Zoke Week, Prompt 2: Childhood

Ten-year-old Zoey had picked out her favorite skirt and pulled her brown hair into pigtails in preparation to meet a new friend... her first friend, if everything worked out.

Even at the young age of her and her peers, cliques had already begun to form – cliques that left Zoey out of the loop. Growing up in a small town meant that most families knew each other already, so kids would generally befriend the children of their parents' childhood friends. Zoey's parents, however, had only moved here in their adult lives, meaning she didn't have that option. A lack of interest in sports and popular culture also cut off a lot of her friendship opportunities. She had reached the age where kids were learning that certain things supposedly made them better than others, and they made no secret of the fact that her continued interest in things like princess cartoons and dressing up in costumes made her "lame" and a "baby". She wasn't actively picked on very often, but she wasn't sure how to relate to her peers when she didn't know much about whatever popular thing they wanted to talk about, so Zoey's school days had become rather lonely.

However, her mother had told her that things could change. A new friend of hers had adopted a boy her age, and he'd start attending her school soon. "You're a sweet girl," her mother had told her, "and anyone would be lucky to have you as a friend. I'm sure he'd love it if you can make him feel welcome!"

At the sound of the doorbell, Zoey brushed her skirt flat, then followed her mother to the front door. Her mother opened the door to the sight of her friend.

"Hello, Mrs. Skinner!" Zoey greeted happily.

"It's good to see you again, Zoey," Mrs. Skinner replied, but Zoey was no longer looking up at her. Instead, she focused her attention on the small boy clutching the woman's leg. His dark hair stuck out wildly, and bandages covered his skinny arms and legs. At the sight of Zoey, the boy made a strange sound and retreated further behind his mother.

"Mike, why don't you say hello?" Mrs. Skinner coaxed him.

"H... hello, Mrs. Roth," Mike said from his hiding place. Mrs. Skinner stepped into the house, and Mike stumbled to keep up with her.

"Hello, Mike," Zoey's mother said. "This is my daughter, Zoey. She's ten, just like you."

"Hi!" Zoey said happily, reaching her hand out to shake. Mike didn't accept.

"Why don't you two go play?" Mrs. Skinner asked. "Zoey's been so excited to meet you."

"Has she?" Mike asked, looking up at his mother. His voice grew quiet, but Zoey could barely make out his words. "But... but what if she doesn't like me?"

Mrs. Skinner crouched to his eye level and matched his hushed tone. "You'll be fine. What's not to like about you?"

"But what if I...?"

"You'll be fine," Mrs. Skinner repeated. "You're safe here." She kissed Mike on the forehead. "But you can come get me if you're not feeling good. Okay?"

Mike nodded, but if he responded with words, his response was so silent that Zoey couldn't make it out.

"Why don't I make us some coffee?" Mrs. Roth offered as Mrs. Skinner rose to her feet. The two chatted as they walked toward the kitchen, leaving the children alone in the foyer. Mike refused to look Zoey in the eye; instead, he stared at the floor to his side and fiddled with his fingers.

"Your name's Zoey...?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah," she answered, toning down her earlier enthusiasm in the hopes that it'd make him more comfortable. "Mike?"

Mike nodded.

"I'm sorry about all the bandages," Zoey said, eying the bandages that covered his limbs. "Do you fall a lot?"

The young boy stopped his fiddling, and after a moment of quiet, mumbled something Zoey couldn't hear.

"I didn't hear that..." she said.

"Do you want to play?" he asked, his voice finally hitting a normal volume. Zoey was almost certain that this wasn't what he said the first time, but she didn't ask about that.

"Sure!" she said. "What do you want to do?"

"You're letting me pick?" he asked.

"Yeah, you're the guest!"

"Then..." He paused to decide what he wanted to ask for. "Do you like drawing?"

"I love drawing!" Zoey answered, her earlier excitement finally renewed. "Do you wanna draw together?"

"Y... yeah!" Mike answered, smiling for the first time since coming into the house.

"Then come on!" Zoey grabbed Mike's hand. Mike froze for a moment after being touched, but after a brief moment of hesitation, he recovered and followed. She led him to a small child-sized table in the living room. He sat patiently as Zoey retrieved her crayons and paper from a nearby shelf and brought them over to the table.

