The World Is A Curse || Spencer Reid 's daughter || Vol. 1

fourteen

EGGSHELL-FINE

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The next few weeks went by without any major incidents. Maeve and Ely went to school, Max and Spencer went back to work and slowly they started to settle into a routine.

Maeve was weary of it, of course she was, but a part of her was really starting to enjoy it. Things were just simpler with the Reids. They didn't pressure her, didn't seem to expect anything of her that she couldn't give, didn't punish her for any mistakes she made.

School got way easier once Maeve was actually able to see. The first time she pulled on her round wireframes she needed to take a minute to silently freak out about how clear everything was, how sharp. How she could read the pricetags of the other glasses from several feet away even though they were tiny. How she could see every strand of hair when she looked in the mirror and every leaf on the trees outside. It was beautiful, she never knew how much she was actually missing.

So, yeah, school was much easier when she didn't have to transcribe every class. She continued meeting with Sydney twice a week to get her caught up on her classes. Sydney was still- pretty direct and brutally honest but she seemed to warm up to Maeve just a tiny bit.

Ely was Ely, meaning a total ray of sunshine, which Maeve still found pretty fucking bizarre.

For once in her life Maeve didn't have much to worry about. It was a foreign feeling. She lived life always waiting for the next catastrophe. Which was stressful, sure, but she had gotten used to it. And sure, she was acutely aware of her mother who was still out there, doing god knows what, but it was hard to stay constantly vigilant when you had a bed, a room to yourself, three square meals, as many snacks as you can eat and the constant support of genuinely nice people.

Maeve let herself go a little. She eased up, just a tiny bit. She didn't wake up every morning expecting to be thrown out and discarded. She let herself focus on one problem at a time instead of drowning in dozens at once.

Right now this problem was Charlie. Or maybe he wasn't. She couldn't tell yet. She'd feared that the return of his mother three weeks ago would change things. In a way they did. Charlie didn't live with them anymore, only stopping by after school but sleeping at his own place. That was the most obvious change.

There wasn't a lot about his behaviour that changed and a part of Maeve wondered if she was overreacting, if she was reading too much into the slight shift she noticed.

She only knew Charlie for maybe a month, how was she supposed to know if his behaviour was normal? She didn't ask Ely, thinking that he might call her ridiculous, even though that would be very unlike Ely. She was still scared of it. Maeve definitely didn't ask Sydney, she didn't seem like the emotionally sensitive type. She didn't tell anyone, didn't want to make a problem out of nothing. Maeve didn't want people to think that she was seeking out trouble.