The Fragile Ordinary Read online

  More than anything I did not want to walk into school only to discover Tobias was going to ignore me.

  I didn’t see him before form class or on my way to biology, and I was stupidly disappointed he hadn’t searched me out before classes started. Dread filled me as I sat in the library during my free second period. Tobias and I had three classes together next. The possibility of being ignored by him hurt. A lot. Too much.

  Feeling like my ankles had been weighted, I walked with such a slow trudge toward Spanish class.

  “Didn’t get much sleep last night?”

  I startled as Tobias suddenly appeared beside me, grinning down at me quizzically.

  All the tension melted out of me and I suddenly felt like a balloon let loose from its weight. I gave him a confused smile. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re walking like a zombie.”

  “Oh.” I blushed and shook my head. “Just daydreaming.”

  “You’re embarrassed.” His smile widened, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “What the hell were you daydreaming about?”

  To my chagrin my cheeks grew even hotter. “Nothing. School. Spanish.”

  “A likely story.” He nudged me with his elbow. “But I’ll give you a free pass.”

  “Magnanimous of you.” I rolled my eyes, pretending not to be mortified that Tobias obviously thought I was daydreaming about him.

  I mean, I was, but I didn’t want him to know that. It would crush me if the thought of me fancying him made him uncomfortable. I needed him to know—even if it was only a half-truth—that I wanted to be his friend above all else.

  He chuckled as we walked into class together. “Anyway... Yo conozco todos tus secretos.”

  I already know all your secrets. I made a face. “That’s what you think.”

  This time he laughed outright, winked at me and strolled to his chair. Ignoring the curious looks from some of my classmates, I slid into my seat, feeling like butter about to slide off hot toast. Somehow, I stopped myself from melting into a puddle under my desk.

  But my heart was beating outrageously fast.

  Laughter and a wink from him, and I was as giddy as a five-year-old at Disney World.

  It was difficult to concentrate in class. And if it was hard to stay focused in Spanish, it was even more so in maths, because Tobias walked to class with me. That wasn’t the part that threw me—although we were getting some curious stares from people in our year who were clearly wondering why we were strolling along like friends.

  No, the part that threw me was when Tobias stopped us just outside of maths class.

  “Any plans for tonight?”

  My heart rate sped up. “Not really.”

  He nodded and then looked around the corridor casually. “I’m going to take a walk down the beach again.” He turned back to me. “Around seven.”

  My belly was now fluttering all over the place. “Good to know.”

  We shared a last, secret look before walking into class to take seats on opposite sides of the room.

  * * *

  “So what exactly does a quarterback do?”

  We sat, Tobias and me, shoulder to shoulder on a bench facing the water. The sun was still out, although low in the sky, and every now and then someone would appear walking down the esplanade, often with a dog or two. Other than that, it was peaceful, quiet, and we’d had no distractions from each other for the last hour.

  “Uh...well the QB is like the leader of the offensive team. He’s the guy that usually calls the plays in the huddle. A lot of responsibility falls on him, because he’s the one guy who has his hand on the ball for almost every offensive play.”

  I still had no idea what a quarterback was. I laughed. “Maybe one day you should explain American football to me first before we start talking players.”

  “We’ll watch a game. It’s easier to explain that way.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  He was quiet for a moment, suddenly seeming sullen as he stared at the water, and I regretted my question. Until this point we’d talked easily about everything and nothing at all.

  “Yeah,” he finally said. “I miss being part of a team.”

  Hating the despondency in his voice, I found I wanted to fix it. “Have you ever considered rugby? There’s a regional team in Porty.”

  “I dunno.” He shrugged.

  “Think about it.”

  Tobias looked at me as if searching my face for something. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

  I smiled, and his gaze dropped to my mouth before traveling lower. I flushed at his perusal and even more so when he grinned and looked back out at the water. “I like the way you dress.”

  Tonight I was wearing a short flared navy skirt with white polka dots. The contrasting waistband featured three mismatched buttons down the front and was a pink-and-blue tartan. To keep warm I was wearing thick navy tights with magenta patent leather Doc Martens. I wore a plain navy jumper, and over it a navy fitted jacket with an old-fashioned tailcoat detail in the hem. The coat had pink-and-blue tartan elbow patches, epaulettes and large buttons.

  “Some people would say it’s weird.”

  Tobias shook his head. “Just different. It makes you stand out from the crowd.” He tilted his head, studying me intently again.

  I squirmed. “What?”

  “I just... Well for someone who is apparently shy, you don’t dress like you don’t want to be seen.”

  “Being shy doesn’t mean not wanting to be seen,” I responded, vehemently even. His eyebrows rose at my tone and I hurried to explain. “Sometimes I find it difficult to talk with people I don’t know very well because... I don’t know. I guess I’m worried what they’ll think of me. That I’m boring or silly. I don’t want to think like that, Tobias. It isn’t a choice to worry what other people think of me. I wish I was like Steph and Vicki, who can talk to anyone, talk to boys like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Talk to teachers like they’re people and not authority figures to be feared.

