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Ezra first "met" Anthony in elementary school, although you couldn't really call it meeting. In fact, Anthony probably didn’t even know he existed back then. They had never been in the same class together at school, and had never had any reason to talk to each other.
But Ezra knew who Anthony was, and he'd been fascinated by him for as long as he could remember. As far as he was concerned, Anthony was not only the coolest kid in their grade, but the coolest kid in the entire school as well. He was tall and skinny, with brilliant red hair and the most unusual (most beautiful) amber-yellow eyes. While his features made him stand out compared to their classmates, Ezra was sure nobody made fun of Anthony, ever. In fact, he was probably the only boy in their school who could get away with wearing nail polish. He always wore black clothes and black nail polish, and he always looked perfect.
Then there was the way he walked. He sauntered through the halls of their school like he owned the place, even from a young age. Anthony Crowley had the kind of cool confidence Ezra Fell could only ever dream of. He wished they could be friends.
And maybe, in an alternate universe, they would have been. Except for the fact that Anthony was the complete opposite of Ezra. And also, he was a little bit... bad. Ezra first discovered this when they were in the same Sunday school class at church, very briefly, in the First Grade. They were seated on opposite sides of the room from each other, and never had a chance to interact. But Anthony still made quite the impression. Unfortunately, he only lasted a few weeks there.
The trouble began one Sunday morning when they learned the story of Noah’s Ark. Miss Michaels had read it to them from a beautifully illustrated storybook as she sat in the rocking chair, the children gathered all around her on the rug. What Ezra remembered the most about her was the way she always looked so prim and proper. He could still see her in a white blouse and gray dress pants, an elegant silk scarf tied at her neck and her hair perfectly done up.
After she read the story, Miss Michaels talked to them about what it meant. She explained matter-of-factly how all the people on Earth had become very wicked, forcing God to punish them. The Almighty sent terrible rains and a great flood to wipe out everything and everyone. But in the end, She made a beautiful rainbow as Her promise never to bring such destruction upon Her people again. It was supposed to be a nice story, a hopeful story. The animals were all saved in pairs, marching two by two across the colorful pages of the book. And of course, God had spared all of the good and righteous people-Noah’s entire family.
But Anthony just wouldn't stop interrupting to ask questions. If God really loved everyone, why would She kill them? Wasn’t She supposed to forgive people? What about all the animals who didn’t make it on the ark? They hadn’t done anything wrong, had they? What about people’s pets? What about babies??
Although it was wrong to interrupt and argue with the teacher, Ezra could tell Anthony wasn’t being difficult on purpose. He was truly upset, and he was starting to get the other children upset, too. Meanwhile, Miss Michaels was becoming angrier and angrier, her face turning red and her eyes flashing with fury. Ezra was a little bit afraid of her.
Finally, she snapped at Anthony to be quiet, and how dare he question God’s plan? The story time discussion was suddenly over, and they were all sent back to their seats to color a picture of the ark in silence. Miss Michaels had a stern talk with Anthony’s mother when she came to pick him up. Ezra could hear them speaking in hushed, angry tones as he walked out the door with his mother.
After that day, Ezra never saw Anthony in Sunday school again.
***
The next time Anthony caused trouble, they were in the 5th Grade. It was a gloomy but otherwise ordinary fall day, with gray skies overhead and dried leaves swirling through the air on a cold wind.
Unbeknownst to most, Anthony had slipped out of the cafeteria during his lunch period, exiting through a side door and leaving it cracked open with a plastic lunch tray. He walked with purpose down the street and over to the run-down house with all the little goats in the front yard. Then he opened up the rickety wooden gate, set them all free, and calmly walked back to school, where he finished eating his lunch as if nothing had happened.
