Button Eyes

Sitting on the highest shelf in Lucy’s room, coated in dust, was Billy. Lonely and forgotten, worn and dirty, He sat. It had been nearly six years since Lucy had taken him on an adventure. He had sat on this shelf for every hour and every minute of those six long years. Waiting, hoping, he sat. Of course, he was a teddy bear, after all, what else could he do?

His stuffing was falling out and his threads were hanging. The scars of past rips and tears sewn slowly untangling themselves. His bright red button eye had faded and the other had fallen off. Still, He waited. 

He watched her grow up. Watched her change. This was not the Lucy he used to know. His Lucy had a wardrobe full of beautiful dresses and sparkling tutu’s, his Lucy would hold him tight and dance around her room, his Lucy was happy. His Lucy was full of sunshine.

This Lucy had cleared her closet of all things pink and pretty, this Lucy would come running into her room tears streaming down her face after yelling at her parents, This Lucy had her own scars of rips and tears she carved into herself. 

This Lucy was not My Lucy. He thought. 

And every day he watched as her world slowly got darker and darker, as she ripped photos from her walls and drawings from her desk. Every day Billy watched as the little light in her eyes slowly diminished. Yesterday, Lucy walked in, crying and shaking with anger, she strode to her desk and pulled out a pair of scissors. Standing at her mirror, she looked at her reflection, scissors hovering over her tangled mess of hazel hair. Her bright blue eyes had gone dull, a permanent frown frozen across her face. Her clothes were anything but bright. She wore a plaid shirt and brown jeans with black fingerless gloves. She looked more like her friend Felix than herself. This was not Lucy. 

The Lucy Billy knew was always bright and full of colour, she had an imagination that reached further than the moon and the skills to bring it to life in her art. His Lucy did not cry all the time, his Lucy did not hurt herself. 

It hurt Billy more when she made those tears and rips in her skin than when his own stuffing was spilling out of his chest. Yet he had no choice but to sit and watch. Oh how he wished he could reach out and comfort her like he used to do, give her a hug and watch the tears dry up. Oh how he missed her smile and her laugh, now he so rarely saw. Billy would do anything to get his Lucy back.

But Billy was stuck, up on his shelf, slowly withering away. 

The floor on which they used to dance was now covered in clumps of tangled hair. Lucy was pulling and chopping her hair with the scissors until she looked like her barbies after a “Makeover”. 

In the shining reflection of the mirror, Billy saw something he had believed he would never see again. There was the familiar smile of his Lucy. 

She turned around and looked around her room, spotting Billy’s shelf. She climbed atop her bed and started pulling everything off the shelf. All the long forgotten toys, the sparkling crafts a younger Lucy had made, everything. Everything, except Billy. 

Lucy packed all of this into a garbage bag she got from the kitchen and threw it into the hallway along with her torn photos and art. 

Then once again, she turned to Billy’s shelf, and reached up to him. She examined his wounds and fixed him up, she replaced his missing eye with a plain clear button, the same buttons on her shirt.

Billy was beyond happy, how he had longed for her to hold him again. But it was over almost as soon as it began, Billy was back on his shelf, and Lucy had turned her attention to something on her desk. 

For an hour and a half, Billy sat, waiting, again. He watched as Lucy ran in and out of the room, painting and sketching and crafting some great design. Billy had not seen her this happy in years. She was smiling and laughing and singing along to music from her phone. The tears were still there, the scars still visible, but she looked so full of joy. Lucy was practically glowing with euphoria.

When Lucy finally finished her masterpiece, she retrieved her dad's toolbox and hung it on the wall. For a moment, she stood, proud, but then her face fell once again.

She climbed atop her bed and pulled Billy from the shelf once more. Standing with him in her arms, facing her newest creation, she asked him “What do you think, Bills? Wall worthy?”

On the wall hung a beautiful landscape with forests full of trees and a big sparkling lake, all painted in deep blue. In the sky, in bold white letters, it said “My name is Luca”.

As he turned from the artwork on the wall to the artwork of utter euphoria in his person's eyes, Billy began to put things together. All the dark, all the gloom, all the yelling, the new clothes, the new hair, the new Lucy. This was not Lucy, but it was Billy’s person. It was Luca. 

He reached over and gave Luca a great big hug. As Billy looked into his eyes once more, he could see a shimmer of the happy kid he used to know, he could see the bright imagination and the colourful personality.

I understand now, my Luca.

And though they will always have scars, eventually those rips and tears will heal, and the holes in their hearts will be filled. This storm will not last forever, the sun will come again. For now, they'll sew up their wounds, and wait out the storm, arm in arm, waiting for their sunshine.