Offbeat Magnetism

Chapter One

A young, seventeen year old was staring out of her kitchen window intently, streaks of red and yellow painted the sky capturing her attention with wonder. Curling her fingers around her steaming tea cup, she exhaled with an aura of contemplation, as if she wished to prolong the fading sun before it fell away into the darkness.

"India, I'm leaving." A hostile voice filled the air as the atmosphere changed and India flinched in complete surprise. "I'm going back to work." Her mother sighs, dressed in her usual work attire:. The lady looks drained, as a result of her husband and her job as a defence lawyer making her irritable in general.

"Ok," India stutters, "but it's quite late mum, are you sure you want to leave now?" She finishes, carefully placing her words.

She uses her words like she's diffusing a bomb, hides behind them as if they were the strongest of walls and slides them into the abyss like a self destructive rope. She knows her mother extremely well meaning that she also knows how to deal with her when she gets into one of these moods; when work is the only important thing and everything else hardly matters.

"That's not really any of your business, is it India?" Her mother sneers, her eyes grim and bitter, full of unshed tears and her lip curling in annoyance directed at her daughter.

"You're right, I'm sorry, do you know when you'll be back?" She asks hesitantly, timidly, mindful of her mother's biting words.

Her worries diminish when her mother notices her nervous habits and suddenly, the woman deflates, the aggression seeping out of her, a guilty look settling on her face.

"I'm sorry honey." Her mother whispers mournfully, looking down in shame which makes India feel bad for every single negative thought that she has nearly voiced towards the woman.

Yes, she'll admit that her mother could be a pain and she did get irked at the littlest of things which meant the blame usually got passed onto India. But her mother was tired, she was doing her best, fighting for an already broken marriage with a man she was no longer in love with and hardly ever spoke to.

India wants to scream at her, tell her to leave her father because even though she loves her dad, (the man who discusses scientific theories with her and buys her dorky t-shirts for no reason, who ruffles her hair and puts up with her rambling without interrupting) she can see that they are slowly tearing each other apart piece by piece while trying to clutch onto their marriage and the life that they built together.

They are so hopelessly involved with one another, so hopelessly gripping onto the person that they were when they met that they're shattering one another to try and keep that person alive.

Her parents can't see that their marriage is collapsing, smashing everything in it's wake and ruining their daughter. India can see it, it's like a car crash in slow motion, you know the end result yet you are powerless to stop it from happening.

"It's ok mum," India smiles crookedly instead, hoping her mother won't know that she's lying and see through the act that she plays every single day. She plays the part of a daughter from a happy family, pretending that her mother's hurtful words don't cut through her and make her insides feel as cold as ice.

She pretends to not notice how her parents can hardly be in the same room as each other without yelling or curving their mouths into hard, sour grimaces which are supposed to be smiles.

In turn, her parents pretend not to notice how she's reluctant to say much around them in fear of causing another argument, they pretend not to notice how every time they look at her, she has a book in her hand, trying to lose herself desperately in other worlds.

She realises then just how good each of them have gotten at lying.

"It's not your fault, I'm fine. Just please don't be back too late, you know how I end up worrying." India tries for a joke but understands that nothing about this situation is funny. She's not the one supposed to be saying this, she's not the parent. Yet in too many ways she is, she's the one who checks up on them, makes sure that they aren't crumbling under pressure, stress and exhaustion.

She cooks breakfast and gives her father aspirin and water when he has gotten drunk yet again, she's the one sitting at home wondering where her mother is when she isn't back when she said she would be.

It's not fair, India knows this. She's been doing this since she was fourteen and a half years old but she loves her parents and they love her so she decides that it's her job to help out a little.

By the time India admits that she can't handle it on her own, that she's losing, it's too much, it's too hard, she's not enough, (and she's too scared) it's too late. It's already routine and she can't accept the fact that she needs to break it, she can't bear the expressions on their regretful faces.

India is highly intelligent, she can do a lot of things, she's nearly an expert on musical instruments, the captain of the science and math teams, the leader in the debate and poetry club, she's the girl with Edgar Allan Poe's poems memorised in her head, she's an artist and most of all an avid problem solver.

The only problem she can't solve however, is her life at home.

Her mother rushes out, blowing a kiss to her already forgotten daughter behind her. India turns back to the window, the fading sun which has now disappeared, the red and yellow streaks of the sky now appearing out of place in the dim horizon.

It was like a distorted image of reality that had become her home, the once safe haven for all her problems to decrease had somehow diminished before her eyes into the main source of her concerns.

She took another sip from her tea, the warmth spread from her lips into her stomach, it was as if the warmth took the emptiness away. The void in her spirit that she still couldn't fill.