Between the Lines | ✓

Cliche 5: Project Partners Guaranteed

It was one o'clock in the morning, and the mansion-like house was still. Quiet.  And yet, there was an unsettled thrum under my skin that I couldn't quite swat away, no matter what I did. Once I got home from school, I immediately drew a hot bath, dumping a generous heaping of sweet-smelling bubble bath solution into the steaming water, which tinted the water a pale pink. 

I had sat there, fingers pruning until the water cooled to an uncomfortable tepid temperature, scrubbing at the skin that still did not feel like mine. The soap I slid over the skin did not follow the contours of a body I was used to, and in the silence of the marbled bathroom everything seemed to hit me all at once.

It wasn't quite the same as the fall after an adrenaline rush, where your hands shook and your legs grew weak. I would have preferred the shaking limbs, rather than the unnerving sense of... helplessness. It was that feeling of being completely alone in a world I did not know, in a body that was not mine. I did not know where to step, not sure where the edge of the path was. In fact, I was sure I had fallen off it, and as I slid down into the cool bath water that grew salty with my smothered tears, I had never felt more lost.

Xander's parents came home later that night, catching me as I was getting out of the bath. They had said hello, before walking down the hall and through two separate doors.

Xander's father was a tall, well-built man, robust in stature and clad in a crisp striped suit. There had been a passing comment in the original novel that the man was a high-powered lawyer, hence the grand house and its expensive furnishings. The novel never mentioned the man's name, his existence merely starting and ending as 'The Main Lead's Dad'.

Xander's mother held a similar air to the man, both of them almost... empty, in the way they glided through the house. She was beautiful, of course - slender and tall, a little willowy. Her hair was perfectly coiffed into vintage waves, strands a cool blonde tone. She wore a green silk dress cinched in the waist by a designer belt and pointed toe heels, looking every part the elegant lady of a fine house such as the one I had been thrust into.

Xander's mother was an heiress of some sort, I recalled from the novel. Old money, or as old as you could get in Australia, I supposed. There hadn't been many details in the novel, her characterisation expanded only so far as to make the reader painfully aware that she was as rich as you can imagine.

Ultimately, they were strangers to me, and to every other reader of 'Say No to Bad Boys'.

Xander's parents walked down the halls without looking at me again, and I realised that, maybe, they were strangers to Xander too. 

I rolled over in the bed, curling my knees to my chest and clutching at a pillow, almost burying myself completely under my blankets. 

The house was too quiet at night, and that only made me feel more alone. I could feel my eyes growing wet again, and I laughed weakly to myself, voice clogged as thoughts about my past life drifted over my tumultuous mind.

As sad as it was, there was not much that I missed from my life as Alexander Smith, but the things I did miss I missed desperately. Even with Xander's flashy Dodge Challenger, I missed my rust-bucket car that perpetually smelled like KFC. I missed my wardrobe full of slouchy knit jumpers, worn and frayed but soft and secure. I missed my small house, with my couch that had a divot in the centre in the shape of me. 

And, most of all, I missed my sister. I missed my twin, my other half, the one that has always been beside me since before I was even born. It occurred to me now that this was the first time I had truly been without Amber, and the thought made me hug my pillow tighter, wishing it was her.

It took a long time for me to fall asleep, and when I did, I dreamed of another life.

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