Victory Storm - Love Hurricane

“Thanks,” the girl mumbled softly, turning in her hands the handkerchief which was soaked with tears and mucus.

“No problem. I didn't feel like being lumbered with maths today,” Adam laughed, trying to play it down.

“Oh my God, school! I had science today,” Kira suddenly remembered when she looked at her watch. Almost an hour had gone by since she had run away to her secret shelter.

“I think you'd better wipe your face before going back to school, or your teacher will get worried.”

Kira smiled at him gratefully.

They walked to the door together.

“You aren't telling anyone what I said, are you?”

“Of course not!” Adam comforted her. Seeing her crying had been a sort of catharsis for him too, as well as something relieving, even if he hadn't shed any tear...almost.

He liked that girl. He had been able to feel her sensitivity and her sweetness during that short time.

He hadn't seen anybody crying for a friend till then.

She wanted to protect Lucas and defend him from life's injustice.

He wished he could have someone like her standing on his side as well!

“Can I ask you a question?” Kira asked him after a short while.

“Of course.”

“Why do you usually hide in the library too and sometimes cry?” she asked him with caution.

“What? I...?” Adam stammered uneasy.

“Yes, I saw you. But if you don't want to tell me, I'll understand.”

Adam sighed dejected and all the thoughts which had been haunting him since he had run away cropped up again violently in his mind.

How should he answer her?

“I think there is something different inside myself,” he said in a whisper, realizing the meaning of his own words for the first time.

***

Princeton, Kentucky, November 11th 2015

“I'm sorry, Mr Lucas,” Rosalinda, who had become the Scott family's ex- housekeeper, sighed sorrowfully.

“I'm sorry too,” Lucas mumbled gloomily, without raising his eyes from his homework. He couldn't stand that woman's tears. False tears. Crocodile ones. Female ones.

“You cry at first, then you betray and leave,” the boy wished he could shout at her, but he held back and grasped the pen violently, till he almost broke it.

“You don't need me any more here. Your house is small and your father doesn't want me” Rosalinda tried to justify herself.

“It's all right.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“What for? For seizing the opportunity and running away from a violent and drunkard master who often beats you too?” he wished he could answer.

“Enjoy my father's severance pay.”

“Mr Lucas, I didn't want to leave. I've stayed here all these years just for you...Things got worse after your mum's death, but I stayed here in spite of it all, even if I was never brave enough to revolt against Mr Scott.”

“Goodbye, Rosy,” Lucas stopped her as he couldn't stand that woman's words any more. She should go and relieve her conscience with someone else! He had to study, as he was sick of being teased for the way he read in front of other people, or for his poor marks, even if he tried hard to do better.

Since Kira had left, “his clever and sagacious mind” as she used to call it, seemed to have retired!

Kira...

If he just thought about her, he could feel his stomach churning till he had to bend down with spasms.

He didn't even notice the housekeeper who was still standing by his bedroom's door.

“Mr Lucas.”

“What else do you want from me? I told you to go away!” the boy suddenly burst our furiously.

“I've done a lot of mistakes with you, when I used to support your father... I was scared, but... No, I don't have any excuse, but I'm going to tell you something I always kept secret.”

“I don't care,” Lucas stopped her, getting more and more furious.

“It's about Kira, the girl who went back to Japan last year,” Rosalinda hinted, knowing that it was a delicate subject.

Kira. Once more.

A new spasm stroke his stomach violently.

“I don't care,” Lucas told her again, twisting his hands to stop shaking with anger and despair as he had done all that year long. The worst year in his life.

“I know you're lying. That girl was everything to you, Mr Lucas. I saw how much you suffered in the last months. You have to understand me: I wish I could have told you before, that Kira didn't forget you, as Mr Scott made you believe. I regret what I did, but I don't want to go away without telling you the truth. Kira wrote several letters to you in the past months. Eighty-six, exactly.”

She had finally succeeded in being the centre of Lucas's attention: he was staring at her bewildered, with open-wide eyes.

“Eighty-six letters? So, where are they?” he was able to ask her, while his brain was trying to focus on her words.

“Your father took them and burned them. All of them,” she revealed, while she avoided telling him that she had always read them. “I'm very sorry.”

Lucas kept staring into space with his hazy mind for a long while, before he could move a single muscle.

He didn't even react when Rosalinda went on saying she was sorry, before going out of that house, never to come back.

When Lucas came back into the real world, he could just feel a blind anger against the man who had brought him into the world and had then taken away from him even the poor comfort he could get in reading his best friend's letters.

He had been suffering for a long time and he hated Kira for having left him, after she had sworn again and again that she would never do it.

She had told him that she was ready to give anything up for him and she would never leave him, but instead...

Not even the t-shirt she had given him that cursed summer was left to him, as he had torn it to pieces in a fit of folly, after he had been discharged from hospital because of a dislocated shoulder.

He had fallen from the stairs by accident, he had told them after his father had threatened him.

He walked to the living room in a state of trance, since he knew he would find his father there, as drunk as a lord.

Their house was small, unlike the villa where they used to live in the past and which that vicious monster had foolishly lost in a game of poker a month before.

He quickly got to the piano-bar, where he found an empty bottle of bourbon lying on the counter.

His father was leaning down and looking for something else to drink, but he caught a glimpse of his son's arrival and he got up.

“Where's Rosalinda? I want her to go and buy some more bourbon,” the man muttered while he tottered to his armchair, but his son blocked his way.

“You fired her, don't you remember? She went away a few moments ago and she told me about Kira's letters,” Lucas told him, trying to hold back the anger which was starting to prostrate him.