He's shivering, again

He's shivering, again. The window's cracked and the wind is cold, blowing the curtains around and chilling him to the core, even though he has three blankets on. Mark accidentally cracked it with his fake sword while playing two days ago, and is too afraid to tell his father. The Christmas tree episode cost him pretty big. He's still got bruises.

Christmas came and went without much ceremony. His parents had Christmas parties; he opened presents with them for an hour on Christmas morning under the salvaged tree and by the crackling fire, and then played with Matchbox cars on the stairs by the servants' entrance while the smell of turkey and cranberries and stuffing wafted out of the kitchen. His extended family came over – he played outside under the falling stars of the snow and sledded wildly on the hills.

But now, it's the day before winter break ends and he's cold and tired and disillusioned. Christmas is always such a big deal to a child and it's a letdown when it's finally over. And his dreams are troubled – he's afraid of what will come next.

So, despite the snow – despite the cold, he finds himself sneaking out of bed and into his boots and winter coat. He's lost one of his mittens and he can't find his hat, but he sneaks out of the house anyway and down the street.

The door is always open. And Mrs. Shepherd, no matter how concerned she is when she picks up the phone to call up to the big house on the hill, always picks him up and cuddles him close, tucking him down beside the sleeping Derek and kissing his windburned cheeks.

"You need to wear a scarf, sweetheart," she mutters to him, like she would to any of her other children, but Mark looks up at her with his serious blue eyes and nods.

"I'll remember next time."

She runs a hand over her own son's hair and catches Mark's eye. And just because – because he's a little boy despite his maturity – she gives him an extra kiss on the cheek and makes sure he's covered warmly.

When he drifts off to sleep, he's never been so comfortable.

/

The next morning is a blur of trying to get ready and trying to hide his transgression. It's disgusting and humiliating, and what's worse, it wasn't even in his own bed. Mark's not a bedwetter, but all little children have accidents and despite his maturity, he's only eight years old. He buries the evidence under the blankets, balled up in the middle of the mattress, while Derek is in the bathroom brushing his teeth.

On the way to school, he's meaner than usual to Derek, who's whining that his mittens are wet.

"Shut up, Derek," he mutters, his mood not lifted by the fact that Addison, in her chubby red coat and white hat and mittens, is busy licking at a handful of clean snow and grinning at him.

"Hey, Mark! Catch this!" she shouts, and hurls the snow at him, catching the side of his ear. He growls and immediately catches up a handful to retaliate, but then remembers that she's a girl, and drops the snow. Instead, he sticks his tongue out at her.

"You throw like a girl."

"I am a girl, stupid," she retorts, and kicks up plumes of snow with her shining black boots. They sparkle in the weak winter sunshine, and despite himself, Mark grins.

"I like that hat. It makes your hair less carroty."

"It's not carroty," she mutters, always sensitive about her hair. They walk beside each other and quick as a flash, she snatches his hat from his head with a wicked grin.

"At least mine is better than yours!" she calls, running in the other direction, waving his grey toque like a banner and flashing her perfect teeth. In a mixture of annoyance and fondness, he runs after her, catching her around the waist and bringing her to the ground in a flurry of snow and laughter.

He pins her down with his body and grabs his hat from her with a smile. "Never try and outrun a boy," he says with a smirk, and she sticks her tongue out at him again.

"Yeah, right." And she's so beautiful there, in the snow with her hair fanned out around her and her cheeks red from the cold, that he suddenly kisses her lips, quickly and without thinking.

Instead of shrieking, though, she just smiles, and when he lets her up, she takes his hand until they're within sight of the group again.

/

Mark's not having a good day.

First, he fails a pop quiz on fractions, because no one made him do his homework over winter break and he's completely lost on what to do with numerators and denominators. He knows that his parents won't care, but there's something about watching Derek receive a gold star on his paper that makes his insides turn, just because the next time he's at the Shepherd house, he'll have to see that paper on the refrigerator, and know that Derek was kissed and congratulated, when his parents can't be bothered to spend five minutes asking him about school, whether he fails or succeeds, or whether he even passes to the next grade.

Secondly, he loses his lunch money that his parents always make sure that he has enough of. Despite the fact that they don't care if he makes it to school or not (not so much they don't care as they just assume he'll get there without their attention), his father makes sure his coat pocket is stuffed with extra change and dollar bills for the times that he goes to Derek's for the night. And in the tussle with Addison, he's somehow lost all but twenty-five cents of it. It's enough for a chocolate milk, but it does nothing to quell the hunger that's tearing at his young insides. Derek offers him an apple, but he refuses. For some reason, he hates Derek today.

Maybe it's that reason that he decides to pick a fight with him at lunchtime.

They're standing in the snowy field, and Mark is angrily kicking at the snow, when Derek throws an icy red ball at him. "Here, Mark, catch!"

