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“Oh, then don’t, please,” Mr. Stone reassured me. “It was just a thought. You better get to your next class.”
As I was leaving he called my name again. I looked back and he gave me an encouraging smile. “You did well today.”
“Thanks, Mr. Stone.” I smiled back and left his classroom feeling reassured that my favorite teacher liked me as a pupil and not as K. L. Caldwell’s kid. But the lie I’d told him, and not the thing about my dad not enjoying saying no to me, sat heavy on my chest, refusing to shift.
I hated lying.
Yet, I hated the idea of my dad coming into our class and talking about writing and books with us. There was no way I’d let the rest of the world see the strange dynamic between me and my father. Plus, he’d love the whole thing. Educating young minds. Passing on literary wisdom. I didn’t want him to have that.
I didn’t want him to have any part of the one place in my life right now, outside of my beach and bedroom, that fit me.
* * *
“Comet!”
Startled by the interruption, I pulled out my earphones and twisted my neck to find my dad standing behind the bench I was sitting on. The sea wind blew his hair off his forehead and his T-shirt batted around his body like a flag.
I looked out at the sea and frowned to see how rough it was getting out there. The clouds above us were growing steadily dark.
“Carrie made her celebratory chicken curry. Thought you might want some.”
Although when I’d gotten home from school I’d eaten two muffins that Mrs. Cruickshank had baked, I wasn’t going to say no to Carrie’s chicken curry. Grabbing my stuff, I hopped off the bench and followed my dad over the esplanade and into the garden.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You’re not even wearing a jacket. It’s cold out here, Comet.”
Goose bumps prickled my skin, but I hadn’t even noticed, I’d been so lost in writing. “Yeah.”
After dumping my notebooks and pens in my bedroom I found my parents sitting at the island in the kitchen eating the only thing Carrie knew how to cook.
A bowl of curry had been left out for me, and I grabbed a water from the fridge before sitting down with them. Every time Carrie finished a commission, she made enough chicken curry to last us days. However, usually it was left to either Dad or me to feed us. I had to give my parents props for that. They had never forgotten to feed me. As far as I was aware.
“Kyle said you were writing. Again,” Carrie commented as I dug into my curry.
I froze and looked at them both through lowered lids.
“Finally going to admit we’ve got another writer in the family?” Dad teased.
“I’m not,” I lied. “It’s homework assignments for English.”
They seemed to accept that. Or at least they pretended to.
“I wish I was writing a bloody homework assignment.” Dad frowned at his dinner. “I wrote fifty words today. Fifty.”
“Honey, it will come.” Carrie wrapped her small hand around the nape of his neck and squeezed him in comfort. “It always does.”
He gave her a pained smile. “I think maybe I need a change of scenery.”
I covered my snort with a cough, but neither of them were looking at me. We lived on a beach! Hello! He had the best view of any writer, ever.
“Well, we could go away.” Carrie flicked a look at me. “Comet’s old enough to stay home alone for a few days.”
Again with the covering of more snorts.
I’d been old enough to stay home alone while they went on a mini-break together since I was thirteen years old. It was just another reason Mrs. Cruickshank didn’t like my parents. They’d left me to take a mini-break to Vienna, and our neighbor hadn’t realized I was home alone until my parents’ return. She’d told me to tell her next time so I could stay with her. I hadn’t ever actually stayed there, but the few times my parents did leave me at home while they traveled, she’d kept an eye on me and cooked dinner for me. To be fair Dad hadn’t seemed all that keen on the idea of leaving me, but Carrie had insisted she’d been left home alone far younger than that and it had never bothered her.
Except, I knew from my confounded curiosity and eavesdropping that the last part wasn’t true. As I’d grown older, stumbling—sometimes deliberately—upon their private conversations, I’d learned there were reasons that Carrie treated me like I was more of a housemate than her daughter. And although I was angry on her behalf, I was still furious on my own behalf, too.
“Why don’t we go to Montpellier for a long weekend? You love it there.”
