Once

Three

The annoying thing was her dad was right. It really was a fine day. As she trudged through the woods between Edgewood Street and School Lane she couldn't help but notice the bright, fresh morning sunlight gleaming through the leaves of the trees overhead; the dappled light twirled over the paved pathway like a thousand fireflies swirling round her feet.

One fine day. That's how all those kids' stories used to start. One fine day, Elle went out for a walk through the woods.

What put that in her head?

She frowned. Maybe she was getting stressed out about exams. Not that she was all that stressed about History. It was one of her better subjects. And it was a weird thing, but Elle was kind of good at exams. Well, she was good at writing, and that was half the battle with exams, after all. If you could write well enough you could get away with more than you'd imagine; even a half-hearted and under-researched argument could be saved if you only knew how to make your point well enough.

Good writing was all about rhythm. It was like music. Some people could just feel how good writing worked - the melody of it, the rise and fall. They knew by instinct how many adjectives were too many, how long a sentence should be for the best effect. Elle was one of those people. She could tell good writing when she read it, and she was good enough at copying the cadence of it to write a half-decent essay when she had to.

She wondered sometimes, in the moments when she wondered idly about what she'd do in the future, what it would be like to be a writer. As a potential job it seemed about the most ideal fit she could come up with. She wouldn't mind it, just being able to spend her days writing, going at her own pace, not being hurried or troubled or having things like board meetings or irate customers to contend with. It would be creative writing, though - not non-fiction or journalism or anything like that. Maybe short stories. Or plays? She certainly didn't have the patience to write a novel, and poetry had too many rules you were meant to follow. There was freeform poetry, of course, but the less said about that the better.

The problem was it just didn't feel at all real as a career path. She knew just what her dad and Kaye would tell her, if she spoke to them about it. They'd say she definitely had the skill, but skill could only take you so far and it just wasn't particularly reliable and had she thought of any back-up ideas and yadda-yadda-yadda. She could recite the whole conversation in her head without ever once speaking a word of it out loud.

She knew all that. She knew it was a stupid pipe dream. But reading and writing were the only things Elle had ever really had a proper sort of interest in. Elle and her stories - that's what her dad used to say about her when she was little. Or maybe it was her mum that had said that. She didn't really remember.

She was reprieved from having to deal with any sort of further existential crisis as the path opened up at that point, and she came in sight of a figure standing up ahead, basking in the early morning sunshine.

For some reason, she smiled. She had walked down this very path towards this very person hundreds of times before, but for some reason, that morning in the bright June glow, she couldn't keep a dopey smile from spreading over her face.

The thing about Elle was, despite moaning constantly to herself that her life was boring as hell, she did occasionally enjoy the routine of it all. She liked being able to second-guess what was coming ahead of her. For someone who has experienced moments of being completely powerless in their life, it was a comfort to know some things she could predict with an unwavering degree of absolute certainty.

Take the boy who was waiting up ahead on the path, for instance. She could barely make him out in the glorious halo-like glow of blinding yellow light all around him, but before any part of him came into focus she knew every detail of how he would look and how he would be dressed as if she had conjured it all out of her own mind.

She knew how he would have his head tossed back, self-assured, confident, almost arrogant but only almost.

She knew how his tousled curls would be tumbling elegantly toward a sort of point over one temple, in a style that looked completely natural and untouched but probably took hours to perfect.

She knew how his hip would be just slightly cocked on one side, one knee slightly bent, one foot slightly perched on its toes - a sort of lounging look, not quite comfortable enough to be for comfort.

She knew, since it was Friday, that he would be carrying a Wednesday Addams travel mug full of lemon tea. (He only had it on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays because his mum was home those mornings to make it for him. On the other days he would have a can of premade iced coffee.)

She could even guess with absolute certainty the order of the pin badges that would be pinned along the front strap of his satchel. Pink dinosaur; rainbow stripes; 'Head Boy' (ironic; year groups at Farway High were too small to justify a Head Boy or Girl); eighties-style pixelated sunglasses; 'Drama Queen'; Frankenstein's monster (as played by Boris Karloff); I ♥ ZOMBIES and cupcake with sprinkles. Always the same. He had stood there, just like this, for five years now.

And he'd only do it four more times, after today.

She forced away the intense pang of sadness that suddenly rocketed through her. They'd be going to Elkington College together in September. At least two more years of seeing each other every day.

And after that?

After that wasn't something to be thinking about just yet.

She stepped out of the cool shade of the trees and into the glorious glowing sunlight. Russell turned his haughty head slightly, and rolled his eyes. He yanked his headphones from his ears, and even from five feet away Elle heard the heavy bass of the music blaring from them.

"Finally," he groaned, relishing every syllable.

Elle gave a half–shrug.

"Sorry. My dad was being - well, he was being my dad. You know how he gets."

They fell into step together, heading up School Lane. It was busier here than it had been on Elle's street. Groups of kids were walking together, chatting and joking, all of them converging on Farway High like ants swarming back toward their anthill.

"What was your dad doing, then, that kept me waiting on my own on a street corner for nearly ten minutes?" Russell demanded. "That's how people get a reputation for themselves, you know."

Elle, with a smile, said:

"He wasn't doing anything, really. He's just got into this weird habit the last few weeks. He likes to wake me up with inane smalltalk about what exams I have that day."

"Inane? That's a complicated word for this time of the morning."

"This is what I mean. My dad's got my all on edge. I'm more wide-awake now than I will be at three o'clock this afternoon."

"Well, you can tell your dad that if he wants to have these inane conversations he can have them in his own time. If he gets us expelled for being late in our last week of school then he'll have to give us both jobs at Farway Bank. And frankly, my dear little Elle, I'd rather eat a glass sandwich."

She laughed.

"It's sweet that he cares, I suppose," she admitted. "He really tried to show an interest in our History exam this morning. He actually used the word Wowzers."

Russell looked at her askew.

"What's wrong with parents?" he moaned, seemingly to the world at large. "Do they go to some school for the terminally tragic? Is it like a night-classes type thing? My mum actually made cue cards to help me remember the major perpetrators of the Holocaust. Honestly, if I never hear another Nazi's name it'll be too soon."

"For more reasons than one, I hope."

Russell smiled as he sipped his tea.

"Wowzers," he said.