  “I had this teacher once.” I shivered just remembering her. “In primary six. I was ten,” I explained. “For some reason she took a dislike to me, and I always found it confusing since I barely said a word in class. Every morning she’d walk in with this pinched look on her face, thunder in her eyes and make us recite the Lord’s Prayer. If we so much as stumbled over the words, she made us repeat it on our own. She started to pick on me a few months into the year. She was like my very own Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter. If I got a solution wrong she’d make me get up in front of the whole class to answer it correctly at the board. That only made me more nervous, made me blank, and she would stand there huffing and sighing and bullying me to get to the right answer. I was usually in tears by the end of it.

  “She even accused me of cheating once, even though the girl I apparently cheated from did poorly in all subjects compared to me. But, no, I was the culprit. I was terrified of her.

  “Worse, though, was when she mocked a poem I wrote for class. She made me read it aloud in front of everyone, even though I didn’t want to. She sneered at me the entire time. And then later, when we got our work back from marking, mine was covered in notes that basically told me to start again. She did that to me with every writing challenge.

  “I think she eventually lost her job a few years later. Something about shoving a boy out of her classroom. He smacked into the wall opposite the door and got a bloody nose.”

  “Jesus.” I felt Tobias’s stare, but I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see his pity. “Did you tell your parents?”

  I shook my head, embarrassed that confiding in my parents hadn’t been an option even then.

  “You can’t let one teacher affect who you are, Comet.”

  My gaze jerked up to meet his. “I’m not,” I said indignantly. “I’m... I know all teac
hers aren’t like her. Mr. Stone is a brilliant teacher.”

  “Yeah? So has he seen your poetry?”

  I squirmed a little, reminded of my conversation with Mr. Stone at Pan and how I’d been avoiding thinking about his words of wisdom. “Well, not my personal poetry, no.”

  “Does anyone know about your poetry?”

  “I have a blog,” I announced triumphantly. “All of my poems are on there.”

  “Is it anonymous?”

  I glared at him and he laughed. “I bet you even have the comments turned off.”

  “What’s your point, Mr. King?”

  Tobias nudged me with his shoulder. “My point is that you let one teacher steal away your confidence. That’s ridiculous. Your poems are great, Comet. You should share them with the world. If you can walk around in yellow tights and pink boots, surely you can share some poems.”

  As lovely as his confidence in me was, I wasn’t quite ready for that. “What yellow tights?” I evaded.

  “You were wearing yellow tights the night you ran out of that party.”

  “Oh.”

  “Comet?”

  At his questioning tone, I looked up and sighed. “Don’t you get it, Tobias? This—” I gestured to what I was wearing “—it’s my way of fighting the girl who doesn’t want to share her poems with anyone. This is the part of me that could give a crap what anyone thinks of me. I’m proud of myself when I walk down the street wearing the clothes I want to wear, because it means I’m standing up for who I am. I wish... You have no idea how much I wish I could care less what anyone thinks about me at all, whether it’s my clothes or the words coming out of my mouth or the words I put on paper.

  “But I do care. Too much. And I don’t think I’m strong enough to handle anyone reading my work yet. Okay?” I held my breath, fearing that Tobias would be disappointed in me.

  To my utter shock and delight, however, the boy at my side took my right hand, turned it palm up and slid his over it. Tingles shot up my arm as his long fingers tickled my palm and then intertwined with mine. He squeezed, holding tight, and looking out over the sea he said softly, “Okay.”

  Okay.

  Just that one word. That one word and the way he held my hand made me fall.

  And I fell hard.

  * * *

  My crush on Tobias only worsened over time.

  For the next few weeks we met up as much as possible at the esplanade, the only thing changing between us the layers of clothing as autumn overpowered late summer. But despite talking to me during classes, Tobias never hung out with me at school. In fact, he made a concerted effort to not even look at me during lunch in the cafeteria. It was like I didn’t exist.

  Not only did that hurt, but watching him mess around with Stevie and his friends pissed me off. Tobias wasn’t like them. He wasn’t a bully or disrespectful to teachers or a thief, and I could not understand how the boy who was so sweet to me could be so rude to our teachers and even some of our classmates when he was with his friends.

  This lack of contact between us outside of class reinforced that Tobias just wanted a friendship with me. And a secret one at that.

  It would be foolish to hope for anything more. Yet, anyone who’s ever had a crush on someone always has hope. Foolish or otherwise.

  My hope was crushed on a Wednesday.

  It was fourth period and I’d asked my history teacher if I could use the bathroom. Since I was a good student, she gave me a bathroom pass without hesitation. Knowing Tobias was in chemistry fourth period, however, I decided to take the long route to the bathroom, i.e. the one that was completely out of the way but would take me past Tobias’s class.

  That was my state of mind now. Complete and utter awareness of Tobias King. Every morning was better because I woke up knowing I’d get to see him. I was always on Tobias alert, waiting to catch a glimpse of him, to hear his voice, brush his arm with mine.

  It was on that ridiculously girlish thought that I spotted Tobias in his chemistry class. The sight of him brought me crashing down to Earth with a bang. Instead of breaking an arm or a leg on impact, I broke my naive little heart.

