Finding Hiccup - Modern!Au ✔️

nineteen

Mum's been pissed off with us ever since Dickensgate. She made us tidy our rooms today, which hardly ever happens, and she found a cheeseburger in Heather's room and it all kicked off.
I don't mean a cheeseburger carton, I mean an actual cheeseburger. She'd taken about two bites and put it back into the box and left it on the floor, like weeks ago. It was buried under a pile of rank sports kit. The weird thing is, the cheeseburger didn't moulder. It kind of fossilized. It was pretty gross.
Mum started on the hugest lecture about rats and vermin and hygiene, but Heather waved her away and said, "I have to go, Mum, Ally is like a minute away. You always say we have to be polite to guests and greet them." She stomped downstairs and I felt a bit swoopy in my stomach.
Astrid again. I didn't think we'd be seeing so much of Astrid while Heather was banned from computers.
Mum obviously thought the same thing, because she looked a bit thrown and called down the stairs, "She does know about your computer ban, doesn't she?" and Heather said impatiently, "Of course."

Then she added, as she hopped off the final stair, "But Ally can play LOC on my computer while she's here, can't she?"
Mum looked a bit flummoxed. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. A moment later she was coming down stairs and heading off to her bedroom, saying, "Steven? Steven, what do you think of this?"
That was all about ten minutes ago. I know Astrid is here because I heard her arrive, a few minutes ago. She went straight into the playroom with Heather and I guess they fired up LOC straightaway. Meanwhile, I could hear Mum and Dad in discussion in their bedroom.
"It's the principle!" Mum kept saying. "She's got to learn!"
I think Dad was on the "They're only kids, it's all fairly harmless" tack and Mum was on the "Screens are evil and corrupting my daughter" tack, and they couldn't agree, so after a while I got bored listening. I headed down to the den and here I am now, waiting.
No, not waiting.
Well, kind of waiting.
I put on an old episode of How I Met Your Mother and try not to calculate how long a game of LOC is, and whether Astrid might come and say hello when she's done. Just the thought of her is giving me little twinges. Good twinges. I think.
I mean, not that she needs to say hello. It's probably the last thing she wants to do. Why would she?
Only, she did say "See you soon." Why would she say "See you soon" if she was planning to ignore me for the rest of my life?
My hands are twisted up, and I try to unclench them. She won't come. She's here to see Heather, not me. I need to stop thinking about this.

I turn up How I Met Your Mother and am flicking through my copy of the Heartstopper Volume One comic for good measure, when Snotlout comes charging towards the sofa.
"This pocket paper is for you!" he announces, and thrusts a piece of A4 at me.

𝐻𝒾, 𝑅𝒽𝓊𝒷𝒶𝓇𝒷.

She's drawn the picture of rhubarb in dark glasses again, and I feel my mouth twitch into a smile.

𝐇𝐢, 𝐎𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐒𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞.

I'm terrible at drawing, but somehow I manage a picture of a face with hair and an orange segment for a mouth. I send Snotlout trotting off with it, and wait.
A few moments later I hear Mum and Dad going up the stairs, and some sort of kerfuffle coming from the playroom.
"You are SO UNREASONABLE!" Heather's voice suddenly echoes though the house.
"PLEASE DO NOT SHOUT AT ME IN FRONT OF YOUR FRIENDS!" Mum shrieks back.
I instinctively have my hands over my ears and am wondering whether to escape upstairs to my room, when there's a noise at the door. I look up—and it's her. It's Astrid.
Before I know it, I've bolted into the furthest corner of the sofa.
Stupid, dumb lizard brain.
I stare fixedly at the wall and mutter, "Hi."
"Hi, Rhubarb. So what's this 'orange slice' thing?"
"Oh." I can't help a tiny smile, and my fists unclench a teeny smidgen.

"I think your smile looks like an orange segment."
"My mum says it's like a crescent moon."
"There you go, then."
She moves a little into the room. I'm not looking that way, but my radar is on full twitch alert. If you spend most of your time turned away from people, you get to know what they're doing without having to see it.
"So—aren't you playing?" My voice comes out a little husky.
"Your mum's banned me. She got a bit mad. Heather was helping me play, and she started on this thing about how she was banned, and that included sitting with her friends, telling them what to do."
"Right." I nod. "I can imagine. Do your parents get so stressed about computer games?"
"Not really," says Astrid. "They're more stressed about my granny. She lives with us and she's proper crazy. I mean—"
She stops abruptly and there's a prickly silence. It takes me about three seconds to realize why.
That's what she thinks I am, hits me with a horrible thud, followed by, Of course she does.
The silence is getting worse. I can sense the word crazy floating around in the air, like the words on Heather's French vocab program.
Crazy.
Fou.
I learned that in French, before I quit school. Folie. That means crazy too, doesn't it? Only it sounds like a chic form of crazy. Crazy in, like, a Breton-striped top with red lipstick.
"I'm sorry," says Astrid.
"Don't be sorry," I say, almost aggressively. "You didn't say anything."