At first, Mike drew in silence. Zoey tried asking him questions, but his answers would be short and quiet, as if he didn't want to talk about himself. So instead, she spoke about herself, in the hopes of bringing him out of his shy shell. It had nothing to do with judgment; instead, Zoey simply wanted to know how to make him feel more comfortable. He may not have had much input at first, but he still listened intently as Zoey spoke about her interests; how art was her favorite subject in school, how she liked watching her mother sew and was starting to learn how, and how she wanted to design dresses for a living when she grew up. She also talked about how she wanted a little sibling someday; her parents told her it couldn't happen, but she'd still wish on midnight stars and birthday candles for it to happen so she wouldn't be lonely anymore.

It took a lot of talking from Zoey, but eventually, Mike began to open up about his own experiences. He said he lived far away before the Skinners adopted him, so he didn't know anything about this new city yet. He liked watching superhero and adventure movies, and when he grew up, he wanted to write movies like that or maybe even act in them. He didn't have many friends back home and hadn't had a chance to make any here, so instead, he spent a lot of his time making stories with characters he'd come up with.

Zoey watched Mike as he drew and talked. "Thanks for taking care of my crayons," she said. Unlike most other kids she'd colored with before, he colored lightly, without pressing the crayon so hard that the point would dull or break, and he put them back in the case in the order he found them rather than carelessly throwing them back when he finished with a color.

"Huh? Sure," he answered. "Why wouldn't I be careful with something that's not mine?"

"Other kids aren't. They always press really hard and break them."

"That's not very nice."

Zoey shook her head. "No, it's not. But you're nice!" she said with a smile. She peeked over at the drawing that Mike was very carefully adding some brown to. "Is that one of your characters?" Zoey asked. A crudely-drawn man in a hat – a fedora, she thought they were called – stood on the paper. He held a lasso in his hand, with the other end of the rope wrapped around the snout of a dragon that sat atop a pile of gold.

"Yep!" Mike said happily. "His name's Manitoba Smith! He's an explorer from Australia. He likes hunting down animals and collecting treasure."

"That's so cool!" Zoey asked. "I think I'd like to watch a movie about him. If you wanted to make one, I mean."

"What are you drawing?" Mike asked as he looked at Zoey's paper. The woman on her paper only had basic features, not even a face, and wasn't colored in, only outlined in black. Instead, the focus of the drawing was on the blue, polka-dotted dress the woman wore.

"I like drawing dresses," Zoey said, "since I want to learn to make them someday. Do... do you like it?" she asked. "I've never had anyone but my parents look at my art before... oh, but you're a boy and you probably don't care. I'm sorry!"

"It's pretty!" Mike said. "I think Svetlana would really like wearing that."

"Svetlana?"

"Another one of my characters," Mike said quickly. "She's a gymnast from Russia who wants to join the Olympics."

"She sounds cool!" Zoey said. "Can you draw her for me? Maybe you can draw her, and I can put a dress on her!"

"All right!" Mike said. He set his drawing of Manitoba aside and grabbed a new piece of paper, then reached to grab a new crayon. While reaching, however, he accidentally bumped the table, knocking the crayon case down to the floor and scattering crayons everywhere.

"Oh! Zoey, I'm sorry!" he said in a panic.

"It's okay!" Zoey assured him.

"No it's not! You were just telling me how careful I am, and now look what I did!"

"It was an accident," she insisted. "And it doesn't look like any of them broke-"

"Why do you need so many crayons, anyway?" Mike snapped.

"Huh?" This new tone confused Zoey; it was harsher than she'd come to expect, and atypical of this boy who earlier looked as if he was ready to bolt in fear from the house. "What are you talking about?"

"Back in my day, only four colors of crayon existed, and that was good enough for anything we wanted to draw!" Mike kept ranting from his seat.

"Back in your- oh!" Zoey laughed once realization hit. "Are you acting like one of your characters? Good one, Mike!"

Mike squinted silently at her, a sour frown on his face. Zoey attempted to clear the awkwardness by clearing her throat.

"Can you help me clean these up?" she asked him. She got up from her seat and walked over to pick up her crayons, but Mike didn't budge. "Um, Mike?"

"They're not mine, so why should I?" he asked. "Back in my day, everyone was perfectly happy working for themselves! Nowadays everyone wants help with their own work! Kids are so spoiled!"

"Mike, this character is funny, but you should really help..."

"Who's Mike, anyway?" he asked. "My name's Chester."

"Wait, what?"

Another silence filled the room. Mike – Chester? – continued glaring at Zoey, while she sat with a blank expression, unsure of what to do.

"Mike?" she tried again, but only received an even stronger squint in return.

"Mom?" she called, finally making a decision to run toward the kitchen. "Mom, Mike's acting weird!"

Whatever conversation the two women in the kitchen were having stopped as they both turned to face Zoey when she ran in, slightly panting from her sprint.

