's shoelaces. Even though they sat opposite each other, Sean didn't truly feel that he was real. It was impossible. How did someone show up in his room without the door or magic? They couldn't. And yet the door had never opened and there was no wand to be found.

"Mark," said the stranger, then with a name attached to his sad face. Sean held Mark's laces tight between his fingers, unable to pull his gaze from Mark for longer than a moment. "You sound weird."

"Hey! You're the weird one." It seemed that with a spark of banter, Mark's sorrow lifted, even if it was just a bit. "I'm Sean. And I'm not weird."

"But you sound like it." Mark rubbed the back of his hands against his red eyes before scooting back a bit, held close to Sean only by his laces. "You don't sound like anyone at home."

"That's 'cause you're not home," Sean huffed like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And it was. Mark had cried about wanting to go home quite loudly; surely he knew that. "How'd you get in here?" It was a question that was simply killing Sean not to know the answer to. If Mark was magic, maybe he could teach Sean to be, too.

"I appeared!" Mark threw his arms out to emphasize his magical arrival. He even waved them a bit. "I was in my school and I didn't wanna be there because they were mean."

"Mean?"

"They kept pulling back their eyes at the sides," Mark mumbled, "so they looked like mine." His bottom lip had started to tremble again; he was probably thinking about a lot of bad things, Sean figured, and it was his job to make it stop. It was then, anyway. Mark appeared in his room, after all.

"That's because your eyes are cool! And they wanted to be like you." He nodded, proud of himself. "You're magic or something, aren't you?"

Mark wouldn't meet Sean's gaze anymore, choosing to stare into his lap as he shrugged. "I don't think so." He began to flex his hands, wiggle his fingers, maybe trying to figure out how he performed the magic that he so clearly did. He must have come from far away; he sounded like no other person that Sean had ever met. "I wanna go home."

"How did you come? Maybe you can do that and go back?"

"I don't know. I wanted to be away and then I opened my eyes and I was away." Mark rested his head on his knees, still sniffling every couple of seconds. Sean placed a hand on the sad boy's tense shoulder, taking notes from the things grown-ups do when they're talking to people that cried. "I don't know how."

"Maybe you can think about home?"

Sean sat as still as he could on his knees. It was hard, sitting in place like he was, but he tried his hardest; he honestly felt like anything he did would make Mark start to sob again.

"Okay."

They sat there as Mark forced himself to think about home, his family, his backyard and his room and his front porch and anything that would help him. Sean simply kept his hand in place and his body still; disrupting would be very bad, he felt, and he was sure Mark wouldn't appreciate it. If he were stuck in a new place with strangers, he'd want to go home, too, and he wouldn't like to be interrupted.

Still, he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Are you thinking?"

Mark had closed his eyes. "Uh-huh."

"Okay." A sudden urge to use the toilet had blossomed in the time Sean had been hanging around the potentially magical kid, so he bid Mark a momentary adieu and ran off.

When he returned, hands still a little wet from washing in a rush, Mark was gone.

The second time was a little less of an accident, if only because they knew each other's names and Mark felt a tad safer than he did before.

He appeared in Sean's room in the middle of the night, a little less afraid. His heart beat a little more normal. His mind was a little less frantic.

"Sean," he whispered, standing at the foot of the other boy's bed. He poked at Sean's legs, prodding just hard enough for Sean to feel it beneath the thick blankets. He wished that he was underneath them, as well. It was surprisingly cold that time, and all Mark had was a t-shirt. Still, he poked until Sean began to stir.

He only said, "Mark?" when he came to, clearing his vision from sleep and the natural blur that the darkness seemed to give it. "You came back?"

"It was an accident," Mark admitted sheepishly. "I wanted to leave and go away somewhere nice and I thought about here."

"Oh. Am I nice?"

"I think so."

Sean rubbed his eyes again, unsure of what to do. It was late; he was supposed to be asleep, because school was tomorrow and he had to be up really early. He considered letting Mark get in the bed, too, so he could go back to sleep, but the longer he sat up and watched the other, the more he awoke.

"Do you wanna play Mario Kart?" he asked instead of retreating back into his blanket. "We'd have to mute it, though. Because it's really loud and it's nighttime."

Mark nodded, looking overjoyed at the thought. It was the first time Sean had seen him happy; it was a nice change from the tears and apprehension that seemed to often plague him.

Sean snuck Mark to the family room, starting the game and silencing the television. As they waited for it to load, he asked, "Where do you live?" because it was the second time and he figured he was entitled to know.

"Ohio," Mark said, whispering just as Sean was.

"Where's that?" Sean asked. He couldn't help the confusion that shifted his face.

"In Ohio? Ohio, America."

