Broken Half: A Tom Holland Story

I Got 99 Problems... That's It

I laugh, "Yeah, I guess I do tend to repeat myself." Leaning back into my chair I grin, "Tell me a little about yourself then... Since you already know everything about me."

She returns the smile and sweeps her hair out of her face, sitting up in the chair. This time I can see her entire face and, funny enough, she almost looked like my baby sister. The hair, the skin tone, even her eye colour was the same as mine. She even had freckles just like me; admittedly, she had a full face of them and I only had them across my nose. It was actually slightly freaky.

"Fine. My name is Morgan. My friends call me MJ."

I smile. "Really?"

She laughs, "I didn't know that was so hard to believe... Yeah, my friends actually do call me that."

I got the reference but apparently, she didn't. Granted, the movie hadn't come out yet and I doubted a place like Stockwell had Spiderman comics just laying around.

"Anyways, I landed... here, when I was around 3 years old, or so the workers tell me. That will make it a decade here in a month."

13 years old. Not a bad age. "So if you don't mind me asking," I say, leaning forward, "What happened to your parents? Why'd you end up here?"

She pauses and I know I've gone too far. Way to break the ice, Tom. I mentally facepalm. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed-"

She cuts me off, "No it's fine... it has been a while after all."

She pulls a stick of gum and a pen out of her coat pocket, sticking the gum in her mouth and using the pen to doodle on the back of the wrapper.

MJ explains to me that she ended up here after a freak accident as a kid. Apparently, she cut her lip in half when she was 2, by slipping on a pair of scissors. When the bleeding wouldn't stop her parents took her to the ER to get her patched up, and while they were there they decided to do some tests... Revealing that she was a haemophiliac.

"So I ended up here, where I met my best friend Jules..." MJ trails off, "She got picked up about 6 months ago."

I didn't say a single thing the entire time, just letting her spill it all out. By the looks of it, she rarely got someone to talk to like this.

She picks up on this and stops her story, "Sorry I tend to overshare."

I wave her away, "No no it's fine-" I can already tell that the room is starting to get awkward. Try and change the subject, Tom! "So what do you think about living in Kingston?" I ask finally, "It's slightly different from life in London."

She thinks about it for a second and laughs to herself, "To be honest? I have a feeling any other place will be better than here. I haven't been outside the courtyard since Jules got picked up and-"

She stops mid-sentence from a ping on her phone. After a quick glance followed by an exasperated sigh, she slides her phone back into her pocket. "Damn it, forgot to take my meds."

"Meds?" I ask. "For what?"

Her hair falls over her face again as she puts her left earbud back in. "I have haemophilia, abnormally low iron levels, and I'm teetering on the edge of depression. So yeah, I have to take meds."