Ordinary

1.Ordinary

This book is a work of fiction and is not meant to offend anybody. All characters are fictional and any resemblance to someone in real life is unintentional.

No part of this story may be copied in any way.

Start Date: 20th January 2017
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1. Ordinary

WHEN ELIZE WAS SEVEN, SHE wanted to be an anthropologist. She would often amaze the adults in her life by demonstrating the fact that she was much smarter than them, not intentionally, but in the innocence of childhood that a seven year old possesses. When she was eight, she had her heart set on becoming a marine biologist. When questioned on the fact of whether she knew the meaning of the words she was spurting, the child replied with lengthy definitions, as if she had a Wikipedia page stored in the confines of her head. She probably had.

By the age of ten, Elize was displaying such an array of intelligence that her parents planned on sending her to another school for the gifted as the school for the gifted she had been attending simply wasn't flashy enough for the girl's rising fame. Her parents had high hopes, never failing to boast about their Wonder Child. It was because of this that our neighbours had taken a disliking to her family.

I, Vincent, was Elize's only friend. As an eight year old I wasn't judgmental despite the environment which I had grown up in where children were taught to dislike those who didn't fit in with the "normal" image. I remember thinking she was quite nice actually. She was funny, a deep thinker, kind and caring. Elize would often come over to play as we lived right next to each other. My parents would look at Elize with jealousy as they watched us children play in the back yard. She would usually be dreamily gazing up at the sky and conjuring up amazing tales in her mind. Then their eyes would flicker to the boy, their son who would be rolling around in the grass or mud. The disappointment didn't need to be voiced. My parent's loved me, I knew that but they couldn't help comparing me to her on a regular basis.

By fourteen, Elize had been attending her second school for the gifted for four years. I was barely scraping by in high-school. She offered to help me on numerous occasions but I graciously declined the offer. I was more concerned about dance, something which I was surprisingly good at despite being extremely, in fact, embarassingly clumsy otherwise. Besides, she was home only one weekend per month as her school was a six hour drive away. And so years passed and we saw each other less frequently until eventually, her trips home turned to once every two months, then four months and then only during Christmas and summer break. Once she started university, she only came home once the academic year finished. Elize seemed fine on her visits, floating around in a bubble of content, but when her parents stopped hovering and basking in their child's popularity as if it was their own, when all the eyes turned away and it was just the two of us like it used to be, I knew she was unhappy. I just didn't know what I could do to fix it.

It wasn't until one evening, when she was home after finishing her second year in Stanford, as we sat beside the pool in her back-garden drinking strawberry milkshakes and eating dark chocolate, both of our absolute favourites, that I begun to get an inkling of just how unhappy Elize really was. She turned to me, the sun highlighting the golden flecks in her eyes and asked what it was like to be ordinary. At this stage Elize was sixteen and I had just turned seventeen. In all the years I had known her - which was a long time - she had never once looked down on me. I knew she didn't mean it in a nasty way, Elize wasn't like that, and her question puzzled me. She pulled off her stripy socks and copied me, swishing her toes in the pool water.

I remained silent for a while skimming my toes off the surface of the turquoise pool. I still remember how the water felt against my skin, silky and cool. The dusk air was warm and the setting sun coated the garden with an orange-pink glow teasing shadows from behind the trees and stretching them across the grass. Elize's golden eyes waited patiently, stationed on my face.

"I just want to know what it's like to not have to always be the best. You know, to have a normal life where you don't spend your days studying 24/7 because your parents expect you to," she explained hastily.

Her parents thought she was studying 24/7 anyway. But I knew for a fact that Elize spent most of her time at home drawing. The girl was a genius. She didn't need to spend all day with her head in the books. She deserved to be out exploring the world and experiencing life the way no book could teach her. But her parents expected her to be at her desk from the moment she got home until the moment she went to bed every day. Only at meal times was she allowed out of her room. They barely wanted to see her anyway unless she was promoting them. It wasn't a life I would want to live and I couldn't blame Elize for wanting to take a different path if she wished. As I mulled it over I realised that I was ordinary but in her eyes there was absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, she wanted to be like me. I had freedom she had never had, living life without an unwanted spotlight constantly beating down on my back.

"Being ordinary... it's nice I guess. I have more freedom and independence," I said evenly at last. "But I wouldn't mind being a genius now and then," I added grinning wistfully. Heading into my senior year of high school the extra smarts would sure come in handy. Elize smiled sadly and moved her feet in the water mumbling to herself.

"Why do you ask?" I questioned.

She slurped the last of her milkshake through the straw and dreamily tilted her face towards the setting sun. The golden rays bathed her face causing her tanned skin to glow and her dark hair to seem even more glossy. Her eyes closed and I couldn't look away. She was absolutely beautiful and for moments I forgot where I was, enjoying the feeling of warmth on my face, the cool water on my toes and the faint scent of her shampoo in the light breeze.

"I think I would like to be ordinary," she smiled. From that moment on Elize seemed to slip away from me. Her physical body might have been there, she would be laughing and as charismatic as ever but her eyes would often wander towards the horizon and I could tell she longed to see the world.

When she was seventeen, Elize came to see me. She had a look on her face and I just knew she was saying goodbye. But I didn't do anything to stop her. Not even when she hugged me tightly and pressed a soft kiss on my cheek. Not even when she asked "Vincent, tell me why I should stay?"

At the time I couldn't think of any good reason. Even after all these years the pros were always outweighed by the cons. She was trapped, wanted to be free and I wasn't going to be the one to prolong her suffering. Even if I loved her, it wasn't enough to justify her pain. Asking her to stay wouldn't be fair. And so I stayed silent. The next day, Elize quit university. She cleared out her bank account - which had been healthily stocked- and disappeared. I hadn't seen her since but I knew she was out there being extraordinarily ordinary. I thought it was for the best. As long as she was happy that was all that mattered. But that did nothing to stop me missing her. I thought that was the last time I would ever lay eyes on my golden eyed, dark haired genius. After all it was the same in every story. The boy next door never prevailed. That was how it went.

As fate would have it, five years later, our paths crossed again. The reunion was nothing like I ever thought it would be. I was 22 and Elize was 21 when I found her in London standing on the edge of Tower Bridge, her feet millimetres away from a sixty five metre drop. There was no "hello" or "how have you been?" She just asked the same question from when she was seventeen years old.

"Vincent, tell me why I should stay?"