It hadn’t taken long for the goats to wander over to the grassy school grounds and start wreaking havoc. They rapidly devoured all the flowers and bushes in the landscaped beds around the front of the school, then found their way to the playground in the back. After nibbling the grass to their heart's content, they jumped up on the seesaw and merry-go-round while the First Graders were having recess. A few stragglers wandered past the big glass windows of the cafeteria, looking in at the students eating lunch. It immediately set off a ripple of excitement through the room, with students rushing to the windows to see the goats.
The whole debacle created a huge commotion throughout the school, and the police were even called out to come and help herd the goats back home. The owner of the house insisted that the animals getting loose couldn't have been an accident. She immediately cast aspersions on the elementary school, although as of yet, there was no proof and there were no suspects.
Unfortunately, there was also no camera footage to review-cameras wouldn't become commonplace in schools for many more years. Instead, school officials had to rely on whatever information the students could give them. Administration spent two days interviewing dozens of students one by one, starting with the 4th and 5th Graders who had been eating lunch at the time. Ezra had been at a table far across the room from Anthony. He could honestly say that he hadn’t seen anyone leave the cafeteria, and he didn’t know anything at all about the incident.
Of course, the kids at Anthony’s table had seen him leave, and probably even knew exactly where he had gone and why. But they would never tell on him. For days, the investigation was at a standstill.
Finally, there was a break in the case when an elderly neighbor down the street called the school to say her husband had seen a red-headed boy cutting through their yard on the day in question. Suspicion immediately fell on Mike McSpadden, a tall third-grader with bright red hair and freckles. He had been signed out with the bathroom pass for nearly twenty minutes around the same time the goats had escaped. To his misfortune, no one could confirm he had actually been in the bathroom.
It was dismissal time the next day when half the school saw Mike sobbing as he left the principal’s office, loudly insisting that he hadn’t done it. Ezra was there, too, in the throng of students making their way to the front doors. He felt bad for Mike and averted his eyes, looking straight ahead instead.
That's when he spotted Anthony just up ahead of him, nearly to the exit. To his astonishment, Anthony abruptly stopped and turned around. Then he started marching against the flow of children, passing right by Ezra. He was headed towards the office with a fierce look of determination on his face.
By the next day, the entire school knew that Anthony had been the one to let the goats loose, and that he’d gotten a three day suspension for his act of mischief. The rumor going around was that he’d done it simply because he felt bad for the animals. Ezra thought he understood. He passed by that dilapidated house on his way to school every day, and he often looked out at it from the window of his school bus. From that vantage point, he could see all the goats penned up in the too small yard, all the grass eaten down to the ground. The poor creatures seemed a little skinnier every week.
Years later, Ezra would look back on "the goat incident," as it became known, and realize it was when he first knew he had a crush on Anthony. Not that he really understood it at first, what this intense attraction was. But it was there, and he was aware of it. Of course, he would never act on it. No one could ever know. Besides the fact that liking a boy was taboo, Ezra knew that someone like Anthony could never be interested in him, not even just as friends. Anthony was the coolest kid he knew, and Ezra was... not cool. Not at all. Quite the opposite, actually.
Ezra had always known he was different from the other boys at school. He knew it practically from the first day of Kindergarten. He wasn’t into sports or superheroes, and he didn’t like roughhousing like the other boys. In fact, he hated getting his clothes dirty. At recess, he preferred to sit by the side of the building and read. It wasn't as if any of the other boys wanted to play with him anyway.
He got along better with the girls, who had more interesting things to talk about, so Ezra always sat with them at lunch. Unfortunately, that didn't exactly help Ezra's social standing with his male classmates. It was considered weird for a boy to sit at an all-girls lunch table. The boys made fun of Ezra for this and everything else they could think of. They were merciless. Anything was fair game--his soft curly hair, so blond it was white. His worn out, old-fashioned clothes. The baby fat he couldn’t quite get rid of. The books he read.
Most days, Ezra just tried to fade into the background and be invisible. He learned early on that nobody picked on you if they didn’t notice you.
And so for many years, that's how it went--Ezra hiding behind his books, and secretly crushing on Anthony from afar, not knowing that one day all that would change.