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Anton hovered between insecurity and freedom for a second; and then he blew the candles of his birthday cake with no wishes in mind. The flames flickered desperately above the candles fighting for their hold on dear life but they eventually succumbed and faded to their demise, prompting the little crowd around the table to applause. In the gloomy atmosphere of the dining room of Mary Brendford’s House for Children Anton Forester had just called the shots for the beginning of the end of the modestly arranged celebration of his eighteenth birthday. The few children over the age of sixteen that had been given the permission to join the little party along with the staff members all shook the young man’s hand before helping themselves to their slices of cake. One of the children, a particularly well-dressed boy with mousy brown hair and a pair of warm, hazelnut colored eyes wrapped Anton’s lean frame in a brotherly embrace.
“Welcome to the club, mate! Hope you’ll handle your years as a uni student appropriate and well behaved!”
“Only if you promise not to join me there” joked Anton. “You and Zane have been the demons hanging over my shoulders for the past decade or more.”
“Talk about yourself, darling, I’ve always been an angel myself” the other boy mock-hurt remarked before bursting into a fit of good-natured laughter. “Happy birthday, Anton, I wish you all the best out and very far away from this place.”
Anton took the paper bag that was being handed to him and tore the colorful wrappings apart. A surge of color emerged from the package, revealing the newest Pink Floyd disk. Anton passed his fingertips lightly across the a Saucerful of Secrets title, tenderly gracing the cover of his very first record to hold as his own; he had heard all of the Piper at the Gates of Dawn songs on his friend’s record player and the impression this up and coming band had given him was the one of a meteor tearing through the velvet night sky; just color, and warmth and fire, all in an impressively tranquil yet explosive mixture brewed with virtuosity and it was love at first sight for the boy. Collin must had remembered this, and Anton couldn’t feel anything else apart from gratefulness and warmth for his childhood friend.
“Thank you, mate! I wish I could play it straight away but I don’t think that Mr. Doughty would like it if I tried to play psychedelic rock on the school record player.”
“Well, I believe this can wait until tomorrow. You can play the record until it begins to burn on our own record at home; Steph won’t dare complain about it, it serves her well…I mean I warned her about your smelly feet and your snoring and all your disgusting habits but still she insisted on inviting you to move in with us…”
At Collin’s words, Anton’s heartbeat begun to gallop wildly in his chest, like a mustang that had been waiting for this call to escape for way too many years. He couldn’t have heard wrong; Collin and his sister had just invited him to move in and stay with them at their family house. And Stephanie had never been one to speak about empty words or not keep her promises. Since the very first time that she and her little brother had been dropped off at the orphanage by the authorities right after the death of their parents, Stephanie had managed to check all of her entries out of her to-do list with the lethal precision of a sniper during a life-or-death fight. Battling against the hardships of losing her only relatives and taking care of a scared and broken five year old that kept clinging to her skirt until the memory of the car crash that had tore his family apart had faded completely from his juvenile mind, Stephanie emerged from this war a winner. After being accepted with a scholarship in university and completing her studies in the field of economics, she begun to rebuilt the fallen empire of her parents from the very start. Out of nothing but ruins, Stephanie started to re-establish the machine parts factory, vowing on the memory of her dead family to save herself and her baby brother from the hard and difficult life fate had decided for them to live. Going against fate with nothing but her creative mind and a willpower fueled by love and loss, Stephanie managed to raise from her ashes and finally built a reliable and steady future, good enough for her to finally be allowed to take her brother to live with her. By the twenty fourth year of her life, Stephanie had created her life anew and made the wishes of her parents come true: she and Collin had finally escaped out of harm’s way, and they were able to live a wealthy and happy life together, like a proper family.
But despite the fact that both Harlows had left the orphanage and their old life behind, they never forgot the friends that still remained at Mary Brendford’s. While coloring the patterns of her new life, Stephanie had never forgotten that some color needed be added into Anton’s and Zane’s grey and still vaguely shaped templates as well. She had kept sending gifts on their birthdays and with any chance she got she would provide the two boys with clothes and books and any other kind of supplies the boys might needed. It was a common secret in Mary Brendford’s that the biggest donor for the establishment of a new heating system was actually Steph, the girl who had left the orphanage as a highly skilled and ambitious college student and who had returned as a talented entrepreneur to take her baby brother away from the place which everyone tried to consider a home but still couldn’t help but feel as nothing more than a substitute house.
