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You know he’s a special kid. You’d known since you found the tike in the crater of a meteor babbling away laying on the corpse of a horse with no eyes.
But there are some things the kid does that just confuse the shit out of you.
You aren’t sure if he’s an alien or what, but he does some freaky things sometimes and you end up sitting in awe watching him.
When he was about knee high to a grasshopper you’d been reaching for something on top of the fridge and had knocked down a mason jar. It had smashed across the kitchen floor and scared him to tears. While he was screaming his fool head off, it had shot back together, teetering back and forth on the floor before sitting in one piece on the tile. You had stared, and he had stopped crying, sniffling and scooting the cheerios around on his tray.
The first day you’d had him dressed and ready to drop him off at the day care center. He had protested, whining quietly with his lip jutting out. But you had to go to work, you’d kept an eye on the clock and it seemed to have moved so slowly. Ten minutes felt like two hours. And upon closer inspection, the clock on the wall was ticking dangerously slow, the morning turning to afternoon outside the window. Your phone said the clock was broken and you were late for work. Even with fresh batteries it sometimes went slow like that.
But it wasn’t until he’d been in kindergarten a few months that you’d finally seen for sure that this kid, this stranded little man, wasn’t normal.
Hide and seek around the apartment. You’d counted and his footfalls took off. You didn’t peak, you weren’t a cheater.
An hour later after frantically looking every single place in the apartment he poked his head around the hall, snickering. You’d been so furious! You’d been so... scared.
He was confused though, why were you so angry?
“Where were you?” You demanded, holding his hand firmly. “Dave.”
“Between seven and eight,” he’d said, that same sad and confused and scared look on his round face.
“Seven and eight what?”
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, Dave, eight, nine, ten, ready or not, here I come!” Dave tried to explain, watching you with a smile, repeating the droning of a seeker’s counting.
“Oh.”