The Tearsmith

CHAPTER 2:Lost Tale

Sometimes, destiny

is an unrecognizable path.

The name of my institution was Sunnycreek Home.

It stood at the end of a dilapidated dead-end street, in the forgotten outskirts of a small town in the southern state. It housed unfortunate children like me, but I never heard the other kids call it by its true name.

Everyone vulgarly referred to it as "the Grave," and one didn't need to be very clever to guess why: anyone who ended up there seemed destined to become a ruin and never find a way out, just like the street it was located on.

In the Grave, I felt like I was behind the bars of a prison.

During the years I spent in that place, every day I wished for someone to take me out of there. Someone who would look into my eyes and choose me, specifically me, among all the children in the institution. Someone who would love me as I was, even if I wasn't much. But no one ever chose me. No one had wanted me or noticed me... I had always been invisible.

Not like Rigel.

He hadn't lost his parents like many of us had. No tragedy had befallen his family when he was young.

They found him in front of the institution's gate, in a wicker basket, without a note and without a name, abandoned in the night, with only the stars, big sleeping giants, to watch over his sleep. He was only a week old.

They named him Rigel, after the brightest star in the constellation of Orion, which that night shone like a spiderweb of diamonds on a bed of black velvet. They completed the void of his parentage with the surname Wilde. For all of us, he was born there. Even his appearance gave it away: since that night, he had pale skin like the moon and dark, somber eyes, the eyes of someone who had never feared the darkness.

From a young age, Rigel had been the crown jewel of the Grave. "Son of the stars," the director before Mrs. Fridge called him; she adored him to the point that she taught him to play the piano. She spent hours and hours with him, showing a patience she never had with us, and note after note, she transformed him into the impeccable young man who shone among the gray walls of the institution.

Rigel was good at everything, with his perfect teeth, always high grades, and the candies that the director slipped to him before dinner.

The boy everyone would have desired.

But I knew it wasn't true. I had learned to see what was beneath it all, beneath the smiles, the immaculate mouth, the mask of perfection he showed to the world.

He, who carried the night within, hid in the folds of his soul the darkness from which he had been torn.

Rigel had always behaved strangely towards me.

In a way that I had never been able to understand.

As if I had done something to deserve that treatment or those...

silences, when as a child I would catch him observing me from a distance. It all started on a day like any other, I don't even remember the exact moment. He passed by me, made me fall, and I scraped my knees. I brought my legs to my chest and brushed off the grass, but when I looked up, I saw no sign of him even considering apologizing. He stood there, staring at me, in the shadow of a cracked wall.

Rigel would tug at my clothes, pull my hair, undo my braids; the ribbons would fall at his feet like dead butterflies, and through my wet lashes, I would see his cruel smile stretching his lips before he ran away.

But he never touched me.

In all those years, he never once brushed his hand against me. The hems, the fabric, the hair... he would push and pull, and I would end up with stretched-out sleeves, but never with a mark on my skin, as if he didn't want to leave the traces of his guilt on me. Or maybe it was my freckles that disgusted him. Perhaps he despised me to the point of not wanting to touch me.

Rigel spent a lot of time alone and rarely sought the company of the other children.

But I remember one time, when we were around fifteen... A new boy had arrived at the Grave, a boy who would be transferred to a foster home in a few weeks. Almost immediately, he became friends with Rigel; that boy was even worse than him, if that's possible. They were leaning against one of the deteriorated walls, Rigel had his arms crossed, his lips and eyes sparkling with dark amusement. I had never seen them argue about anything.

On a day like any other, however, at dinner time, the boy showed up with a bruise under his eyelid and a swollen cheek. Mrs. Fridge gave him a hostile look and asked him in a thunderous voice what the hell had happened.

"Nothing," he replied, without looking up from his plate. "I fell in the school.

But it wasn't true that it had been nothing, I sensed it. When I looked up, I saw Rigel lowering his gaze to hide it from the others. He had smiled, and that subtle grimace had materialized as a c***k in his perfect mask.

And as he grew older, his beauty stood out more, in a way that I never wanted to admit.

There was nothing sweet, soft, or kind about it.

No...

Rigel burned with his gaze, capturing your attention like the skeleton of a house on fire or the wreckage of a car destroyed on the side of the road. He was cruelly beautiful, and the more you tried not to look at him, the more that torturous attraction embedded itself behind your eyes. It seeped under your skin, spreading like a stain until it reached the flesh.

That was him: wicked, solitary, insidious.

A nightmare dressed in your deepest dreams.

That morning, I woke up as if in a fairy tale.

Clean sheets, a pleasant scent, and a mattress that didn't reveal its springs. I couldn't wish for anything better.

I sat up, my eyes still sweetened by sleep; for a moment, all the comforts that room provided made me feel fortunate like never before.

But after a moment, like a dark cloud, I realized that I only occupied half of the story. There was also that black corner, the burn, and there was no way to escape from it...

I shook my head lightly. I rubbed my eyelids with my wrists, trying to suppress those thoughts. I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to let anyone ruin it. Not even him.

I was too familiar with the process to get my hopes up about having found a permanent home.

Everyone seemed to think that adoption worked like a happily ever after encounter, where after just a few hours, you would be taken to the home of a family that you would automatically become a part of.

But it didn't work like that at all; that only happened with puppies.

Actual adoption required a much longer process.

First, there was a period of staying with the family, to see if the coexistence was viable and the relationships with its members were satisfactory. They called it a "pre-adoptive placement." During this phase, it was not uncommon for incompatibilities and problems to arise that hindered family harmony, and based on how this period had gone, the family decided whether to proceed. It was very important... Only if everything had gone smoothly and no setbacks had occurred, would the parents finally complete the adoption.

That's why I couldn't yet consider myself a full-fledged member of that family. For the first time, I was living a beautiful but fragile story, capable of shattering like glass in my hands.

The house was small, so it didn't take me long to find the kitchen; I heard voices and hesitantly made my way there.

When I arrived at the door, I was speechless.

The Milligans were sitting at the breakfast table, still in their pajamas and with their slippers halfway on.

Anna was laughing as she ran her fingers along the steaming cup, and Mr. Milligan was spreading jam on his toast. They looked so...