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thelionshoarde · 6 years

Note

For the prompt-a-thon I have a cheesy idea: What about Obi proposing to Shirayuki at the christmas tree? *-*

Uh. I would just like to say that I am not really a marriage person, but I did my best. Have a little angst with your cheese, tho?

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS PROMPT-A-THON, DAY 2

read here on ao3 if you prefer :3

“Hey,” said Shirayuki, tugging Obi to a stop on the busy sidewalk. Someone snarled something rude under their breath, bumping into Obi’s shoulder, and Obi tilted his head back, reminding himself to let it go. That a snide remark or left hook or clever pick pocketing rebuttal was not worth it, not anymore.

Instead, he ushered Shirayuki to the side, next to the storefront that had caught her eye. A bakery, full of many-tiered wedding cakes, exploding with iced roses and edible pearls. Obi eyed it, askance. For her part, Shirayuki merely raised a mittened hand up to rest against the window, the pom poms that dangled down catching on the intermittent breeze.

“You have zero situational awareness,” Obi chastised, resting his chin on the top of her head. The wool of her knit cap itched, but Obi ignored it. “Hey what?”

“Do you…”

“Honey,” Obi drawled, “if you want a cake we’ve got some sort of fudge monstrosity at home. I can bake it in a flash. No reason to go speechless with hunger. Though if you want iced flowers you’ll have to give me a day to practice, you know. I’m good, but I’m not a baking god.”

That got a laugh out of her. “You’re terrible at baking, don’t even. And – that’s not… Well. Hm.”

Standing there, laden down with bags of early Christmas shopping, the city a whirlwind of traffic, and chatter, bodies in bulging coats pressing all around, the sky as gray as the pavement – snow began to fall.

Obi jerked his head up, delighted, to watch it. Gentle, minuscule white flakes of biting cold to dust the rust red of Shirayuki’s hair where it spilled out from beneath her cap.

Then Shirayuki asked, “Have you ever thought about getting married?”

* * *

He needed – eggs. Right, eggs. And vegetable oil, probably. Sugar? Milk? Hot water?

Obi held the measuring cup in both hands, fingers slipping against the thick glass, and stared at the closed door of the refrigerator. Behind him, Shirayuki said gently, “The recipe is on the back of the box, Obi.”

“I know that,” he said. “I – yeah. I know. I was just thinking – pecans? Or walnuts? Which would you prefer? Maybe both? None? Coconut? I think we still have caramel drizzle somewhere. How about some caramel?”

She sighed. “Obi.”

“It’s just a question, Shirayuki,” Obi snapped, before he could stop himself.

In his chest his heart pounded, rabbit-fast. It still made his skin crawl, sometimes, fighting with her – but it was okay. They were past the point where he thought a fight meant the end. Were instead at a place where Obi could just get petty, and not feel like the world was closing in on him. Usually.

Obi set the measuring cup down onto the counter with a clatter, reaching for the pantry door, and the box of cake mix inside. “Just – let me make the cake,” he said into the cluttered shelves. “Please? Give me a bit, all right?”

He heard the shuffle of her stockinged feet on the floor. The hesitation at his back, barely enough space to keep from touching. He fought down a flinch, holding perfectly still, waiting, relieved when she didn’t touch. When she read the tensed lines of his body, maybe, or heard in his voice the things he was carefully holding in, and knew better than to push.

“Okay,” she agreed, and was gone.

When Obi heard the door to their bedroom shut, he let himself fall, hunched down between his knees, hands over the back of his head. It was just a question. Had he thought about getting married – had he thought about it – marriage – with Shirayuki –

He –

He hadn’t.

He hadn’t, but apparently she had. Shirayuki had thought about marriage, and him, at least enough to ask him about it. Which meant… What? That she wanted a proposal? That she wanted to tie the knot? Make it official? Happily ever after, and all that? Like he was – like he could –

Groaning, Obi squeezed his fingers into the tense muscles at the side of his neck, jaw working. His stomach felt like lead, like cement snakes weighing him down. The shopping bags were still on the floor by the entrance way, where they’d dropped them without care. Outside, snow fell, a languid flurry of silent white to blanket all the ugly things beneath.

It would have been nice to go outside, let each snowflake kiss his skin, his scars, numb him from the outside in. Hide him, at least for a time.

Instead he stood, grabbed the box of cake mix, and got back to baking.

