No one replied. Instead, the others stood back and looked at the house. I hadn’t seen people in daylight for what felt like years, but that didn’t stop me from being able to see none of these people wanted to be here. All their jaws were locked tightly with eyebrows that met high in the middle. Even the little girl bit on her lip as she clung to her mother.
‘Sure, Dad. A little work and it could be...nice,’ one of the boys said, taking a moment to carefully choose his words as he grabbed a box labelled ‘Theo’s trophies’.
‘You’re right, Theo. Once we get it cleaned up with some fresh paint, it will look as good as the old house,’ the woman said, also lying but with tight eyes, as she bit on her soft pink painted lips. The children, except the little girl, had her eyes, a pale blue that almost looked translucent, compared to their dad’s dark eyes which the girl had inherited.
‘Which begs the question, why leave the old house in the first place?’ said the other boy, his face hidden behind scruffy, unkempt hair. A statement that I think all but their dad agreed with silently. It was strange because you could tell he was Theo’s brother but only after you stared for long enough. You had to see past their obvious differences to notice their similarities.
‘Don’t start, you idiot.’ Theo rolled his eyes as he shoved him with his broad shoulders.
‘Theo, leave your brother alone. Finn, stop with the scratched record.’ Their mum sighed as she brushed back her auburn hair with her fingers into a ponytail. ‘Let’s just get inside and see what our new home looks like.’
New home?
If I could, I’d have screamed so loud that the windows would have shattered in protest. They would have all looked back in absolute fear, which would have only made me stronger and allowed me to send them flying. They’d scramble to their lorry, dropping the boxes, in a hurry to leave this house that didn’t belong to them and never return. Of course, none of that was possible with my current strength. So instead, I stood back and watched them unlock the door and walk straight into the house.
2
Finn
It’s huge,’ Theo said running down the stairs, sounding as though they were moments away from collapsing under his weight. ‘Three floors including a library at the top.’
‘Plenty of room to each have our own space then,’ Mum said with an overly enthusiastic smile, the same smile she put on whenever we received an unwelcome visit from her mum. She shifted her eyes over to me.
‘The house is a mess. It’s dirty, old, and…’ I paused and reached my hand out to the nearest light switch. ‘...has no electricity. We left our home for this? For an extra floor and a library that no one will ever use?’
Mum’s smile quickly fell and was replaced with the glare I’d become familiar with the past year. ‘Give it a rest, Finn.’
‘No,’ I said surprising myself with the volume of my own voice. ‘This makes no sense. You can’t just pack up our whole lives and move us miles away without telling us why. We had a life there.’ I could feel the heat in my cheeks begin to smother the rest of my face.
‘Finn. I said, enough,’ Mum yelled as Dad stepped into the house. There was something off about him today. I had noticed it ever since we had loaded the car earlier that morning. He was distracted, so much so that he had not yet shouted at me despite the number of times I knew I had done things to irritate him during the journey here.
‘Jack, will you please talk to your son?’ Mum said in the usual way she did—scare me with the threat of Dad’s louder voice—except this time Dad didn’t move. It was like he was rooted to the spot, frozen with a side table in his arms. I watched the colour in his face drain away as though it were being sucked out of him. His breathing was shaky as he glanced around the room with darting eyes. His grip of the table legs tightened displaying white knuckles before he finally opened his mouth without a sound.
‘Jack?’ Mum looked at him, displaying the deep lines on her forehead. ‘Is everything ok?’
It was like he had been hit with a jolt of electricity when he finally looked at Mum with a quick nod of his head. ‘I am fine,’ he said with far more aggression than any of us expected. ‘Finn, don’t give me this crap about how we had a life there. Your life at the old house consisted of nothing more than you locking yourself away in your room. You will be able to do that from here too.’
‘Jack…’ Mum said as I threw him a look before storming up the stairs. Each step sounded more unreliable than the last.
‘What a prick,’ I said under my breath feeling my chest growing tight from the anger smothering me. I walked into the first room on my right to find it was empty except for a rusted, metal bed frame in the corner of the room beside a shattered, tall mirror. The walls were a murky pea-green except for one wall which had peeling pink and blue wallpaper. Every corner staged an abandoned cobweb—not even the bugs wanted to live in this dump. As I walked further into the room, the floorboards protested my every step until I stopped before the large window. It was covered in a mixture of bird poo and rain smears, but looking through the gaps of dirt, I could see a forest behind the house. The nearest forest to the old house was at least an hour drive away, and even then, I had never gone anywhere near it. In fact, thinking about it, I hadn’t ever been to an actual forest. The old house was nothing like this. It was surrounded by houses full of neighbours—some we’d smile at politely as they left their house on their daily commutes, others we’d pretend we had never seen before despite being neighbours for years. But it was different here. The nearest house had been at least a ten-minute walk away. In fact, I had seen more cows than people on the way here.
‘Is this the room you’ve picked?’ my dad said after doing the awkward clearing of the throat trick. ‘I’ve got some white paint in the lorry that you can use to cover this up if you want.’ He kept close to the door as I turned to face him. ‘We could sand down the floorboards before we unpack your stuff, so it’ll be like your old bedroom.’ He tried to force a smile but it was far from genuine.
‘Dad, what do you want?’ I gave him a cold stare.
He sighed and held onto the door frame. ‘Look, this moving stuff is stressful for us all—’
‘Then why move full stop?’ I threw my arms around the room. ‘Look at this place, Dad—it doesn’t even look safe enough to live in. And how the hell did we get it anyway? Who just gives away a house?’
‘Finn, I know none of this makes sense to you right now, and I know you’re upset about leaving the old house, but this was the right decision for us as a family.’
I shook my head and walked over to the bedroom door where he took a few steps back. ‘You’re right,’ I said, taking hold of the door handle. ‘None of this makes any sense.’ I threw the door shut, watching for a moment as it startled the thick inches of dust.
The tightness in my jaw was beginning to give me a headache as I turned to the bed and kicked its leg. A loose screw gave way, hitting the floor with a tap before it rolled into one of the many gaps.
I sighed as I looked around the room once more, imagining my old room. The clean white walls and even cleaner floor. My bed that sat in the centre of the room that Mum always made when I was at school despite my protests. My TV had been on the opposite wall with my PlayStation ready for me to play. It was my space. It was somewhere I knew I could be left alone, but all that was gone. And for what? My dad’s dumb reasons. I hated this house as much as I hated him. I had little interest in going to university next year, but knowing it would mean I would be away from him for at least three years made it all the better.