Montpellier was my dad’s favorite city in southern France. I waited, dreading him saying yes. We might not spend huge amounts of time together when we were at home, but it was comforting to know they were there when I went to sleep. I hated being alone in the house at night. Whenever they left me, I slept with a baseball bat I’d borrowed from Steph beside my bed. Pride stopped me from slipping over to my neighbor’s house to stay in her guest bed. I didn’t want her to know it bothered me when my parents left me.
Dad turned to me, a plea in his eyes. “How would you feel about it, Comet? I just... I really need a break. Help with the writer’s block.”
I shrugged, like it was no big deal to me. “You guys do what you want.”
“There!” Carrie beamed at me. “We can go.”
He grinned back at her. “When should we leave?”
“I’ll see if I can book us in somewhere this Thursday to Monday.” She tilted her head. “Maybe we should consider making this a monthly thing. Why don’t we look at property while we’re there, get an idea of house prices?”
“I love the idea.” He glanced back at me. “As long as Comet’s okay with that?”
I swallowed a piece of chicken, the food I’d consumed suddenly sloshing around in my stomach. “Sure. Buy a holiday home in the south of France. I’ll just assume I’m not invited to these monthly weekend breaks.”
He gave me a pained look but Carrie scowled. “Comet, we’ve come this far without you turning into a sullen teenager. Don’t start now.”
“That would be a ‘Yes, Comet, you assume correctly.’” I pushed my bowl away, no longer hungry. “Don’t worry about it. I prefer when you’re not here anyway.”
After locking myself in my room, I slumped back on my bed and stared at my ceiling. When we first moved into the house I’d wanted glow in the dark stars all over my ceiling. The problem was the ceiling in my bedroom was higher than one in the average house. Before my bed was moved into the room, my dad had borrowed tall ladders and stuck the stars on the ceiling under my direction.
He and Carrie had argued that night, because she’d been left to unpack so much herself while he “arsed around with bloody stickers on the ceiling.”
A year later, when I asked if I could get fitted bookshelves, Dad hired a guy, didn’t even inspect the work as it was happening, or notice that I’d asked for the added expense of a ladder and rail so I could reach the highest shelves and move across them like Belle in the bookshop scene in Beauty and the Beast. When it was finished, my dad just paid the guy without commentary, without caring.
That was my dad. One minute he cared. The next he didn’t.
Mercurial.
That was one of my favorite words in the English language.
However, I doubted any kid wanted their parent to be mercurial.
I grabbed a pen and opened my notebook to write it all down.
A ball of frustration tightened in my chest. Why did I need that constant reminder? I should just get it by now. I was on my own. I always had been.
Enough of the woe!
I slammed my notebook closed and crossed the room to my bookshelves. It was time for a mood changer. My eyes lit on the first book in a bestselling teen vampire series. The heroine was sassy, kick-ass and she was all those things despite being neglected by her parents. I pulled out the book and curled up with it on the armchair in the corner of my room.
As I fell into my heroine’s adventure, my parents, the house...it all just melted away.
THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG
5
Hey you, pretty girl with no filter,
Are we friends or are we enemies?
You’re mercurial and slightly off-kilter,
For my safety, I’m labeling us frenemies.
—CC
Much to my disturbance, I discovered that just because you tell yourself you can’t possibly be attracted to a Neanderthal, doesn’t mean you suddenly stop being attracted to a Neanderthal.
It was the only explanation for how hyperaware I seemed to be of Tobias King’s whereabouts. As it turned out we had three classes together. He was in my maths class as well as Spanish and English. All Higher classes, and from the little I’d gleaned over the week—because my ears were hyperaware of him, too, and pricked up anytime I heard someone discussing him—Tobias was in only Higher classes.
If his first week was anything to go by, however, he wouldn’t be there long.
Thursday, we were in maths, and I was sitting next to a girl I didn’t know well, Felicity Dodd. If it was possible, she was even quieter than I was. We hadn’t spoken a word to one another.
We hadn’t gotten that far into class when I became aware of a low hum of noise, and it struck me quite quickly that it was the sound of music blasting out of earphones. Our teacher, Ms. Baker, heard it, too, and stopped to scan the room. I turned to look behind me, my eyes automatically zeroing in on Tobias.
And sure enough...
He was the cause of the noise.
He had his head buried in his arms on the desk, and the white wires of earphones could be seen coming out of his ears.
