Secrets Of His Playhouse

The green-eyed boy tells me a story PART ONE

Jermany's POV

DAY 5

The past few days have been great, better than silence.

I keep discovering new sides to Shawn Phillips every day. Turns out he is not that bad. But I wonder why he hides this part of him. We're seated on the floor, only inches apart from each other.

"Here." He says handing me a granola bar, which I take smiling.

For the past 5 days we've been living off bags of chips, granola bars, water and occasional soda. It's not a healthy life, but at least it's better than the one week of hunger I had expected.

"How did you get all these things, the food I mean?" I ask.

"Like I told you before, I expected this. I'd be a fool if after all these years I wasn't used to my father's methods of punishment." He drawls.

"Methods of punishment? Does this happen often?"

"Once in a while. When I was younger, he would lock me up in my room for 3 days without food just water." He says and laughs humourlessly.

"How young were you?"

"Fourteen."

Wow. The entire atmosphere gets heavy. "So that's how you knew?"

"Yes. After he had done that for a while I observed that it was a pattern, so I developed a means of survival. I would stock my room up with food that could last me for days. So, whenever he locked me in there, I wouldn't go hungry. He never found out because whenever I knew he was coming I would make myself look very untidy and hungry, giving him the impression that..."

"You had been starving the entire time." I say and he smiles.

"Exactly. When we came to the playhouse, I stocked up this cell with a lot of food items, enough to last me two weeks. I would replace them every two weeks so that the food would always remain fresh. He always puts me in this one because it is the one farthest away from people. I guess I'm used to it by now." He says shrugging.

"That's... harsh." I say as my hatred for Peter increases.

"Yeah."

The silence that follows that one word is enough to drive me insane. He recoils into his own world and it feels like we're back to 5 days ago. I have to say something.

"So.... Mr. Philips, you never told me about your college days." I say.

"Please do not call me that, that's my father." He says grimacing.

"Okay." I say, worried that I might have ruined the mood again. The silence returns, but not for long.

"Well, it might seem hard to believe, but I got into college on a full-time scholarship at age 17. I got in to study business administration at Harvard." (A/N: I DO NOT KNOW IF THEY OFFER THIS COURSE AT HARVARD SO, NO HARD FEELINGS IF THEY DON'T)

"Seriously, you?"

"Yes, try not to sound surprised. Before I turned 6 and my time in college, those were the best years of my life. After that, well, we both know how I turned out."

"And in between that?"

"Well, in between that is a story, one that changed me forever." He says staring into the distance like a movie narrator waiting for the clip of his story to play.

He breaks into a smile, and I laugh. "You're so dramatic." I say.

"Why thank you." He says grinning.