The Trouble Series

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Surprise?

What the …

I don’t …

Is he kidding me?

Matt, looking perfectly groomed in a shirt and jeans, steps around the side of my trolley and gives me a peck on the cheek. He bends and picks up my fallen book, then says, “How was your flight?”

“I … um …” Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m still asleep on the plane and everything that’s happened since we landed has been a ridiculous dream. “I … I thought my mom was—”

“Oh, yeah, your mom and I thought it would be a nice surprise if I came to fetch you instead.” Matt runs a hand through his neat, sandy coloured hair before pushing my trolley towards his car—which, it appears, managed to pull up in front of me without my noticing.

“I’m so confused right now,” I mumble, but Matt doesn’t seem to hear me as he loads my luggage into the boot. I get into the front passenger seat and put my seatbelt on, but still I don’t wake up. I’m forced to face the horrifying fact that all of this is, indeed, happening.

“So tell me all about your holiday,” Matt says as he turns his key in the ignition and pulls his car out of the parking space. I stare at him. We haven’t exchanged a word since the night before I left, and now he’s sitting next to me pretending it never happened? “Did you manage to get to all the places on your Top Tourist Destinations in London list?” he asks, seemingly oblivious to my state of shock and confusion.

Since there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do, I haltingly tell Matt about the places Julia and I visited. Before long, he starts filling in my silent gaps with stories of his own visits to London, leaving me to watch the sugar cane fields rushing past and occasionally adding ‘Uh huh’ or ‘Oh yeah, I saw that too’ or some other appropriate comment.

As we turn off the highway and head through the streets that lead to my home, I imagine how different this drive would be if Aiden were beside me, seeing all of this for the first time. What would he think of the casino ‘kingdom’ in the middle of the sugar cane? What would he think of the minibus taxis blasting their music as they swerve around us and screech away at double the speed limit? Would he comment on how early the sun goes down compared to an English summer? The humidity? The space? And—as we turn into Girvan Avenue—what would he think of the fact that I live opposite an old, rundown cemetery? Would he think it’s creepy? Cool? Not important at all? Would he be commenting on how large everyone’s gardens are compared to the tiny backyards in London?

“… more books than I’ve ever seen in one place,” Matt says at he parks in front of the gate to my house. “I knew you’d love it. You did go there, didn’t you?”

“Hmm? Sorry?” I pull my gaze from the window and focus on Matt.

“Foyles. That giant bookstore in Charing Cross Road.”

“Oh, yes. It was one of the first places Jules took me to.”

The gate starts rolling open—Mom must have been on the lookout for us—as Matt jumps out the car and goes to the boot to fetch my luggage. I undo my seatbelt and climb out slowly. I breathe deeply and remind myself not to do anything weird, like start crying.

“Hey, are you feeling okay?” Matt asks. He slams the boot shut and wheels both suitcases to my side. “You’ve been very quiet. Did you get any sleep on the plane?”

“Uh, some.” I rub my eyes and follow him up the driveway. “But, yeah, I’m quite tired.”

Mom runs down the path from the front door, past Matt, and wraps me in a tight hug. “Welcome home!” she sings in my ear.

I hug her back and say, “You know I was only gone for three weeks, right?”

“Yes, yes,” she steps back and examines me—for what? Could I really change that much in three weeks? “But you know I miss my chickens when they’re not home.” She gives me another quick hug, then pulls me up the path. “Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tom are coming for dinner, and I cooked Mexican. Your favourite. Will you be joining us, Matt?” she asks as we step through the front door to where Matt is leaning my suitcases against the wall.

“Oh, I’d love to, but I need to get home right away. We’re heading to the farm just now. Spending the week there.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Mom says. “But why are you leaving so late? Why not go tomorrow morning?”

Matt shrugs. “I don’t know. My mom wants to. We were supposed to leave earlier today, but I told them I wanted to see Sarah before we left. Those three weeks without her were just too long.” He pulls me into a sideways hug and kisses the top of my head while I try to wipe the look of confusion and I-just-tasted-something-bad off my face.

“Sarah! My favourite middle daughter!” Dad calls from the lounge before striding into the entrance hall and greeting me with a hug. “I hope you videoed your entire visit to the Science Museum.”

