Kash soon became a staple member in my household. My parents didn't seem to mind the random addition to our family dynamic. Kash slept over almost every night. He became a step in the routine‒‒‒go to school with him, come home with him. Tina found him very endearing, especially after he convinced her to redecorate my room. He gave a whole salesman’s pitch about how a room defined a teenager in their pivotal moments, and how an authentic room could help me find my authentic self. It sounded like a load of crap to me, but Tina bought it, and so we spent the weekend shopping around local boutiques to find an “aesthetic” for my room.

“You have to be, like, minimalist, but then again you’re kinda an e-boy too,” Kash rambled on, as he meandered up and down the aisles of a music store. “You just need something, I don’t know… alternative. You’re room’s just so boring, and we wanna spice it up a little, but not too much, ya know?” Kash explained as he continued his trek around the store.

“Yeah, sure whatever man,” I replied. I had no idea what he was saying, but a small part of me had always wanted this, in a way. A friend who does this kind of stuff for people. Someone to just take me around and force me to decide. Not that Kash was forcing me to do any of this but I suppose my room was a little boring. I never thought much about it because I always had a million other things to be preoccupied with; but then maybe this was nice, too. Just letting all the serious stuff go for one day to have fun with something so trivial to me as the color of the sheets on my bed or the sorely posterless blank beige walls I stared at every night, as I fought my way into sleep.

We returned to my house and spruced up my barren room with some band posters from the music store, as well as a few other key items that were, as Kash so faithfully insisted, in tune with “the vibes”. When we were done, we showed my parents the finished product. Beth was really impressed by the transformation. Tina was so taken with the LED strings lights synced to my Bluetooth speaker that she insisted we get a few hundred feet so she could line the entire inside of the house with them.

“Think about it, hun! It would be like we’re in Tron,” Tina pleaded fiercely. Beth entertained the notion with no more than a dismissive cackle, but she laid down a firmer response when Tina didn’t let up on her puppy dog charade.

“Absolutely not, not for one second are any of you turning my gorgeous restoration revival Victorian into a Tron museum.”

Every day became easier at school. After the week's previous incident, Theo didn’t return to class. Kash also updated his map and we did a good job avoiding Nate’s flirtatious advances. Even with the hard work of laying low at school, we still occasionally ran into people from the “other pack”, Ryder specifically. He made sure to always screw with us in some way, even if it was pushing us into lockers or knocking our books out of our hands. It was just always a problem when he showed up, but then it never amounted to more than passive hallway terrorism so we were able to make it through the day relatively unscathed.

Kash came home with me every day now, except for Fridays. He claimed he had to be home for some kind of “community pack meeting” or whatever he called it. When Friday’s rolled around, just like today, Kash would take his time to get to the bus loop. Meandering around in the crowded hallways until it was time to go. He was always the last one to get on the bus. I walked him to the pickup loop and waved goodbye as the dusty yellow bus carted him away. Kash’s cheerful demeanor faded quickly as he waved to me from the back seat window. He always got so sad when he had to go home.

I wonder why?

When the bus was out of my sight, I weaved my way out of the carpool crowd and headed home. I kept my pace brisk, taking care to not linger around the school grounds too long. You never knew if Ryder was lurking around somewhere, waiting on one more chance to beat me up for the day.

———

The walk was uneventful and I steadily made my way to my house, skipping up the back porch. I opened the squeaky screen door and found my parents gathered around the granite island in the kitchen.

“There he is!” Tina said ecstatically as she walked over and ruffled my hair. I shot her an annoyed look. She knew my hair was important to me. What was up with her today?

“Oh yes, there’s our main man!” Beth replied with the same energy.

They were acting sillier than usual. Maybe they had an early afternoon happy hour and dipped into a bit too much of the bubbly Moscato stashed in the door of the fridge. Beth was a notorious lightweight‒‒one glass and she was done. Tina always loved to joke that Beth was a cheap date and it’s true, one time we had to hear Beth rant on about how trees in the city never sleep. “They are always in photosynthesis from the street lights guys, they never have a break,” she cried; but quite literally, Beth was bawling after only half a glass of port with dessert.

Tina was slightly embarrassed over the whole thing, the fact that I was seeing my guardian, my role model, end an otherwise uneventful night out on such a chaotic high note. But then she seemed to relent and just let Beth lean fully into her drunken dinner table TED talk because Tina saw me on the other side of the table unable to contain myself. I’m not sure that I’ve laughed harder in my life. It was one of many moments where I learned how silly they could be and over time I learned that the more they wanted something, the more out-there their behavior got.

Beth and Tina walked over to the breakfast nook, ushering me to the ready-made dinner on the table. Beth took my backpack off my shoulders and Tina pulled the chair out for me like a server at a restaurant. I watched as they coordinated this elegant dance of food and gentle ambiance… All of it seemed too good to be true.

Beth had pre-prepared a plate of freshly fried chicken, collard greens, and two flaky oversized buttermilk biscuits, plated with all the simple (but machine-like) elegance you might find on the cover of Southern Living. She even used the good china: her shopping network bone dinner plates with faux 24 karat gold inlays, and the absolutely ancient silverware from her great, great grandmother.

Tina poured out three servings of homemade sweet tea in some colorful topaz crystal glasses I had never seen before (they apparently received as wedding gifts). My mouth watered at the delicious options, but all this still made me a little confused: this was my favorite meal, but notably something we’d only eat at holidays or when we had company over. I looked at them, trying to read through their eyes. But they looked at me like a pair of lesbian Stepford wives, their blinding smiles seemed almost manic and put a fog over anything real in the room.

What's going on here?...

A/N  A very short chapter but another update tomorrow! I couldn't fit the whole chapter in...#sadness but don't worry, you find out soon enough! Thanks for checking out my story! Please make sure to subscribe, like, and comment! Cheers!