FORTUNE: A FREENBECKY STORY

Chapter 5 🐾

"Aunt Mhee!" Freen shouts. The sound of the vacuum stops and an elderly lady appears from around the corner. "Please arrange some clothes for her and call the car to drop her off at home."

Aunt Mhee nods. She's visibly empathetic towards the new girl. She's seen this Freen many times before. But was sure Becky had not.

During the car ride home, Becky did not say a word. She didn't know how to feel or act. She had only met Freen a couple of nights ago so had no right to expect anything serious. She didn't know whether to text Freen to address the situation or if that was a little presumptuous. Her face began to wear a sadness that tears alone could not carry.

The car pulled up to the drive in front of Becky's family home. "We're here Miss Armstrong," the driver announced but Becky did not notice. The driver looked at her in his rear view mirror and repeated "Miss Armstrong".

Becky looked up and caught his gaze in the rear view. She snapped out of her daze and hurried out of the car in an effort to conceal it from her family who were inside. Becky sees the car off holding a nylon bag with her clothes from the night they met. She readies herself to put her best face on not wanting to worry her family waiting inside. She was the golden child after all.

The trouble is when you're a golden child, you learned to suppress your needs, to achieve, and to be as easy as possible in order to be loved. The golden child is the child who becomes highly self reliant and almost appears to raise themselves. Sometimes people will notice the golden child is "mature for their age." They place a lot of pressure on themselves. This leads to extreme anxiety. And extreme shyness. You learn to wear a mask to please others.

As Becky walks up to the door she begins to hear scuffling noises behind the door. "BonBon must be happy I'm home" she thought. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out her key. She twists the key and door handle and swings the door open.

-BANG!-
A loud noise jolts Becky to alert.
"SURPRISE! Welcome home Richie!"

She looks up and briefly catches the disappointment on their faces but sure enough, behind them she sees BonBon barrelling towards her with Joy. "At least BonBon is happy to see me" she thought, her arms wide open to receive him. 

"Hello baby! I know your happy to see me! I know boy," Becky says, as her dog leaps at her excitedly. She scratches him under the chin and he wriggles around in delight.

When she finally caught sight of her Ma Becky smiled. She was a petite woman which was funny because she was currently holding a box of decorations half her size.

"Hi Becca, how was work?" She says, without actually waiting for an answer, she continued "your brother is already on his way, can you go up and get some more poppers? We used so many on you. They're in my closet in the back!"

Becky nods and gives her Ma a peck on the cheek, "Hi Ma" she says.

She begins to scan the room for more familiar faces then hears a voice call out to her "Becky, come help me hang this up"

Becky smiles as soon as she turns and sees Chen who was a childhood friend. She rushes over to him and grabs the right edge of the banner and mounts a chair to tape it up above the back wall opposite their foyer.

She dismounts and immediately gives Chen a big hug. She hadn't seen him since she got back but was pleased he came. "I'll be back!" Becky says as she makes her way up the stairs.

As Becky enters her mothers room she notices a letter on the floor in front of the door. The letter looked old. Like centuries old. But Becky picks it up and places it on the dresser beside the door. She swims through the clutter in her Ma's room finally reaching the closet in the back. The light in the closet was broken and it still had not been changed since her Da last came home so she strained her eyes and rummaged through the closet.

In that moment she noticed a blue light in the back corner of the closet. She crawled towards it and picked it up. It was a small perfume bottle that looked exactly the same as the one she had seen in Freen's room the day before.

"Is this a new brand?" Becky questioned.

"BECKY! HE'S HERE!!" Mrs Armstrong exclaimed.

Becky grabbed the poppers now able to see it with the light of the blue glow emanating from that mysterious perfume she was holding. Without thinking she dropped the glowing blue perfume into her pocket and rushed down to greet her brother.

"SURPRISE! Welcome home Richie!" Everyone shouts as Richie enters the house. Richie's handsome face lit up at the sight of his loved ones but especially at the sight of Becky. Becky could tell that he had missed her and he could tell right away that she wasn't herself. Even though they were two years apart in age they behaved like twins with special intuition.

Richie rushed to hug his Ma and made his way over to his sister pulling her into a hug also. His hug with Becky lasted a little longer than with others as he patted her on the back as if to comfort her.

Just then, Richie's best friend Chen shoved a plate of food into his hands and whisked him away.

Becky stayed near the food, offering her Ma assistance as required. But when the party died down she slipped out into the garden to sit on the wooden swing. She brought out her phone and pulled up Freen's number her thumb hovering over the call button. Becky had always been courageous but she had never been so scared to lose anything this much in her life.

After a minute Becky put her phone back into her pocket and looked up at the sky in deep thought for several minutes and had all but zoned out before noticing a weight shift on the wooden swing. It was Richie who sat down beside her.

Unaware of how much time had passed, she asked "what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be having fun with everyone?"

"Shouldn't you?" Richie asked. "They've all left. It's late."

Becky looked up at the sky once more realising she could now see the stars.

"What's up?" Richie asked.
Becky smiled, "nothing much"

"I've know you all your life." Richie claimed.
"Ha! I haven't seen you for 3 months, a lot can change in 3 months" Becky replied.

Becky looked down and let out a sigh "I fell in love".

Authors Note:
Apologies that there was no new chapter yesterday but this chapter was a little longer than usual. I hope that makes up for it. Please feel free to leave a comment telling me what you think is going to happen! That makes it fun for me too.

- I'll be back with five chapters next week. -