Work Text:
“You’re making a mistake.”
Light looked up from the pterodactyl he was drawing to find L standing beside his desk, staring down at his paper. He looked back down immediately.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
L was a tall boy, who looked a little like the teu-teru bozu hung up by the window — all pale and bobble-headed, with big black eyes which looked as though someone had drawn them on with a marker. He had a bright blue cast on his right arm, which was covered in signatures.
He’d gotten the cast after he’d climbed up on the monkey bars on the big kid’s side of the playground, where he wasn’t supposed to be, then slithered out onto the bars and hung upside-down from his knees, his arms dangling down below him. Then he’d fallen, all at once, dropping so fast Light couldn’t even see it happen then hitting the ground with a loud crack. When he came back to school two days later, he’d gotten a big applause and then everyone had huddled around him to sign the cast in silver sharpie, even though he was doing something wrong. It wasn’t fair. Light hadn’t signed L’s cast.
Light had been the only one there when he fell. L had hung there, grinning at him, and then all of a sudden he’d been on the ground, staring upwards, his giant eyes wide, and Light had crouched beside him, looking, until Tanaka-sensei came running over and yelled at Light for not doing anything. But Light hadn’t known he was supposed to do anything, because L wasn’t screaming or crying or anything like that. He was just looking at the sky, his face very pale, and not moving at all. So Light hadn’t done anything wrong. Even his dad had said so, afterwards, that he should have gotten help but he hadn’t realized so it was okay and he’d just have to do the proper thing next time, now that he knew. Then he’d hugged him and sent him upstairs to watch television in his room while he and Mom discussed something.
L kicked his chair. Light looked up again.
“Don’t you want to know what it is?” L said.
“No,”
“It’s a big one.”
“I’ll hit you if you don’t leave,” Light told him. He would, too. He could hit very hard .
“Oo-ookay,” L said, not sounding upset at all. Light turned back to his pterodactyl and started colouring its claws again. He had a special trick for making the claws really shiny, which was to press the pencil crayon very hard on the paper so you could see the light on it if you tipped the paper back and forth. It was his own invention, and it was a secret, but he was going to teach Sayu when she got old enough to go to school, too.
He didn’t look back up, but he could see the shadow of L leaving, and then he was alone again at the table in the back, which was what he liked.
When the time came to show their dinosaurs, Light walked proudly to the front of the class. He’d taken the longest on his dinosaur, which meant he was the best, because he’d put more work into it than anyone else. The teacher had needed to kneel down beside him and say, Light, you don’t want to be naughty, do you, you need to finish up or else you’ll make everyone wait.
He stood in front of the class and turned his paper around.
He’d drawn the pterodactyl which he’d seen at the museum two weeks before with his parents. It has been hanging from the ceiling of the Jurassic exhibit, almost invisible in the dark. He’d liked it because it looked alive, the shadows from the spinning fan giving it the impression of movement. The dinosaurs on the ground were so close that you could easily tell they were only plastic and foam but the one on the ceiling looked like something that had flown straight in from before the meteor. His father had put him up on his shoulders so he could reach for it even though it was far, far ahead, so high up it was obvious that he could never touch it, but he’d liked it anyway, because he could pretend, and because his mother had been saying, lately, that he was getting too old to be held, which he didn’t think he was.
Their school didn’t have the exact right colour for the pterodactyl from the museum, but he’d done his best by putting a little bit of brown over the orange. Most of the other kids had put glitter on theirs, but Light hadn’t. L, who was sitting at the front of the carpet, paper face-up in front of him, watching Light very intently, had drawn a chicken.
“This,” Light said, “is a pterodactyl and it’s a flying dinosaur from Germany. It eats smaller dinosaurs and jellyfish, so I drew them here, and —“
He stopped. L had stuck his hand up in the air.
“L,” said Tanaka-sensei. “We can ask Light questions when he’s finished sharing his dinosaur.”
“We can’t,” said L. “I have to say it now.”
Tanaka-sensei smiled at him. Usually she was sharp with L, who never behaved, but ever since he got his cast she’d been sweet to him. Now she was sharp with Light, instead, and wouldn’t let him sit with her at playtime. She said he had to play with the other kids and learn to get along, but he didn’t want to do that — he wanted to sit beside her and show her his special tricks and the rocks he found. Sometimes he used to play with L, but he couldn’t do that anymore either because now everyone wanted to follow him around and see if he’d let them draw things on his cast, which he did often enough that there was always a chance but not often enough that you could expect it, so there was always a crowd around him, which meant Light didn’t have anyone that was just his own anymore and he had to spend all of playtime hiding in his special spot behind the hydrangeas, feeling like someone had scooped him out with an ice cream spoon.
“Is it something nice?” Tanaka-sensei asked.
“No,” said L.
She smiled at him while Light stared at her in disbelief — it was his turn to talk and not only was L taking up all of it, a teacher was actually encouraging him to do it. No one was looking at Light anymore. They were all looking at L or at somewhere unrelated. “Well, then why don’t you tell me in private,” she said.
“Okay.” L climbed to his feet, and looked directly at her. “That’s not a dinosaur,” he said. “That’s a pterosaur. Dinosaurs are only the ones that walk on land with erect back legs and birds.”
