Dirt and Ashes {Open}

[Erik Stewart]

Erik was a stranger to the workforce. It was generally decided that he wasn’t very good for it: he was unreliable and unfriendly, and if his room was any indication he had no particular skills in cleaning, either, but here he was, leaning on a mop and staring at the wet trails of water he’d made in his wake. The butt end of it rested against his palm which rested against his chin. A yellow rag dangled from his pocket. He didn’t have much desire to make it to the end of the hallway, but a cigarette break was an hour away at least.

Erik had gone to the center before, but he had been sporadic at best, a far cry from visiting the place daily to clean it. Still, they knew him well enough; they knew everyone that came from the ‘meta school’. Their type was a novelty around here. He was lucky in that sense – all it took from him then was to ask, which he did, after some posturing and in a low mumble at that. Erik sorely needed the money. All he had were two estranged, absent parents and a nicotine habit.

With a hefty sigh he got moving, pulling the housekeeping cart along with him. There were all manner of things he had to contend with: gum stuck to the floors and under chairs, clumps of hair, the bathroom (just the bathroom in general – it was never a pretty sight), and so on and so forth. It wasn’t that he minded filth but cleaning up after people was not his idea of a fun time. Wasn’t anybody’s.

He wasn’t expecting there to be much traffic: he was on the evening shift, five o’clock after class to nine or ten, it depended on the day, for which he was grateful. Erik wasn’t ever in the best of moods and it just got progressively worse while he was wiping things clean.

Once in a while a staff member would walk by, though, so it wasn’t unusual that he heard footsteps down the hallway.

[Deleted]

Naozumi was a sporadic visitor to the youth center. He didn’t like to come by too often, but those were his own insecurities. What if someone he knew saw him there and made assumptions? It was true enough, though, that the center had frequent visitors from the Hammel campus, so there were bound to be a familiar face or two, even if he wasn’t necessarily friends with them. And if asked, he would deny or simply not answer. Not answering was safer. After all, Nao wasn’t the talkative type anyway. He didn’t respond to a multitude of things that normally expected a response.

He liked coming here. Some of the activities were fun. If he could, in the future, when he had more self-confidence in himself, he hoped to volunteer some. But for the most part, Nao just came for the food. They had food often in the afternoons. Not much, mostly snacks, especially since they had to have enough for all the visitors, but it was something extra that he liked to enjoy in addition to the lunches provided at the school.

Nao stepped down the hall, enjoying a grape popsicle that was threatening to melt right off the stick if he didn’t consume it quickly. He started at the bottom, where the threat was most perilous, and worked his way up from there. After a few sucks, the popsicle broke into the two halves, and he held each half by their respective stick in each hand. But he was getting an ice cream headache, eating the cold treat so quickly. Still he tried to salvage his snack before it was lost, taking them one at a time.

Yes! One down! One to go!

Unfortunately, just as he turned to the other popsicle stick, there it went, sliding off and down past his hand. Nao tried to catch it, but it was too late. The syrupy, cold, wet treat had fallen onto the the freshly mopped floor, right beside where an older boy was resting from his chore, though Nao barely noticed him. He looked down at the growing purple puddle, mourning the loss of his popsicle.

[Erik Stewart]

When he looked up and saw that it was not some staff member – or, at least, not that he knew of – he still wasn’t concerned about it. His thought processes were that whoever it was would walk on by and they could both get on with their day. It was not to be the case.

He picked up the plop the wet popsicle made on the floor, and turned his head with eyes narrowed and lips set, knowing that he wouldn’t like what he’d find. Sure enough there was a purple splotch on his newly-mopped tile and the kid – whoever he was – standing over it, staring, the wooden stick clutched in his hand. Erik lifted his head.

First of all, who was this? Erik had just been minding his own business and doing his own job, the one that had been assigned to him, honest pay for honest work and all that, and what, exactly, had he done to deserve this? Couldn’t he have dropped his shit anywhere else?

“Really,” he said.

