morning dally . elaine

“That,” said Kellan, “would only serve to make me feel like an invalid.” His words were developing into tools of unerring destruction, and he was both pleased and horrified that he wasn’t troubled about it. Soon, he would come to realize that he was being the stubborn one, and he would scoot himself into the wrong, and Elaine would be able to give him hell for it later. 

“But thanks for the thought.” He tried, and failed—the comment dripped with sarcasm. He was practically handing the girl ammunition with a smile. “Because while that might make me feel absolutely wonderful, I think I should learn how to eat like an invalid, anyway, because I’m not going to have the privilege of having you at my every beck and call.” 

He dropped the spoon into the bowl with a plop, and watched it float around in disdain. He would hate himself later, he knew it. 

ELAINE DARZI-ACCURSO

“If it hadn’t been for me, Daddy would’ve wanted to know why you were doing porridge in his little prison.” Kellan seethed, because he could see both sides of the argument, and he refused to acknowledge the side that wouldn’t benefit him. He was beginning to feel like a pile of rat droppings, but he plowed through with a hanging head and a wounded pride, 100% self-imposed. “Maybe I should’ve just left you there. My hands would be just fine, then.”

There. He’d said it. And now that it was out, it coalesced with the already tense atmosphere—now it was taut and sharp enough to draw blood if either of the two went too far. There was an itch on his nose, but the tension forced him into stillness. Or it was Elaine’s rising anger.

God. The girl could intimidate a brick into doing her bidding.

Also, it had just occurred to him that Elaine probably didn’t understand what “doing porridge” actually means.

ELAINE DARZI-ACCURSO

“Because I’ve got a smidgen of human decency,” he sniffed, taking a swipe at his nose when he spoke, because speech dispelled the strain wafting in the air slightly.

His spoon was completely submerged in the white, billowy liquid—only the tip of the handle poked out from the film. He stared at it, as though he were trying to force it back into his useless, crippled hand by telekinetic means, like the moment when the remote control for the TV is out of reach. He didn’t condone laziness, but he slipped every now and again.

“I can’t say the same for some people,” he said, leaning back, having given up on suddenly discovering his psychic prowess and settling into the routine of fraternal passive-aggressiveness. There were words, however, that were too heavy to throw around the breakfast table, but he couldn’t help but consider them and bite his tongue. It was soaked in vitriol, and he was afraid of what might happen should he let it run loose. It was hard to believe, after all, that he still had a reign on his words.

Also, he didn’t know what to do with his cereal.

ELAINE DARZI-ACCURSO

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

Kellan, however, still stared down into the void that was his cereal bowl, and it stained him in a meek light, though the cacophony pounding on his skull from the inside screamed the opposite.

There existed a line that represented the term “going too far,” and Kellan felt that he and Elaine were not just toeing it, but preparing to brazenly leap across it. There was a point where they wouldn’t be able to go back, and Kellan had to start asking himself: Will we go past that point?

But the real question was: When will we go past that point?

Kellan wasn’t prepared to go past that point, but something was shoving him forward.

He said, “I don’t think you would handle the truth too well.”

ELAINE DARZI-ACCURSO

Kellan had let the cereal sit for too long. He wasn’t going to eat it, not anymore. He wouldn’t have eaten it, anyway, as he was a husk of the boy that was once Kellan Accurso, replaced by an angry whirling mass of guilt and fury. Also, his spoon had disappeared.

“Capable of making your own decisions as long as they benefit yourself, I bet,” he replied, the smooth mask over his voice beginning to crack.

Normally, he took life with a grain of salt. With danger, he took a handful of salt, a testament to his lack of self-preservation. With Elaine, it depended. Right now, he felt like dropping the grain of salt, picking up a rock instead, and throwing it at her face.

“Do you want me to be straight with you, Elaine?” It was a rhetorical question, because he was going to be straight with her, anyway. The next few words were chosen carefully. “Because what I think is that you only think about yourself, you selfish prick.”

Elaine’s nonchalance was met with a dead stare. It wasn’t within Kellan’s capabilities to leap into a full-scale fury. He got darker, and darker, and then it all turned to black.

He just sighed.

“I don’t know. I just thought I would’ve liked you to care a bit more. Quite clearly, you don’t, so I don’t even know why I’m wasting my time here.”

Kellan’s cereal was indigestible, and anything that made its way past his lips would be soured by his mood, so he ignored his stomach and its silent wailing.

He pushed his chair back and pushed himself up with his hands—a mistake, because they still stung, and angry as he was, he couldn’t hold back the wince from the sting. He didn’t know what hurt more—his own anger, cutting himself up to pieces, or the fact that Elaine was arguing with him. Or the fact that he was arguing with her.

“I’m not going to school today. Go ahead and tell your daddy.” She would get a kick out of it.

Hearing Elaine apologize was something that was to be cherished. She, with her princess-like demeanor and superficial tendencies, stooped her standards low in that degree, and everything about her that was humble was like a well-deserved miracle.

In other words, it was a refreshing change of pace, and Kellan appreciated it.

“I don’t know what you can do,” he said, without much of the previous vitriol, and easing his tone into the wholly flowing, smooth, and not-so-subtle accent of one hailed in Britain and bred in Britain. “The burns are already there.”

He didn’t smile. Not yet, but he wanted to, but at this point it would feel the same as asking a man how long it has been since their wife had left them, so he restrained his visage, liquefied his anger, and walked over to Elaine and held out a limp hand. “Don’t be rough.”

He looked like a horrible actor in the shoes of a sleep-deprived zombie. His hair looked a little more ruffled than usual, the bags under his eyes a little more prominent with a closer look. He didn’t handle the aftermath of an argument too well.

Kellan should have known that Elaine would be glib the moment the tension had been washed away. It was a hopeful sign. He offered her the grace of a careworn chuckle, but nothing more—he wasn’t good at shifting gears.

“I went straight to sleep after we parted ways,” he confessed. In retrospect, it was a horrible idea, but he didn’t want to risk waking anybody. “So, no. I’ve got nothing. I’m sorry.”

The apology was also meant for everything he’d said previously, but Elaine would have a hard time getting Kellan to admit it.

Should Kellan have been warmed by the sight of Elaine pouting? He didn’t think it appropriate, but the corner of his lip twitched all the same.

Elaine curled her fingers around his wrist and threw him to the kitchen sink, where he managed to turn the knobs and get a trickling, silvery stream of freezing water and held his hands under it. The sting and relief of the cold intermingled into something odd that made him cringe in a good way.

“Cold, cold,” he muttered. Once he couldn’t stand it anymore—and this was about two minutes—he yanked his hands from the downpour and looked for towels to dry himself off with. Finding none, he gently patted his hands on his sweats.

Kellan didn’t know the twins very well, but he’d heard much of their accomplishments, their names intertwined with awed, gushing voices that seemed to get louder whenever Mr. Giovanni Darzi-Accurso’s presence overwhelmed the room. Some people had the talent of taking a room by the hand and shaking it. Mr. Giovanni broke the hand. So he didn’t know how to feel about being better than them, but he chuckled at Elaine’s declaration.

“I bet. Also, d’you have the wraps?”