It bounces into Mark's gut and off across the snow. Mark turns around with a snarl. "What are you DOING?!"

Derek looks a little frightened. "Trying to play catch?"

"Well, learn to throw!" snaps Mark; even though it was his own fault that he missed the ball. He picks it up easily in one hand and snaps it at Derek, catching him in the face. Although he feels a sharp pang of regret the minute Derek's face crumples in pain, another part of him feels a sense of sick triumph as he runs over to him.

"Sorry about that, buddy, are you okay?" Mark's voice is gruff, but he takes his mitten and gently wipes the snow from Derek's face and helps him get up off the snow. Derek, however, has lost his patience, and he stands, his curly hair beaded with ice, his cheeks red and his blue eyes snapping behind smeared wet glasses.

"You're an ASSHOLE!" It's rare that Derek swears, and Mark's eyebrows immediately shoot up. The other boys they're playing with start to crowd around the two.

"You meant to do that! You did that on purpose!" Derek's totally lost control of himself, and he stands, fists clenched, his whole body trembling. "You wanted to see me get hurt!"

"Derek, I didn't mean to – calm down. Jeez." Mark tries to keep his voice reasonable, but Derek's having none of it. He hauls off and punches Mark in the nose. Because Mark's not expecting it, the punch catches him off guard and he falls backwards into the snow, feeling the pain spread from his nose all over his face. Tears spring to his eyes and it takes every ounce of strength he has not to retaliate and give Derek the worst black eye he's ever seen.

Derek stands over him, his chest heaving, his glasses catching the weak winter light. "You're not a very good friend. You come over every night and I never get any sleep because of your crying. Just like a little girl," he spits, kicking a little snow onto Mark's prone form. By now, a crowd has grown around the two boys, and Mark's face is flaming red.

"He comes over to your house every night?" asks one of the boys, and Derek turns to him, nodding eagerly, glad to have an ally.

"Not only that, he CRIES. And he wets the bed," Derek announces, knowing even in that moment that he's gone too far.

Mark's face turns totally white. In his haste to get up, he ends up slipping on the snow and falls onto his back, knocking the wind out of himself and causing the tears that have gathered in his eyes to slip down his windburned cheeks. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the crowd, but all he can hear is the roar of laughter as the whole assembly ends up having a laugh at his expense. Big, tough Mark, a bedwetter. It's almost too funny to be borne.

Eventually, he ends up getting away, running as if a horde of wolves are after him, around the school and behind the boiler, hiding in the warm, dry space between the wall and the metal heater. There, he stops being the tough guy that's become his reputation. He stops being brave. Instead, he just cries, like the child he is – like the little boy he's never allowed to be.

And that's how Addison finds him.

At first, she says nothing. She simply scoots in beside him, and they sit on the dirt and huddle together for warmth, their feet up against the boiler, the soles of their boots getting sticky from the heat, and she takes his hand in her own little sticky one, and they're just two children, two neglected little rich kids taking comfort from each other. Mark's tears slow down at the thought of her beside him. He's not as sad when there's someone to stand beside him.

Moments pass, and then Addison says, thoughtfully, "I thought I was the only one."

"The only one what?" His voice is rough and full of tears still, and he tries to clear his throat, but she ignores that and goes on.

"I thought I was the only one who wets the bed." Her voice is light, clear, and her grip tightens on his hand as she goes on. "It doesn't happen a lot, but it does every so often, you know?"

"Yeah." And he does. "It only happened because I was cold last night. I don't do it every night. I'm not a baby."

"No, of course not. Derek's a baby."

They laugh a little, but then Mark looks down at his boots. "He doesn't wet the bed, though."

"So? So what?" Addison heaves herself up a little bit on the wall and stares into Mark's eyes with her serious blue ones. "Who cares? He wouldn't play wedding with me, or take the blame for a Christmas tree falling down, or even make sure I got the last piece of Christmas cake last week. So who cares?"

Mark tries to smile, but his lips tremble and Addison suddenly throws her arms around his neck to try to get him to stop being so upset. He, shocked, moves back from her, but ends up wrapping his arms around her tiny body and giving her a hug back.

When they leave the area behind the boiler, the backs of their coats are muddy and the soles of their boots are a little thinner, but their hands are firmly clasped. When Mark's classmates laugh at him, he simply laughs with them and in another week, it's blown over.

/

It's not a case of the prince and princess live happily ever after in this story. It's not a case of nothing bad ever happens again, just because a shaft of understanding was passed between two children with a remarkably similar background, mindset, and personality.

She's stronger than he thinks. He's weaker than she realizes. And in that way, they complement each other; the sneakiness and fighting completing the rare moments of understanding, tenderness, and gentleness that two eight-year-olds are somehow capable of sharing.

It's not the end of the story. It's only the end of one era in a long history to come.