In the Moment//Ed Sheeran

T.W.O

Bethany

June, 2007

My parents are wildflowers. They grow wherever they damn well please. When it was hot, they grew where it was cool, and when it was cool, they grew where it was hot. I had to go with them to Hawaii and Jamaica and whoever else they decided to live. Suffolk with my mom's sister seemed the be the place where we would settle down for the first time.

Suffolk was the exact opposite of where I had just come from, which was California. California was hot, loud, and dangerous in some parts. Suffolk was clammy, calm, and the most danger I've heard of was a crazy woman who killed someone a long time ago, which was featured on an ID Discovery special. It was the perfect place for my mother to write her new romance novel, Rina in Rain, which was about was about a woman who lived in a small rainy town and was trying to discover love. Sounded like me.

It was my first real year of being a teenager. I had a car, freedom, but a surprisingly, a lack of actual friends. Because of my parents untraditional child rearing, I was incredibly shy and slightly awkward. My parents homeschooled me my entire life, and sometimes, my only friends were people who didn't speak the same language. After a while, I gave up on friends and turned to books for support, just like my mother.

I went downstairs for breakfast, my nose stuffed into yet another book I had purchased at a book store at the airport. My parents bought me books in bulk just in case we moved somewhere where the reading materials weren't in a language I was fluent at. By the time I finished reading all of the books, we were leaving again.

"Better watched where you're going, sweetheart," my dad said, kissing me on top of my head as I wandered into the kitchen. He handed me a plate of eggs I took without looking away from my book.

"Oh please, dad. I'm a master at this," I tell him. I sit at the table, besides my mom, who was typing so furiously on her laptop I thought the keys might break.

"You cannot be cooped up in the attic all day reading, Bethany." My mom said, not breaking stride. I put the book down.

"You're being hypocritical."

"No, I'm being a mother. And one characteristic of being a mother is being hypocritical, yet practical. Your cousin is here and you two only see each other once in a blue moon. She's the only family you have really." My mother stopped typing and peered at me though her glasses.
My mom was like me in in characteristics, not looked. She looked old around the edges, like an old book, fraying with small font and hard to read. I was a new book, which bright white pages and large print, bold and unbent.

"She doesn't like me." I said, scooping a bite of eggs into my mouth before returning to my book.

"Of course she does."

"She calls me her kids cousin. I'm only a few months younger than her. She almost left me at the bonfire the other day. I would prefer to hang out with my own company, thank you very much."

"Your mother is right," my dad said, frying bacon at the stove. "We haven't done a very great job socializing you. Time to get in your hours. Then I can give you your 'I'm Sociable' badge."

"I am sociable. I made several friends at the bonfire. Tiffany, Helen, Christy, Ed--"

"Hold on," my mom said, taking her glasses off and giving me her full attention. "Ed?"

"Oh, he's Mina's very awkward and slightly antisocial boyfriend. He and I get along fine."

"Are you suppose to get along fine with your cousin's boyfriend?" Dad asked me, testing me. I lowered my book and looked at him, my eyebrows depressed. "I don't think I've ever had the boy talk with her, have I sweetie?"