Memory
High school came much too soon. It was only yesterday that he could remember signing everyone's middle school year book, or vice versa. He had gone around begging everyone to sign in his yearbook, he wanted something to remember everyone by in case they moved away or died or got abducted by aliens again. He got turned down every time, of course, and just when he thought he had asked every person in school Kenny McCormick came up and snatched the sharpie right out of his hand and signed it right then and there.
"Try again next year, Butterscotch."
Leopold Stotch remembers him well, always bundled up safely in his parka, his hood drawn tight to a close. He remembers not his face, because nobody ever got to see his face for very long, but his eyes. Kenny had these little brown eyes
or were they green? Blue? No, no, they were definitely brown, brown like hazelnuts
ringed with dark circles from staying up late playing video games, and even if you couldn't see if he was smiling or frowning, or understand a word he said, one look at his eyes and it was like taking an open book test with the cliff notes taped on the inside of the cover. Leopold wonders how he could possibly forget something as
pretty as Kenny's eye color
simple as an eye color when he suddenly remembers that nobody has seen Kenny's eyes in a long time. The poor boy finally outgrew his parka after hitting a growth spurt in middle school and had taken to wearing his brother's tattered old hoodie instead. To compensate, Kenny grew his hair out, since he was too poor for a haircut and he didn't trust his dad anywhere near his neck with a pair of scissors, and let it hang in his
blue green brown
eyes messily more often than not. There was a momentary pang of loss and then it was gone and he decided to forget about it, because colors were such fickle things anyway and
did you know dogs couldn't even see in color?
there was no sense in worrying about it.