Read The ELI Event B007R5LTNS for Free Online

stuffed it into his jeans pocket. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I think it’s funny as hell, but I won’t rat you out.”
    Still no reply. Tom bent closer, put his face near Robin’s. “Hello? Hey! Testing, one two three! Anybody home?” Silence. He passed a hand in front of the other boy’s eyes; Robin didn’t notice. “Uh, hey man, you okay? Bird? I mean, Robin?”
    Robin stood stock still, arms at his sides, face blank, eyes vaguely focused where Tom’s lighter had been.
    Tom looked around nervously. “Hey, man, c’mon,” he pleaded through a puff of smoke. “Hey, this ain’t funny any more. What’s wrong? What’s the matter with you?”
    Robin’s arms began to quiver, the fingers flexing spasmodically. Tom threw the butt down and waved both hands in front of Robin’s face; nothing, not even a blink. He shook Robin’s shoulders and returned the blank expression with one of his own for a few moments, then let go, fear gathering in his own eyes.
    Robin stood expressionless, staring into space. The trembling spread; his whole body was now rippling in tiny jerks, making his features seem to blur. Slowly, his head tilted back until it was almost perpendicular to his torso, his mouth open wide, the quivering now in full control of his thin body.
    Tom’s cigarette dropped from his hand. “Oh, shit,” he said quietly; then, louder, “Oh, shit.” He backed away, stumbling, unable to take his eyes off Robin. “Oh, shit!” he cried again, then wheeled around and bolted for Mrs. Faraday’s office.
    Every suppressed trauma has something that swiftly and unexpectedly brings it to the fore, an initiating event, a trigger. Robin’s trigger was fire. Tom’s cigarette lighter had sent him off to his own private hell, to a world of five years past, to an event blanked out of his conscious mind, but brought to life all too vividly whenever he saw a flame, however small.
    And now he was lost, back again in the small frame house in Oberlin, just northeast of Colby. He was once again ten years old, back with his mother and infant sister, Elizabeth. Lost again, reliving the nightmare…
    “Robbie,” his mother called. “Robbie, come help me with Lizzie, please.” He immediately put down the plastic soldiers he was playing with. Playing would have to wait—Mama needed him, and he was the man of the family now. He didn’t understand why his father was gone, but he recognized that his mother and Lizzie needed someone, someone strong, to be there. He did his best to be that someone.
    He trotted from the back bedroom he and Lizzie shared, pausing to turn on the light in the hallway. Mama was waiting for him in the kitchen, one hand on the skillet in which she was frying chicken, one hand holding Lizzie’s little arm. “Robbie, take the baby into the bedroom to play, huh?” she asked. “She wants me to hold her, but I just can’t right now. I’m afraid she’ll get burned in here.”
    “Okay,” Robin replied. He smiled at Lizzie and lifted her up in his small arms; the baby howled her delight at being picked up. “C’mon, Lizzie,” he cooed. “Let’s go play and let Mama fix supper.” Awkwardly, he carried Lizzie through the hall into their bedroom, where she immediately began to play with Robin’s toy soldiers, tossing them about and banging them into the floor and each other.
    Robin went back down the hallway to the kitchen door and peeked around the corner at his mother, who stood before the gas stove, wiping her face with the tissue she always kept in the pocket of her apron. Robin felt her sorrow then as he had felt it when his father disappeared. She had cried all day, and Robin had cried too—not for himself, but for Mama, whose life he knew would be that much harder now. Even at his young age, Robin understood that much. And then and there, he had resolved to always stay at her side, always be her helper and friend, always be the man his father should have been.
    From the bedroom came a