Floating

Chapter 3

"Can you pass the strawberries?" Ava's mom asked.

Ava looked up from her book and reached out to pass the bowl of strawberries to her mom.

Ava's mom had long brown wavy hair, not dissimilar to Ava's. Glasses perched on her nose, a consequence of the long hours she spent staring at the computer coding for various companies. Her coding consultant job allowed her to stay home as she worked, a fact that greatly helped with her constant migraines.

"So, what are you and Jenny planning for the bake sale?" Ava's mom asked as she scooped the strawberries out into a separate bowl on her placemat.

"Just the usual. Cupcakes. Jenny thinks we need to be more creative with the frosting this time so we're going to go off of the unicorn trend. According to the Internet, unicorn cupcakes always sell well."

"Vanilla again?"

"'Course."

"I honestly don't know how anyone can hate chocolate." Ava's mom shook her head in disbelief.

"I'm sure you would too if you bit into a chocolate muffin in preschool and got a bee sting instead of a chocolate chip," Ava noted absentmindedly. Jenny's impressive dislike of chocolate meant that Ava's mom always ended up struggling a little when it came to dessert at their house.

"Well, if you two need anything, just let me know."

Ava gave her mom a quick smile and nodded. Unlike many of the other parents at the school, Ava's mom was never too concerned with her grades and could always be counted upon if Ava needed help with her extracurriculars. Which didn't happen often, but was nice to keep in mind.

Pushing her glasses upwards, Ava's mom opened up the newspaper. Shaking her head, she said, "They still haven't found that boy yet." She sighed, "His poor parents."

Ava looked up from her book again. Simon had been a basketball star, ranked nationally - but had really made headlines only when he disappeared about two months ago. Law enforcement hadn't been able to find him since, despite the missing posters on every available post in Fairmont.

His disappearance was startling for most of the parents in Fairmont, a place which had, by all standards, been considered generally a safe city. It was the reason Jenny's parents' no longer let her walk home alone. Ava's parents did, but only because she reliably had her cell phone on at all times and had proven through her judo classes that she could defend herself. Still, she knew her mom worried.

The two of them finished their dinners in silence, but a comfortable one, with Ava's mom reading the newspaper, and Ava attempting to read her book, but her thoughts wandering from subject to subject.

When she finished, Ava got up and said, "Spaghetti was great, Mom," as she put her dishes into the dishwasher. "Gotta finish an essay."

Ava's mom nodded through a mouthful of spaghetti before calling out to Ava as she walked up the stairs, "Dad says he'll be home around ten again!"

Ava jumped up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Walking to her room, she passed two crowded offices.

One was her mom's, and was filled with stacks of assorted objects - paper, pens, erasers, books, cassette tapes - a large top-of-the-line computer monitor, an ergonomic keyboard, and a maze of power surge protectors and extension cords. Ava was sure that was a safety hazard somehow, but the office had always been like that, and nothing disastrous had happened yet.

The other office was her father's and was considerably neater. It also featured a computer monitor atop at wooden statuesque desk, but the wires were neatly organized. Books lined the wall-shelves on one side of the room, while the opposite held a filing cabinet with several drawers of, what Ava assumed, were neatly organized files of paper.

It was an unspoken rule that no one walked into her father's office, despite the door always being open. Ava was told her father for the State Department, but she had long since disregarded that idea and determined that he most likely worked for the CIA. It would explain the long work hours, the constant moving, and her father's insistence on self-defense classes, in addition to language, swim, CPR, and coding lessons.

As a result of her extensive learning and extracurriculars prior to middle school, Ava could speak French and Spanish proficiently, was relatively well-trained in judo and fencing, could hack most websites, and was generally one of the top athletes at her schools.

Unfortunately, social skills had not exactly been the top priority in any of her activities, and so the last three times her family had moved, she found herself struggling to make friends. Ava was grateful to Jenny for her constant companionship and enjoyed Fairmont High the most out of any of her previous schools.

Ava opened the door to her bedroom and plopped down onto the bed. She pulled out her laptop and started typing.

"The Effects of Superstition in the Medieval Ages." She would have to change the title later.

A few hours later, satisfied with her essay, she submitted it digitally and ran downstairs. She found her mom munching on a bar of chocolate and watching an episode of Stranger Things. Grabbing a bowl of ice cream, she joined her mom on the couch until the end of the episode, when she got up, brushed her teeth, changed her clothes, and hopped into bed.

As she slowly drifted off to sleep, she heard the back door open and the familiar sound of her father putting down his briefcase. She glanced at the clock. A couple hours later than expected, but that wasn't usual. Her mother and father spoke in low voices, their usual greetings, followed by a kiss and the sound of tired footsteps walking slowly up the stairs.