I pull out of the hug and say, “Darn, I knew I forgot something.” At the look of disappointment on his face, I quickly add, “Relax, Dad. Jules and I did at least five mini interviews at various places inside the museum. She was more than happy to stand in front of my phone and act all goofy while talking about science.

“Anyway,” I continue, “Matt needs to go now, so I’m gonna say goodbye, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”

My parents take the hint and disappear into the lounge to give me a moment alone with Matt. I turn to him, and I’m about to ask what’s going on between us, but he takes my face in both hands and presses his mouth against mine before I can get a word out. He tastes of familiarity and … guilt. Because the last person I kissed wasn’t him. I try to relax against him and remember all the butterflies and goosebumps I used to get when he kissed me, but he’s already pulling away. “I missed you,” he says, then adds a quick kiss to my nose. “And now I’ve gotta go.”

I clench my fists at my sides as he turns away. SAY SOMETHING! “Matt, I’m … I’m a little confused. The night before I left …”

“Yes,” he says, stopping and turning back. “Yes, I know.” He looks down. “We were both angry. We both said very hurtful things we ended up regretting, and … well, now that we’ve had a few weeks to cool off, I think we should just put it behind us, you know?” He raises his eyes to mine and gives me an encouraging smile. “All couples fight. It’s normal. There’s no reason we can’t get back to the way things used to be between us.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “We’re good together, Sarah. I’d hate to lose what we have.”

He gives me one last hug, and I mumble, “O-okay,” because somehow it doesn’t feel like he left much else for me to say.

“Anyway, I need to go. I’ll see you on Friday morning.” He ducks out the front door and heads down the path while I try to figure out what he’s talking about.

“Friday morning?” I call after him.

“Yeah, I’m coming back to pick you up to take you to the farm.” He looks over his shoulder and, at the blank look on my face, rolls his eyes. “Grandpa’s ninetieth, remember? The party’s next weekend? I told you about it months ago.”

“Uh, yeah.” I do remember, but for some reason I’d thought it was happening after Christmas. “Okay, see you then.” I lean inside and press the button to close the gate. When I look back out, Sophie is running up the driveway.

“Hello, sisi!” she shouts, then just about collides into me. I wrap my arms around my younger sister, and we do a kind of bouncy hug thing that starts us both giggling.

“Where’d you just come from?” I ask her once we’ve recovered from our laughter.

“I was down the road at Braden’s.”

I raise my hands to make quote marks in the air. “You mean ‘that boy’?”

Sophie groans and closes the front door. “Yeah, Mom still doesn’t like him much.”

She helps me carry my luggage down the passage to my bedroom, where I see a brown paper bag sitting on the bed. I open the bag and look inside. “Biltong! Fantastic!” I stick my hand in and remove a few pieces of the finely sliced dried meat. “I’ve been craving biltong the whole time I was away.”

“I know,” says Sophie. “You mentioned it on f*******:, so I told Mom.”

I munch on the salty, spicy snack and mumble, “You rock.”

Sophie smiles sweetly and says again, “I know.” She pushes her blonde hair over her shoulder, then holds her hand out, palm up.

Jules and I both have dark hair like our parents, but somehow Sophie wound up blonde. She used to get upset about it when she was little—‘Why don’t I look like the rest of you?’—and Jules would tell her every time that she’d always secretly wished she had Sophie’s beautiful golden locks. That would inevitably lead to Sophie begging some-one to tell her the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and by the time that was finished, she’d always forgotten she was upset in the first place.

I shake the paper bag over Sophie’s hand until several pieces of biltong fall out. “So that’s why you told Mom about my craving,” I say. “You knew you’d score some for yourself.”

Sophie smiles but doesn’t say anything.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Mom says, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “Don’t fill up on biltong. We’re having dinner soon. Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tom are almost here.”

She hurries away—probably back to the kitchen—and Sophie puts a few more pieces into her mouth. The sneaky look on her face reminds me of Julia, which sends an un-happy lurch through me, which then gets me thinking about Aiden, which, in turn, twists my insides further.

I push the thought of either of them from my mind. “Want to see all the cool stuff I got overseas?” I say to Sophie.

