400 LUX r. gansey

Henrietta Waits For You

She thanked the taxi driver and took a good look at the lanky boy that stood proudly in front of her. She stayed quiet with surprise, you could only hear the crunchy leaves beneath their feet, he was not at all what she was expecting.

In her head, she was staying in an upper-class all-American family's house, Ralph Lauren sweaters and a golden retriever. Not an old factory in desperate need of a coat of paint and to prune those wild weeds.

Her grandfather had some explaining to do.

The boy was tall, muscular— not too muscular, a brown mat of hair that looked like a bird's nest sat on his head and almost entirely covered his eyebrows, that were a shade or two darker than his locks of hair. His eyes were half-lidded because of the direct sunlight—that made even more obvious the hazel color on them. He looked nice, she thought, but terribly pretentious, like he was about to jump and explain inflation to her. She examined his appearance trying to find an answer for all the questions she had made up from the moment the plane took off.

"I'm Gansey" He said "Richard Campbell Gansey the III" he let out a breathy giggle at her wide eyes "I figure your grandpa already told you about me"

"Not really" His name ringed a bell in the back of her mind, but it was strange for her grandfather to ever talk about his life.

He laughed "That sounds a lot like him" She couldn't help but found this odd, how would a teenager know him so well?  "You're Guinevere, right?"

"Gwen is just fine" Guinevere made her feel like a porcelain doll in an iron maiden, or a paper ship in a wildfire, or a teddy bear in a pack of wolves... So yes, uncomfortable.

"You sure you don't prefer Mary Jane?" She laughed softly, the muscles on her face were still rigid from the flight, and she'd heard that jokes too many times before.

She was sent away from home mid-semester to go to this great school her grandad got headstrong about. He was like that, from day to night his wishes could change and everyone around him had to bent over backwards to accomplish them. That's how she ended up in Sussex again, anyway.

When she was twelve she moved to New York from London when her father got this great job offer, but then her grandfather wanted them lo live at the old manor with him, and she had to leave everything she knew to start over. Just as she was starting to feel at home again, he said that if she missed the States so much, she should go back. 

He said Henrietta would be the place for her, that he had friends living there and that she'd stay with them, that she'd go to school with their son. 

So both her and her parents assumed they'd be adults, but then again she found herself carrying my bags into the old factory, following a 18 year-old kid, at most.

"So... Your parents?"

"In DC" He said like it was the most obvious place for them to be.

"Oh... And when are they coming back?"

He laughed. "Oh, no, they live there"

Her brow furrowed and her feet stoped walking "So you live... on your own?"

"Well with some frie-" He paused and turned around with a confused look on his face "Did you not know?"

"Well... No. My grandad said I'd stay with his friends—like, plural."

He smiled "Nice surprise isn't it?"

She nodded trying not to show how awkward she felt about it all "And you're okay with me staying here?"