"You're from the States?" Sean sounded amazed then, his eyes wide and delighted. He sat close so he didn't have to strain to hear the whispers, not really worried about whether or not he was making Mark uncomfortable with his close-range excitement. "Is it fun there? Is it nice?"

"Um, it's nice." Mark shrugged like it was no big deal. "Sometimes it's really cold, like here, and sometimes it's really hot. And there's a lot of people."

"I wanna go. Can you take me with you one day?"

"Okay. I'll try one day."

They played Mario Kart (which Mark was unfairly good at; Sean had picked Yoshi, his favorite character, and still lost, so surely Mark had cheated somewhere) until Sean had fallen asleep again. When he awoke, the sun was beginning to rise and Mark was gone again.

The third time was purposeful.

It was very hot when Mark appeared again, smiling from the start. He had a pinwheel in his back pocket, two of them. He gave Sean the green one and kept the red for himself, claiming every so often that they reminded him of Christmas.

"How come you're here now?" Sean asked between puffs on his pinwheel. It had a dash of glitter infused into the plastic, sparkling every time it spun around. "Did you wanna run away again?"

"No, I just wanted to come."

"Ohh. I was gonna go outside, so you should come with me. We can play out there this time."

They ran around Sean's backyard for what felt like hours on end, though it was closer to thirty minutes. They collapsed on the ground after a ridiculous game of Tag that involved throwing twigs and tackling and even tossing their pinwheels, the sun beating down on the pair without mercy. "Does your mam ever wonder where you go?" Sean had wondered that since the first time Mark appeared, but had never thought to ask. Not until then, anyway.

"No. I don't really go when I'm around her. Only at other times. I don't like people knowing. It's weird."

"It's cool!" Sean shouted, rolling onto his stomach. He dug his elbows into the ground to prop him up.

"It's freaky."

"It's magic."

Mark grinned then. "Okay."

The fourth, the fifth, the sixth time, they were all just as purposeful. They had found a best friend in each other, but Mark's sporadic arrivals threw things a bit out of hand. Apparently, the time was different in America than it was in Ireland. Sean had learned that when Mark showed up at midnight and said he had just finished dinner at home. He also learned that Mark was already seven, eight months older, and that he had a brother and that he really loved animals (even though they didn't seem to love him back).

But, more importantly, he learned that Mark really needed to keep coming back. Because Sean really liked having him around.

The seventh time was the shortest.

Mark was panicked, saying that he thought about Sean's room by accident and shouldn't have even been there. He was in the bathroom at school and had to be back in his classroom in five minutes or he might get in trouble.

"Wait!" Sean exclaimed when Mark decided he couldn't stay. He grabbed Mark's hand and pulled him away from the corner he had secluded himself in. Swiftly, Sean clasped a chain around the other boy's neck, one that sat just a tad bit low courtesy of the ring that hung from it. "You have to keep this, okay? I have one, too, see!" Sure enough, an identical ring sat around Sean's neck, gleaming dimly in the sunlight.

"It looks like we're married," Mark said, inspecting the new piece of jewelry. At least he didn't look so frantic. "Are we married?"

"Uh-huh. You're supposed to marry someone you like a lot if you wanna keep seeing them. And I want to keep seeing you."

"Sean," Mark had started, twisting the thin chain around his fingers. He wasn't sure about the effectiveness of marriage – it didn't keep his parents together –, but he had the ring and Sean sounded truly excited. So he said nothing more than, "Thank you."

"You're welcome! So that means you'll come back more, right? Because if you're married, you can't just go away. That's mean."

"Yeah, I'll come more. But I have to go now, or I'll get in trouble."

"But you'll come back?"

"I'll always come back."

Sean had placed his hands over his eyes as he waited for Mark to disappear. He had never seen Mark come or go and quite liked the air of mystery it left behind. As he awaited the feeling of being alone, he began to pray that his mother never realized she was missing two rings, and if she did, he prayed she never traced it back to him.

When he was done praying, Mark was gone.

The eighth time was the longest.

Mark had appeared right after Sean was supposed to go to bed, giving them the whole night to play if they remained quiet. Sean considered Mark his best and biggest secret, not to mention if he was caught sneaking around with friends after bedtime, he'd probably get in trouble. So they spoke only in whispers and buried themselves in a blanket fort they spent a good hour or so making. Mark pretended it was a spaceship, saying things about space that Sean never knew. Sean simply played along and fired off countdowns when necessary.

The ninth time, however, never came.

Sean hoped and prayed that Mark would just appear before it happened, but he had no way to contact the older boy in time. When Mark showed up, he arrived to an empty bedroom.

Sean had moved and Mark had no idea where.

And that was the end of that.