Kira went on, snorting and trying to put the largest plaster she had been able to find on the boy's eyebrow.
“It's not my fault if you're small,” Lucas teased her as he found Kira's threatening look funny: when she screwed up her eyes, she looked like a character of Japanese mangas.
“You're just three inches taller than me and by the way, I wish to remind you that you were a real shorty last year,” Kira immediately underlined. She had realized lately that all her class mates had grown a lot and she was the shortest one now, while she used to be the tallest one in the past. Even her best friends Jane and Roxanne were a few inches taller than her by then.
“I'd better take up basket once more,” she thought, feeling vexed because she hadn't grown at all in the last two years.
“Take off your t-shirt now. It's stained with blood,” she ordered him soon after, thinking about the great amount of blood pouring out of his wound when she had gone and visited him that holiday afternoon. She had had to hold herself back and avoid feeling sick, after she had flung at Lucas's father, calling him “alcohol-addicted butcher” and “Jack the Ripper.” Just her mother's arrival had been able to save them from the furious anger of that man, who was in an alcoholic haze.
“But what shall I wear then?” Lucas got nervous and felt uneasy for being half naked, especially because the marks of his father's violence where still clearly visible on his shoulder blades.
“My mum and I bought a t-shirt for you at the market yesterday. Mum wanted to give it to you for your new school term, but I'm going to do it now! I chose it myself!” Kira exclaimed enthusiastically, making Lucas blush to his ears, but she simply ignored him and, taking him by his arm as she always did, she took him to her parents' bedroom, where her mother had hidden the present in her husband's socks drawer.
When they got into the room, Kira and Lucas locked themselves inside.
“Here you are!”
“Thanks” he muttered feeling moved and unwrapping it.
There was a blue t-shirt inside, with Super Mario's mushroom in its centre, like in Kira's Nintendo, and his name, Lucas, was printed under it.
“As soon as I saw it, I thought about you, because we always play Nintendo when we spend a Sunday together. You really love Super Mario Bross and jumping on the mushrooms in the game.”
“I usually jump on them, while you crash into them and are killed,” Lucas reminded her: he considered Kira like a genius at school, but an absolute duffer at video-games.
As an answer, Kira stuck out her tongue at him and Lucas smiled happily.
“So, how does it fit me?” he asked her, changing subject of conversation before Kira started listing the fields where she had no trouble in beating him.
She hated judging carelessly and not judiciously, so she placed her hands on her hips with her usual lofty air and started looking at him attentively.
The t-shirt fitted him wonderfully and Kira couldn't avoid noticing his muscles, which weren't there some time before. She had always kept silent about that, but she had realized that she was always the looser when they wrestled with their pillows now, or when they pushed each other on the sofa or played basketball in the courtyard. Even if Lucas was always quite thin, there wasn't much left of the nine-year-old boy that Kira had met four years before.
Time had gone by and Lucas was getting stronger, he was growing and becoming more and more defiant and brave. He didn't fear his father's blows any more, he had learnt how to take them without shedding any tear.
Kira stared at him for a long while and was spellbound by his face as it always happened. She had got to love it, even if his look was often different because of his father's blows.
His hazel eyes were always bright under his heap of messy, brown hair, in spite of a melancholic shadow which Kira had seen too often in his gaze.
Knowing that her friend was suffering made her feel very miserable, so she always tried to make him feel better and happy when they spent some time together.
She had even burst out crying in her mother's arms one night, thinking about Lucas.
“You're still too young to carry such a burden, but as you are considerate enough as to realize it, so just try to make him smile as much as possible! Kira, if you wish to help Lucas, you mustn't cry, you have to be strong for him!” her mother had told her that day. She hadn't understood very well what her mother meant by her words then, but she had been trying hard to be always cheerful and caring towards her best friend since that moment.
And now, after some years, she could see a very different Lucas in front of herself: much taller, stronger and very good looking.
“So?” Lucas spurred her, feeling nervous. He wasn't absolutely used to Kira's silence, she was the most biting pontificating girl in their school.
Thanks to her, nobody had ever dared teasing him, even when they had discovered that he found school hard because of slight dyslexia, which the school speech therapist and psychologist hadn't been able to certificate because the boy's father had hushed it up, as soon as they had started talking about back-up teachers and facilitated tests to help his son face his handicap in a better way.
That word, handicap, was exactly the one which had stirred up a mess, sending the speech therapist to hospital with a broken nose.
That day the powerful Darren Scott hadn't been able to get off very easily and had been forced to pay a lot of money in order to avoid being formally denounced
“You're very handsome,” Kira stated keeping her eyes on the t-shirt.
“Handsome?” the boy repeated amused and uneasy, as he wasn't used to such compliments.
Kira immediately regretted using that word.
“Jane says you are handsome,” she underlined, very ashamed since she had just revealed her friend's secret.
“Jane? Jane Hartwood?”
“Yes. I believe she would like to pair off with you,” Kira whispered, keeping cursing herself and wondering how the hell she could have told Lucas those things.
“Really?” Lucas asked her, turning suddenly serious.
That change in his voice deeply annoyed Kira, who felt suddenly very irritated and angry.
“You don't like her, do you? Lucas, don't tell me you want to pair off with her too! You want to kiss her and...” she squealed in a shrill and raving voice.
“No, I don't! I'm just curious. I didn't think Jane liked me,” Lucas stopped her.
“If that's the question, Roxy is crazy for you too,” Kira was going to reply, but a poisonous feeling of jealousy shut her lips.
“What's the problem now?” Lucas immediately got worried as he knew what that small, heart-shaped mouth could hide when it turned still smaller and thinner.
“Nothing.”
“You're angry,” Lucas could understand since he knew her very well.
“I'm not angry at all!”
“Is it for Jane's fault? I think she is nice, but she isn't the one for me.”
Of all his words, Kira could just hear “nice.”
“So, you like her!”
“I just said she's nice, not that I like her!”
“Well, so just get you next Super Mario's t-shirt from her!” Kira burst out furiously; her mind was hazy and she went out of the room slamming the door.
“Kira!” Lucas called her, upset. Kira had never left him alone in all those years they had spent together, so he was feeling deeply guilty at that moment, as if he was responsible for her reaction.
Kira couldn't understand her own behaviour, but she felt shuttered