DancingKitsune

A streetlamp a few feet away from me flickers. The sun had long since made it’s descent behind the horizon. I look at my watch and notice that it’s almost eleven at night, then look around me. I’m at a crossroad for four ways to go, buildings curbed with grass and concrete.

I look across the streets out of habit to see that there’s no one trying to run me over, and I jog slightly to the opposing pavement. I shove my hands into the pocket of my grey hoodie and continue my trek to his house.

There are three things that I could always count on, regardless of the date and time – One, that the local ice cream joint loved earning a profit from loyal paying customers too much to close – ever. Two, that Ms Inverse lived, breathed, slept, and ate the phrase “the more the merrier”. Three, that Leon’s window was always remain open.

I look up at the old Victorian house that I called my second home. The grand building was a dark maroon color with cream colored shutters and molding. There was a terrace up on the upper left side around the third floor. A large porch wrapped around the whole house with a porch swing on the right side upfront, not to mention several potted plants that were flowering. In the back of the large three and a half story building there was a patio on the second floor that had several pairs of French doors (which oddly lead to the kitchen) and a metal spiral staircase that took you down to the porch.

I stood there staring at the home in all of it’s grandeur for a couple minutes, then walked up the path to the porch. The front yard wasn’t that large, really – only lasting about fifteen feet or so – but there was a large weeping Sakura tree on each side that met overhead the center of the yard. I knew that their backyard was much larger, and had three or four more of the trees back there. Le’s mother was absolutely obsessed with the tree.

When I get to the front, I turn to the right and walk around the side of the house. I get to about the middle of the house and I cross between a pair of pale pink rhododendron bushes to a cream-colored vine fence that was leaning against the porch roof. I make my way up the fence to the top of the porch and pull myself up. There’s a window in front of me, but it’s not the one I’m looking for. Next to it, however, there’s a chain-linked ladder hanging from it’s bolting on an above window I could tell was cracked open some from even here.

I climb up the ladder and push open the window and haul my shoulders in, still half out the ledge. I look around the dark room and spot the boy I’m looking for already fast asleep in a cocoon of blankets. I pull myself into the room as quietly as I can, but still manage to make some racket.

“Who’s ‘ere?” Leon calls out in a sleepy voice as he rubs his eyes. He’s sitting there in a tee-shirt with his legs bent up with the blankets covering the lower half of his self. His hair is down from it’s usual pigtails on the top of his head and it seemed to be just about everywhere, meaning he had been sleeping for a while. I feel bad about waking him up now; he loves his sleep so much. “Hey...” I call out quietly, guilt evident in my voice.

“Natie? Dun’ be a stranger now, baby, come to bed…” he says as sleepy as ever as he moves over some and pats the space next to him lazily. I go over to him and sit down on the edge of the bed with my hand folded on top of the other. “You okay, babe?” He asks when he noticed that I wasn’t laying down. “Look’it me, Natie..” he says while hugging my shoulders from behind.

I turn my face and he gasps a little when he notices the abrasions around my cheekbone and eye, then his face gets hard and sad. “Oh, baby, look what he did…” He knew it was my dad knocking me around again. He sighs all exhausted like, and hugs me tightly as he nuzzles his face into my neck.

“We’ll deal with it tomorrow, okay? He can’t do anything here, babe…” he says before he kisses my neck then gets up from bed to get some pj’s from his drawers over by the window. He stares out it for a moment, distracted by the moon and stars most likely, then brings them back over to me. It was a random tee-shirt and some shorts, like what he was wearing. I pull them on without saying a word, he just goes back to staring out the window.

When I’m done, he looks back over to me and says “Now that’s much better…” and smiles to me. He climbs into bed and I follow his lead and lay down next to him. He cuddles up to me, and I can’t help but humorously wonder where his defiant, independent, and dominant side goes when he’s sleepy.

I lay there a while half asleep and staring at the crescent moon out his window. He’s already fast asleep, and soon I can’t help but follow his example.

I can always count on his window being open…