(DISCONTINUED)

○ 2.6 :: The Flat Stan Clan ○

Dedicated to @jemjemdirectioner for adding this to her reading list :)

*

I spent most of the morning thinking about what Niall had told me just hours before. It was utterly consuming me, which wasn't good because I had an assignment for my Creative Writing class (which started at three) that I had been putting off for a week. How could I concentrate when pretty much everyone I had made friends with at this stupid college apparently had supernatural powers? How could I possibly have missed that? There was no way there weren't any possible signs that I hadn't seen. Was this why Harry could never look me in the eyes when he was mad? Was this the reason he shut me out all the time? Was this the reason he constantly pushed everyone away and acted like an ásshole? Was this the reason there wasn't a single mirror in his room? What was up with that, anyway?

I looked back down at my Creative Writing assignment.

Write about an experience/event/person/etc. that changed you in some way as a person.

There were a lot of ways I could've gone with that question, but none of them of seemed to be flowing out onto the page any time soon. A lot of things had run through my mind when my teacher had first announced it as the title: my mother, Edna and of course Harry... but I couldn't choose. At first I was just going to go with the person who affected me the most, but I wasn't ready to allow my mind to return to the dark place it always did when I thought of my abusive mother, because that's what she was. Abusive. She had abused me - both physically and emotionally - and I wasn't prepared to mentally go through that again without Harry by my side. Speaking of Harry, I'd wanted to write about him, too, but how typical and cliché was that? I wasn't some love-sick twelve year old, writing about the cute guy that looked at me today inside my fluffy pink diary. He hadn't exactly changed my life massively, either. The changes Harry had provoked in me were more subtle, like being able to stand up to The Bìtch Next Door, or actually liking my hair curly for the first time since I hit the age of thirteen. And how was I supposed to explain the effect Edna had had on my life? She had given me a mother. That was all there really was to say. She given me the motherly love that my biological mother seemed incapable of. How could I explain that without having to inevitably explain everything about Theresa as well? Miss Fern had said this assignment needed to be written in great detail and take up at least two pages. How we were going to present it was up to us; it could be a simple essay, a diary entry or a story about the day(s) that changed us, a poem... The possibilities were endless, really.

And I was still sitting on my bed with a new, completely unused pen between my teeth and a piece of lined paper in front of me that was covered in a whole lot of nothing.

I uncrossed my legs and flopped onto my back, letting out a huge sigh that almost seemed to make me sink into the mattress. Part of me wished I could. To just be able to bury myself in the foam (whoever furnished the college obviously understood the needs and - ahem - urges of college students, and had decided that the sound of creaking springs was the last thing we needed in the middle of the night), away from the assignments and surprise superpowers and just rest - not sleep. I wasn't particularly tired, but I needed a break. Everything was getting too much.

It was this thought that for some unknown reason pushed me to text Harry. It was ironic: when my problems became too much for me to handle, I escaped and distracted myself by running straight into the arms of the person that had thrown me into the majority of them. It was ultimately stupid, but it worked somehow; I was distracted, and Harry was the distraction on which I was relying to keep me focused. It made a lot more sense in my mind, or when I was actually with Harry, and he was saying something sarcastic or annoying or cute, and I would laugh or roll my eyes or blush. It didn't seem like such a bad idea to be around him anymore (especially because of this whole super powerful dangerous ability he was hiding) when I was smiling so much that my cheeks ached, or when my heart was skipping a beat, or when I was falling apart - in the best way - in his grip on top of a shaking washing machine. Lately, my life had just been a series of bad ideas and confusing back and forths.