a bag of tricks

Was this trick or treat?

Honestly, Eli Lightly had no idea how to be.

His sisters were mean to him. He wished that explained it. He was the baby of the family, after all. And they grew up in run down apartments most of his life. Not to say that was exactly bad. Sometimes, it never seemed their mother got a break. No one did, really.

It was loud at home. Bickering. The shoving. Oh, he remembered the old neighbor telling them how they needed to help each other. Nothing would get done in this mess. After all, he'd hardly known his dad, who he found out later already left two other families hanging, just like theirs.

So he'd done a little investigating, he'd found his sister Lena. But he hadn't exactly told her she had a half-brother. Instead, he wanted to see if she was as messed up, as he was. Naturally, she wasn't. It was devastating, actually. Now he felt he needed to be her friend. Luckily, she thought he was too freakish to be anything else.

"There must be something going on between you and Dorian. Has to." Now she was involved in this. He really hadn't meant to tell her about Dorian, but it seemed he talked about him all the time. According to Lena. He was afraid he'd get in an argument with her. He didn't want her to be a true sister, after all.

"OK, you meet him." Not that it would be anymore than a meet up of some sort. It was an accident it was Halloween, and she wanted to go to this low-life party. Eli was a bit disgusted that he was here. But he was with Dorian, after all. And he was trying to remember all the signs Lena coaxed him about.

Instead, he thought he'd cut his lip on Dorian's mouth. Was he bleeding? It was not at all as Eli expected.

Yet, somehow, Dorian nursed it back with a genuine kiss. Surprisingly, he could learn. Eli didn't feel as nervous.

"Do you think Lena found the bathroom?" Dorian asked before they could float into oblivion.

"What?" Eli winced as if he wasn't amused with Dorian's question. He walked toward the house then. Eli caught his fingers. Not wanting to lose this grasp. "You, like me..don't you?"

"What about Lena?" Dorian looked back at him. "You, could lose her in a mess like this."

"I-I..don't really know her, you know." Eli felt a truth about it, but not entirely. "Its not like its cheating, you know. I never..ever lead her on."

"But she's here, with us." Dorian wouldn't lose sight of that. Dorian raced up the stairs as if he knew where he was going. He banged his fist on the bathroom door.

"She's..my sister." Eli let slip.

"What?" Dorian turned and looked Eli in the eye.

"I just haven't told her, yet." Eli whispered as Dorian pushed the door open to see someone straddling the commode. Actually, two people, but neither were Lena.

"You're sister?" Dorian winced harder.

"My half-sister. I don't think she knows I exist." Eli gritted.

"Then..how..how did you know, she's your sister?" Dorian wanted to know.

"My grandmother keeps track of that sort of thing." Eli went to the source. His father's mother was someone Eli's mother didn't talk to. "My grandmother hadn't seen her, since she was a baby. I'm..her only grandson. She seems to think I'm special." A sudden uncontrollable laugh took over him. He supposed this was not the time to go into all the social classes he'd been pushed into, over the years. It wasn't exactly Aspergers. No one in his family ever believed the school. He was high functioning. Possibly, a bit awkward, and rather rude.

"Is this a trick, now?" Dorian shook his shoulders as if for him to keep it together. Just then he noticed Lena at the bottom of the stairway.

"See, she's fine." Eli did his best to act normal. But for all he knew, he might have been making faces at the moment.