ryder beckett | seven | wip

we stood, steady as the stars in the woods

so happy-hearted as the warmth rang true

inside these b o n e s as the old pine fell

we sang, just to bless the morning

Middle school seemed hardly a necessary evil, and as he sat in class on the first day, he surveyed the room, taking note of the peers in his class. Of the vast majority, he had grown up with, and rightly so, he supposed. This was the rich school: the one with tuition.

"Not a private school, though," his mother had argued over dinner, "those are in the southern part of the District, and you aren't old enough to attend yet." The way she said yet made him quite frightful of things to come. Already, he felt out of place, a boy with gold lining his pockets who could not walk a straight line while sober.

His ADD made it hard for him to focus in the ways the others did. Unsteady hands would scatter papers around on his desk: order them, reorder them, then not be able to find the flashcards he needed moments later. It was just here, he thought, remembering he had drawn a monkey on the top it. Where the hell is it— oh, it's right here, okay.

He looked down at the matching set of three: the first one said caves, the second, coffee, the third, spring time.

Three things he liked. Teacher's demand, not his own. He pushed his hair out of her face as she paired people based on really weird basic facts, such as their eye color or their height. He had grown probably six inches over the summer, so when they filled out their papers and gave them to her, he had just lied wrote something down. He looked around the room again at his peers. No one even came close to being as tall as him.

"Our only two lefties," the teacher said, patting Ryder on the back, "Ryder Beckett and Nico Davenport."

Nico was the only person who came close to being as tall as him, though it was still a bit of a reach. Olive skin and curious eyes, when Ryder sat down across from him he smiled, trying his best to be friendly.

"Now, the teacher droned on, "I want each of you to hold a flashcard up, one at a time, and discuss your favorite things. Who knows, perhaps you'll have something in common."

"I'm Ryder," He said, leaning on his elbows. He thought about shaking the boy's hand, but he worried Nico might have taken a bite out of it if he moved too quickly. "Ryder Beckett."

The silence that followed bordered on awkward, before Nico cleared his throat. "Nico Davenport." The two boys looked at each other, and Ryder decided then that Nico would be his friend for a very long time.

"What kind of a name is Davenport?" He joked.

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He had always sort of stumbled through his life. Literally. Tripping over painted lines, walking into brick walls, and to some it was endearing. To him, it was actually quite a bit annoying. In hindsight, he always knew what he was doing in the back of his mind. He knew the lines were painted, that the posed no danger, but then the second he thought of it, he replaced the thought with "I wonder where Nico is," and then that was replaced with "I wonder what I'll be having for dinner," and so on and so forth until his mind had been led so astray that when he saw the line again his first thought was to pick his foot up so he did not trip over it.

He knew the wall was there but then he thought he heard a fly and as his head darted about trying to find it, the wall inched closer until he just smacked into it.

Once, he sat down with Nico and a girl named Rosemary, who was far too odd for her own good, and he hadn't been doing anything in particular when Rosemary put her elbows on the table and said "You just can't help yourself, can you?" Ryder, who had a half-eaten gummy worm hanging out of his mouth, said "What?"

"Being so adorable. You drip allure, don't you?"

He should have been flattered by things like that, because they were said to him often. But most times he simply felt out of the loop, out of step. Like everyone was in on a joke except him, because he was the punchline.

But his parents had raised him to be respectful, so he would just smile and tilt his chin up, and let the conversation die right there.

He was such a klutz, in fact, that his father nearly stopped letting him help build the traps that had made them famous across the district. New money, not ever the type of family to have heirlooms and written wills until Ryder's father became known for his twitch snares and box traps. It started with his friends noticing how well the areas around their house were kept.

"None of the vegetables have been eaten, there are no rut marks in the dirt, not even any signs of droppings," they would remark, to which his father would reply with, "Well of course not. I've used up every sharp object in my tool shed for a reason."

His business was born and raised overnight, it seemed, and before long, Ryder and his older brother, Raiden, were taken to the District Square often to buy new clothes and new toys. They started adding more rooms to their house, buying new appliances, cutting their hair more frequently.

But when it came time for Ryder to learn the craft, he had nearly sawed off several body parts on several occasions just to make baseboards. He still had a scar on his right ring finger where he had accidentally activated a twitch snare while attempting to set it up. There was a scar in the crease of his neck where a hook had caught him while he set a trap in the lake by his school.

Before long, he would have been completely broken in half, had his father not warned him to be more careful. "You've got to slow down, Ryder," he said, bandaging a wound on his right leg, "Your mother is beginning to think I'm trying to murder you."

"My thoughts just get a bit jumbled sometimes. It becomes hard for me to think."

His dad took a step back, watching as Ryder subconsciously tapped his fingers against his knee, how his gaze never stayed in one place for too long. "What do you think about?"

"Everything. And nothing. Whatever is on my mind at the time, I guess."

"And how does it make you feel when everything starts to pile up?"

Ryder squinted at his father. "You're not a doctor," he joked. His father breathed through his nose, which was the closest he ever got to laughing. Sort of a quick huff or a sigh, but with a smile. He was weird, too.

"But I was going to be. Once. Like my dad before me."

"It makes me feel... Overwhelmed, I guess?" He stumbled over his words for a moment. "You know how the magnet traps are set off because of pressure?" He asked, speaking of his father's personal invention. It took very precise hands to lay the magnets out equidistant from each other so that the slightest disturbance would set them all into motion.

"Yes?" His father pinched his bottom lip with his thumb and index finger. "It feels like that. Except there is never any disturbance. It just gets stronger and stronger, because nothing is there to relieve the pressure."

"And when something finally does?"

Ryder mimicked an explosion with his hands.

"From now on," His dad said, standing up so that he was looking down at Ryder, "When that happens, just stop. Stop everything you're doing and breathe for a moment. You get ahead of yourself, Ryder. You just need a moment to collect. Okay?" "Yes sir." His hand patted Ryder on the head.

"Otherwise, your Mom is going to make you stop helping." He joked.

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abadeer

nico and aspen

nico's departure

aspen's landing(;

and the smoke in my l u n g s

or the echoed stone; careless and young,

free as the birds that fly with weightless souls now

and as the old pine fell, we sang