Frustration boiled inside of me. What was this kid’s problem? Jesus! Did Mummy and Daddy drag him away from America and he was trying to punish them by being a total dipshit at school?
Boo-hoo!
At least they hadn’t left him there. I’m pretty sure my parents would have left me if they flitted countries. And hey, let’s not rule the possibility out. There was still time for total and complete abandonment.
Scowling, I looked up at Ms. Baker to find she was doing the same. Her hands flew to her hips. “Mr. King.”
Nothing.
Of course not.
His music was too loud.
Our teacher turned her attention to Tobias’s neighbor, Becky Ford. “Miss Ford, could you please nudge Mr. King?”
Becky looked like she was wishing she’d sat anywhere else as she gently nudged him. He didn’t budge.
“Harder, Becky.”
She shoved him.
Tobias’s head flew up, whipping around to glare at her.
Becky glared back and pointed to the front of the room.
Confused, he followed her direction. Upon realizing he’d been caught, he stared blandly at Ms. Baker, who mimicked taking earphones out of her ears. Rolling his eyes, Tobias did her bidding.
“What’s up?” he said.
I thought Ms. Baker’s head was going to explode. Instead she held out her hand. “Give me that.”
“Give you what?”
“Whatever device you’re using to listen to music while you’re in my class.”
“It’s my phone.” Tobias shook his head. “No way am I giving you my phone.”
I swallowed a gasp. His attitude was the kind I’d expected to put up with in years one to three. But in fifth year, I was in classes with other driven people who needed good grades to achieve whatever their future ambitions were. I did not expect to have to put up with this crap from someone in my class, and I was sure Ms. Baker was thinking the same thing.
“I don’t know how things are done in the US of A, Tobias, but here, when a teacher confiscates something from a pupil for good reason, that pupil does not refuse.”
“This one is.”
The class shifted collectively in their seats.
“If you don’t hand over your phone, you can just get up out of that seat and walk yourself to Mr. Jenkins’s office.”
“And who the hell is that?”
Really?
Attracted to that? I thought to myself.
“Mr. Jenkins is an assistant rector here, and watch your language.”
“Assistant rectum? That’s an unfortunate job title.”
Someone snickered at the back of the room.
“I’m sure you’ve already been made aware of this, Tobias, but rector is our term for principal. An assistant rector is a vice principal. Perhaps you understand how much trouble you’re in now.”
“Whatever.” Tobias stood up abruptly, his chair scraping against the wooden floor. “Just point the way.”
Ms. Baker marched toward the classroom door to open it for him, and the door happened to be in front of my desk. She stopped him at the door and gave him directions to Mr. Jenkins’s office.
“And Tobias,” she said quietly, but I was right there, so I heard every word, “despite your grades and test scores, you will not last in my class with this attitude. If you’d like to remain in Higher Mathematics, you better rethink your behavior. Do you understand?”
His answer was to salute her and stride out the door.
Ms. Baker stared after him, looking concerned and peeved at the same time.
Finally, she slammed the door closed and continued with class as if nothing had happened.
* * *
“What are the plans for the weekend, then?” Steph said as she sat down at our table in the cafeteria. Despite the fact Vicki and Steph both had friends outside of our circle, only the three of us ate together at lunch. I had a feeling this was deliberate on their part and for my socially awkward benefit. Either that or I embarrassed them. Neither reason made me feel great about myself.
The cafeteria was the hub of the school. Glass doors ran along either side of it, but could only be accessed from inside. A massive staircase spiraled into the center of the cafeteria and led to the upper floor classrooms like English. Ground-floor classrooms were dedicated to subjects like Home Economics, Graphic Communication, Engineering, Chemistry, Biology and Physics.
At one end of the cafeteria was the lunch counter, where our lunch ladies and gentlemen provided okay meals. A new health program had been instituted in the school so, along with burgers and chips, we had fresh salads and soups.
There were never any burgers left, but there was always plenty of salad.
At the opposite end of the room were vending machines—soft drinks, water, chocolate bars, packets of crisps. And along from them, pool tables. I didn’t know who’d had the bright idea to give us the luxury of pool tables in the cafeteria but I wasn’t sure how long that luxury would last.