Anton was still taking his time to process the brilliant prospect of moving in with the two Harlow children when Collin welcomed another boy, one of ginger hair and freckles all over his pointy features to their company. The boy was still wearing a raincoat and wellingtons and looked as if he had just returned from a very long and exhausting trip.
“Judging by the moronic smile across his face, I guess you told him” the newcomer said, taking his wet top coat off and throwing it carelessly on a nearby chair. “Say Anton, how does it feel for a sad little orphan to finally find a warm place to call home?”
“You should try becoming a writer of sappy romantic novels instead of becoming a chemist, Zane. It would suit you bloody great” retorted Anton as the ginger boy pulled him into a tight embrace and ruffled his dark hair amicably. Anton felt the ginger’s exhaustion in his heavy breath.
“How was your trip? Had a good time with old Mr. Tomils?”
“Can’t say I enjoyed his company, but the outcome was pretty good” said Zane, cramming an entire slash of Anton’s birthday cake into his mouth. “I will be allowed to sleep in the uni rooms and use all of the facilities for free for as long as a study there. Tomils convinced them that I am one of his best students so they didn’t hesitate to help things a little bit. The old fellow sure knows how to use his words.”
“So he really helped?” asked Collin, elevating a fair eyebrow in disbelief. “I thought he always said that smartasses like you should be expelled instead of kept and fed for free by the orphanage.”
“He kept telling me that during our whole way to Edinburgh. At some point he made me think that he had played a role in me not being accepted by any related colleges in London, to be frank.”
“London or not, you’ll still have a room in our house” said Collin. “Steph says that you’ll always be welcomed to stay for as long as you want, and just for the holidays. She’s determined not to give you the chance to get away from us.”
“Can’t say I’m not happy about it” said Zane, “so, I guess, Anton’s moving in soon then?”
“Well, yes, right after I come back from B...”
Zane’s desperate glare was definitely not one to be dismissed. The boy’s obviously indignant grimace forced its way through Anton’s happiness almost dagger-likely and impaled itself in a tender spot of his heart. Anton glared back at the ginger boy in a similar fashion, jaw clenched and eyes full of contempt.
“I think I have already made clear that I will travel to B…no matter what. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for all my life.”
“You had Steph ask for the birth and death records of the entire region and nobody named Forester at the time of your birth would have been able to have a child, either because of ill health or age. The only living Foresters nearby denied ever having a child and I see no reason for them to lie in this case. Why don’t you just quit and stop wasting time over things that nobody even cares about anymore?”
“Hey, hey, take it easy you two” interjected Collin before Anton could retort in an equally frustrated tone as Zane’s. “We’ve already discussed the matter; you’re visiting B… and we’re coming with you. It’ll be fun, the three of us travelling together.”
“No need to bother yourselves, I can go on my own” said Anton bluntly. Collin laughed his friend’s pouty face off and Zane simply sighed and changed the topic before Anton could get any angrier over his final attempt to change his stubborn mind. Soon, the tightness of the previous uneasy altercation had faded in an avalanche of flowing conversation between the boys. The room had almost been completely deserted by the children who had left for their rooms after wishing Anton happy birthday for one last time.
Anton participated absent-mindedly in whatever conversation the other two had started up, but his mind had already begun to take the journey to the town of B… He was already on his way, to the town where it all begun, to the grounds where the seed hap been planted and the roots had been made to settle and find home within. He was already knocking on each and every door of the small town, receiving suspicious glares and disappointing answers, and he was determined to keep knocking and searching from doorstep to doorstep asking and begging and searching until somewhere, somehow, one of these soundly locked doors that led in a place as good as nowhere to him would finally unlock and reveal a woman, or a man with dark hair and pale complexion and a pair of eyes as grey as steel that would, after meeting with their grey depths of his own eyes, widen in shock and maybe greet him with love or curse him in disdain or simply answer his questions without emotions, only with plain logic and common sense in a way that Anton would finally understand and be able to face the questions and doubts that had shaped his very existence throughout his halved and crippled life.