Getting a Clue | ✓

Chapter 1

Author's note: Edited ebook version now available for free on Smashwords or $.99 on Amazon (because they wouldn't let me make it free). This version will stay up as-is, except I am going to go add on the epilogue I wrote for the edited version.

If you want to help the needy, Christmas is the absolute worst day you can choose. Why? Because that's when every single other person wants to help the needy. Well, okay, not everyone, but if you're going to choose just one day to put in the effort there's a good chance Christmas is going to be it.

You're going to have to get creative if you want there to actually be room for you to be useful. A Christmas party at a church was about as uncreative as you could get.

I was there because my parents had told me it would be a good thing to do since we weren't really doing much anyway. Everyone else was there because... religion, maybe? Probably.

I hadn't really objected to the idea. I wasn't really surprised it hadn't ended up being a great one, but, well, whatever. At least I had lemon sponge cake.

In theory it was fine, but because of the aforementioned fuckton of people — most of who were way more invested in this shit than I could ever hope to be — all I'd actually done here was carry a couple of things and then lurk awkwardly and eat their cake.

Probably our real purpose was talking to the vulnerable members of the community who had come here for Christmas dinner because they had nowhere else to go. That's what my parents were in there doing. But fuck that shit.

Not that I didn't care or... whatever. I just couldn't do it. And didn't want to. But mostly couldn't. I couldn't even go inside the room they'd set up for dining longer than was required to grab more cake and watery cordial. I didn't know how other people's brains could work when they were surrounded by so much activity.

So I was just sitting outside, back against the church as I ate my cake, pretending this wasn't painfully awkward. They had a nice fountain.

When I noticed someone approaching, I was very careful not to look at them. It was a great way to encourage people to leave you alone without technically being rude, because they can't be sure you just didn't notice them. A lot of manners was just plausible deniability, really. You can't just straight up tell someone to leave you alone, on Christmas of all days, but hinting it in a way that might have been accidental? Yeah, that's fine.

Unfortunately, this person had now crossed out of the plausible deniability zone. I might have been able to extend it a little further if I'd thought to bring my iPod, but, well, here we were. I looked up.

It was a guy probably around my age — sixteen — and he was upsettingly handsome. He had blond hair down to his chin that was combed in a kind of a sweep over the top of his head that had definitely taken work and hair product to achieve. I wanted to mess it up. Then maybe we could get on the same level. My own short brown hair always looked like someone had messed it up.

Anyway, I definitely didn't want to talk to this guy's handsome face. I didn't want to talk to anyone but, like, an ugly person or maybe an old person who I definitely wouldn't have been sexually attracted to would have been preferable. Social interaction was hard enough without having to pretend you didn't want to touch some dude's nice hair.

"Hey," the guy said, and his smile revealed he had nice teeth, too. Fuck. "You sitting alone?"

And, again, I wasn't allowed to be honest here. Like gee yes I sure am, despite ample opportunity to not being doing that. Weird, huh? Wonder why. Mysteries. But I couldn't just say that. Not even without the snark.