Intertwined

Leon

Leon

    It was four thirty pm and Mum was in the kitchen arguing with Eric over how to cook potatoes ready for the guests. I mean, come on. Potatoes are potatoes, in England or America, and I really didn’t remember Mum’s method being drastically, life-changingly different from anyone else’s.

    “You put them in cold water first!” she was saying in a pissed-off tone. Eric (who is, oh, joy, my new step-dad) was trying his best to pacify her whilst subtly boiling water ready to carry on with his initial potato-related plan.

     I attempted to shut them both out, forcing my attention back to the sentence I was halfway through at the kitchen table.

     “Thus A. E. Housman’s approach differs from Auden’s in that-”

    “Why’s the kettle on, Eric?! I just told you that you need cold water!”

      Gathering up my English Lit things, I walked out of the kitchen.

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     It wasn’t that I didn’t like Eric. Yeah, he was annoying at times, but if I didn’t have to live with him- if I didn’t have to live with him in America, in this place that was pretty much as far from home as I’d ever been, if I didn’t have to live with his family, have him pretending I was a part of it (I wasn’t) – I might have thought he was a decent enough guy. I wasn’t blind. I could see he made Mum happy. I could see that easily enough in the way they argued about potatoes, because both of them trusted the other not to leave.

     But oh God why did I have to come?! I just didn’t belong here. I’d spent about two weeks ‘settling in’ (or rather, not settling in) and around a week in my new school, and that had been more than enough to prove to me that I didn’t belong. I couldn’t go in a shop and open my mouth without feeling an outsider. I didn’t understand the transport, the school system, the currency. And I could never work out the time zone difference properly, which had meant my brother and my best mate back in England being woken up at all times in the night.

     I didn’t want to be here.

     I just wanted to go home.

     But Mum wanted – claimed she needed - me here with her. She wouldn’t let me stay at home with my older brother Arthur, or with Dad. I would’ve put up more of a fight but she went on and on about me being her last child, which hurt, and her not wanting to miss the last year of my being at home before university; not wanting to miss my last day of school ever, and then she got a bit teary and then, to be quite honest, I was fucked.

     I spent the summer at Dad’s as a goodbye. It was nice. He was really busy but still, it was- yeah. Nice.

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     The absolute worst bit about moving – and I’m not joking, this was the absolute, absolute worst bit – was having to share a bedroom. (A) Because I’ve always been kinda a need-my-own space sort of person and (B) because I had to share a bedroom with none other than my step-brother, the lovely Jake Nash.

     Or as I liked to call him, Dickhead.

     You wanna know why? Well, let’s recall our first proper conversation. Mum had left me in our ‘shared’ bedroom, and Jake was eyeing me like he was about to start a punch up, and I was just looking at him like, ‘I’ve been on a plane for hours please just leave’, which, granted, was not the most friendly look. But it didn’t merit the following: