Elijah Herald-Smith was - and is - one of the most influential presence that I have ever come into contact with.

I knew I’d like him from the moment he walked into the room, with his black hair in tangles around his far too thin, far too pale face. He was wearing black dress pants, a white button down shirt, and a midnight blue pinstriped waistcoat. No one at school had ever seen anyone like him.

He sat next to me.

I thought he was beautiful.

One of his eyes was grey-green, the other was pale blue. For the first few months I knew him they were flat and emotionless, from about the time he introduces himself to me, to the first - and last - time he asked me to skip with him.

I yelled his ear off.

He lost his temper, and his eyes turned bright with fury. He told me I was an uptight harlot who he never wanted to see again. He always seemed to get more articulate when he was angry, using words most teenagers wouldn’t even know the meaning of, let alone use.

No matter how much we fought we always seemed to get over it in the end. Usually he’d come back first, he was always worse at holding grudges than I was.

I eventually stopped scolding him for skipping class, and smoking. He stopped losing his temper when I scolded him.

Despite glaring differences, we became the closest friends we could be. Everyone claimed we were dating, but I think we were simply too close to consider a romantic relationship.

He was the first person I told when my parents were splitting up, and he helped me with the divorce that followed.

I was the one he came to when his mother was missing, and I comforted him when she was found badly beaten, and apparently drunk, in a park on the other side of town.

That was the most frightening thing that ever happened to either of us. He’d burst into my house crying, and all I could do was hold him and tell him it was going to be alright - in a very unconvincing voice, no less. It was the only time I’d ever seen him scared.

She died and it crushed him.

After that he went flat again - worse than when I first knew him. All emotion was gone, every movement was tightly controlled. He was out of school more than he was in it, and he smoked more than ever.

His family moved away two weeks later. He said it was his brothers decision - that his father was too drunk to do anything. I’m still not sure if he was being sarcastic.

I haven’t seem, or talked to him since. I try not to remember the last time I saw him. I will always see him as the caustic, temperamental, beautiful young man, who walked into the room, and sat down next to me.

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Descriptive creative writing formative. Gained Excellence. About half a year old. Set before Cigarettes Outside Apartment Buildings.