Tobias, Stevie and their crew were playing on one table while their dinner plates were scattered over the other.
“Earth to Comet?” Steph waved a hand in front of my face.
I jerked my gaze away from Tobias and tried not to blush.
I failed.
“What were you staring at?” she frowned and glanced over her shoulder.
Vicki saved me. “The idiots at the pool table.”
There was a loud hoot from the boys, and Stevie playfully shoved Tobias as they all laughed.
Steph rolled her eyes. “I’m surprised they’ve even lasted the week. Stevie got kicked out of two of my classes.”
“The new guy got kicked out of one of mine,” I offered.
“Why even bother coming to school?” Vicki wondered.
“To wind up the teachers and piss the rest of us off.” Steph shrugged. “Anyway, this weekend?”
“My parents left yesterday for a long weekend in Montpellier.”
Both my friends’ heads jerked up from their plates. “Seriously?” Steph said, sounding excited about it in a way I didn’t understand.
I nodded cautiously.
They looked at each other and grinned.
“Okay, what’s with the evil mastermind smiles?”
“Party at Caldwell’s,” Steph explained.
My stomach dropped at the thought. “No.”
Their expressions fell.
“No way.” I shook my head. “My parents would kill me.”
“It’s not like you owe them anything, Comet,” Steph grumbled. “They practically ignore you.”
That stung but I didn’t let it show. “Actually, I’m pretty certain I owe them my existence. An existence they would snuff out if I let strange teenagers into the home where they work. You know...expensive artwork and unfinished manuscripts lying around.”
Vicki slumped. “She’s right.”
“Oh come on,” Steph huffed. “That house is perfect for a party. It’s a mess, stuck in some time warp. The only reason it’s even clean is because Kyle is obsessive about cleaning it.”
Irritation flexed its muscles within me, curling my fingers tight around the bottle of water in my left hand. “Are you trying to say I’m filthy? Unclean?”
Steph’s eyes widened at my unfamiliar tone. I rarely got pissed off with my friends. Correction: I rarely revealed when I was pissed off with my friends. “No, I didn’t mean that. God, Comet, I’m sorry. You know I say stuff without thinking.”
“No, you say mean stuff when you don’t get your way.”
Vicki’s jaw dropped and I couldn’t work out if that was horror, amusement or respect in her eyes or even a mixture of all three. Steph flushed.
An awful silence fell over our table.
We stared at anything but each other as the noise of the cafeteria faded into the background. The impulse to apologize, to make things all right, clambered up my throat, and the determined stubbornness within me tried to stop it. However, the truth was my friend had apologized, and it just made me an ungracious arsehole to not accept it.
“I’m sorry.” My gaze flitted to Steph, who looked ready to cry. “You apologized. It was mean of me not to accept it.”
My friend looked up at me in relief and gave me a tremulous smile.
“Phew!” Vicki relaxed back in her chair. “Okay, now that’s done with, back to this weekend. Before you say anything, Comet, I get it. We can’t have a party while your parents are away. But we could have a sleepover and not tell our parents your parents are away. Instead we could go hang out with Jordan and his friends.”
Jordan as in Jordan Hall? The nineteen-year-old almost boy next door Vicki had been crushing on for two years? I raised an eyebrow and she laughed. “We ran into each other this morning, and he mentioned his friend was having a party on Saturday and I should come.”
Steph’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. “Oh my God. Oh my God!” She squealed and reached across to squeeze Vicki’s arm in excitement. And then she swung her gaze back to me. “Comet, come on! We have to do this for Vicki.”
I didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of college boys.
I didn’t want to go to a party where no one knew me and wouldn’t care to know me.
I wanted my friends to just sleep over at my house so I wouldn’t be alone the entire weekend.
No doubt seeing the thought in my eyes, Vicki’s expression fell, disappointment clouding her features. She gazed at me in reproach, as if to say, You promised you’d try. And I had promised, hadn’t I?
Feeling angry butterflies at the thought, I nodded. “Sure. Let’s do it.”
While Steph practically bounced in her seat with excitement, Vicki’s disappointment melted into gratitude. “Thank you.”
