The Corruption ✔️

Chapter III

I Have No Idea How To Comfort People.

Tyler Foley

My father had finally convinced Lucy that it was best if we moved to his significantly larger holiday home. On one condition. (Of course! Women always had a condition or a catch) We had to stay in their house for one more week and really spend time as a family in their neighbourhood. The week that followed was long and awkward. The days seemed to drag on and I spent most of it on my bed talking to Colton. I sincerely regretted this afterwards as I would wake up every morning with severe back pain. However after a while even Colton got bored of speaking to me and I had to find other ways to entertain myself.

I had spent two whole days wasting the daylight cooped up in my room. I looked out the window and I expelled any thoughts of stepping out. It wasn't even Autumn yet but the weather looked arctic. I missed the scorching weather of Cali. If I was in California now, Colton, I and the rest of our troop would have been at the nearest beach-ogling the bikini-clad babes. But in Alaska the weather was always dreary. It didn't seem to fluctuate at all, bar the occasional biblical torrents of rain and flurry of snow.  

But there was only so much that a teenager could do in a room with no Wi-Fi and barely any signal. I had started to get restless. I was wearing the carpet away from pacing the room and I was on the brink of bed sores with the amount of hours a day that I spent on bed just staring at the ceiling. I went downstairs in search of amusement. I strolled into the kitchen, deciding that the said search for amusement was a parching task.

'Hey, Tyler.'

I looked for the source of the overly-enthusiastic voice and found Andrea crouched with half of her body in the freezer. She looked up at me with a wide grin splitting her face. It was 8.00. No decent human being should have been awake, never mind smiling. The permanent frown on my face darkened as she continued smiling at me. When she realised she wasn't going to get a smile back she blushed and turned her attention back to the freezer. Her being occupied with her survey of the contents of the freezer gave me the opportunity to get a good look at her. The first thing I noticed was the ludicrously bright yellow t-shirt she was wearing.

'What the fuck are you wearing?'

Her eyes lit up at the mention of it, as if she was just waiting for someone to bring it up. The glow in her expression dimmed significantly as she comprehended my depreciating words and dark frown. She rose from her crouched position and her top rose with her. It came to rest mid-thigh upon her sand-coloured legs. Whatever cruel words that I was about to say became lodged in my throat as I caught sight of her legs that seemed to stretch on endlessly.

'What?' she snapped uncharacteristically when she caught me staring. 'There's nothing wrong with wearing SpongeBob t-shirts.'

I scoffed and grabbed her chin. It didn't go unnoticed by me how her breathing hitched.

'You're sixteen not six.'

A slow smile stretched over her lips.

'Aww, buddy.' She cooed with a pout. 'What's your problem with SpongeBob?'

My glare intensified and I snatched my hand away from her as if I had been burned. She grinned widely with pride and pushed a spoon into her mouth. She shrugged her shoulders contently and went back to her search. I rolled my eyes and pushed past her.

Every other time we met was similar to this, the exchange was thorny on my part and Andrea was as sickly sweet as always. The week crawled on at snail's pace and the last day of the week couldn't have come slower even if it had tried. Lucy wanted to celebrate the last day of our stay in her house by treating us out to her favourite diner. But my father declined with a lame excuse about how he wanted to spend the last day relaxed with his family. I almost gagged.