LITMIR.BIZ

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out of her pink smock and dampen it under the small fountain’s spout.

      Then, with a sweetness unknown to him, she rubbed the wet and fresh tissue on his cheeks and eyes.

      “My mum always makes me wash my eyes after I have cried, to prevent them from getting swollen and red” she explained sweetly to him, while she kept wetting his eyes by the drenched cloth.

      When the young girl judged the cleaning satisfying, she took another clean and ironed handkerchief out of her rucksack. She unfolded it and used it to wipe his face kindly.

      Stupefied and glad for those unexpected and relaxing cuddles, he let himself be washed and wiped, standing still like a doll.

      The biting autumn wind was blowing hard that afternoon, but Lucas found himself smiling happy for that new caress that also the sky had wanted to give him.

      Peaceful as he hadn’t felt for months, he opened his eyes and he was able to look into his rescuer’s ones, at that hurricane that had turned into a fresh spring breeze at that moment, with her kind and gentle gestures.

      He stared at her for a long time, till his memory could remember that girl’s name: Kira. She was the new girl and she sat in the third row behind him in the classroom.

      “Your face is strange” Lucas stated, letting his eyes slip on that girl who was more than ten centimeters taller than him. Even if she was thin and very tall, her face was large and round and it stood out on that slim and small body bending under the rucksack’s weight.

      Her skin was very fair, but her cheeks were reddened by the cold and her small, heart-shaped mouth was tight and stiff while she was focusing on folding the two handkerchiefs.

      Lucas lingered curiously on those small and full lips, wondering whether she could eat anything bigger than a crumb.

      But the feature which charmed him the most were his slightly half-open eyes, with their strange almond shape. Even if they were hidden by a straight, slightly too long, black fringe, he could make out two very bright brown eyes with dark green shades, reminding him the woods at Westurian lake, where his father owned a house they had used to spend the summer till two years before.

      With an angry gesture and a snort which threw her fringe back, the girl looked at him, slightly hurt.

      “And you’re short for being a boy” the young girl replied, crossing her arms.

      “You don’t look American” Lucas tried to explain, stumbling while he spoke.

      “Sorry, where were you this morning, when our teacher introduced me to the class?”

      Lucas didn’t dare tell her he had fallen asleep, because his father had kept him awake all night with his drunkard grumbling.

      Placing her hands on her hips in a defiant gesture and filling her lungs by a deep breath, the girl summarized her morning speech, hoping that it would get fixed into her new classmate’s mind this time.

      “My name is Kira Yoshida. I’m nine years old. My father is Japanese and works for the army, while my mother is American and she is a social worker.”

      “That’s why your face looks strange. You’re Japanese” Lucas exclaimed happily.

      “My face isn’t strange! Mum says I took after my father in my features, but the color of my eyes and my character are hers. By the way, I was saying I’m half Japanese and half American. I can speak both Japanese and English well and I attended the International School in Tokyo, till my father was moved her for the next four years, to train the new recruits keeping guard at American embassies in the world. Mum didn’t want to stay alone in Tokyo, so we moved here with my dad, even if he is hardly ever at home. I’m good at school, even if I’m better at writing Japanese ideograms than your alphabet, but mum says I usually learn very fast and I’ve already decided that I’ll be a social worker too when I grow up. I joined the basketball club in Tokyo, even if I never really liked that sport. I hate sports and I love watching cartoons and reading mangas.”

      “What are mangas?”

      “Comic strips” Kira explained, annoyed by Lucas’s ignorance.

      “I like comic strips too!” the child said cheerfully.

      “So I’ll lend you some.”

      “Really?” Lucas was surprised, because nobody in town wanted to deal with him and even less with his father.

      “Of course! We’re friends, aren’t we?”

      Friends.

      That word made Lucas’s heart miss a beat.

      He had no friends.

      No child had ever approached him for fear of running into the powerful and wicked Darren Scott. Also all the parents and teachers were afraid of his father’s presence and he had quickly understood that nobody would be his friend. Neither now nor ever.

      But that day instead, hurricane Kira had got into his life. He couldn’t remember her family name anymore. It was too difficult to spell.

      “Oh, my God! Kira, here I am! Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” a woman fidgeted, running breathlessly in their direction.

      “Mum!” Kira exclaimed happily, running to her and hugging her.

      Watching that scene made Lucas feel tears in his eyes again, because he had never enjoyed his mother’s love. When she was alive, she divided her time between a cocktail and a sleeping pill, when she wasn’t struck by her husband’s crazy jealous frenzies.

      “Darling, I’m sorry I was late on your first school day, but I’ve been taken on this morning, so I immediately had to deal with some matter and take it to the Juvenile Court, before I could come to you. I found a lot of traffic but I came as soon as possible. Sorry.”

      “No problem, but we have to take Lucas home. His father hit him and then he left him here” her daughter answered with her usual naïve but merciless frankness, which was a slap both on Lucas’s and on her mother’s face.

      “Kira, these are serious charges” her mother warned her, as she spent all her working time fighting against abuses or family problems which were difficult to overcome without a social worker’s help.

      “You must report it to authorities, make an injunction and send him behind bars” the young girl got excited, repeating in detail the words she had heard on TV the night before.

      “Forget about watching Law&Order with me next time” her mother guessed, before moving closer to the boy. “You must be Lucas, mustn’t you? My name is Elizabeth Madis and I’m Kira’s mother.”

      Lucas nodded shyly before that smiling woman, whose green eyes were sweet and brave. Kira was right: she had the same eyes as her mother, but they didn’t look like each other in anything else. Kira’s straight, jet black hair where in contrast with her mother’s caramel and wavy ones.

      “Kira says that your dad hit you. Is it true?” she asked him gently.

      “Yes, it’s true. His cheek was all red” Kira intruded, getting a dirty look from her mother.

      “It happens” Lucas whispered uneasy. He couldn’t even think about what his father would say if he got to know about that conversation.

      “I understand. Where is he now?”

      “At home. He was angry.”

      “What about your mother?”

      Lucas took several moments before answering. “She isn’t here anymore.”

      “I’m so sorry, darling” the woman immediately comforted him, caressing his face. “Can you remember your home address? If you want, we’ll take you there. My car is parked outside the gate.”

      Lucas smiled grateful. Someone had come to rescue him.

      He stared at that woman again: she looked like an angel to

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