* * *

When he opened the door it was two hours later, he’d burned the base of his thumb, and there was egg yolk on the ceiling.

Shirayuki was curled up in their bed beneath the throw Ryuu had knitted them last winter with Hana, their tortoiseshell monster, sprawled across her shins and purring like a finely tuned motor. Obi leaned against the door frame for a moment, hesitant to intrude. They looked peaceful, calm – a safe haven as pure and cleansing as the snow outside.

Shirayuki’s eyes flickered up to him from her book, and she crooked a timid smile his way. Obi saw the way her body language shifted open in welcome for him, reeling him in, instant and gratifying. Somehow, it dislodged his heart from his throat, allowed his feet to move again.

“Hey, there. Nothing exploded, so… one of your better ventures, I’d say.”

“You would think,” Obi agreed, grin just as crooked but far more sheepish. “And yet, I present to you – burnt, soggy fudge stuff. Your fork, milady.”

“Oh, my,” Shirayuki said, voice faint and face a curious puzzle of dismay and fondness. She took the plate and fork, setting her book aside. Hana opened one amber eye and twitched her tail before subsiding. Shirayuki prodded the cake, which oozed. “It looks…”

“Horrifying? Like an occult nightmare? Possibly Lovecraftian?”

“…delicious.”

Obi laughed, a sharp, wild thing. Shirayuki looked up at him from beneath her fringe, pleased, and Obi sat on the edge of the bed, taking the fork from her hand before she could quite dare be brave enough to try a bite. “Your stomach would murder you, and then me. Trust me – it tastes terrible.”

“You’ll get it right one of these days.” Setting the plate aside on her bedside table, she insisted, “You’re too good a cook to be this bad a baker, Obi. I have faith!”

“Mm,” Obi hummed, tilting the fork back and forth across his knuckles, watching the light shine along the tines, marred here and there with a touch of fudge. “You do. And –”

Shrirayuki’s fingers – tough with calluses, nails clipped short and painted a glittering purple, familiar and strong and kind – just brushed Obi’s wrist. A barely there graze of assurance. “You don’t have to answer,” she murmured. “You never have to answer, Obi. So long as I’m with you, I’m happy. You – us? We don’t have to –”

When the words tripped over his tongue Obi thought they would taste like acid, or scrape the inside of his mouth like metal – but in the end they were just words, and it was almost easy. “I never considered myself the marrying type, so I never really thought about it, no.”

This time, Shirayuki’s fingers hooked over and around, a gentle pressure rubbing against the vulnerable skin on the underside of his wrist. Her thumb curled around to form a circle, holding him. “What do you mean?”

He raised his free hand in the air, then dropped it, shrugging.

“You know me,” he joked, even knowing that she would be able to tell that he wasn’t. That she could read between the lines by now, after all these years, and would hear the truth even where Obi couldn’t help but try and hide it. “Bad boy through and through. Juvenile delinquent, felon. Scruffy and handsome, sure, but – not the type to stick around, or be – be kept, I guess.”

Did that make sense? He wasn’t so certain. But Shirayuki kept silent, waiting, so Obi kept going.

“It wasn’t a big deal. I mean, I never thought about marriage when I was younger because I never would have wanted it. Being tied down? Ha! And later… Well, I knew no one in their right mind would want to marry me,” he laughed, and tried to ignore the hollow echo in it, the way Shirayuki’s thumb dug in just slightly, in protest or kindness or empathy, Obi didn’ t know.

But it reminded him where the border of his skin was, and how he fit inside of it. His breathing steadied, and he explained, “I don’t think I ever bothered thinking about it again, to be honest. There never seemed to be any point.”

Eventually, when Obi was silent long enough that the words had settled, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders, Shirayuki tugged gently at his wrist.

Obi went to her, laying out on the edge of the bed atop the blanket, fork dropped carelessly to the floor, Hana a purring cocoon wiggling in between them. He kissed Shirayuki’s cheek, her eyebrow – she caught his lips, and held them, before pulling back. Hey eyes were green, clear and bright, and without expectation.

“Thank you for telling me,” she whispered.

Obi quirked his mouth, not quite a smile, but almost. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Sure.”

* * *

Three weeks later in Zen’s office Obi was pacing. “I can’t get it out of my head,” he admitted. “I mean – marriage? Me?”

“You,” Zen agreed, flipping through his planner, sounding distracted. “More surprising things have happened. Why shouldn’t you get married? Izana did. And I never thought I’d see the day.”

