In the Eyes

The Prompt: Despite everything he said he’d be when he was eighteen, when he looked in the mirror, he still saw that scared ten-year-old boy.

It was the eyes, he decided. Those wide, pale blue eyes. They were in a constant state of fear. They glanced alarmingly around, never stopping for too long. Danger could always lurk behind that door, in the shadow over there, behind him. At ten he had learned about danger. His teacher, the door locked tight to protect them. Protect him.

He was supposed to be stronger now. At eighteen he was an adult, legally ready to take on the world. Legally. He wasn’t ready in any other sense. At ten he’d had a plan. He’d be all grown up at eighteen. He’d get in a car and drive. He’d drive anywhere. New York. Florida. California. The very edges of the country. It didn’t matter as long as he was getting far away. But now he was eighteen. He was an adult. And he had no car. He wasn’t driving away. He was crouching, burrowing, hiding in the same place he’d always been.

When he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see an adult. He didn’t see a teenager. All he could see were his eyes, the ten year old’s eyes. So many things could change. He was taller, his hair was longer, his clothes different, but the eyes. The eyes never changed. They were the same pale blue, the same fearful expression. The eyes were windows to the soul, they said. The soul must never change either.

Stronger, smarter, faster, braver. It was all a crock, a child’s dream. Naïve. He was naïve. That had changed. So he had finally found it. The eyes staring back at him, those scared pale blue eyes, didn’t belong to the ten year old after all. They were his. Just as broken and scared, but without hope. Only children dreamed and he was no longer a child.