  Jess Reed, a sixth year everyone knew, was sitting next to Tobias. The table pod they sat at covered their bottom half so the teacher couldn’t see Jess’s hand on Tobias’s thigh as they murmured with one another, heads bent close. Tobias smirked flirtatiously at whatever she said, making no move to remove her hand from his leg.

  Jess Reed.

  I was such an idiot.

  Spinning back around, I blinked back the sting of tears and attempted to fight off the gnawing ache that pulsated in my chest. Jess was a year older than us. She was small and curvy, with tons of shining dark brown hair, perfect bronze skin and huge tip-tilted dark eyes with eyelashes that seemed to go on forever. Every boy in school fancied the pants off Jess Reed.

  She was head of the events committee and a karate champion. Hot and a total badass.

  How the hell could I think Tobias would see me—pale, gangly, bookish me!—as girlfriend material when he had the likes of Jess Reed flirting with him?

  I crashed into the nearest girls’ bathroom, thanking God it was empty, and locked myself in a stall. Tears spilled down my cheeks and I swiped at them angrily.

  Fighting for calm, I took deep, slow breaths. Eventually the tears stopped, my breathing returned to normal and with it my sense returned. My overreaction to seeing him flirt with another girl was a wake-up call!

  I didn’t want to be one of those girls who became so obsessed with a boy that nothing else mattered. That wasn’t me before Tobias and I’d burn my entire collection off Irregular Choice shoes before I let it happen to me now. There was more for me to worry about than if Tobias King fancied someone else. And what did it matter anyway? Come graduation, I was gone! I would hopefully be on my way to Virginia, and nothing and no one was getting in the way of that dream. Which brought me back to the things I needed to be focused on—like finding extracurricular activities to become involved in for college applications. To stop ignoring Mr. Stone’s advice to be brave with my writing and poetry. And to find a way to mend the breach in my friendship with Vicki who had been there for me long before Tobias ever was.

  Tobias King was a problem and not just because of my unrequited crush.

  Maybe it was time to reevaluate our friendship.

  * * *

  The shame I’d felt earlier that day in the girls’ restroom returned as I sat listening to Vicki and Steph talk about the school show during lunch in the cafeteria.

  Tobias liked me for me.

  But did he?

  He wasn’t the one sitting with me at lunch every day. Vicki and Steph were. They hadn’t abandoned me. Well, sometimes they went to Nana’s without me, but most of the time they ate in the cafeteria with me.

  I was mortified by my behavior. Ashamed that I’d let us drift apart. Especially Vicki, when I knew she needed my friendship more than ever. I waited until Steph left the table to grab another soda to ask Vicki, “How are things with your mum and dad?”

  Vicki blinked at the seemingly random question. I knew it sounded like it came out of nowhere, but I didn’t want my friend to think I didn’t care about her life anymore. She shrugged, giving me a sad little smile. “They still disagree about my future.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I just hate being the reason for them arguing, you know?”

  “I know.” I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “You know I’m here if you ever need to talk.”

  “Yeah?” She cocked her head and studied me. “Why don’t we talk about why every day for the last few weeks you haven’t been able to keep your eyes off Stevie’s crew? Anything to do with a certain American?”

  The thought of anyone knowing how much I liked Tobias—even if it was Vicki—made my body lock with
tension. I removed my hand from hers, withdrawing into myself. “Of course not. I didn’t realize I was looking at Stevie all the time. They bug me. You know that.”

  Anger flashed in Vicki’s eyes. “Right. Sure.”

  I flinched at her sarcasm.

  Thankfully, Steph returned and I could pretend there wasn’t this awful distance between me and Vicki. I struggled to find something to say to my friends that they’d want to hear or talk about, and then I remembered they were going to another party at the weekend.

  “Are you guys looking forward to Ryan’s birthday party?” I said, hopeful that my interest would ease the tension between us.

  Steph grinned and opened her mouth to answer but Vicki beat her to it.

  “Why do you care?” she practically snarled. “It’s not like you’re going.”

  She might as well have slapped me.

  Even Steph shot her a horrified, confused look.

  As for me, I just stared at her, stunned, wondering when our friendship had gone so terribly wrong. As tears stung my eyes for the second time that day, I scraped back my chair, letting my hair fall over my face. “I just remembered I need to get something from the library. I’ll see you later.”

  * * *

  But I didn’t see them later, and the next day I was deliberately late to school, missing form class. I opted to walk home for lunch, and in English I refused to lift my head out of my copy of The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins. We’d moved on from Hamlet this week, and I loved Mr. Stone’s choice of literature this semester because I hadn’t read it.

  In that moment, however, the book was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to be anywhere but there.

  “Hey,” Tobias said as he settled into his chair next to me. His arm brushed mine as he pressed in close. “Why did you cancel last night? You okay?”

  Yesterday I’d texted Tobias to tell him I couldn’t meet up with him, but I hadn’t given him an explanation. I’d been hoping—

  The truth was I didn’t know what I was hoping. I was conflicted. Part of me wanted Tobias to just forget about me so I could forget about him, but the other half of me hated the idea of losing his friendship.