“This is true,” Obi realized. “Izana got married. Anything can happen. I should – Should I –?”

“Aha,” Zen cried, looking up finally and grinning as he caught Obi’s gaze. “Tomorrow at 4pm I’m free for an hour and forty-five minutes. Meet me out front, got it? Don’t be late!”

Obi blinked, pacing halted. But he still felt the nerves in his veins, bubbling like champagne, and his heart was a restless wandering thing, something that ceased to stay still now that it had a glimpse of a new horizon. “For what?” he asked, exasperated.

“Ring shopping,” Zen said.

“…What drugs are you on and why aren’t you sharing?”

Sighing, Zen leaned back in his stupidly plush leather chair, looking smart and mature and infuriating behind his desk. “Obi, I hate to break this to you, but – you haven’t stopped talking about this for weeks. So tell me, is it that you can’t stop thinking about it because it freaks you out? Or does it freak you out because you can’t stop thinking about how much you want to marry Shirayuki?”

Obi squinted, tilting his head. “Stop it,” he complained, hand clamping down on his shoulder and squeezing. “You resemble your brother far too much in this moment. This is unacceptable. I will not allow it! Where is the drunken asshole I once carried home on my back at three in the morning? Where is the idiot who took me to the hospital that time I –”

“We promised never to speak of that,” Zen interrupted, turning faintly green. “Also: don’t avoid the question, Obi. You deserve to be happy. And someone should make an honest man out of you. May as well be Shirayuki, since you’re stuck with her regardless. She’s not letting you go, in case you were under any delusion otherwise.”

“Ugh,” Obi said, a giddy warmth suffusing him in a way that was positively embarrassing. “You brute. Four tomorrow, then. I hope you’ll have your smelling salts on hand, because I’m going to swoon. It’s going to happen.”

* * *

Obi didn’t swoon, but he did have a mild panic attack when he found the perfect ring and realized, without any lingering shred of doubt: he wanted to be Shirayuki’s husband so badly it hurt.

* * *

Christmas Eve was utterly cliche, but Obi was – something. Something impossible, and reckless, and overflowing. He was all sharp angles and weak knees and a heart that wouldn’t quit, beating and jumping and breaking at every sleepy smile, too-loud laugh, or casual touch that Shirayuki gifted him with.

He was going to ask her to marry him.

He was almost certain she would say yes.

It was funny, he thought. Trust wasn’t something he had ever come to naturally. It was a prickling, ferocious opponent, something that had hurt him more often than not. He had never expected to ask someone to marry him. Had never anticipated wanting to. Yet here he was, dressed up in a cable knit sweater, his nicest pair of jeans, and his fuzziest socks. Ring in his pocket, plan reformulating every half-second in his fevered brain.

Because he –

He trusted Shirayuki.

And he trusted their relationship. Had more faith than he’d ever known his entire life in this thing that they had built together, through every awkward misunderstanding, every halting, inching step forward, every bump in their path that they surmounted because it was worth it.

Whatever her answer, Obi knew he wasn’t going to – to ruin anything.

Everything was going to be all right.

Wiping his sweating palms on his thighs, he just wished that meant he was less nervous. “You ready for spiked eggnog and A Muppet’s Christmas Carol,” she called from the kitchen, sounding distracted.

“Yep,” he called back, trying not to shiver with nerves.

For some reason he couldn’t look at her, as if seeing her in front of him would chase all his courage away, or knock him stupid. So he stayed standing in front of their Christmas tree, the bright multi-colored lights and goofy ornaments Obi could never resist buying, the shiny packages beneath. He rubbed his fingers against the ring in his pocket, and listened as Shirayuki set their glasses down on the coffee table.

Nothing fancy, he thought, trying to get his heart to calm down. Nothing impressive. Just honesty. Shirayuki would understand what this meant, what he was saying; and besides, he didn’t know if he could get through anything more than the most basic of questions – will you marry me? – without puking.

“Obi.” He heard her take a deep breath, like she was bracing for something, and a muffled thud. Her voice came again, insistent. “Obi, I have something to ask you.”

Right, Obi had to stop staring at the tree. He had something to ask her as well, after all. It was time. He could do this.

When he turned around, there was Shirayuki – knelt on the floor by one knee, a little red velvet box being turned nervously in her hands. And – oh. Oh, that was – that had to be –

A ring box, like the one in his pocket.