Light felt as if the world was slipping out from under him. It suddenly felt very close and far away at once. “That’s not true,” he said, then tried to keep going. “It’s a flying dinosaur from the Jurassic period and it eats —“
“It’s not a dinosaur.”
“AND it eats smaller dinosaurs and invertebrates. I saw one at the museum with my dad. It was in the dinosaur exhibit, in the Jurassic room.”
“It’s not. It’s a pterosaur. And I went to the museum too with my uncle and the one they have isn’t even a pterodactyl. It’s a caulkicephalus and it’s from the genus ornithocheiridae and it’s not from Germany, it’s from England, and it’s not from the Jurassic period, it’s from the Cretacious period. If you paid attention there’s a plaque on the wall that says they put it in the wrong room and they’re going to move it. Also it doesn’t eat other dinosaurs. It eats fish. You forgot the crest, too.”
He could feel his face going hot and prickly.
He couldn’t read the plaque and L knew it because there were only two kids in the class who could read yet and he wasn’t one of them. L was one, because of course he was.
A little while ago L had proved this to everyone because Light had been reading one of their picture books by remembering the words his mom had read to him from the same one they had at home but he’d said the words from the wrong page by accident and L had told everyone and they’d laughed at him and then one of the teachers scolded him for lying even though he hadn’t been, actually. He’d just just been remembering out loud. And now if he was ever looking at a book L would wander over and offer to read to him so he couldn’t look at books anymore and he wasn’t getting any practise and it would take him even longer to learn and he would be the last one in the class and everyone would laugh at him even more forever. And he hadn’t been able to explain this to his mother when she found him in his room throwing his picture books against the wall and screaming and she wouldn’t buy him a new one when it turned out his favourite one had ripped because he had to learn responsibility, apparently, even though it wasn’t his fault, it was L’s for being annoying and if she would just listen to him she would understand this and hold him and tell him everything was okay. But she wouldn’t listen. So now he had a ripped book and his parents didn’t love him anymore and Tanaka-sensei hated him and everyone was looking at him and thought he was stupid and his face hurt and he didn’t have a cast and L didn’t want to be his friend anymore because Light hadn’t done anything when he fell.
He wasn’t supposed to cry because he was five and that was too old but he thought he was probably going to do it anyway, and in fact he was doing it even though he was trying not to, so he sat down and L said, “Tanaka-sensei, Light is crying,” as if it were a rule he was breaking and then everyone else was saying it, too, because they all did whatever L did now.
“Light,” Tanaka-sensei said, sternly. He balled his pterosaur picture up in his hands then ripped it up into little pieces and threw them at L. Then he laid down on the carpet and started hitting it with his fists and screaming, which seemed like the only right thing to do.
Suddenly someone was sweeping him up in their arms, so he started hitting them, too, and he was getting carried out of the classroom and into the hall, and shouting as loud as he could, and there was someone running along behind him and they were carrying him into the playroom, which was dark now and made his eyes feel less bad and the person with him in their arms was saying, get a blanket under him so he doesn’t hurt himself and there was movement and noise and then he was getting dropped down onto a soft pile of blankets, gentle except for that when he flailed he still got his knee hurt and he lay there, screaming and thrashing.
Someone was saying, should we call his parents, which he wanted them to do, and someone else was replying, no, he’ll be okay, it’s just a tantrum, we’ll just wait out.
After a while he started to feel tired and the bad feeling wasn’t crawling through him as much and the world was a little more real so he stopped hitting and shouting and he curled up and bit his fist and started to sob.
It was Kimura-sensei and Morita-sensei in the room with him, he realized. He liked Kimura-sensei because she was always sweet to him, no matter what, and she always knew what to do, and he liked Morita-sensei as well because she was very quiet and wore skirts with animals on them.
Once he was finished crying he lay there for a little while longer. Kimura-sensei was kneeling beside him. “Do you want a juice box and some crackers?” she said.
Light nodded into the carpet.
“Then you have to sit up,” she said. Light pushed himself upwards and she handed him a juice box, with the straw already in. It drank it. It was apple.
He felt very tired. His throat hurt a lot.
“There you are,” she said.
Light sucked on the straw.
“Are you ready to go back inside?” she asked.
He shook his head. He wasn’t ready for that. He wanted to stay here with Kimura-sensei and Morita-sensei and be special.
Kimura-sensei and Morita-sensei looked at each other. Then Kimura-sensei said, very softly, “Okay. We can stay here for a little bit. But then we need to go back in.”
Light nodded.
He didn’t want to look at L again. He didn’t want L to have seen that he’d cried. Except he was crying for a good reason, so it was fine.
Kimura-sensei and Morita-sensei sat down beside him. “You’re a very good boy, Light,” Kimura-sensei said. “I know you are.”
Light knew this, too. But he still liked to be told.
“Everyone wants you to do well,” she said. “All of us, and your parents too. I know you’re going to grow up and be smart and strong and brave.”
Light nodded again. He was going to be just like his dad.
“So do you think you can be brave right now and come back inside?”
Light looked at the door, and then he looked at Kimura-sensei. Slowly, he shook his head. He was good. He was the best in the class. He knew all of this, because everyone said. But he’d be brave in a little while.