The Fragile Ordinary

Although all the while angry butterflies fluttered wildly in my stomach.

* * *

All I could do was stare at the building. I willed my feet to move but it was proving difficult. Stevie lived on a street that bordered Portobello and Niddrie. It was a good thirty-five-minute walk from my house on the beach, and our situations couldn’t have been more different. While I lived in a midcentury seafront home, Stevie and Tobias lived in a drab building that housed six flats. Stevie’s flat was on the ground floor. The gray pebble-dash render on the building, along with the overlong front lawns and toppled rubbish bins, gave the place a depressing feel.

It bugged me that Tobias lived here, and I couldn’t explain to myself why that was. I wondered why he and his mum had to live with Stevie. What happened to them back in the US?

And suddenly Tobias was there, standing in the open entrance to the building. His face was in shadow, but I knew it was him by his height and the way he held himself. He wore only a T-shirt and joggers, no shoes, just socks, and he had his hands stuck in his pockets. “You plan on coming inside anytime soon?”

I jolted at his question, and to my everlasting mortification I blushed again, before finally making my feet move toward him. “I wasn’t sure I had the right house,” I lied.

He smirked. “Right. You’re one of the smartest girls in school but you don’t know how to read a street sign.”

I ignored his sarcasm. “How do you know I’m one of the smartest girls in school?”

“Stevie told me. Plus, you can’t exactly get into the classes you’re in if you’re stupid.”

“True. So why do you pretend to be?” The question was out of my mouth before I could even think about it.

Tobias looked as surprised as I felt. He also did not deign to answer me. Instead he led me inside the ground-floor flat, and the lingering smell of Chinese food hit me as I stepped into the narrow hallway. I followed him, dodging the several pairs of shoes that were strewn in the hall near the entrance.

As we passed an open doorway, I glanced in and saw two women lounging on a couch. There were empty Chinese takeaway containers on the coffee table in front of them. One of the women was thin with wispy fair hair. Her neck was bent at an awkward angle, and it appeared she’d fallen asleep. The other woman met my gaze as I passed. I got an impression of pale skin and dark hair, but we were moving too quickly down the hall for me to observe anything else.

“Tobias, where are you going?” The woman’s voice rang out just as he put his hand on the knob of a door around the left-hand corner at the end of the hall.

“Room,” he called back. “I told you I have an assignment to work on.”

“Well, I’d like to meet your friend. Where are your manners?”

He shot me an exasperated look like it was my fault. If only he knew I was even less inclined to meet the person I was guessing was his mother. The less I knew about Tobias King, the better. He gestured for me to go back the way we’d just come, and I drew to a halt at the sudden appearance of the tall brunette from the couch. She had big, sad, dark eyes and chin-length dark hair, pale skin and freckles across her nose that, along with her trim, slender physique, made her look too young to be the mother of an almost seventeen-year-old boy. Appearance-wise there was very little of her in Tobias. I wondered if he took after his dad. And then I wondered where his dad was.

She looked at Tobias and raised an eyebrow.

He sighed heavily, as if she were forcing him to do something unpleasant. “Mom, this is my English presentation partner, Comet Caldwell. Comet, my mom.”

“Hi, Mrs. King,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Call me Lena, please.” She spoke with a Scottish accent muddled by an American one.

“Okay.” I smiled, but it faltered as her gaze drifted over me in an assessing manner and I suddenly realized I should have perhaps dressed more conservatively for coming to Tobias and Stevie’s flat. I was wearing a dark green velvet skirt with a black-and-green striped top with arms that were tight at the wrist and then puffed out in balloon sleeves. On my feet were green flats with an oversize yellow bow on the front.

Not giving away her thoughts, Lena turned to her son. “Carole is worn-out. Try to keep it down.”

“Where’s Kieran?” Tobias asked.

If I remembered correctly, Kieran was Stevie’s little brother. He was around six or seven years old.

“In Carole’s room reading. I’ll keep an eye on him. You just get your homework done like you promised.”

“That’s what Comet’s for,” he said.

Ass.

His mum seemed to think it was a crappy comment, too. “Don’t you leave all the work to Comet. Promise.”

“I could make that promise, Mom, not keep it and you still wouldn’t do jack about it. That’s what you’re good at, right? Being a liar and doormat.” He didn’t wait for her to answer, just turned and bulldozed his way into the room behind us.

Lena stared after him wearing an expression of embarrassment and hurt.

Me? I was in shock and wondering what the hell I’d walked into.

“Are we doing this or what?” Tobias called, presumably to me.

His mother slid me a wary look and I gave her a shy, pinched smile before I darted into the room.

“Leave your bedroom door open a little,” Lena called.

Tobias got up off his bed and immediately shut the door.

Okay.

I was guessing he and his mother didn’t have the best relationship. Or Tobias was just a dick.

I was suddenly very much aware of the smell of too much teenage boy in one room, and I realized why when I saw the two beds and the floor around the bed nearest the window littered with clothes and football stuff.

“I share a room with Stevie,” Tobias explained as I unwillingly stepped farther into the boy pit. The walls were a dark gray and covered in posters of football players around the messy bed. The walls behind and opposite the bed that was made and had no crap around it were covered in Lego and Minecraft posters. I raised an eyebrow, and Tobias smirked at me. “This is Kieran’s bed. Until Mom and I find a place, I’m in here with Stevie.” He gestured to the pit side of the room, “Kieran’s in with his mom, and my mom’s on the couch. It’s a little crowded.” He sat down on his bed, picked up his copy of Hamlet and his notepad from his bedside table and shuffled back against his pillows and the wall.

“Where is Stevie?” I asked instead, gingerly placing my bag on Tobias’s borrowed bed.

“You can sit, too.” He smirked at me, like he knew I was uncomfortable being this close to him.

I sat on the bed. I could feel Tobias watching me, and all I kept thinking was that this was probably the first time he had a girl in his room to do homework. I wondered if he could guess that this was the first time I’d been alone with a boy, or furthermore alone with a boy in his room.

I squirmed, wishing I was at home with the book I was currently reading instead.

“Stevie’s out,” Tobias finally replied, drawing my gaze to his. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Disappointed?”

Disappointed? That Stevie was out? Why would I be disappointed? “Excuse me?”

He seemed to assess me and then finally shook his head. “Never mind. Let’s get started.”

It was difficult to concentrate on anything but the fact that I was on Tobias King’s bed, sitting across from him, feeling his gaze on me as I took out the notes I’d already started making. To my surprise, as we worked, Tobias gave a lot more input than he’d suggested he would.

After about an hour of study we’d pulled a number of quotes from Hamlet’s soliloquies to back up our analysis of his character development. We worked easily with each other—another surprise—seeming to grasp Hamlet with a similar understanding.

“I’m going to grab a soda. You want one?” Tobias asked.

It was the first thing either of us had said that didn’t relate to Shakespeare, and I noted, to my further shock, that I’d lost the restless, squirmy feeling I’d had earlier. The easy way we collaborated had distracted me from my discomfort. “Um...sure.”