The Bad Boy Isn't Into The Soft Girl

Chapter 1

Laurie has had always loved Autumn. Ever since he first looked at her. He first looked at her when they were 11, sitting across Miss Augustine's French class and he saw Autumn roll "À ètudie" out as smooth as butter off her tongue. Laurie found out that he couldn't stop looking. Autumn had black straight hair, with jets of red running across her head. He smacked his lips when he saw Chase looking at him.

Chase staring at him bothered Laurie. He could just shudder his shoulders as if it meant nothing, but he knew looking at Autumn made him feel some kind of way. He was too young to bother with what it was. But he felt a surge of anger inside his veins, staring right back at Chase.

"What's up with you?" Chase gave him a 'what's-bothering-you' look. Autumn had just started to go out with Chase this summer. Autumn was too beautiful for Chase. Laurie knew that. But he was pleased to have the attention of other girls in his grade.

"Nothing mate," he slapped the back of his hand a bit too harshly across Chase's white shirt that it left a rippling effect on the linen. Laurie turned his head towards the ajar windows, hiding the cynicism that he had learnt from his father about things he can't have. He can own things, but he can't really have them.

And, what's more there is to Autumn other than her gorgeous black hair and the faint colour of spring on her cheeks?

***

"How come you're failing in History, Lawrence?" Father's voice had always rocked Laurie off his toes. He lowered his eyes from the man's scruff blonde chest hair to his waist, wondering what's to come. It was noon. The sun was high up in the sky, always dominating the middle of his French window's view, obliterating his vision and forcing him to close his eyes when he stared at the sun for a bit too long. The sun's strong rays reminded Laurie of his father's gaze when he was not happy with something he did. 

"Listen to me, boy!" The middle- aged man grabbed him by the collars and shook him, as if he was drying a wet bedsheet that hasn't been tumbled dry. Laurie felt his vision shake and he felt the sun's overwhelming glare on his forehead. Perhaps it was time to close his eyes and let it all pan out as always. If he pretended he wasn't there, does he have to be?

Was he always like this? Laurie wondered.

The answers that Laurie is looking for will take a few years down the road to welcome itself into his life. For now, he can only close his eyes, and hear his dad's leather belt unbuckle as he could see his dad's black woollen pants hug his slender, athletic legs.

Laurie always thought about his mom when this happened. And he would wonder why did she leave them?

Did she know?

***

Autumn was a soft, silly girl. Someone had told Autumn when she was a little girl, that all girls who have to survive this world have to be a little soft and a little silly. She always wondered why at the peak of her adolescent life she took it to her heart. As she turned 13, she decided she will be the naive, soft-spoken, silly girl that everyone wanted her to be. She will wear pastel silk and will wonder about a time when life was somehow easier and fairer and lovelier. Her life was far from being fair anymore.

Daddy was sleeping with someone else and so was Mommy. The worst thing for her to learn was even at the peak of her parents' marriage, they never really loved each other. They were nice, kind and respectful and sometimes warm to each other when Autumn was around, but they never met eyes when they spoke of their love for one another. Autumn always used to think that perhaps they are shy, and perhaps they are acting the way they're acting because she was around. It was different, of course when she wasn't there. Of course, they were acting differently when Autumn was around. They were cordial in front of her.

Behind closed doors, they would hurl the worst insults at each other in angered whispers. Autumn doesn't remember this or she doesn't like to remember, but sometimes there will be a shrill, screechy sound of a vase flying and hitting the wall opposite the bedroom. One day Autumn woke up the first thing in the morning, and ran to her parent's bedroom for a hug from Mommy because she had seen a terrible nightmare first thing in the morning and was all shaky and trembling, and she felt this weird water fall on her shiny black hair from above. When she touched the drops falling on her hair and neck, she could see it was masala tea, dripping from the ceiling. It seemed that someone had thrown a cup of hot tea in a beautiful arc all over the ceiling, as it contrasted with the white of the intricately patterned ceiling with the dull orange of the tea. Autumn was already too scared to think of what must've happened in there as she couldn't find either her Mommy or Daddy in the room. She ran all the way across the hallways and went in her room and closed the door shut and wept harshly. She didn't acknowledge it, but she knew.

She always knew.

They never loved each other.

And she was in for a hell of more of a revelation.

She would soon find out that Daddy doesn't like sleeping with Mommy, hell, he hates her mom's gender with a passion. Her Daddy prefers young, black men though.

And as she was sprawled over a sofa aching from her first period in her soft pastels pink bedroom, Daddy will welcome her History teacher, Mr Brew for a coffee inside the house's guest room on the first floor.

Away from all eyes, except her mother's.

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© Anjali Sinha, 2021.

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