Edge of Seventeen.

I. The Wives Are In Connecticut.

I. The Wives Are In Connecticut.

Robyn was having a really shitty day.

The day had started unravelling, pulling frantically at the web that willed her through the day and was nearing the end of its string, the moment that her pack of red biro pens had exploded all over her brand new brown leather bag, leaving her to play a dangerous game of Schrödinger's Cat — will it or won't it be ruined? Will her hands come back clean or a screaming red? It felt like she was rummaging around in the belly of an oily beast. Then, she'd been pulled out of history, her favourite class, to discuss her dwindling attendance with the guidance counsellor and, although the school were "sympathetic to her situation," otherwise known as the incompetent-father-shaped hole in her chest, curated by daddy dearest himself who couldn't string himself together into some semblance of a man long enough to reach the front door, they were struggling to justify her attendance drifting from orange quarters to red.

Not to mention the fact that both Kirk and Taylor had been harassing her, at the same time, before coffee, early in the morning, asking for the same ABBA CD that she didn't even have, leaving her to do nothing but fix her withering stare on the borderline empty tip jar and seriously consider the side effects of chugging bleach and blacklisting them both.

Forgetting the Doose/Gleason ABBA scandal, which Robyn was desperately trying to do, pulling at the ridges and grooves of her brain like she was both on the operating table and, paradoxically, operating on herself in some sick attempt to perform a memory-altering surgery in search for any kind of distraction despite the fact it could be front page of the Gazette tomorrow, the store had been relatively empty, leaving her to lean on the counter and pour over her essay on the Romantic era.

She was growing tired of the haunted gothic castles involved in Mary and Percy Shelley's reign and the cautionary tales of hubris, fingertips ink-kissed and aching.

The fact of the matter was Robyn had no qualms about writing—she loved it—but her copy of Frankenstein, with spine cracked and pages crumpled like nobody's business, was running out of room in the margins and she was having to move onto neon yellow Post-It Notes. Everything was a mess. She may as well have stuck a straw in her brain and let it pour right out onto the page. She was so consumed with wallowing in boredom and self-pity that she didn't even budge when the bell above the door jingled.

"Oh, Rob, thank God you're here!"

Robyn dropped her pen immediately, grateful for the distraction. "Where else would I be, Lane?"

Lane Kim, resident music buff and the sole reason Robyn's father's store was still in business, rushed towards the counter. She was breathless, like she had just run halfway across town, but she was excited. That much was clear. Robyn had been there when she had started her secret, underground music collection. She was the one holding up the floorboards, meaning Lane's urgent news was incredibly important to her too.

"I—just," she paused, catching her breath.

"Woah, hey, Road Runner, breathe," Robyn moved to pass her a bottled water from beneath the counter that she had been saving for later, bracelets clashing with every movement. "Where's the fire?"

Gulping down the water with a crazed look in her eyes, the Korean girl all but exclaimed, "I finished it! My ad, I finally finished it!"

Rob looked on in amused confusion.

"Your ad?" she asked, smiling as Lane passed her a yellow legal pad covered in big, bold writing.

"Yeah, someone might actually come forward and teach me how to play bass. Or the drums. Or the trumpet."