Head Over Heels ✓

12 / mother's intuition

september, age fourteen

Year Nine was an odd year for Lucas and when summer had hit, he had been glad to see the back of it. Although starting Year Ten meant starting serious work, with GCSEs looming at the end of the two-year course, it wasn't the work that bothered him. He had always been a solid, studious worker: he wasn't distracted by social events when his family occupied the vast majority of his time. He much preferred tagging along to his sister's sign language classes than going to parties with his classmates, his socialisation extending no further than his three friends. Mika, Tom, and Asher.

For the past nine months, Lucas had stood on the sidelines as he watched Adler infiltrate his life, taking up the spot he wished was his. She laughed with Asher, pouring herself over him as though they were glued together, and he seemed to love it. He also didn't seem to notice how much it still bothered Lucas: no matter how much they hung out together, nor how hard Lucas tried to not let Adler bother him, she always found a way. Although he and Asher had made up within a couple of days of their first ever fight, each muttering apologies before they allowed the tension to ruin the Christmas holidays, it still weighed on his mind far more than he suspected it weighed on Asher's.

Lucas was torn. Asher was his best friend - that would never change, he was determined - and part of the unspoken best friend code was wanting the absolute best for that person. As much as Lucas hoped that he was the best for Asher, one thing he knew for certain was that Adler wasn't. Even pushing aside his hang-ups about her, the objective facts were clear. She appeared to believe that her lack of any proper friendship group was because she didn't care; she was independent. It was clear to Lucas, however, that her solitude was by no means her own choice.

He had heard the way the other girls gossiped about her behind her back, their painfully true words mirroring Lucas's thoughts. Adler was stuck-up; cocky; braggadocious - a word of Maddie's choosing, not any of the Year Nine pupils. She had no best friend because none of the other girls wanted to hang out with someone with such a critical eye, someone who always appeared to be giving them the once over.

And yet somehow, in a way that Lucas couldn't understand or explain no matter how hard he tried, she had cast a spell over Asher. He was under her charm, completely blind to what everyone else saw. Being with her gave him tunnel vision, completely oblivious to everything that went on around him. He didn't see the way she looked at Lucas as though he was dirt on her shoe, often moments after putting on a show of being his friend. Lucas was sure that Asher had talked to her after they had fallen out: ever since then, she had made a point of being nice to him when Asher was around.

It was hard to watch. As difficult as it was for Lucas to tell himself to let go, it was even harder to watch his best friend be manipulated by a girl who had him under her thumb. It was as though she knew exactly which strings to pull to dominate him. When they were together, Asher wasn't the Asher that Lucas knew. He wasn't as strong or as determined: the conviction he had shown when Lucas had confronted him disappeared when Adler was by his side, as though she sucked the life out of him without him even realising.

He let her win.

But Lucas wasn't ready to let him go. He wasn't prepared to give up.

The summer holidays were almost over. School was due to begin in less than a week, that week always a let down when his birthday was the last day of August. Between turning fourteen - the last one in his class to do so, except for Mika who had only turned thirteen a few months earlier - and starting school exactly a week later, Lucas never knew what to do with himself. There was no last minute back-t0-school shopping to do when he lived in a state of constant preparedness, no holidays to take when Truman used his two weeks of summer to cover his children's and his wife's birthdays.