Eight Boys and a Walker girl

47 | On my way

47 | On my way

A lot has changed by the time we finally return home.

Before, I wouldn't be waking up at 7:30 to the sound of a car engine rumbling beneath my window, it's horn beeping loudly enough to wake the entire street. I wouldn't hear the key in the front door clattering as Mum lets in the owners of the car, and I wouldn't be jumped on top of and yanked out of a peaceful sleep by four girls- bigger than me- and long hair somehow finding its way into my mouth.

Most of all, those girls wouldn't have been Tabby, Hazel, Melody and Portia Huxtable.

I wouldn't have my hair done, nails done and outfit picked out all at once by three different sisters, whilst the fourth blasts Hozier from her phone and tells me about a documentary on environmentally-friendly makeup she watched on the weekend. I wouldn't be surrounded by girls that are so close to me- like sisters. I've had so many brothers- blood and not blood- but I never dreamed I'd have sisters. Let alone that they'd be the school's most beautiful and popular girls.

I wouldn't come downstairs to my Mum struggling into leggings that cling and attaching a fit-bit to her wrist. She's gotten into this whole health-kick thing recently- I think she saw a poster about keeping fit at the hospital, and now she forces herself on long and intense runs every morning, and has begun buying really weird and gross foods that are supposed to boost your immune system, like oat mixes and something called electrolyte water that tastes like water but full of dust. On the weekends, she makes me run with her. Let's just say that I won't be dropping my camera for running shoes anytime soon.

One of the most significant changes between then and now is that I'm coming down to a kitchen that is practically empty.

After weeks of eight boys taking up every inch of my personal space, the house seems bigger than ever now. Every time I take the trip to the front door, slinging my bag over my shoulder and chatting with Melody about who the better Doctor Who was, I pass the photo that Mum had taken and hung up in the hallway. It's a black and white one, and about the size of a small horizontal notebook. Eight boys in white or grey t-shirts and jeans, laughing, arms around eachother. A girl in the middle of them, her hair a holy mess but the laughter in her eyes showing that she just doesn't care. I have Bailey in my lap, and he's beaming up at me, his Thanos figurine in his hand. Little did I know, as that photo was being taken in our living room by one of Mum's photographer friends, that he'd be giving me that figurine just minutes later. A gift. A sort of parting one. I have it on my windowsill in my room.

In the photo, Julian is next to me. He's grinning is broadly as his brothers, but his gaze isn't on the camera. It's on me, only me. Like I'm the only person he sees. His arm is brushing against mine, and our knees are softly touching.

The first few times I passed the photo after the house became silent, I had to try really hard not to cry.

Before, I'd either be catching the bus to school, sat alone at the back and watching the backs of Lauren and Zoe's heads- or most recently, I'd be hitching rides with either Jace in his car or one of the McCartney brothers on their motorbikes. Jace still drives me to school sometimes. We play music and roll back the roof of his car, and he copies my art homework, and I copy his chemistry.

We're good friends, Jace Jaxon and I. If it weren't for our history, we could've maybe turned out to be something. It's a shame. A shame that his Dad took that away. We could've had something special.

But mostly I join Melody and Tabby and Portia in clambering into the back of Hazel's bright pink open-roof car, and ride to school with them. I don't do a lot of the talking. I'm happy to sit back in my soft leather seat and let the girls' voices wash over me, coating me in a blanket of warmth and love and sisterhood. I listen to Melody telling Hazel that her car looks like Barbie's dream car, and I let out a laugh.

As we pass Danny's house, I sometimes look up, towards his window. Sometimes the curtains are closed, sometimes they're open. Whichever it is, he's never there. I don't look for him at school, because he goes to a different school to me. But I feel the sadness ache a little more each time I pass his house and see no one. Sometimes I see Paul lumbering out the side door to go to the gym, and consider going to him and asking if he'd give Dan a message for me. But knowing Paul, he'd probably ask for some horrific favour in return.

Danny isn't returning my calls. Or my texts. Or my snaps. Or my DMs.

I haven't told Mum that we've fallen out, but I'm pretty sure she knows from the way I go sort of quiet whenever she brings him up. Mum loves Danny, so she brings him up a lot. Asks why he's never around anymore. At first, I made up lame excuses. After a while, she stopped asking.

Before, I wouldn't be spending the minutes before the start of school stood in the middle of a group, laughing and catching up. Jace tells us all a funny story about his little brother that happened over the weekend, and Lauren and Zoe both crack up laughing. I'm pretty sure they both have major crushes on him, but whenever I teasingly ask, they deny it, red-faced. Portia rolls her eyes at him and says that all boys are stupid, but she smiles as she says it. Then she turns to me, hooking her arm through mine, and whispers in my ear about the date she went on on Saturday with one of Tabby's friends' brothers, and I place bets on how long it is before he calls her back to arrange for a repeat. We both turn to Zach and Koda, two of Jace's friends that quickly became ours, and argue about our favourite TV shows, and which character is next to die in the new season of Riverdale. I laugh until my stomach hurts- another thing that would've never happened Before.

Lunches are spent on the football fields, sat in a circle and throwing crisps at eachother as we exchange jokes and play giggled games of Truth or Dare, daring eachother to do lame things like climb up trees or go up to someone random in the playground and ask them out. The first few times I spent lunch with these people, I was uncomfortable and nervous, waiting for them to get bored of me and kick me out. Two weeks later, I'm still with them- Portia, Jace, Zoe, lauren, Zach, Koda, Shem and Esme. The same popular kids that I used to think were stuck-up and rude and opinionated- I'm laughing and joking with them.

Turns out no one is quite as they seem.

After school, I'm either at the Huxtable household, listening to the sisters' mum Lucia tell us all about a new lipstick her company are considering releasing, or at home, doing homework whilst on FaceTime with one of my friends. Sometimes I take walks along the same river where Julian and I visited the makeshift beach and he promised to take me swimming someday. During those times, I sit on a side-turned barrel, hinges rusted from the murky water, and watch the waves. Then I take out my phone, and go to the person's name at the top of my contacts. My finger hovers over the letter J. Then I press 'call', and wait for the exact three rings before he picks up.

Like I do today.

Three rings- one, two, three. It's always three. He picks up, and I feel a warmth spread through me that I never get from hearing anyone else.

"I'm here," I whisper. "How far are you?"

And the warmth deepens as I hear his soft, husky voice reply- "I'm on my way, Walker girl."