These Little Flames - hs

one

                                                                               ONE

A maverick is supposed to be an independent person. Perhaps, in that regard, my name suited me. Maverick.

My story started here, in the middle of the night in my mom's SUV. I was playing doodle jump on my phone, a game I'd sworn off of, but the intense boredom had nudged me to it once again. My mom adjusted her rear-view mirror to look at me.

"You know, it's not a crime to talk." she said, waiting for a response. I continued playing doodle jump.

She sighed through her nose. "Harry, please. Come on. Look, I'm sorry. This is the last move. The Bureau promised this time."

"And we've never heard that one before." I said, tilting my hand left and right. I lost. I started over. "They always promise. You always promise."

"I know. I know, honey, and I'm sorry but we've talked about this. You'll like Atsila. It's a lot smaller than New York and I'm sure you'll make tons of friends."

"Mom, we never stick around that long and you know it. So let's not pretend that I'm about to become Mr. Popular here."

She sighed, adjusting her shoulders. My doodle died again.

...

I held a box with my things in it. I didn't own much. Just some clothes and a soccer ball. It was easier to move that way. It's a nice house, I remember thinking when I got out of the car. Once inside, my mom gave me the grand tour. It had three bedrooms, a spacious kitchen and a somewhat fancy dining room. Definitely bigger than our apartment back in New York.

Consequently, when I walked into 'my' room, I wasn't surprised by how large it was. I had lost track of how many rooms I'd had in the last 5 years and it wasn't uncommon for me to feel no connection with it.

I started unpacking, which would have only lasted minutes had I not started juggling my soccer ball between my feet. When it hit the floor, I continued taking my clothes out of the box.

It was a nice house, but when I finished unpacking, I decided that I would spend as little time here as possible.

I dragged a mattress into the room and fell into it face-down.

"The movers'll get the furniture here by tomorrow." I heard mom say from the doorway. I could hear her footsteps come near the mattress, and her knees move as she bent to the floor next to me. She stroked my hair. "You'll like it here. I know you will. I have a feeling about this place."

"You have that feeling about every place." I mumbled into my mattress.

"True. But those places did have plenty of murders I got to solve. So I wasn't wrong. Not completely. I quite enjoyed myself."

I blindly gave her a thumbs-up.

She kissed my hair. "Night, monkey. Don't forget to set an alarm for school. We may have moved, but I'm still not that kind of mom."

She left, closing the door behind her, and, after setting an alarm, I passed out.

...

When I stood in the middle of my homeroom, I cringed internally. My teacher had asked me to introduce myself, something I had done so many times in a new school that I had the urge to tattoo it onto my forehead.

"My name is Harry Aidan. I move around a lot. That's pretty much it."

I stayed quiet for most of my classes. During Lunch, I avoided the cliché sitting-alone-at-the-loners-table thing by walking around the school, apple in hand.