[Deleted]

Typical absent-minded Nao. It hadn’t even registered to him that this was a brand, newly mopped floor and that the person standing next to him had probably spent a good deal of work in getting it to glimmer and shine it’s brilliant white the way it did. Nope, Naozumi was far more focused on the loss of his remaining purple-popsicle, now splatted in a purple, gooey mess on the floor and quickly melting into a purple, syrupy mess. If it could have been salvaged, Naozumi would have gladly picked it right back up and placed it in his mouth, but even Naozumi wasn’t stupid enough to eat from the floor, no matter how hungry his tummy was.

Therefore Nao simply stood there, unsure of what to do, and with a small glimmer of wetness appearing in the corner of his eyes.

His head rose slowly a moment after hearing the brief utterance of the other boy he barely knew was there. A droplet fell down his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he offered softly with a very plain expression.

[Erik Stewart]

As far as he was concerned sorries didn’t account for anything. Sure as hell wasn’t gonna pick up that mess on the floor.

“You couldn’t go eat that shit somewhere else?” he snapped at him.

It was technically his job to clean up the purple blob on the floor but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. Erik wasn’t the best employee, obviously. He wasn’t going about his business with a smile on his face, whistling and skipping down the hall. He suspected the staff only kept him around because they felt sorry for him; as much as he wanted and needed the job he still had to drag himself through it every day. Luckily he wasn’t needed all the time – three or four times a week was the average. It was enough to pay for cigarettes, anyway, and some new clothes once in a while (and something extra to eat if he wanted it).

He pulled out the mop like a sword from a sheath, plopping the still-damp tendrils on the tile. “Place is damn near closed anyways.”

[Deleted]

Nao blinked at the boy who was suddenly snapping at him, flinching a little as he snapped. Naozumi was normally pretty easygoing and didn’t let people’s irritation at him get under his skin…or he just didn’t understand it. However, there was something very sharp about this boy’s attitude that made him take a figurative step back. Why was he so upset? Nao said he was sorry…and didn’t do it on purpose…really he didn’t. And now not only had he lost his popsicle, he’d gone and angered this person. “I was on my way out…” he muttered softly, watching the older boy clean up the mess he’d made.

Nao wanted to do something to make up for his slip up, but he didn’t know much of anything about this boy…at least he didn’t think so. Had he seen him around campus?

“…..you were at the Valentines Dance,” he stated. Now he remembered. Nao was bad at names, but he remembered faces pretty well and remembered seeing this one hanging out with a couple of other nice looking boys.

[Erik Stewart]

Erik kept his eyes on the floor. He was already expecting this kid to be on his way out, somewhere far away from him, so he was surprised (and not very pleasantly) when he brought up a new topic of conversation. Almost immediately he pulled a face. “So?”

Where Nao remembered him, he most certainly didn’t remember Nao. By his recollection, he was at the dance for thirty minutes, tops. He had made off with two cupcakes and a cookie or two in his back pockets, wrapped in napkins. He was pretty sure he’d seen Kodi there but everyone else had just been a blur of strangers.

This time Erik straightened up and peered at him. That face still wasn’t ringing any bells. One of his hands rested at the top of the mop, fingers curled. “You lost ‘r what?”

[Deleted]

Nao had been on his way out, but the disturbance in his routine, to simply walk out with his popsicle and return to campus, had been disrupted and thus left him unknowing how to correctly move past the situation. Was he supposed to just be rude and leave it be for the cleaning boy to mop up? Was he supposed to offer his assistance? Was he supposed to do something more to ensure that this other boy knew of his sincere regret for causing him trouble by offering something in return?

His indecision left Naozumi standing there awkwardly and, consequently, engaging in light conversation as memories of the Valentines dance returned to him.

”So?”

The question baffled him. Even Nao didn’t know exactly what he was getting at. Perhaps just hoped that this boy would pick up the invitation into casual conversation. Naozumi tilted his head in the other direction. Naozumi shook his head in response. He wasn’t lost. Just curious.

“You were with a group of boys,” he said, remembering exactly who had been there. A asian boy and a blonde. “Are they your friends?” His face remained blank, but interested, as he waited for an answer.