How the Wind Shifts, chapter 2
IM SO SORRY IVE BEEN BASICALLY IGNORING YOU GUYS AS OF LATE!!! I have been so unbelievably busy over he past few months since I last updated, but better late than never right?
(I APOLOGISE FOR HOW AWKWARD THE FLIRTING IS IN THIS CHAPTER I AM INCAPABLE OF TALKING TO CUTE BOYS WITHOUT EMBARRASSING MYSELF SO GUESS WHAT ALANS GONNA BE THE SAME WAY) I didn’t realise I’d fallen asleep, but someone rapping on the door woke me up. “C’mon, time for school, up and at ‘em sweetie. Fresh start, right?” Wendy’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. “Remember to make your bed and pick up anything on the floor, okay?”
Ugh. School. Not at all something I was looking forward to. Maybe I would meet someone who didn’t hate my existence for no reason. Wow, was Sarah’s positivity rubbing off on me? I’d have to change that quickly.
Scot didn’t look me in the eye, or acknowledge my existence at all before I walked out the door. I’d gotten the grades speech the night before, so I knew how important academics were to this family. I had a lot of catching up to do, I’d been out of school for a few months now and I probably missed the second coming of Jesus and the cure for cancer while I was out.
School was school, uneventful and lonely. Nothing I wasn’t used to. I ghosted through the day without being noticed by too many people. This new school was laid out really weird, in three levels of circles, so I got lost pretty easy. I felt like Alice in the rabbit hole without a Cheshire Cat to direct me. Finally I found my history room and everyone was settled in for the lesson to start. “Sorry I’m late sir, it’s my first day and- yeah.”
"You are… Ashby, I presume?" I nodded. "Fair enough. There’s a free seat next to Justin over there in the back. I suggest you take it. Not a very good first impression, being late on your first day, Alan."
I muttered some kind of sorry and made my way to the back corner of the room. Perfect, less people to stare at me from back here. When I got to the desk the teacher had pointed at, I sat down and bent my head over my sketchbook to avoid actually talking to people.
"Whatcha drawing?" A voice whispered from next to me. I looked back at him and he smiled this adorable smile at me that made my stomach go all funny.
“Oh, um, uh, just doodling.” I stuttered. Making friends wasn’t exactly my strong suit. Neither were words around cute guys, apparently.
“Do you like to draw?” This kid, Justin I assumed asked. When I didn’t respond because I was so flooded, he kept talking like it was nothing. “My sister likes to draw. Oh, here, you probably need the notes we’ve been taking. Wanna look off mine?” All I could do was nod and take the red spiral coil notebook from his hands. Justin could sense my anxiety and smiled sweetly at me, as if he understood how I felt. “Relax, I’m not gonna bite you or anything. Unless you like that, and if that’s the case gimme your number. Like right now,” the joke made me laugh and helped me calm down a little.
"Sorry, I-I’m not the greatest at making friends."
"It’s okay, awkward people are more fun to me anyways." A moment of silence followed when the teacher turned back around to face us after writing on the board. I was surprised by that statement. Why are awkward people more fun? I can barely hold a conversation with someone other than a cat, how is that fun?
When class let out and we went down to lunch, I went to assume my usual position, alone in the very back of the cafeteria so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone else. I’d already humiliated myself a couple times today, I didn’t want any other reasons for people to look at me and draw conclusions.
Those were always the worst parts of these moves. I would start at the most random times during the year, and people would assume all these things about me that weren’t even the slightest bit true. The best one I’d heard was that I was a juvenile delinquent who had just broken out of jail, and had changed my name so the cops couldn’t find me.
A figure standing over me pulled me out of my thoughts. “Yo, Mama Thompson said she’s picking us up at the end of the day, don’t take the bus home.” Drew said before walking away to sit with her friends.
Even someone with as insufferable as Drew could make friends and I couldn’t. This royally sucked. All these moves always sucked, but I didn’t have any way to stop them. I couldn’t change what had happened to me, to my family, I just had to accept it.
I kept to myself for the rest of the day, finding seats in the back or as far away from everyone else as possible. When the bell finally rang to let me out of math, someone’s shoulder bumped into mine. I thought it was someone who wanted to start picking on me, but when I turned around I was greeted by Justin.
"Hey, where’d you go? You just like dropped off the face of the earth for a few hours there."
I shrugged. “Disappearing what I’m good at.” What am I saying?
Judging by his laugh, Justin clearly didn’t think it was as awkward as I did. “Oh, so cute ginger boy is a magician now? I see how it is.”
"I’m just full of surprises I guess," I joked with a smile. He smiled back too, both of us stopping at the door where a bunch of cars were lined up for pickup. "I’ll um… I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?"
In lieu of an answer, Justin gave me a smirk and turned around to catch his bus, presumably. That’s when I realised…
"Oh shit, tomorrow’s Saturday!" I covered my face with my hands to avoid the self-humiliation I just caused, scraping my hands through my hair when I felt my embarrassed blush recede from my face.
"Mama’s Boy! Let’s go, I wanna leave!" Drew yelled at me from where she was standing in front of a large SUV that I assumed was theirs. I rolled my eyes at the jab and jogged over to the car.
"Would it kill you to be a bit less bitchy?" I snapped, not in the mood for her attitude.
"I could be, but where’s the fun in that?" She asked, flipping her hair and climbing into the backseat. The only other open seat not next to someone insufferable was the front next to Wendy, so I assumed I got shotgun today.
"One day down, how’s it feel to be back?" She asked cheerily. I sighed.