"Zoey? What's wrong?" her mother asked, her brow furrowed.

"It's... it's Mike!" Zoey said, still trying to catch her breath. "We were coloring and talking, and he was acting nice... but then he spilled my crayons, and he started yelling about how I was spoiled when I asked him for help! It's like he changed into a different person!"

Mrs. Roth and Mrs. Skinner both locked eyes.

"Can I tell her?" Mrs. Skinner asked.

Mrs. Roth nodded. "She should probably know..."

Mrs. Skinner turned to face Zoey. "What sorts of things did Mike say to you?"

Zoey frowned. "He called me spoiled, and he kept saying things were different back in his day, which is weird when he's just a kid like me... at first I thought he was joking around, but then he wouldn't answer me when I called him Mike. Does he think messing with people is funny? It's not! It's confusing!"

Mrs. Skinner sighed in relief. "At least it was just Chester..." She then returned her focus to Zoey. "Zoey? Did Mike tell you anything about why we adopted him?"

Zoey shook her head. "I didn't ask. What does that have to do with him messing with me? Was he making fun of me? I don't get it..."

Mrs. Skinner knelt next to Zoey and rested her hand on her shoulder. "Zoey... Mike went through some pretty tough stuff before we adopted him," she explained. "After what happened to him, his brain doesn't work like other people's, so if he's not feeling good – like if he gets upset – he starts acting like someone else."

"He did seem really upset after he spilled the crayons, even though it was just an accident..." Zoey said.

"He didn't mean to yell at you," Mrs. Skinner said. "He just has something called dissociative identity disorder. It's an illness, and it's not his fault. Can you please be patient with him? I'd really like to see him make some friends... it's been hard for him when no one else wants to try to understand him."

"But I will! I'll try my best!" Zoey said. "I can't be mean to him just because he's different! That's... well, that's mean!"

Mrs. Skinner smiled. "Thank you, Zoey. You should probably get back to him... he might not remember you coming in here, so he might wonder where you are."

Zoey nodded. "Thanks, Mrs. Skinner." She then turned and bounded off to the living room to see how her new playmate was doing.

Mike looked up at Zoey as she re-entered the room. In her absence, he had begun picking up the crayons and gently placing them back in their case. They weren't returned in the exact order that Zoey preferred, but she could see that he was trying his best.

"You came back!" he said, his eyes widened in surprise. "Did I do something weird? Is that why you left?"

Zoey shook her head. "Not weird. Just different."

Mike turned his attention back to the crayons. "I know I'm weird... that's why people don't like talking to me."

Zoey walked over to Mike, and before he had a chance to question it, she bent down and lightly kissed him on the forehead, leaving a slight stain from her lipstick.

"U-um..." Mike stammered, and his entire body froze. "What... what was that...?"

"Your mom told me your brain is sick," Zoey said as she sat down to help Mike with the crayons. "I wanted to make it better."

"Sorry I'm crazy..." Mike mumbled.

"Not crazy. Just different."

"But it's why no one wants to be friends with me... they won't believe me when I say I have people who live in my head and like using my body sometimes. People always tell me I'm lying."

"It's okay. I believe you." Zoey examined a crayon to double-check what color it was, then placed it where she wanted. "You wanna know something? I don't have any friends at school, either."

"Really?!" Mike exclaimed. "But you're so nice! Why not?"

Zoey shrugged. "Not everyone's nice, I guess. I'm nice to people, but they aren't nice back."

"I know how that feels..."

"But I have one friend," Zoey said. "Right, Mike?"

"Really? What are they like?" Mike asked. After she only responded with a smile and a giggle, he froze again. "Wait... really? You want to be my friend?"

Zoey nodded. "If that's okay with you."

Mike returned her smile, wider than he had all day, and nodded. "Yeah! I'd really like having you as a friend. I... I actually had fun today. Usually when someone else starts talking, they mess everything up."

"It's fine," Zoey said. "Maybe I can meet your other characters someday. Do you think they'd like me?"

"I bet Svetlana would. You should tell me if you ever meet her."

"Can you tell me about any others?"

Mike furrowed his brow in thought as he placed the final crayon in the case. "I can draw them for you, if you want."

The two kids spent the rest of Mike's visit with Mike drawing pictures of his characters and telling Zoey stories about them. This must have been the first time he got to talk to anyone about this, she thought, between what he said about having no other friends and how enthusiastic he seemed about finally getting to talk about the stories in his head.

Not once did Zoey ever accuse him of making things up or call him insane.

If every day was as fun as this, Zoey would be more than happy to call him her friend.