"I am not ready to raise a kid."
"No one's signing you up for a Father of the Year award."
The universe is made of stories. And Maeve Fluer-Reyes had her own.
With pictured misfits in her life, the twelve-year-old was up for anything as long as she...
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MAEVE FLUER-REYES
The city's skyline sprawled majestically from where I sat, watching footsteps that merged into a symphony of several man-buns, lanes enveloped in a bizarre show of graffiti, and random soundtracks that spoke for the taste of the neighbourhood.
Unlike the autumn hues in Manhasset, October in Brooklyn meant winter wrapping its icy fingers around everything.
I couldn't help but chuckle at the people layered in thick coats, scarves, and hats, while I, in my jumpsuit, remained unfazed by the wind growling into my face. The cold, as always, having failed to extinguish the warmth fanning out of my body. I always wondered why I was like a human heater when others were quite literally freezing into popsicles.
Alas, my little superpower.
The tree-lined street ahead of this house was soon lost to the fog, the fog that I was told would worsen by the end of the day. Evening shadows, too, were picking up which meant a couple of hours had passed since Mr. Reyes drove me to his place. And I, being the hopeless creature I was, made nothing out of the time I was given, busying myself with unpacking for the day and using the other half to gawk around.
The room I was given was large. Not as large as the one at my place-Kai's place, but large enough to pull an 'Alice who stumbled upon the Queen's courtroom'. If I were to think about it, everything in the room screamed expensive, and that pretty much summed up why I was smitten.
Natural light doused the space through a mammoth of a window, below which laid a seat, festooned by random cushions, and in case, it wasn't already obvious, I happened to have a bias.
Apart from the sage green feature wall, the rest of the walls were intentionally left plain, presenting the otherwise dim ceiling lights as the star of the show.
The low-beckoning bed, towards the heart of the room, was adorned in crisp cream sheets, with a beige blanket draped across the foot of the mattress. Floating shelves at either side of the bed were another tale to tell, decked by a handful of items including some fake plants, a lamp, and an alarm clock that didn't work. Typical.
My eyes widened into saucers, just like they did earlier when I caught myself in the reflection, an enormous one, on the mirror which stretched all the way from the floor to the ceiling. On that side, atop a small flight of stairs, was the entrance to the walk-in closet, and right next to its folding doors, stood a matte black chest of drawers. Yeah, I was in my main character era.
Home had always been a person for me. I never had a physical place I could truly call home, where I felt safe and secure. In fact, it was the idea of having someone there, someone who wouldn't leave, someone who would be a constant presence in my life.