“Yes, definitely.” She sits cross-legged on my bed while I unzip my suitcase, and even though I’ve never really connected with my younger sister the way I have with Julia, I’m so glad to have her right now.

When Aunt Maggie and Uncle Tom have left, and everyone else has gone to bed, I find myself alone in my bedroom. The excitement of photographs and travel stories and handing out all the gifts I bought has passed. Julia’s absence and Aiden’s absence and the inevitability of having to return to a university degree I don’t even like after Christmas settle over me like one of those heavy apron things they cover you with when you have an X-ray at the dentist.

I finish unpacking my clothes, throwing most of them into a pile near the door to wash in the morning. When I get to the bottom of my carry-on suitcase, I slowly remove my notebook. I stand up and rub my thumb over the shiny, paisley-patterned cover. I flip through it—pages and pages of scribbled words squished close together—before opening the bottom drawer of my desk and tossing the notebook inside. I gather the rest of my notebooks from my bookshelf and add them to the drawer, then slam it shut. I don’t want to see inside those notebooks again. I don’t want to read my amateurish scribbles. They almost caused me to miss a flight, and—far worse—they caused all the hurtful things Matt and I said to each other the night before I left.

When I’ve finished unpacking and changed into pyjamas—summer pyjamas! No more climbing into bed covered in at least four different layers!—I open the lid of my ancient laptop and turn it on. I wait patiently while the aged beast grumbles, whirs, and blows hot air in its attempt to start up. After several minutes, it seems to be alive and ready. I open the browser and head to f*******:. I scroll through the news feed for a few minutes, but no matter how many videos of cute toddler relatives or captioned pictures of weird cats or random status updates I see, I can’t stop my eyes from continually moving up to the search bar at the top of the page.

Aiden. I want to search for Aiden. The problem is, I don’t know his surname. I caught a glimpse of the name tag on his luggage, but all I remember is that his surname ends in ison. I think. Which doesn’t exactly help.

Maybe it’s better that I don’t know his full name. After all, it feels like it might be wrong to search for him. Like in some weird way I’m cheating on Matt.

Okay, look, I tell myself. You thought you and Matt were no longer together when you kissed Aiden, so you didn’t really do anything wrong there. And he technically kissed you, not the other way around. And all you want now is to be friends with him. Nothing wrong with looking him up on f*******: just for that.

I open a new tab and go to Google. I hesitate, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.

“What are you doing?” I whisper to myself.

Before I can change my mind, I type surnames ending in “ison” into the search bar. I scan the results that come up, but I don’t see anything too helpful. I was hoping for a list or something. I look at a few articles and pick out some surnames—Addison, Morrison, Bettison, Madison—before returning to f*******:. I try each surname paired with the name Aiden, but I don’t find the guy I’m looking for.

“It’s just not meant to be,” I mutter to myself. I close the laptop with a mixture of disappointment and relief settling in my stomach. I climb into bed with my phone—which is about a century ahead of my laptop in terms of technology—and open the email app. I saw an email from Livi when I was scrolling through messages at the airport, and I think I could do with some best friend love right now. I smile at the words in the subject line: You smell nice. Livi likes to title her emails with weird statements that have nothing to do with the content, just to make sure nobody misses them. I’m amazed half the messages I’ve received from her haven’t ended up in the Spam folder.

I tap the screen to open her email.

From: Alivia Howard

Sent: Sat 14 Dec, 8:13 pm

To: Sarah Henley

Subject: You smell nice

One week and counting! Woohoo! I am SO glad this year is almost over—I never want to see another German brat in my life. And BOY do I have a story to tell you! A story involving a BOY, actually ;-) I don’t think even your made-up stories can top this one! We need to book a poolside date SOON so I can tell you all about it.

xx Livi

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From: Sarah Henley

Sent: Sun 15 Dec, 10:34 pm

To: Alivia Howard

Subject: Re: You smell nice

Oh, I think I have a story that might top yours. And mine isn’t made up either!

_________________________________________

From: Sarah Henley

Sent: Sun 15 Dec, 10:37 pm

To: Julia Henley

Subject: Never again shall you mock the travel toothbrush

Jules! You will never guess what happened to me on the plane …

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