How To Be a Boy

Chapter Seven

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》Chapter Seven《  

The commander is a bit peculiar, as I expected him to be. He pierced his beaming eyes often, and crossed his shoulders in concentration, expecting one of us to falter, and there would be one person every now and then, but no one knows what happened to them, causing the majority to tremble at the thought of doing the unusual.

Evan has been distant today, as he was yesterday, and I suspect it be from the openness he had shown a few nights ago. He hasn't been too off considering he is sheltered himself anyways, but I haven't heard him hum familiar tunes he does secretly through out the day, or at night.

My eyes traced the trail ahead of me as we jog, our hearts racing and our feet pounding against time, and once again, I found myself falling behind. People glanced over their shoulders with grand caution, trying not to capture the guards attention. Every time one looked back, my confidence faltered, and I would fall further and further behind until the people in front of me were no longer people- they were figures running into the sun, only to burn themselves. Me, see, I'm lacking behind. I'm making others uneasy, the guards upset, and the commander infuriated, but me- I'm taking my time. I don't wish to dash into a blazing sphere of wonder too quickly, and burn knowing that the worst jog I had was the one before this; I wish to to run into the sun, and when I burn, be one of those whom are please with the jog they had. And by the looks of it, no one else will be. 

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Evan sat with me at lunch today without a tray to sit in front of him. The flat emotion threaded into his face wasn't particularly unusual for him, but I was most concerned with his unsteady body language. 

"You alright?" I whispered, and his eyes cut towards me without hints of hesitation. His eyes narrowed, and my lip twitched slightly in the shadow of his intimidation. 

He stopped rubbing his knees and bent down to whisper in my ear a simple, "No," his voice projected, and shuttered, "I'm not. and I'm guessing you want to know why, no?"

I nodded,"Yes, actually."

He chuckled, and his chest rose forwards and backwards in a quiet sigh that was created out of every ounce of annoyance he could muster, and he took his lip in between his teeth, cut a glare at the guards, the commander, and finally at me and whispered"I'm not talking about it."

"Excuse me?"

"I said," the skin on his faced tightened, and his voice was like pine cones rustling together on a windy day,"I'm not talking about it, Isa. Be considerate."

"What does-"

"God, Isa, seriously," the twitch on the side his face caused me to freeze. It was almost unnoticeable, but it seemed to destroy every tiny molecule in my body that desired to know what he's possibly upset about because, right then, a tear slipped his eye. A tiny drop leaked over the eyelid, and before it had any time to sink into the pores, it was gone- wiped away, and no more came into sight after that.

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Training for the rest of the day was meaningless to me- I barely did anything. I jogged the extra two miles that I never finished before lunch, and by then, I was already behind, so the commander ushered me towards him, and with a displeasing grim expression told me that he will keep me past curfew until I finish every task that he had everyone else do and another mile added on at the end of it all. Most of it was cardio, as one would expect as a punishment of lack of running. I leaped through tire holes, crawled through the mud patch with a time limit, swam laps in the lake, and before that, climbed a few trees next to it. The guards held my head under water for a certain amount of time (this is supposed to help me when my plane crashes in the water) and made me run that extra mile at the end of it all.