There was, once, a boy who ran. 

It had happened many times before and would happen many times after. The boy running was not always a boy and not always was he running. Sometimes he took a bus or a car or even a plane. Other times, he only ran inside of his mind. He stayed in the same town but ran, nonetheless, from an idea or a background he could bury like a bone. It was a story that happened over and over because you could not learn it through words. 

The story happened many times. But this boy, in particular, ran from a house he refused to call home. He ran down a road that felt much longer than it was for his ten year old body, legs growing weak and tired, his chest burning from the quick gasps of air he took. He ran until he could not see anymore. In his spotty vision, he did not realize he had run into something until he was being helped up by it. 

“Dear, are you okay?”

He looked up, blinking repeatedly to try and process that he was no longer running. The ground was hard and piercing–like gravel, was he on a gravel road?--but he could not find it in himself to care, because he was no longer running, his body still. He suddenly felt very close to sleep. 

“Can you hear me, dear?”

The boy heard her distantly. He wondered if she was speaking to him. Her voice was unfamiliar, but the school across the road from the house he refused to call home was always employing new women. If that was where he had ended up, he had not run as far as he had wished to. 

“I’m going to bring you to a doctor, alright?”

A doctor?! 

The boy shot upwards in rejection. “No!” he gasped, throwing his eyes open. 

The woman in front of him stepped back, startled. She was young, with fair skin and dark brown hair tied in a bun at the back of her head. Scattered across her face were light freckles and rosy cheeks. She did not seem to want to hurt him, but if she wanted to bring him to a doctor, then she must’ve. His mother and father had told him that doctors were evil, nasty people who would prick needles into his arms and render his legs immobile in casts. 

With a sudden fierceness, the woman reached down, grabbing him from under his armpits. She yanked him off of the ground. “Then you should get off of that rocky ground–oh my, look at your arms, so red.”

The boy felt his weight slumping in her arms, but he forced his head upwards to meet her eyes. “Who are you? Are you from school?”

She shook her head. “I am from the orphanage. Where are your parents?”

He did not know many things, but something told him that he could not tell her the truth of his parents’ whereabouts. She would send him back there. So, he said, “I have none.”

The woman frowned. “Come with me,” she said quickly, pulling him away with her.

The woman had taken him to a room full of other adults. They spoke in hushed whispers and veering eyes, all unsure and off put. The boy could not hear them, and based on their charged tones of voice, he decided he did not want to. 

He was rushed out of the room soon enough, and taken to a rundown room with two beds. “You may stay here,” the woman who had stayed with him the entire time said. “You seem as though you need rest.”

He supposed he did. If this place was as evil as his house that he did not call a home, then he could leave in the morning. He eyed the window and the loose screws; they would not be able to hear him escape. 

When he fell onto the bed, he heard the woman say, “Sweet dreams.”

When the boy woke, he heard voices, which was not surprising in any way. He wondered what time it was, but when he looked out the window he planned on escaping from, it was still dark. His eyes were crusted with the sand of sleep, and his legs were sore now instead of burning. 

The collection of voices was not the thing that caught his attention, but the voice of just one. It was a young voice like his, light and soft and curious. 

Despite the weakness in his legs, he pushed the blankets that covered him off, and turned to stand from the bed. The door to the room had been left slightly ajar, golden light protruding from the outside. It was warm and silky, and he was tempted to envelop himself in it, but told himself he had to survey first. 

When the woman had brought him to the room of two beds, she had led him through something like a living room first. He saw it again now, but instead of being bathed in the light of the sun, golden lanterns were sitting beside every woman in the room, one for each. There were several of them, the women, and all looked unoccupied except for one–the only one he recognized. The woman he had initially bumped into sat at the edge of the couch at the center of the room, a smaller girl sitting on a footrest in front of her. The woman brushed the girl’s hair gently. 

All of the other women sat amongst themselves talking. They were all dressed the same, only separated by small differences: different boots, belts tied loosely or tightly, flowing hair or pinned accessories at their head. 

The boy could not make out their scattered voices. But when the little girl his age spoke, he could hear her clearly. 

“Why can’t he stay?”

The woman brushing her hair paused. In a nice voice, she said, “We are still deciding if he will stay.”

“Why should he not stay?”

Continuing with that nice voice that sounded like warm blankets and hot food, she said, “Because we do not know where he comes from. If his parents come looking for him, we may get into trouble.” Whatever warm blankets and hot food her nice voice created were shattered–ripped and gone cold. The boy frowned. It was not as though he carried the house he refused to call a home with him, and he knew his parents would not come looking. There was a reason he ran. 

The girl, though, seemed unfazed. Shrugging, she said, “Maybe he will play cards with me.”

The boy did not end up escaping from the window. 

He had not fully admitted to himself why. It was because of a few reasons, but the main one sat boldly in his mind, begging to be touched, but the boy refused. It was there, and that was fine, but he would not dwell on it. He stayed for other reasons, too. A bed to sleep in, food to eat (the woman had led him to a dining hall in the morning), clothes to wear, soothing oils to rub. 

