Chapter Text
Anthony J. Crowley was, in fact, a person.
Surprisingly enough, he was a human being - and this statement could be quite sarcastic, unless one had a previous impression of him that led them to believe that he was not human. Alas, he was - which meant he was made of flesh (protein), and blood (mostly water), and bones (calcium, he'd suppose), and other squishy bits. This was all physical matter, but as Anthony J. Crowley knew, and had known for quite a while, all physical matter was made out of atoms.
You may be asking yourself: what are atoms made out of?
Crowley wasn’t a quantum physicist. He didn’t fucking know.
All he knew was that all this flesh and blood and bones and squishy bits were made out of atoms, and boy, there were a lot of those! There was also a lot of space in between those atoms, he knew.
Sometimes, when he thought about it too hard, all that space between the atoms made him lonely. Surely, all those atoms would be quite lonely, since there was so much space between them.
Sometimes, when he got lonely, he thought of all those atoms in his skin, and he thought about how there were so many, he could see his hand, and there really mustn't be so much space between them, or else he could see right through his hand!
Or, well, there must be quite a lot of them, if he could see his hand.
When Anthony J. Crowley got older, and he got lonely, he ignored it. Feeling sorry for yourself won't get you anywhere, he could hear. It was usually coupled with a burning in his belly that came along with drinking bitter-tasting liquor.
When Anthony J. Crowley got even older, and he got lonely, his hand usually went for the telephone.
When Anthony J. Crowley was young, he didn't get lonely very much.
-
Children were easy to like. Even if you didn't exactly like children, it was easy to look at a bunch of kids filtering into school, and upon seeing that, it was easy to think back to one's own childhood - a time of carefree love.
Children were easy to be annoyed by, as well. It was easy to look at a mother boarding a long-haul flight with a 14-month infant and thinking oh, dear God, please don't let that thing cry the whole time. Even if you wouldn't actually wish harm upon a child, I'd hope, nevertheless the thought still exists. It's just human nature to not want to listen to something the size of a loaf of bread scream with the lung capacity of a vacuum cleaner.
It takes a special kind of person to be able to deal with crowds of them - children, not loaves of bread or vacuum cleaners. Could you imagine a crowd of bread? That's the stuff of nightmares. Poor, poor bakers.
Ms. Lavey was that type of person.
Now, don't let this trip of narration fool you into believing Ms. Lavey is a character of any importance, or that any of this would be told from her perspective. She isn't even a character, she's just a name I thought up, because there needed to be one.
I'm sure she's a perfectly average teacher of young adolescents. She's probably married to a nice young man she met in or out of college, maybe even her highschool sweetheart. She's probably young, hardly 32, with dark brown hair that's shoulder length and curled at the ends. She probably has a dazzling smile, and a warm presence - something young adolescents need. She probably teaches something like History, or English, or Social Studies - and she's probably kind, with a soft voice, that can be raised when it needed to be.
Ms. Lavey is an average woman, even more average than just normal, and she probably is quite boring. You can see why she exists as a cardboard cutout in this tale, right? Right.
She was starting the new school year. She had likely worked there for years - and was probably quite good at all of this.
"Class," she crooned out, in the same way teachers of young adolescents often did, in a nice sweet voice, "we do have a few new students joining us this year! And I'd like to get to know all of you, so let's start with an icebreaker activity."
The school year always starts out with an icebreaker activity, a student had thought. A student with platinum blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a cute, round face.
Ezra Fell was 12 years old, and he'd been in this school system since he learned how to read. Speaking of, he loved to read. It was his favorite thing to do, he was so good at it, and he really, really liked it.
Teachers said he was "gifted", and he always heard that word. He wondered when he'd gotten those gifts, or what they were! Maybe it was still on the way, and it'd been lost in the mail. He hoped it was cool. Like a sword!
Ezra Fell wasn't completely hopeless, of course, to books. He had other interests that 12 year old boys often did. Like swords, and scraping his knees, and getting into trouble, and playing games with the other kids during recess. He wasn't completely hopeless, no, but he didn't exactly have friends, either.
Sure, he had a few, what kid didn't? Every kid had friends. He had his group that he played with on the playground, and for group projects, but they weren't really... friends. He didn't really have sleepovers, and he didn't go to other kids' houses too often. He played with the neighborhood kids during the summer, sometimes, when his mom implored him to get out of the house.
He was getting a little old for that, these days, and sometimes just decided to ride around the neighborhood on his bike. Sometimes he'd go into town, if he asked his mom really nice, and she said yes. It wasn't a very big town, anyway. There were plenty of shops, and a river that cut through town, and a library. That was Ezra's favorite spot. He could spend all day at the library.
The library, of course, was not an uncommon place for 12 year olds. It was a really nice library, after all - with a section for kids, and for teens, and a downstairs for various events, and an upstairs for adults. The upstairs had rooms you could rent, and balconies you could go out on, and kids usually liked to go onto the balcony, since you could be loud. Ezra liked sitting upstairs in those cozy chairs where it was quiet so he could read books.
His favorite part of the library was that he could stay for a long time, and read books, and he didn't have to buy them! He figured whoever invented libraries really liked having books, so he wouldn't want to take them away forever.
He understood, reverently, as a young boy. He had his own bookshelf full of his own books (and all his older siblings' books, but they didn't have a whole lot), and he would hate to part with any of them. Ezra was very mature from a young age, in understanding that he'd have hell trying to give away any of his books.
