The Fragile Ordinary(9)

She burst out laughing at my dry tone and hurried to thread her arm through my elbow. “I bet that’s not true. You’re really pretty, Comet. It’s just this uniform does nothing for you. For any of us.”

“Well you always look amazing.”

“He needs to see you as the real Comet.” She squeezed my arm, grinning at me. “He won’t be able to take his eyes off you then.”

It was sweet of her to try to reassure me, but I was over it. “It doesn’t matter. Did you see who he’s hanging out with?” I wrinkled my nose in disdain. “Stevie Macdonald and those idiots. Ugh. No thanks.”

“Stevie’s not so bad,” Vicki disagreed.

“He’s disrespectful to teachers,” I argued.

“God forbid.”

I frowned at her sarcasm. “Your dad is a teacher, Vicki. It should bug you, too.”

“It would bug me if Stevie was disrespectful to my dad or to any of the teachers that give a crap, but I’ve only seen him wind up the ones that clearly are just there to pick up a payslip.”

Realizing we disagreed entirely on the matter, I stayed silent.

She laughed. “Not all of us are afraid of authority figures, babe.”

I wasn’t afraid of authority figures. I just... I respected the adults in our lives who made time to talk to us, teach us things.

God... “I’m such a geek,” I groaned.

Vicki started to shake with laughter, setting off my own, and we giggled all the way to her house.

When we stepped inside the whitewashed bungalow, Mrs. Brown kissed her daughter on the cheek in greeting and then turned to me. “It’s lovely to see you, Comet.” She engulfed me in a hug, one that I soaked up.

I could hear sounds of cartoons coming from the living room, and I could smell something amazing cooking in the kitchen.

Mrs. Brown let me go and smiled at me, taking me in. “You get prettier every day, Comet.”

I blushed furiously, unused to such compliments, and she reminded me of Vicki as she laughed at my reaction. Vicki was a gorgeous blend of her mixed heritage. Where her mum was Caucasian with light hazel eyes and golden-brown hair, her dad was British Black Caribbean with dark umber skin, dark brown eyes and dark hair he always wore close-shaven in a fade.

“Can Comet stay for dinner, Mum?” Vicki asked, and I was surprised how tentative she sounded.

It had never been a problem before for me to stay over for dinner.

Frowning, I watched uneasiness flicker in Mrs. Brown’s eyes before she nodded. “Of course.”

“Will Dad be home?”

Again, Vicki’s tone surprised me.

“He hasn’t said otherwise.”

They shared a look I didn’t understand, and the sudden tension between them made me feel like an outsider. “I really should probably just go home.”

“Nonsense.” Mrs. Brown smiled brightly at me. Falsely. “But you girls must be hungry now. Let me make you a snack,” Mrs. Brown said, striding down the hall toward the kitchen in the new extended part of the house. As she passed the living room, she raised her voice. “Ben, volume.”

Almost immediately the noise from the television lowered.

I wouldn’t want to disobey Mrs. Brown either. Although she was always kind to me, she had that matter-of-fact, authoritative personality that seemed so prevalent in GPs.

We followed her, not having to respond to her offer because she knew from experience that we weren’t going to turn down a snack. I shot a questioning look at Vicki as we walked, but she didn’t meet my gaze. Hmm.

I waved at Ben, who looked up from the couch as we passed and waved back so enthusiastically that I paused. Vicki’s little brother was quite possibly the most adorable human being in the world, and the only child I’d met thus far in my short life to make me wish my parents had given me a sibling.

“Hey, Comet.”

“Hey. How was school?”

He made a face. “It was okay.” And I assumed my opener failed to pass muster because that was all the attention I was going to get. He returned to eating a banana and watching his cartoons.

I found Vicki and Mrs. Brown in their large, modern kitchen. Whereas our kitchen was the same ugly 1980s-looking disaster that had been in the house for decades, Mr. and Mrs. Brown had bothered to update theirs, and it was all clean lines, white and shiny.

The smell of pot roast made it the most inviting space despite its starkness.

Already in the middle of putting a banana, a sandwich and a cookie on a small plate each for us, Mrs. Brown smiled up at me. “Vicki said you had a particularly good day at school today. What happened?”

I shot a dirty look at my friend and then quickly covered it with a bland smile. “Mr. Stone is teaching us Hamlet in English. Vicki knows how much I love Shakespeare.”

Vicki snorted. “Right. Shakespeare.”

Her mother shook her head, smirking. “I know I’m missing something here, but from the look on Comet’s face she doesn’t want to talk about it so I’m going to let it go.” She slid a plate over to me and then handed the other to her daughter, leaning in to cuddle her as she did so. “Stop teasing your friend about boys.”

While I blushed again at her perceptiveness, Vicki huffed. “It could be about something else.”

“Not at sixteen.”