Droplets

Chapter 1: Baby Blue

Warning: Breaking Bad spoilers.

"Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path."

- Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure why we have the pool. I don't swim in it. My dad doesn't swim in it (or isn't allowed to swim in it, over mom's fear of the neighbours seeing how fat he's become in his middle age). And I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen my mom swim in it over the past few summers - all times when the twenty-something year old neighbour just happened to be trimming the hedges that connected our back yard to his.

So, I'm especially unsure why, exactly, mom thinks it's necessary that she needs to hire a pool cleaner to clean said never-swum-in pool.

Apparently, it's because the hedge likes to shed, and the leaves block the drain. Yeah, okay. I'm pretty sure I can see a grand total of three leaves floating in the water, from my perch on the kitchen bar stool. I drum my fingers against my temple, watching one leaf drift into the shallows, beaching itself upon the blue-tiled steps. It's May. The hedge shouldn't even be shedding at this time of year. Jesus.

But when you've got money, supposedly the logical thing to do is to spend it all on unnecessary commodities that we probably - definitely - don't need. My mom's pretty damn good at that.

Okay, so maybe it's nice being spoiled once in a while. I'm not gonna lie about that - especially since dad brought back the new Xbox One the other week, to make up for not having made a single dinner at home for the past ten days. Not that I really noticed anyway. He couldn't care less about his home life; I know for a fact he's banging his secretary every night at the office. The blonde ditz has been stupid enough to call the house phone on more than one occasion whilst I've been here.

"Jean," I hear my mom croon as she wafts into the kitchen in sky-high black heels, her ankles wobbling. She looks ridiculous, as usual, the epitome of a once-upon-a-time trophy wife, her lips and forehead strained with Botox. "Jeeaaan, darling, do you have twenty dollars on you? I forgot to go to the ATM this morning."

I roll my eyes, and tug my wallet from the back pocket of my jeans; the mottled leather still stinks of tanning chemicals, despite having had the thing for almost a month now. There was nothing wrong with my old wallet, of course - but mom insisted the old one was ugly. It'sHugo Boss or the highway, in this family.

I have two, crumpled tens folded up; I hold them out to my mom, who plucks them from my fingers with her newly-buffed dark red talons.

"Thank you dear - I totally forgot to get any cash to pay the pool cleaner today," she says, extending her vowels in a dramatic fashion. From the drawer adjacent to the stool I'm slumped on, she pulls out a plain envelope, tucks away the money, and presses it closed. In her near-illegible scrawl, she pens something along the lines of: Trost Pool Servicing & Repair.

The summers in Trost are pretty fucking hot, and pretty much start come the middle of April. I'm sure most houses in this neighbourhood have a pool - it can't be a bad business to be in at this time of the year, that's for sure. Although, saying that, I can't quite remember at what point last year's pool boy just stopped coming. It was probably something to do with the goo-goo eyes that my mom had the tendency of throwing his way, and my dad - the big, fucking hypocrite - probably picked up on that.

I can't even remember what that pool boy looked like, to be honest. Last summer was a bit of a drag, what with all the studying for my high school finals, and then the following burn out after all that intensive brain-cramming, which lasted for pretty much all of July and August. I remember I watched a fuckload of TV that summer - mainly because, hey, the couch was pretty fucking comfy and I couldn't really find it in myself to actually leave it, but also, because it was the best place to be to avoid my mom's ridiculous attempts at flirting with said pool boy. Yeah, that was kinda fucking embarrassing. The "kinda" is an understatement.