Anyway, there was a topic at hand here.
Right, icebreaker activities.
Short of the few new kids they had every year (and usually it was just one or two), there was really no need to have icebreaker activities, Ezra thought. He thought he was very mature in having an opinion like this.
All the kids knew each other already, he thought. Ezra knew most of these kids' name, and what they were gonna say (going to, he could hear his mother correct), so there was no need! At the mere mention of an icebreaker activity he rested his chin down in his palm, looking around the room for those new kids Ms. Lavey was talking about.
He could see a girl with dark blonde hair, already talking with another girl next to her. She was pretty, he thought. She looked nice. He saw a boy with glasses, with dark, almost black hair, who was just... the sort of kid you originally think of when you think "glasses", before realizing that a lot of kids wear glasses. He could probably recite the whole periodic table by the age of 16.
Ezra saw another kid he didn't recognize. He was thin, and tall (Ezra could assume. They were all sitting down, of course), and he was fair in a way that told him that he either didn't tan very well, and just burned, or he didn't really go outside during the summer months.
He stuck out in a way that Ezra could only begin to describe as intentional. He had flaming red hair (not ginger - it was red.), and he wore all black. In the grace of being a 12 year old boy, these clothes happened to be a black jacket, unzipped, a black t-shirt, and dark jeans. It was intentional, alright. He stuck out to Ezra not because of the way he looked, or because Ezra felt any certain type of way about him - this boy stuck out and made himself the center of attention, sitting as far away from people as he could, because he wanted to stick out. He wanted the attention.
Ezra wasn't used to kids like that. It wasn't like they had a huge population of punk kids, or kids that wore all black and dyed their hair for attention. It was a small town, and they were all quite sheltered from that kind of thing. Well, he was new for a reason.
"Now, we're going to go around the class - we'll start with Kelsey here. I want you to say your name, and one cool thing you did this summer. Right, Kelsey?"
Ezra decided this would be a good time to start organizing the things in his backpack. He kept an ear on what was happening, so he didn't miss his turn. He noticed they were going through the rows in a way he wasn't expecting, so the boy in the back with the all-black and the red hair actually went before Ezra.
"Uh, I'm Anthony- and, I, uh- well, I caught a snake in the woods, I guess that was cool."
There was nothing remarkable about this. It wasn't terribly remarkable that he'd caught a snake - he was sure everybody had caught a snake - and 12 year olds were bound to trip over their words when speaking in crowds.
Anthony. He'd have to remember that. Eventually, it swung around to Ezra.
"I'm Ezra, and this summer- well, this summer I went with my family and we went to Italy."
Ezra's family was pretty well-off. It wasn't exactly showing off to be talking about a holiday to Italy - the small town had a population of mostly upper-middle class folk. It was a rich town, and a rich school district. That wasn't to say poor people didn't exist. He knew kids that lived in 2 bedroom houses with their parents and siblings, and didn't have too much money, and he knew kids that practically lived in mansions.
Ezra was kind of in the middle of that spectrum. He had older siblings, so he was no stranger to hand-me-downs, but it was out of convenience rather than necessity. He'd shared a bedroom with his older brother up until he went to college. Their house wasn't super huge, but it also wasn't particularly tiny. Ezra had a comfortable life, in terms of finances. Most people were fairly financially comfortable here, enough to hop across the channel and have a holiday in Italy or Germany or France.
At recess, Ezra brought his book outside with him. It was still early September, so it was quite warm outside, and quite nice for playing in. He could sit at one of the picnic benches outside and read his book in the nice weather. Sometimes he preferred to read over playing with the group of kids, and sometimes they played games that Ezra didn't want to play, anyway.
When he sat down, and opened his book to the page he was last on, he could see somebody in his peripheral stalk up in a slouch, and sit down on the opposite side of the bench, on the opposite end. Ezra didn't look up from his book. Sometimes teachers sat down, or other kids with friends - he hoped another kid wouldn't sit down so that they would be loud.
To his luck, nobody else joined the figure in his peripheral. The figure did speak up, though.
"What kind of a name is Ezra? You Jewish or something?" Ezra looked up. The boy sniffed, clearly looking curious about it. It was Anthony, the boy from earlier.
"I'm not Jewish. It's just a name. And for your information, before you ask, it is not a girls name." He'd been teased about it before - about having a girl's name. His mom told him that Ezra was a high priest, and he even had his own book. He quite liked his name.
"Oh, alright," the other boy said. "You didn't look Jewish, anyway. How come you're sitting alone?" The boy - Anthony - didn't seem to think any of these questions were a little pointed, or personal, judging by his facial expressions. He was talking as if this was the most casual thing in the world.
"Because I wanted to read my book," Ezra countered, "and how come you're sitting alone?" This seemed to amuse Anthony. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, as if Ezra had just told a joke he himself didn't understand.
"I don't know if you've noticed at all, but I'm new. Haven't made any friends yet."
"Oh," Ezra said. Now he felt bad. "Well, do you want to be friends?" Anthony considered it briefly. He slid down on the bench, so instead of sitting away from Ezra, he was across from him.
"Yeah, okay." Now that Anthony was sitting so close, Ezra could see that Anthony had pale freckles, and hazel eyes. "Call me Crowley, though. 'S my last name. I like it more. And don't ever call me Tony."
"Okay, Crowley." Ezra liked the name Crowley, too. It quite fit a boy that wore a black jacket outside in early September, with pale freckles on his pale face, and hazel eyes.