The Fragile Ordinary

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 (#ud4d4c379-b146-5280-a995-cf6b34f3b9f1)

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.