"Could’ve been worse. I think I made a friend." The short car ride over to the middle school to get the other three kids was relatively silent. Until one of the twins looked up from his Game Boy when we pulled up and started yelling something at Wendy that I couldn’t understand, but I knew was going to give me a headache.
"How come Alan gets shotgun? Today was my day!"
"Shut up, oh my god, why do we always fight over this, it’s a seat," Tracey groaned from the way back.
"Because, Kyle, today was Alan’s first day back to school in over three months, he deserves it. You can have it tomorrow."
"But that’s my day," Andrew yelled.
I hated this already. “Is everything a fight with this family?” I muttered under my breath as I put my feet up on the dashboard and let my head rest on my knees. I shut my eyes and covered my head with my arms, in an attempt to make everything go away, drift off into my own little world, but it wasn’t working. Someone patting my back and rubbing it comfortingly pulled me out of my exasperation, and when I looked I was met with a caring smile from my foster mother. I smiled back weakly and put my head down again. She had no idea, but even that small gesture of kindness meant the world to me.
"Rough day?" I nodded and didn’t offer anything else up, and she didn’t ask, which I liked. "Well, it’s Friday, that’s a good thing right? Friday’s always movie night in our house. You can pick the movie if you like. Maybe invite that friend you were talking about over?"
"Is someone gonna yell at me for taking their movie night day too?" I asked, sounding more bitter than I meant it to.
"Nope, that one’s not a set schedule. Have at it, sweetie." I thought for a minute, then suggested we watch Coraline, which was one of my favorite movies. Now I was actually looking forward to going home. That was a weird feeling.
"Dad’s at work and you guys know the rules, homework started before he gets home. Soon as we get home, homework time, okay?"
The twenty minute ride home was filled with music, the noises of someone’s Game Boy, arguing, and my headache was getting worse by the second. I just wanted silence and calm, which seemed an impossibility at this point.
Homework went fine, I was glad I got it done so I didn’t have to worry about it for the weekend. When I finished, I went back up to my room and found Sophie spread out all over my desk and my art stuff. “Sophie, you know you’re not allowed to lay there.” She tried to protest me picking her up and moving her, but she knew she wouldn’t get very far. Or, at least I’d like to think she did. Finally I could relax, not have to worry about other people, and do what I loved. While I drew, I didn’t think much about what I was drawing. I just let autopilot take over and went over what had happened today in my head. Justin was really nice, almost too nice for it to be real, but I couldn’t tell if he was genuine in wanting to be my friend or not. I was too flustered to get an accurate read on him during the few interactions we had.
A knock on the door made me jump and look up from my drawing. “Dinner’s ready!” The voice sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. Maybe it was one of my other sisters I hadn’t met yet. When I opened the door, I jumped again. Justin’s face smiled back at me as if him appearing in someone else’s house was completely normal. “Well hey there! You come here often?” He joked, clearly trying a pickup line on me.
I kept my hand on the door knob and gave him a confused look. “Um. I live here?”
“C’mon, that was a terrible pick up line and you know it.” Drew laughed from the stairs. “If you’re in the guy’s house you can’t use that one!”
“Don’t laugh, I’m still getting the hang of it! I don’t know what pickup lines work and which ones don’t, might as well try them all.”
“Yeah, well, that one’s not gonna work on me,” I smiled slightly against my better judgement, which made him smile.
“I told you that one’s really cheesy. It’s never worked on a guy I’ve tried it on before so I don’t see why you’d have any luck with guys either.”
“It’s not the pickup lines that’ll work, it’s my charm that’ll get them,” he laughed back when he turned around to go downstairs. I shut the door and followed them down the stairs, giggling a bit when Drew and Justin argued about pickup lines.
“C’mon, dinner’s getting cold, let’s go!” Wendy joked when we sat down. The mood tonight was much different than the night before, even with Scott leering at me from the other end of the table.
"So homework’s all done, chores are done, and everything for Christmas decorating is all ready," Wendy said. I’d completely forgotten that it was the second week of December, with everything happening with the move and all the date became a secondary issue. I hadn’t had a Christmas with a family in a while, and the last one I had sucked, so hopefully this year would go better.
"Where’ re we going on vacation this year?" Kyle asked. "Cmon please tell us!"
Justin smiled a bit and leaned in towards me to explain. “Every year your family and my family go on vacation together after Christmas, it’s a big tradition for us.”
I’d never been on vacation before. “Do I get to go?” I asked excitedly.
"You are a member of the Thompsons right?" I nodded. "Then yeah, you get to go, why wouldn’t you?"
I shrugged. “I’m probably not gonna stay for long.”
"Well if you’re still around on December 28th then you’re going," hearing him say that made me feel happy, genuinely happy, for the first time in a while. Maybe things would start looking up for me.
The conversation turned back to me a few minutes later, and luckily didn’t go off track as badly as the night before. “So Alan, Sarah told us youre a hockey player, are you thinking of trying out for the team at school?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I probably won’t make it though, your team’s really good.”
"Might as well give it a shot, it’ll be nice to have an athlete in the house," Scott said, tone strained but trying to be civil. The comment made me look at him with an almost scared expression, but Justin gently nudged me with his elbow and I felt myself calm down. It was weird, but I didn’t think much of it.
"Yeah, might as well…" I let my sentence trail off and hang in the air for a moment before it was filled up again with happy chatter, not directed at me. If I was learning anything here, it’s that I really really REALLY didn’t like being the center of attention.
