6
Finn
It was long into Sunday afternoon when I finally woke up. My head ached as though it had been sat on all night. I couldn’t remember what time I had finally fallen asleep but I knew the sky hadn’t looked too different from the pale blue it currently was.
I heard a little tap on my door.
‘Finn?’
‘Come in, Maia,’ I kicked off the duvet, and sat up.
She walked into the room, dressed in the Captain America costume I had gotten her for Christmas. It was only when I saw her in it—with the arms not quite reaching her wrists and the legs sitting way above her ankles—that I realised how much she had grown in the past nine months. It seemed impossible that she was already five years old.
She took a look around the room, clearly unimpressed by the mess it was in before looking back to me with a smile.
‘Mummy wanted to know if you were still asleep.’ She carefully climbed onto the bed to sit opposite me.
‘Nope. Not anymore.’ I smiled back at her, rubbing my hand through my hair to flatten my bed head.
‘Are you gonna tidy your room?’ Maia said looking around the room once more. Admittedly, it looked a lot worse in the light from the bare windows.
‘Are you saying it’s messy?’ I said with a fake look of shock.
She nodded with a grin beginning to grow on her face, knowing what was coming.
‘Well, I guess I better tidy it up,’ I said slowly crawling over to her carefully. ‘Right after I get the tickle monster out!’
I tickled her tummy, causing her to shriek in laughter.
‘Not the tickle monster!’ she said squirming to get away from me. Her laugh was infectious, and I found myself laughing with her, but it soon stopped once I caught my mum’s reflection in the shattered mirror.
‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ Mum said with a smile as I let go of Maia and straightened myself up. I felt a twinge of guilt as Maia’s smile fell too.
‘Are you ready for school tomorrow?’ Mum said, trying to fill the silence that had suffocated the room.
‘Yeah,’ I said, but it came out sounding like just noise.
She nodded, but before she could speak again, I stood up from the bed.
‘I’m gonna have a shower.’
I ruffled Maia’s messy hair and walked past Mum at the door heading for the bathroom.
I didn’t want a shower but I didn’t want to sit and talk to my mum about my new school. I was dreading it enough as it was.
I turned on the shower tap, half expecting it to pour out brown water. For a few minutes, I just watched it run as it steamed up the bathroom mirror. I sniffed my armpits, wondering if I could even be bothered to get in. It’s not like anyone was going to get close enough to smell me at school tomorrow.
They’d avoid me, just like the last school.
I sighed. I was sick of moaning but it seemed to be the only thing I was good at.
Slowly, I pulled off my clothes, noticing the slight chill in the air as it caused the hair on my body to stand. I climbed into the shower, which was not nearly as hot as the steam had made it seem.
I actually loved showers despite my groans, in fact, I loved anything that had water involved. A few years earlier you’d only ever find me in a pool. I shrugged off the thought as I washed away the last bit of soap off my legs.
Once I was dried off with a towel around me, I wiped the steam off the mirror to glance at my reflection.
My hair had grown way too long, even for my standards. The sides had almost covered my ears and the front was constantly touching my eyebrows. I wondered if I should get a haircut, but the thought of going into the new town made my stomach knot. I could have asked my mum to cut it, she had been a hairdresser before she had started having kids, but the thought of her being that close to me made a trip into town seem the better option.
I settled to push the hair out of my face before racing back to my bedroom.
For a second, I thought about tidying up the room. I looked at the bottles of cleaning products Mum had brought a few days before but instead, I shut the door and switched on my game.
I never really paid too much attention to time, but today it was flying past. Every time I reached for my phone, an hour or two had passed until the blue sky had completely disappeared. I was in darkness except for my TV screen.
I could feel the familiar ache in my stomach as the thought of Monday morning became my only thought. Not even my game could keep me distracted as I lost another battle against twelve different strangers from around the world. I switched off the TV and sat in the darkness for a few minutes, listening to Maia’s muffled voice through the walls.
‘Would you like some tea, AB?’ she said.
I wondered where her imaginary friend’s name had come from. I smiled at the thought of her talking to herself offering empty cups of tea.
I climbed into bed. Every muscle in my body begun to ache, protesting for me to just let them rest, but my mind still raced. Pulling out the laptop, I typed in the name of my new school into Google. One page revealed pictures of a brownstone building surrounded by acres of perfect green land. Kids posed in the ‘I’m a professional student’ kind of way with books in their hands and false grins on their faces. Other pictures showed busy classrooms with teachers smiling back at their perfect students with not a single hair out of place and clothes that screamed upper-middle class.
Theo would fit in perfectly here with his perfect hair, perfect athleticism, and perfect charm.
And of course, I wouldn’t.
I sighed loudly before changing the page to Facebook as I scrolled through, reading the status’ from people I barely knew. A handful had been old friends but the majority had just been people who had added me because of Theo. None I had ever spoken to except for the odd ‘where is Theo?’ question. As I continued to scroll through, I was interrupted by a noise. My eyes shot over to the floorboards by the door as they creaked. My mind immediately pictured a scary looking ghost staring back at me. ‘Don’t be stupid, it’s an old house.’ I reasoned with myself before closing my laptop and hiding underneath my covers.
Ugh. This was not helping my stomach or my sleep.
7
Ab
The weekend had passed, and it had been a few days since the family had moved in. I was completely aware of the fact that I had broken the daily promise to myself to get the family out of the house but every night, I would end up in the library telling myself I’d do it the next day.
‘There’s no rush. They’ll be here tomorrow,’ I said to myself as I would end each night no closer to them leaving.
I knew what was stopping me, of course. The unlimited supply of energy I was getting and the unlikely friendship I had made with Maia. We had spent the last two days sipping from empty plastic teacups and watching movies on the TV’s that I had originally thought were black pictures. I had been taught that Cinderella had been replaced with someone called Elsa, the internet was a thing everyone now had, and mobile phones were also flat and played videos. It was hard to remember that the world had continued without me. Over time, I had tried to keep in sync with the date by writing it down each day but soon enough I had run out of ink and paper and when the seasons began to change so quickly, I lost all count of the date, month, and year.