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He was thirteen and he’d finally perfected the art of not caring that he couldn’t fit in. He could stand in the middle of a room and be completely alone and look completely at ease with it. He could sit at a poker table, astounding the adults around him with his playing and his patter, and never even blink.
Schools, when he could attend them, were more difficult. Little Ezra Standish was hardly a specimen of budding manhood. He was short and slight, the only thing remarkable about him, the green eyes that flashed with an intelligence more children envied than admired. Still, he could charm those he wanted to and confront those he had to.
Because Ezra could fight as well, of course. At first, it was simply the boxing he’d learned as a child, encouraged by his mother’s memories of his dead father’s pugilistic endeavours, but eventually, after a few hard knocks to the head, technique had to give way to common brawling. He’d perfected that, too, of course, because Ezra Standish had always been a student of something. Of everything, if he needed to be.
So at eleven, he’d begun to study how people fit in. It was the one thing he couldn’t seem to master, after all, so he watched. He wrapped himself in silver and glided invisibly into the saloons where his mother plied her trade, watching the woman who could simultaneously fit in and stand out in any environment. Maude Standish (at that point she’d been Maude Hillerton, but that hadn’t lasted long, as the rich old man was ancient and doddering when she married him) managed to be at home in any room. It was uncanny, and he was jealous and proud in equal measure.
Maude would throw herself into the fray—that was her trick. Walk in as if you owned the place, and people would just naturally assume you belonged. Ezra’s biggest problem was that he knew he didn’t. He knew what he was, in a way that few boys his age did. He was a grifter of distinction, an uneducated orphan, a freak of nature who could turn himself invisible at will. He was not normal.
He did not belong. Anywhere, really.
But, as his mother said so many times, they didn’t need to know what didn’t benefit you .
He first tried his mother’s trick when he turned twelve and they moved to Mobile, Alabama, with Maude hot on the trail of another rich man to take in a grieving widow. He strode confidently into the boarding school where she’d finagled a place for him, smiling that smile of his, courteous and happy and sly.
The silver that hid him from view helped in the charade. Though he shared a room with an evil young man from one of the surrounding plantations, the boy never saw Ezra stand at the window in the middle of the night and yearn for just one of these children to help him fit in. No one knew that he stood to the side while they talked about that “uppity Carolina boy,” who was too smart and too cocky.
Apparently, walking in as if you belonged worked better in a saloon than a schooyardl.
So Ezra made a decision, late one night as he rambled invisible through the school. He would just not care. It wasn’t so difficult, really. After all, he’d long since learned not to care when his mother failed to come for him when she said she would. He’d learned not to care about the beatings and teasing and mistreatment he’d received at the hands of his so-called relatives.
He took a deep breath, settled his shoulders, and walked out into the grounds surrounding the old manor. The moon shone on the fields around him and let his own silver fall, only to be bathed in the silver of that shining orb.
He was a student of all things, Ezra Standish.
But there were some lessons it had simply taken him longer to learn.
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the end