(He had never played cards). 

(He wanted to learn how to play cards). 

(But the food was nice, too). 

The boy saw the girl for the second time during the second evening there. He was being dragged by the woman again from an office-like room. She had just wrapped his arm in bandages, much to the dismay of him. He had resisted fiercely, but when her nice voice went bad, he relented. 

“Do you want to go back home?” she had asked. 

He had winced and immediately shook his head. 

“Then you will allow me to fix your arm. Doctors and nurses are not bad people.”

When he said nothing but sent her a cold stare, she released him. “You may do as you please around the orphanage. Make some friends.” After a moment, she continued. “And don’t take off your bandages!”

He nodded begrudgingly. When the woman quickly shot off, skirt billowing behind her, he found himself walking the opposite way. 

To be honest, the boy did not know what an “orphanage” was. He knew, upon current observation, that it was a large building surrounded by smaller buildings surrounded by even more grass and gravel paths. The forest surrounded a fence that caged the orphanage in. All around were kids. Not all of them were his age–in fact, many were younger. Many were older, too, but not so old as to tower over him. There were much fewer of those kids, but he had seen a few, all the few of them lurking in corners with books or sitting at the fountain in the center, glaring at it like it would give them something. 

Suddenly he lurched to a stop when he saw a small table. At it were two children his age, one face familiar while the other was not. 

The familiar face was the girl from the living room a few nights ago. His breath caught. All of the women in that room had been debating sending him away, but all she had said was Maybe he will play cards with me.

The two at the table were playing cards. His heart lit up. 

He did not understand what they were doing. They both held an array of cards, and at certain points, they would take a card from the middle or place some down. His legs buzzed with the urge to step forward and ask for a tutorial. His nails dug into his palm from the intensity of the desire. 

After a bit of the back and forth shuffle of cards, the girl suddenly took all of them into her arms and started to pack them up. Disappointment flooded him from every angle. He wanted to play cards. 

She must have noticed him staring, though, because she looked up just before putting them all into the box. The other kid was long gone from the table, and with her eyes on him, he felt alone with her. 

She immediately smiled widely. The edges of her mouth seemed to reach her eyes, her cheeks bursting red with joy. “Would you like to play cards with me?!” she exclaimed, voice high and girlish. 

He did, but there was one thing. “I don’t know how to.”

“That’s okay!” she motioned to the seat across from her. “I can teach you. Just don’t leave early like that other guy.”

Ah. “He didn’t want to play?”

“Not with me.”

The boy frowned. “Why not?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was solemn as she said it, but she quickly corrected her own face and grew back her smile. “Sit down!”

He sat down across from her. He played with his hands under the table, unsure what he should do. Reach out for cards?

Apparently, he didn’t need to, because she dished them out for him and for herself. “The thing with this game is that you can’t be dishonest. All of your cards will be revealed by the end, anyway, if you get to the end of it.”

“Okay.”

“So you can’t be sneaky.”

“Okay.”

“Also,” she started, “part of the game is that we exchange cards. If I give you one that isn’t good for your deck, or that you don’t like, you can’t reject it. And the maids said it’s against the rules for us to even badmouth each other if that happens. At first, when Missy told me that, I thought it didn’t make sense. But she said that we all have different ways we like to play and different cards we like to discard early on because of that.”

This version of cards wasn’t quite making sense to him. He had never even heard of a game with rules like these, but he listened to her anyway. She continued explaining the rules, and by the end, he thought he understood everything except for one part. 

“How do you win?” he asked. 

She shrugged. “I’ve never gotten that far. Everyone else quits playing halfway through.”

“There must be a way to win.”

“I don’t know, okay? I think we both win.”

“Then what’s the point of the game?”

“To have fun,” she said. 

They played until it was dark. The boy’s arms were starting to hurt from the position they’d been resting in. He didn’t know if they were playing correctly–it was fun just like she said. But all of the games his father had taught him in their backyard were rough and mean. Did this count as a game, too? Could games be nice and fun and comfortable like this one?

They had played for so long that all of the other kids outside were gone. There was a light on in the second biggest building, the one where the boy had eaten his breakfasts and dinner. A maid opened the door to that building and came bounding toward them. 

The girl’s eyes blew wide open at the sound and sight of the maid. “We should put everything away quickly,” she said. “So we have to endure less shouting.”

“Okay,” the boy obliged. They started to pack up their things. 

By the time the maid was halfway across the lawn, the cards were in the box. It was silent, both of them sitting still and proper, stomachs growling. 

The boy suddenly frowned. “That was my first time playing a game like that.”

An ecstatic smile spread across her face. “Really? I’ve tried with many people, sure, but never gotten that far. We both learned new things, I guess. I always see others playing cards, though. Where are you from that doesn’t?”

He shrugged, a little ashamed to answer. “A bad, mean place.”

She shrugged back, a little lighter and more nonchalant. “Well, that’s okay. You’re still very good at cards.”