Fated

Chapter 6

The rest of school passed uneventfully. I wrote up some ideas for English, avoided Natalie in the common room, and plotted the untimely demise of my economics teacher - Mr Marina. Walking home, I caught up with Jake again; we aren't in any of the same classes so I have to make an effort to see him. Of course he gave me another taunting lecture on the importance of moving on from Natalie with some random girl. Still, I don't think I'm ready to 'move on'. Because moving on means accepting what happened. 

I'm hiding in my room now, once again encased in the folds of my bed with a book. Honestly, with the amount of money I've spent on random books which booktok or booktube has 'recommended', I could've bought a new computer. But that's beside the point - reading is my escape. And if I don't like what's happening in the book, I just put it away and switch to another.

I can hear my mum moving about downstairs, probably making dinner, or vacuuming some corner of the house nobody but her looks at that closely. Her cleaning is secondary only to her tea drinking and obsession with The Crown, and Call the Midwife. And of course, spending time with me, her amazing son.

Wandering downstairs, I discover that I was wrong - she wasn't cleaning or cooking, she's doing star jumps. If you had held a gun up to my head and demanded that I guess 100 times what my mum was doing downstairs, you'd had better start organising a cleaning company to scrape off the blood and pieces of brain off the eggshell walls, because I would never have guessed star jumping in front of a passive aggressive YouTube video. "Heyyy Mum, what is going on? I haven't seen you exercise since, well, ever."

"Move it! Only 15 left now!" the video wails.

"Chris! you're back! I didn't hear you come in," she says, whipping her head around to look at me and abruptly stopping her exercise regiment.

"Don't stop on my account mum - you'll be better prepared than the rest of us when the zombie apocalypse comes. Or when Chris Hemsworth finally walks by in our town and you're the only one who has the stamina to chase him back to America."

"Chris, stop it. I was just trying to work in a bit of exercise to my busy day. It can't help to be more active. You should join me, instead of spending all afternoon curled up in your bed like you usually do."

"How else am I going to hit my goodreads goal, Mum? You know all my friends can see if I don't get it. I've got a reputation to live up to; it's October already and I I'm still 25 books away - that's like 3 books a week. Thats a lot of time in my bed. So, really, I'm just working towards my goals."

"Yes honey, I'm well informed of your goodreads goal, as I was yesterday. And if you want to be a publishing editor when you're older its great you are reading so much. But still, don't neglect your schoolwork, or seeing friends so much. It's not the same as seeing them in school," Mum says with the air of parenting which lets me know a lecture is coming on. "What about seeing Jake? It's been ages since he has come over."

This is not the first time she has said this so I just give her the same response. "Jake's busy. As is Dylan and Nathan. Plus, I've got loads of suff to do anyway."

"Okay, okay. But maybe you could do something else. Oh, I know - why don't you make dinner today. I know how much you like to cook and it would do you some good to get out of your bedroom, even if you refuse to invite a friend over."

It's not a question. I can immediately tell that this was her plan all along: give the same lecture about friends and not 'getting out' my bedroom, so that she can get me to cook dinner. Sneaky woman. I do like to cook though, and if I do dinner, then I get to choose what we are having, which means carbonara. "Okay mum, fine, I'll cook. But don't think I don't know that it was your plan all along." She just gives me a smirk at that and goes back to her YouTube video. I walk into the kitchen.

We have all the ingredients, and although I've made it a thousand times, I search up a BBC GoodFoods recipe anyway. As I'm scrolling through the list of potential recipes, I can hear Mum huffing and puffing int he living room. I know she's worried about me after Natalie - and it is her job to worry about me to be fair - but I've got everything under control. Yep, everything's under control. At that moment, the bag of pasta I was trying to open tears completely down the middle with a great ripping noise, causing a shower of spaghetti to rain down over the kitchen floor. Oops.