The Bad Girl, The Bullet & The New Beginning (on-going)

12 ~ Welcome To The 21st Century, Kid

That night, for the first time in two weeks, Lila walked home from school. Isaac had sent her an apologetic text saying that he wished he could drive her but it would ruin their fake breakup. Reading it had brought a smile to her face and she felt a kind of pang in the pit of her stomach that she knew meant she missed him. Just a few days apart and then they could start over, she reminded herself.

She rounded a corner that brought her onto the road where the Oakleys lived and spotted a figure just ahead of her. She blinked at it for a moment, finding the outline oddly familiar, before her mind managed to put the pieces together.

"Hey, mystery guy!" she called out, jogging to catch him up. Sure enough, the figure spun round to reveal Kit, clad in his usual dark hoodie with an earphone dangling from one ear.

"Princess," he greeted her, stopping walking to let her catch up. Lila decided to let the use of her ridiculous nickname slide – besides, she kind of liked it when he said it.

"What are you doing here?" she asked in bewilderment.

"Going home," he answered with amusement, gesturing to a house just coming up on their left. "Why? What are you doing here? Taking a stroll?" he asked sarcastically.

"Wait, you live here?" Lila asked, "Why did you never tell me?"

"I don't usually start with my address when I meet new people," he deadpanned. "Anyway, why do you care, stalker?"

"'Cause I live four doors down, dumbass," she retorted but with a playful tone to her voice. "Why would I be stalking you? To find out just how many of those black hoodies you own?" she teased.

"You do keep turning up wherever I am," he pointed out.

"Hey, it's not my fault that we both share a talent for getting detention," she defended, "or that we're practically neighbours."

"Whatever you say, princess," he chuckled, approaching the front door to his house and leaving Lila on the sidewalk. "Just don't get too cold hiding in the bushes tonight, okay?"

"You're an idiot," she called out to him just as she closed the door behind him. She rolled eyes and kept walking the last stretch up to her aunt and uncle's house, an amused smile never leaving her face.

It was weird, she never saw Kit around school, not in the hallways or the lunch hall or in any classes, but somehow they just kept bumping into each other. And now it turned out that he lived just four houses away from the Oakleys. For some reason, this thought made her smile and she realised that she actually counted Kit as one of her friends in Lake Larson, despite the fact that she barely saw him and even when she did, all they really did was insult each other.

When she got back to the house, she was expecting her usual interrogation from Penny the moment she stepped through the door, wanting to know how her grades were, whether she'd got in any trouble, all that kind of thing. But luckily for her, instead she found the house eerily quiet and still, with no sign of her aunt rushing around the kitchen or furiously dusting ornaments around her.

"Aunt Penny?" she called with curiosity, wondering if she should be worried.

"Lila?" she heard in response, but the voice definitely didn't belong to her aunt. She peered into the living room where she found her uncle Jon enveloped in one of the comfy armchairs sat behind a giant newspaper, occasionally taking a pen from behind his ear to scribble down answers to a crossword.

"Oh, hey uncle Jon," she greeted him, feeling a little confused but pleasantly surprised to find him there. "You're home early. Where's Aunt Penny?"

"She's working late at the hospital tonight. Emergency procedure," he explained, "so I'm afraid you kids are stuck with my cooking tonight," he joked. Lila hoped he couldn't pick up on the look of relief on her face. Things had been pretty tense between her and Penny ever since the fight they'd had and, after the day she'd just had, she definitely didn't feel like facing any more awkwardness.