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The day after, he woke up queasy, and felt as thought he'd gotten caught at something, and punished. He thought about going downstairs, feeling the dust under his bare feet, and watching it dance through the sun shafting through the stained glass window on the landing. He pictured his mom's smile, his dad's playful slap on the shoulder, and wondered how he'd be able to accept that. Their love, their perfect faith in his innocence. Wouldn't they see it in his eyes? Would he have to watch the light fade from theirs, the smiles dim, as they saw who he'd become?
Breakfast smells rose up the stairs. Mom was making bacon and pancakes. Coffee, too, but he hated the bitterness of coffee. He'd settle for syrup drowning his plate, and a glass of apple juice. Then his stomach flipped as he remembered.
"Chicken! See, I told you. He's a pussy. Still kisses his mommy goodbye in the morning." Robbie was tall, and fat, and angry, the kind of kid you always thought of when you thought the word "bully". He stood in the middle of the field of overgrown grass. Charlie hadn't known grass could grow that tall, would grow heads like wheat, and poke you as you walked through it. All around Robbie, dark shadows darted and flicked, too fast and small to be identified. But Charlie knew.
The first day, Charlie was walking behind them, and had stopped short at the edge of the field, nervously taking in the flying buzzing shapes. Robbie and crew stomped on a few feet, and that's when Charlie heard it, the crunches as they were crushed under foot, the truncated cries of pain, and the quick zip of energy drawn up and away.
"C'mon, you baby. What're you waiting for? Scared? Scared of grasshoppers!" Robbie turned to his fellows and laughed. He sneered as he caught the look on Charlie's face, mistaking disgust for fear. He turned threatening in an instant, smelling prey. "C'mon, I said. Now." Robbie advanced toward him, and Charlie turned back, running home. He hid on the side of the garage, showing up late for school on his first day. Since then, he'd taken a circuitous route through back yards and down alleys, successfully avoiding Robbie. But yesterday, at the end of an alley that emptied out on the far side of the field, he'd found Robbie and a group of other boys waiting. He could smell his own blood in the air, feel pain in his ribs as he looked at their bared teeth.
All it had taken to save himself was a walk through the field. It had helped that he'd peed his pants. Robbie saw it as a sign of submission, although it had really been his distress as he felt all those lights crunched out beneath his sneakers. He'd walked all day with the scent of death wafting up from underneath him, a lingering curse that made him keep his head down, so nobody would see his tears.
Sighing deeply, sounding much older than eight years old, Charlie padded downstairs and braved his way through the ignorance of his parents' smiles and jokes. "Go on out and play" they'd urged. So Charlie squared his shoulders and went to the closet for his shoes. They were there, and they looked the way they always had, but he could smell it, and he saw smudges of black smoking up from underneath them. He picked up the right one, and turned it over. There, the way he knew it would be, was the evidence of his dishonor. Perfectly splayed out, as thought intending to preserve itself for all time, lay the corpse of a single pixie. Charlie would not brush it off, would never, in fact, wear those shoes again. He told his mother he'd lost one, and endured her exasperation as but partial payment for what he deserved.
One day, when he was much older, he would tell fairy stories to his daughter, and she would wonder at how his face glowed with conviction and sadness over a tale she already knew, at her age, to be false.
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