Page 2 of Validus Vale Academy 1
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Plans are not in the works. Not even the rough sketch of a plan.
October 1st has been circled in red, on Aunt Nancy’s Celtic Quilts kitchen calendar since January. I’ve had nine months. Nine whole months to find somewhere to live that isn’t Aunt Nancy’s spare bedroom.
“OK, great. Let me know if you need any help with packing, sweetheart,” she calls, her voice lifting slightly as she heads down the stairs.
“Will do,” I reply, gritting my teeth. I can’t blame Aunt Nancy for wanting me out. It’s been a decade since I was dropped, literally, on her lap. Who wants to be lumbered with someone else's kid?
Not Nancy. I know that for a fact.
I have fuzzy memories of being at the hospital, and a social worker taking me by the hand, away from my dead parents, and depositing me in the waiting room with a tired-looking woman I’d never met before—my aunt.
“Give her a cuddle,” the social worker barked, and Nancy reluctantly pulled me onto her knee. “Looks like you’re coming home with me, Theo,” she sighed.
—Just great—Goodbye retirement—
The years with Nancy have been fine. I’ve no real complaints, but they haven't exactly been filled with love and hugs. It was the timing. Nancy’s own kids—my older cousins—had just flown the coop, so she’d sold the family home and moved to this smaller, “easier-to-manage” house just before the accident.
I’d done my best not to be another thing for her to have to manage, but I was a weird kid whose whole world had imploded, so…
*shrug emoji*
Now it’s time to find a new place to call home. If I don’t, I’ll be living up to the Failed-Theo name once again. Aunt Nancy won’t be surprised—and truthfully, I don’t think she’ll kick me out onto the street, come October—but I’d love to get my shit together and actually surprise her for once.
“Theodora!” Her voice booms up the stairs, snapping me out of my thoughts.
Yikes, I need to get moving. I’m already running late, and my boss, Oliver, is on his last nerve with me.
I shove the fat squares of quilting materials aside and finally unearth some clean underwear. Hallelujah. My shoebox of aroom is overflowing; half my crap, half Nancy’s fabric stash. Her quilting obsession takes up a significant chunk of my already minuscule space, which makes me feel a smidge less guilty about ‘ruining her retirement.’
Now dressed in a pair of purple jean shorts and an orange bralet (three for ten at Tesco), I flip over a heap of plaid quarters until I find a clean SubArmy tee. “All veggies, none of the meat, our flaming hot sarnies are bringing the heat” is emblazoned on the back.
Ugh. Heat. It’s the middle of September, and our usually feeble British summer is in a weird overdrive this month. The whole country is wilting. Pale people like me are suffering, along with dogs in cars, old people, and soup vendors. Pulling on the tee, I slather myself in sunscreen and calculate today's potential tips. Fridays are usually decent; the tantalizing prospect of weekend freedom has a funny way of loosening the purse strings.
Yeah, but even good tips won’t cut it. I’ve been working every possible hour at the sub shop, and I still don’t have enough to cover first and last month’s rent, plus deposit. Unless some eccentric millionaire who loves the most average of sandwiches is on my route today, it’ll take a miracle to get my own place anytime soon.
Unless—there’s always the sofa.
At Veronica’s.
Veronica’s offer isverymuch a last resort. Veronica, Mike, and baby Liam live in a two-bed apartment, and my friend keeps offering the living room couch for a token rent. “You can pay me back by babysitting,” she’ll say with a gleam in her eye. “Be my live-in nanny.”
I shudder at the thought. I mean, I guess I do love Veronica’s son, but if I’m honest, he’s a little shit. Living with a three-year-old sociopath-in-training isn’t, um, shall we say, appealing? Andthen there’s her boyfriend Mike; he doesn’t seem keen on having me as a new roomie. Can’t say I blame him—lots of people feel awkward around me.
“Mike can overlook it, hun, just like I do. It’s not your fault you're a, what’s the word? Animally?”
“Anomaly, Vee. Anomaly.”
“Yeah, potato, potarto. I’m just saying I love you anyways. Even though you’re animally.”
Being animally, whatever that is, is probably way cooler than being an anomaly, which is what I am—anyway, staying at Vee and Mike’s?
Negative, Ghost Rider.
Feeling a little overwhelmed with everything, I pull my hair off my face, yanking it taut and giving my scalp a delicious stretch. This calms the brain-chaos for a moment. I haven’t heard back from the live-in housekeeper job yet. Maybe I’ll get that.
Ha! Right. Pretend you don’t know the odds of getting hired are about the same as a snowball surviving this heatwave.
It’s a plain and Gods’ honest fact that the majority of the world has a problem with Anomalous Unawakened Adults (AUAs) like me, which sucks.
