Luke Castellan xOC
Once I had wondered what was holdin' up the ground
But I can see that all along, love, it was you all the way down
(completed 10/2/24)
She didn't cause trouble on purpose, of course, but it always seemed to find her.
No matter how many times she was told off by her mother or given detention at school, she remained the poster child for accidental troublemakers. She tried so hard to be the daughter her mother wanted, but whether due to unrealistic expectations or her own inability to meet them, she always fell short. So, eventually, she just stopped trying to be good. It wasn't difficult once she let go. The chaos flowed from her.
Which explained why she now sat in the hall outside the principal's office of her military school, kicking her legs absently back and forth. Her uniform was wrinkled, soot smeared her hands, and her curly hair, though tied back in a neat ponytail, had a few errant strands hanging around her face. The scent of burnt paper lingered around her like the smoke from a dying campfire. Twelve years old and at her eighth school in as many years, and from the look of things, it wouldn't be her last.
She hadn't meant to light the chemistry lab on fire, but the light had hit her beaker just right and caught her worksheet on fire. At least, that was what she thought happened.
Weird stuff always seemed to happen to her and no matter how much she protested, none of the adults believed that it wasn't her fault. When she had been six and accidentally let a python into her pre-school, nobody believed that it had been a worm when she had pulled it from the school gardens. When she was ten and her mother paid for her piano lessons, she hadn't meant to find out about her piano teacher's affair with the pool boy, but it had led to their divorce anyway. And of course, they blamed Andromeda. She shouldn't have been spying.
Andromeda wasn't a bad kid—at least, not intentionally. She tried, at first. She really did. But when you're born under the Callaway name, things are different. There are expectations. Unspoken rules. You either rise to meet them or get swallowed by their weight. Her mother, head of pediatric neurosurgery, would prefer the former. Her father, a high-powered lawyer, would expect nothing less.
The Callaway name was a curse, a gilded cage full of expectations and rules. Andromeda didn't really fit in with the rest. She wasn't like Marcus, who was the perfect child, obedient, kind, honest, ambitious, the golden boy, as Andromeda's mother constantly reminded her. But it was hard to resent Marcus for that. He couldn't help being good, just like Andromeda couldn't help being bad.
Marcus was her best friend, her mentor. He had been the one to teach her how to surf, her favorite past time. He had said it was a metaphor, something about controlling the chaos, but Andromeda wasn't sure what it all meant.
