Red Hair, Black Soul (Red & Black #1)

04 | See you around

"What do you mean you pushed someone down the stairs?" Mum focuses her golden eyes on me.

I drop the bomb later this evening, during the dinner. On the ride home, I've decided they were going to get to know about it somehow anyway, so there's no use hiding it. I counted exactly four minutes from the moment we started eating to share the news with them. As a result, I can now watch as Everett is looking for the purpose of his life in his pasta, and witness how Dad nearly chokes on his broccoli. Only Mum seems to proceed the information right away and is now looking at me as if she's trying to understand.

"I mean what I said. I pushed someone down the stairs." I shrug, wrapping the noodles around my fork. "By an accident."

The sound of metal clinking against porcelain sounds in the room as Dad sets his fork down and thrusts his hand through his hair. I watch as it threads through his fingers only to come back to its place.

Now, seeing that either I or my brother are redheads, people usually think that it's our Mum that we inherited the hair colour after. For some reason, the society chose to believe that only red-haired females deserve to be loved and start a family. Apparently, the Dearg family doesn't fit into the scheme, since it's our Dad to whom we owe that noticeable feature. Our Mum is the proud owner of beautiful, chestnut hair that glosses no matter what. I can't count all the times when I wished I could have looked like her instead of like my father. Out of the two of us, it's Everett who takes after our mother more. In his case, Dad's hair colour mixed with Mum's, giving Everett's hair a shade that is more auburn than red. It can't be said about me, though. My hair is one hundred percent red, with no hope of being mistaken with any other colour. In a certain light, it gets a copper hue, but that's all I can count for. Most of the time, I look like the lost Weasley. Considering that not many people can boast with such hair colour, I usually gain a lot of stares while walking down the street. And it would be nice if I liked attention, but for someone who loathes it, it's pure hell. I've even tried dying it some lighter colour a few times before but to no effect. Nothing can tame this red evil - apart from black, maybe, but I can only imagine how I would look like with black hair. And this vision makes me want to stick with my original hair colour, no matter how terrible it is.

Dad's fingers catch my attention, wondering down to scratch his beard that gives him the look of a Scandinavian lumberjack. That's another thing I don't like about him. Ever since we came here, Dad started becoming more and more... hipsterish. And watching someone who's always chicaned my older brother for being different grow a beard and start wearing shirts in colors that would make clowns proud is simply... weird.

"Daira..." Dad begins, scrubbing his hands down his face.

"It's true!" I step in before he can start his lecture. "The bell rang and I was in a hurry. And then the rest just... happened."

I drop my gaze to my plate and start pushing my broccoli around. My hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, so I can't use it to hide my face. Of course, I can always let it loose and use it as a curtain, but doing it now would end in sending my hair flying everywhere, most probably straight into everyone's food. Not wanting to present them with a few new strands of red spaghetti, I decide to put on my brave mask and face them without any barrier.

"What did the principal have to say about it?" Mum asks.

As the former teacher, she always cares about what the king of this hellhole thinks in the first place.

"I don't know." I admit. "I didn't talk to him."

Mum looks worried. "Why not?"

"I don't know." I repeat. "Guess he's too busy to bother with random lunatics throwing other students off the stairs."