The Fragile Ordinary

“Have you read it, Comet?”

I nodded. I’d painted the words To Thine Own Self Be True above my headboard in my bedroom.

He smiled back at me and then continued on, handing out the play to everyone.

I flipped open the copy, hoping the lure of Shakespeare would be enough to distract me from the beautiful boy behind me. This was English class. The only place at school I felt at home.

Tobias King wasn’t going to fluster me or divert my attention from Mr. Stone and a class I loved.

* * *

Considering how disturbed I was by the thought of having a crush on a boy at this school, I was almost grateful for what happened next.

It was after lunch and I was heading to history. The wide corridors were filled with students milling around or walking to their next class. As usual I was slipping through the crowds anonymously when I saw him coming toward me.

My heart started racing in my chest.

He really had the most gorgeous smile.

And then I realized who he was smiling at.

Stevie Macdonald. And with Stevie were his crew of borderline delinquents.

Huh.

That surprised me. To be honest it surprised me Stevie was still in school. I’d have bet everything I owned that he would have dropped out as soon as he turned sixteen. His friends, too. But nope. There they were.

What surprised me about Tobias hanging out with Stevie was the fact that Tobias had to have achieved good grades at his old school to have been accepted into my Spanish and English classes. Stevie and his crowd weren’t exactly high achievers.

But there they were, messing around like they’d known each other forever.

As Tobias neared me, my breath once again seized in my throat.

And then it was expelled with force when Stevie shoved Tobias and he clobbered me, nearly knocking me off my feet. Thankfully the new guy had fast reflexes. Almost as soon as he hit me, he turned and grabbed my arms to steady me.

“Sorry,” he apologized, and for a moment our eyes met.

My skin burned beneath my shirt where his fingers gripped me, and I found myself entranced by the flecks of gold and blue in his eyes. They were more blue-gray than light gray like I’d thought.

The heat in my skin traveled all over me, and I knew my face was probably on fire.

Damn my pale skin!

Just like that, he let me go and turned to laugh at whatever Stevie had said. I stumbled a little, turning in shock to watch him stride away as if he’d never even touched me, talked to me.

Tobias King was not book boyfriend material! A book boyfriend did not knock the heroine quite literally off her feet and then walk away once they made eye contact.

“Nice,” I muttered, infuriated.

It had been silly of me to think my intense reaction to Tobias King would be returned. He’d been here a day and was already the most popular boy in school.

This was the wake up I needed to shake me out of my stupid insta-crush.

After all I was just Comet Caldwell.

Great big bloody snowy dirtball.

* * *

“I was thinking we could ‘study’ at yours instead,” I air-quoted as I fell into stride with Vicki.

The end of day bell had rung five minutes ago, and I’d caught sight of my friend weaving through the crowds heading out of school.

For some weird reason, Vicki looked unsure. “Why?”

I knew the girls liked hanging out at my place because my parents never bothered us and because I was right on the beach. But I was feeling unexplainably prickly toward Carrie today and really didn’t want to breathe the same air as her. “This morning Carrie either pretended to or genuinely forgot that I’m sixteen years old and have been for a while.”

“What?” Vicki wrinkled her nose. “Babe, she gave you a birthday card. With money in it.”

“No, apparently, Kyle gave me a card with money in it and signed Carrie’s name.”

“That’s rubbish. I’m sorry.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “Okay. Come to mine, then. I’m sure Mum won’t mind, because today was her day off.”

Vicki’s mum was a general practitioner at the local doctor’s surgery but ever since Vicki’s younger brother, Ben, was born she’d worked part-time. Ben had been a surprise—a happy one—arriving nine years after his big sister.

“Well, if you’re sure.” I wasn’t going to argue.

Vicki’s house was on the way to mine, about a ten-minute walk from school and just a few blocks from the main street in Portobello.

Portobello, or Porty as it was known locally, sat on the east coast of Edinburgh, about a twenty-five-minute car journey from the city center. It used to be a beach resort with fun fairs and rides, but now it was more about volleyball, kayaking, sunbathing, swimming, dog walking and the arts. Years ago, as part of an art event, a steel tidal octopus sculpture had been installed on the beach. During low tide he was completely visible, but during high tide you could see only a tentacle or two.

We had independent stores, cafés and restaurants in Porty, and a Victorian swimming pool with an original Aerotone and Turkish baths. It was a village with identity and personality, and it had a laid-back vibe with a socioeconomic mix of low-to-mid income and mid-to-high income families. There were people who spoke with a more anglicized Scottish accent, like me and my friends, and those like Stevie who spoke in thick Scots. It was a mishmash, and for the most part I loved that.

But that came with problems. I knew some kids who were bullied for having less money than other kids, and kids like me who were bullied for being posh and a swot—a geek, a brainiac, a nerd. Our school had its “good” kids, its overachievers, and then it had the “bad” kids, the disrespectful kids, the troublemakers and the underachievers. Overall, I didn’t interact much with the “bad” kids, as I wasn’t part of their circles, and I liked living in Porty.

That didn’t mean I didn’t have every intention of getting as far away from here as possible when I went to university. And I meant far. My dream university was in the US of A. The University of Virginia. It was really well-known for writing, for its literary magazines, poetry workshops and for its Pulitzer Prize–winning graduates. If that wasn’t enough, the awesome Tina Fey graduated from there! Yes. If it took my blood, sweat and tears, I would become a proud alumna of UVA and no one, not anyone, was going to get in my way of seeing that dream come true.

“You’re quiet,” Vicki mused as we strolled in silence toward her parents’ house.

I shrugged. “Just first day blues, I guess.”

“Or...” She nudged me and grinned. “I saw you checking out the new guy.”

I blushed crimson and shook my head frantically.

“Fine.” She turned stone-faced. “Keep your secrets.”

Frustration gnawed at me. Vicki took it personally when I kept things to myself, but it wasn’t personal. I just wasn’t a sharer. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, however, I sighed. “Fine. He’s good-looking. That’s a fact. Nothing more.”