Perceiver

Chapter 6: Confessionals

It was a week since I had seen my grandparents and come to think of it a week since I had seen Harry. We were down to the final weeks of school before exams and it was no longer compulsory to attend unless you had to see the teachers. I was studying at home and getting things done without the distractions of a bustling class room.

I had never been one to enjoy the judgment of others. Mainly because their judgment always seemed to be bad. I much rather preferred to bury myself with my pondering thoughts. That was until I went to Australia and met people who changed that.

Anyway, the point was I was having a very productive week, I may or may not be doing actual study but I was getting things that I needed to be done, done. And one of the many things was deciding my future, I had been invited to visit multiple universities due to my parent’s high ranking in their fields. Mum the Doctor and Dad the Engineer/ Architect, left a huge amount of pressure on my shoulders to deliver as I was their only legacy. I wasn’t always an only child I had an adopted brother until I was five, that’s when his birth parents took him back. It wasn’t a proper adoption it was more my parents helping out old friends who had had the boy then fallen into a rough spot financially and could barely afford to keep the roof over their head so my parents had taken him in whilst his parents went overseas and built a stable life style. I don’t remember much of him accept his smile, his beautiful smile.

The list of applications they had made to various elite colleges all around the globe was mind boggling and the number who had replied saying they would be delighted to have me after they received my exam results (of course). The names were high class and flashy enough to get anyone excited; Harvard, Oxford, Yale. Anyone except me. I wasn’t interested in going to study at a posh totty university and being yet another one of the thousands of graduates who go on to work main stream jobs and never do anything of any real merit in their lives except live.

My parents were reluctant to even let me study music in year 12 because they thought it was a frivolous subject. You see, I actually want to go write music. I’ve always loved writing stories and books and plays and movies, but it never beat writing music. Matching lyrics to notes. That was what passion was to mean and the only one who ever fully understood that was my Grandma.

An abrupt knock on the door halted my thoughts, thinking nothing of it I simply ignored the sound and presumed it was irrelevant. That was until of course the person knocked again. I rolled my eyes and put my headphones on to cover the sound of any future disturbances. To only feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. Swiping it out I read the name of the caller and sighing out loud I answered in the flattest tone I could muster “Harry.” I could hear him snicker at my reluctant voice before continuing with the conversation, “Clara, would you be so kind as to let me in.”

I hated when he did that, let the words hang in the air like poison. He finished his sentences on up beats as if there were more to the story but he just didn’t want to go further. Well, too bad, I didn’t have time for his games. I wasn’t gonna let him off on a cliff hanger. In the same monotone as before I proceeded to question him. “Why?” Harry was never one for intellectual answers and so I figured he would pull out a stupid, witty comeback but instead his response was simple, direct, to the point and frankly scary. “We need to talk, alone.” His voice was deep, threatening and so alien to me. I had never heard him speak like that to anyone, ever. I swallowed nervously before continuing my interrogation. “What about?” I still wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable letting him into my house when he was in this state, yet something took a hold of my mind and willed my feet to take me downstairs toward the front door.

On the other end of the phone I heard movement and Harry mumbling under his breath. Through the fogged full height windows either side of the door I saw a figure slump against the brick walls of the porch. I assumed something was wrong so I hung up the call stepped outside to find a broken boy sitting on my porch with his head in his hands. I sat down next to him sighing and patting his leg I asked in a more positive way “Well, come on out with it?” “Seriously?” he questioned and as I eyed him obnoxiously he continued on. “Kayla broke up with me…” My eyes widen, I suppose I wasn’t surprised but I was slightly shocked that he came to talk to me about it. “And, your problem is you’ve never been dumped by a girl?” I assumed. “No, the problem is you.” He began to rant “You see, ever since you arrived I thought I hd finally forgotten the girl I fell for in seventh grade, but no you had to come back and flip my life upside down once again.”

And there it was. Harry’s confession, stress he had been balling up ever since I arrived and he pinned it all on me. It was…

Different. I wasn’t my fault yet he made it seem that way, like I was a problem he couldn’t solve and I suppose that was what made me laugh. I was sitting outside my front door, attempting to offer sympathy to the guy I’ve hated since forever and he was blaming me for all his problems. I laughed because I was the one question he couldn’t find an answer to and I planned to keep it that way.