Candy Gram ✓

chapter five

When I get home, it's about dark. Which really just means it's five o'clock in the great American Midwest. Snow is piling up on the sides of our drive - and the drifts are only getting bigger. Josiah's mom invited me to eat supper with them, but I told her I should be getting home. Snow was coming down thickly then, and it's still worsening.

I'm seriously wishing I could park in the garage. But that's for VIPs - Very Important Parents.

As soon as I walk through the black front door and into our homey mudroom, I feel a wave of relief wash over me. I'm home. I'm home, and that's all that matters.

"Nick? Is that you?" My mom's voice rings out from the kitchen, high and clear.

The door clicks shut, allowing one last puff of cold through behind me. "Yeah, I'm here."

My dad's sat in our dank - not "cool" dank, mind you - living room, and he looks up to me when I come in, still trying to shake snowflakes out of frozen my hair. "Where've you been?" he asks, looking over his shoulder at me whilst Jeremy Wade scuba dives on the TV screen. Climactic music plays as I take off my jacket.

"Animal shelter," I tell him, sitting down next to him.

My brother, Ben, who's sat in front of the TV, doesn't even turn around. "Two-point-seven million cats are eutha-euthan-- put down - each year," he says. Ben has a habit of quoting documentaries - that kid has a head for knowledge, just like I do theatre. Or, maybe even better said, drama.

"That's awesome, my dude," I say with a slight smile, running a hand through my drenched hair and hanging up my damp jacket. "I didn't miss dinner, right?"

"Just about." My mom steps out of the kitchen, dark - almost black - hair in a horrifically messy bun. "I'm just dishing it up now. Go wash up." She doesn't sound too impressed, but I know she doesn't really care as much as she's putting on – her eye brow isn't quirked.

I head to the bathroom to wash up, i.e., stare at my reflection and pick myself apart. Maybe pop a few pimples. The usual.

There's nothing I can do with my hair - it's kind of shaggy in a way, and when it's wet, I can try and shove it out of my squinty eyes. They're a kind of 'meh' blue - not discoloured, but nothing like Josiah or freaking Elijah Wood. (I would kill to have Asa Butterfield eyes, believe it or not.)

I do wash my face, because I think I might have let kittens rub up against it. Along with every part of me, of course. Who knows - it's all a tired blur.

Dinner is basic, which is almost a little disappointing - I know Mom and Dad will be going out tomorrow for dinner, which is fine, but that means that I'll be making dinner for me and Ben, who will definitely be unbearably but adorably high on candy. The kid's actually popular, which is great - he watched a game of baseball one night, then went to school the next day and joined some game. He crushed it; the kid replicated the home run he saw the night before. Suddenly, everyone in the fourth grade wanted to be his best friend.

If only it were so easy in high school.

"I think I'm getting a girlfriend," Ben announces as he twirls his (disappointingly-basic, but thanks, Mom) spaghetti.

"Oh, really?" our mom says, smiling. She and Dad and Ben all smile the same way: this tired thing that seems almost snarky, but is easy to read as sincere (if you're not socially intelligent enough to realize when they're kidding; they're sarcasm queens, all of them). I don't share it - although I don't really smile when not forced. I don't think, at least. (Maybe I do, and I just don't have the self-awareness to realize it.)