I smiled in return, but inside I was already dreading this weekend more than I dreaded end-of-term exams.
* * *
When the girls asked me if I wanted to hang out with them after school the plan had always been to lie and tell them I had a dentist appointment. Before lunch I would have felt bad about the lie, but after stewing over our conversation in the cafeteria I didn’t feel guilty about heading into the city without them. Being corralled into doing something I didn’t want to—being made to feel guilty for not wanting to go to some party with strangers—made me feel resentful. It also made me feel even more insecure than normal. While most days I could argue that wanting to live inside the world of books more than I wanted to live in the real world was perfectly rational considering how boring and sad my life was, there were days like today when I couldn’t. Because Vicki and Steph made it seem like it wasn’t normal. And maybe they were right.
Maybe there was something wrong with me.
Maybe I really was a weirdo.
Good thing I was going to the one place I didn’t feel that way.
After school I hurried home and changed out of my uniform, and then I caught the bus from Portobello High Street in the center of town. It took me into the city, to Edinburgh University, and from there I walked to Tollcross where my favorite café was. Pan was this almost ludicrously hipster café for poets and artists. There was a mishmash of murals painted on the walls, and a gallimaufry of furniture, including tables and chairs, sofas, armchairs and beanbags. Rugs of all sizes and colors had been thrown across the scuffed hardwood floors, and the café counter was discernible as such only because of the coffee machine behind it and the cake stands on it. At the far end of the room a small stage with a mic awaited poets and musicians. While I ordered my usual—a hot chocolate with whipped cream on top—a young guy, around college age, was onstage reading a poem from the crumpled piece of paper in his hand.
Taking a seat at the back of the room, loving how no one here paid attention to me or my ruby-red Dorothy shoes, I took a sip of my hot chocolate and listened. The guy’s voice trembled and his hands shook, but it was hard to tell if it was from nerves or because of the subject of his poem.
“It was like a knife of white heat
Plunged into my chest
Exploding in a myriad of pain and anger.
Like a long lost letter unopened,
Its pages waiting to bring
A sudden dawning;
To complete a puzzle that once
Had been so difficult
For a little boy to understand.
The realization is consuming in its accompanied rage.
Does he know what he did?
A little boy suffers as another
Parades his falsities
To an audience of jesters.
His teardrops fall
Among the court of
Villains and victims,
Whilst another’s falls silently
Behind his eyes and down
Over his broken heart.”
As much as I loved being at Pan, soaking in the good and the bad poetry and the fact that you could be a purple elephant in this room and no one would care, I could never dream of getting up on that stage and reading my own poetry aloud. It was only upon visiting the café that I’d discovered something depressing. Apparently, I belonged to a group of poets that had fallen out of fashion.
A poet whose poetry rhymed.
The only poets here who rhymed were the spoken word artists—those who wrote slam poetry.
I wasn’t a spoken word artist.
And the only other kind of poet I’d come across in Pan were the free verse poets. Maybe rhyming wasn’t cool anymore. I was a lover of Robert Burns, William Blake and John Donne. I loved rhyming. I loved the challenge of it. But I knew that a lot of people thought rhyme felt forced and that poets shouldn’t be constrained by it.
Being in the minority didn’t give me a lot of confidence in my work. Pan was the one place where no one made me feel abnormal. I did not want to put myself in the position of being judged by a crowd of people I admired.
Shoving my worries aside, I lost myself in other people’s thoughts, emotions and imaginations. The poetry café was another escape. The surrealism of the venue, with its murals and tie-dyed fabric billowing across the ceiling like a canopy, made it feel as if I had walked into a dream. Here, I was in a bubble in the same way I was when I cracked open a book. Yet, it was different because I was alone without really being alone. I was surrounded by real live people who liked the bubble just as much as I did.
“Comet?”
The familiar voice made me tense.
No.
This wasn’t happening.
Not here, where I was perfectly anonymous.
My inability to be disrespectful to the owner of the voice made me look over my shoulder and up. Sure enough, Mr. Stone stood behind me with a cup of coffee in hand and the leather satchel he wore that was always bursting with papers slung over his shoulder. His smile was curious as he stepped toward me. “Do you come here a lot, Comet?”