Relocated

Chapter Four

NEW CHAPTER! I'm excited haha. Even though I'm pretty sure that only like four people are reading this book at all :3 

Update with me: I've just gone back to school and so updates will probably be slow, especially as I'm in all the extension classes (I think you call them Honours in the USA?) And have to abttle it our around homework, my job, family and friends :3

BUT I WILL BATTLE ON! Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter and I will hopefully update soon xx

Chapter Four

At home, I walked up to my room to start on my surprising lump of homework. We were only ever given this much homework in the lead up to a test back home…

Home. That one word filled such an ache in my chest, a pounding in my head. Where was home? Was it in Melbourne, where gang men killed other men in the street? Or was it here with two strangers? I didn’t know.

I fumbled with the old CD player Fred has gotten down from the attic for me. It was old and not all the functions were responsive when I hit the button, by the sound quality was okay.

With the sweet sounds of Koda. I set out my homework at my desk and began work on my maths first. The songs blurred into one as I finished paper after paper. Before I knew it Clara was knocking on my door telling me to come down for dinner.

I glanced at my clock beside my bed: half past six. I had gotten home at four in the afternoon. Had I really spent all that time doing homework and not even notice it? I stepped to the side to move towards my door, but tripped over my bag.

“Oof.”

Detangling my leg from my bag, I saw the little slip of paper which Lyra had given my just before we both left. She’d ask me to call her. I grabbed the paper and glanced down at it. Lyra’s light blue pen scrawled across the page in elaborate loops. Her handwriting was so pretty, I wanted to frame this little piece of paper.

I stared down at it, my heart pounding against my chest. Should I call her? What if she asked me in homeroom why I didn’t call her?

Clara calling my name for dinner again awoke me from my thoughts and I ran from my room and thundered down the stairs.

Already, Clara and Fred sat at the dining room table, serving themselves to lasagne and salad. Fred smiled warmly at me as I sat down across from him. I served myself to the food and scooped a large forkful into my awaiting mouth. “Hey kiddo, how was your first day at school?” he questioned me eagerly.

I swallowed the mouthful of salad in my mouth, my shoulders leaning forward to help the food travel down into my system. Fred waited my reply patiently. “Good. I met a really nice girl today, Lyra.”

“Mmm, what’s her last name?” Fred’s attention, it seemed to be focussed on cutting up his lasagne into bite size chunks. I stared at his hands for a moment. Those hands handled deadly weapons on a daily basis. Killing machines, artefacts of warfare. But they were also the kind hands that helped me up when I fell down, the same set of hands that sat across from me cutting up a plate of lasagne, scraping the knife back and forth so as to keep the greenery on his plate separate.

“Dufort.”

Beside me, Clara and Fred seized up. I cast my eyes between the two. “What? What’s wrong with Lyra Dufort?”

I could see Clara and Fred staring at each other, like they were talking with their eyes. Why did they both freeze over when I mentioned her last name? Fred was staring at me intently. “did she mention anything about an older brother?”