Prologue

A Chapter by Alli

(The... prologue? or part from my story of Ezzie & Toby)

It was early, the sun barely visible through the window. A man sat at the kitchen table, coffee in hand and a small girl sat to his right. “Papa?” the girl says through a mouthful of food. The man peers over at his daughter, “Eat your cereal, Ezzie.” Ezzie stares at her father for a while before going back to her cereal.

A few minutes later, Ezzie speaks up again. “Papa, I have a question.” The man looks over at the child and waits. The girl looks up at her papa curiously before saying, “Papa, why does a person not like you?” The man furrows his brow, “What do you mean?” Ezzie scrunches her face up in concentration, thinking of the correct way to word her sentence. “Papa, what makes a person mean?”

“Do you mean ‘how can you tell if someone is being mean’?”

Ezzie shakes her head impatiently, “No. I mean, how do they become mean?”

The father looks at his daughter’s earnest face before saying, “Ezzie, is someone being mean to you at school?”

Ezzie nods sadly, “Yes… but he’s mean to everybody… and I don’t know why.”

The father starts shooting off the questions as they come in his mind. “Well, does he get picked on a lot?”

Ezzie shakes her head again, “No, everyone calls him the bully now. I used to play with him at recess. But that was last year. He was nice then. He’s a bully now and it makes me sad because we used to be friends but he won’t let anyone play with him anymore.”

The man looked at his coffee for a while, “and you're sad that he’s mean to you?”

Ezzie looked thoughtful. “No. I think I’m sad because I don’t know why he’s mean to everybody and I think I would like to know why.”

“Do you think maybe he’s angry because he’s upset about something that doesn’t have to do with anyone at school?”

Ezzie got off of her chair and climbed up onto her father’s lap, “What do you mean Papa?”

The man hugged his daughter close, resting his chin in her hair, “Sometimes things happen that make people very upset. Sometimes they don’t know how to express how they feel. Sometimes what they’re feeling turns into anger.”

Ezzie was quiet only a moment, “Toby’s dad died last summer.”

Ezzie’s papa gave her a squeeze, “Now you know why he’s so angry.”

The little girl shook her head, “No, now I know why he’s so sad.”