For just a second the whole world swam, vision dipping with the excited thrum of his pulse. Obi felt like he’d been kicked in the solar plexus, all the air rushing out of him at once and sending him reeling. She couldn’t – Was she actually –

“What are you–”

“Obi,” she started, and it was the tone she got when she was choked with nerves, but determined, and yet softer somehow, soft like the way she whispered to him at night in bed, when a nightmare woke him. “Obi, I–”

This was happening. Obi was being proposed to.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

Maybe Obi should kneel, too, or pull her up from the floor? Do – something other than stand there like an idiot. The ring box was burning a hole in the pocket of his pants, and this was too much, too much. But somehow he couldn’t quite do anything at all, save stare, heart in his throat, waiting.

He hadn’t known how much he could want, how it could take him over and make him fragile, and how he would still feel perfectly safe, regardless.

Shirayuki took a deep breath, and met his eyes, steady and fierce, a little wet with the force of her emotions. Distantly, Obi realized his hands were trembling.

She said, “You can say no, Obi. We don’t need this. But I – I want you to know how much I love you. I wanted to show you with more than just – just words. That I have no intention of ever leaving you. That I absolutely think you’re the marrying type.” Pausing, she laughed a little, cheeks turning rosy. “I love you more than I ever knew was possible, you know? I just… I never really understood it, before. The idea of a single person changing the way you – you see things, how you think, you live. But now I can’t imagine what my life would be like without you. I don’t want to. I want – you, Obi. Only you. I want –”

She flicked the box open, revealing a gold band, beautiful and shining in the low light.

“Obi, will you marry me?”

He didn’t mean to, but he started laughing. A snorting, helpless kind of snigger that had him clamping a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. Shirayuki’s nervous, hopeful expression shifted into raw panic, and Obi went down onto his knees in front of her, graceless and eager, hands clutching at her forearms and forehead pressed to hers.

“Yes,” he gasped.

She whined, “Then why are you laughing.”

“It’s just,” Obi tried to calm the bubble of euphoria in his chest, and explained, helpless, “traditionally, aren’t I the one who’s supposed to propose? You even – on one knee, Shirayuki!”

“Well,” she said, grinning shyly. “Like I’m going to let something like that get in my way. I just… I wanted you to know that I choose you. Forever and always.”

“So you decided to put a ring on it?” Obi asked, laughing, and was glad this was private, glad this was just the two of them in the home they’d made together, because his voice was thick with emotion, eyes smarting with unshed tears, and his grin was so wide it almost hurt.

“I decided,” Shirayuki sniped, “on a symbol of my commitment to you, a – a promise. And a request, that you – that you will allow me the honor of marrying you, Obi. And – well, yes, basically. I decided to put a ring on it. Speaking of…” Shirayuki fumbled the ring from the box, holding it up towards him. Her eyes were wet, too, and shining, and beautiful. “May I?”

“You better,” Obi managed to squeeze out, throat tight. Both their hands were trembling a little, but Shirayuki managed to slide the ring onto Obi’s left hand, the band a snug, perfect fit. Tiny, tasteful diamonds flashed in the light, and Obi admired the way it looked, a physical claim, a declaration of intent.

Then Shirayuki took his hand in hers, and kissed the ring on his finger, a sweet, tender thing, and that was better, that was –

“I love you,” she whispered.

Obi had always, secretly, tried not to drown. Tried not to go so deep that he couldn’t survive it; but he’d fallen faster and deeper than he’d ever expected, a whole world opening up in front of him. One where he was wanted, and desired, and where Shirayuki had no intention of ever, ever letting him go, and wanted everyone to know it at a single glance. Wanted Obi to know it, that she trusted him as much as he did her, that they were in this together for the long haul.

He said, “I love you, too. In fact, I – I have something for you, as well.”

#akagami no shirayukihime #obiyuki #obi #shirayuki #fanfic #12 days of christmas promptathon #proposal fic #AHAHAHAHA SORRY GUYS #I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PROPOSE APPARENTLY #I HOPE YOU ENJOY ANYWAY???#my fic #anon #prompt fic

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tessbenser · 7 years

Text

Three On a Match: Chapter 1

Chapter preview below the cut.

August, 1994

Frances ***

If anyone had terrible luck, it was Frances Murphy. Not just bad luck, not merely a haphazard pile of unfortunate circumstances jumbled together like a badly tossed salad of crappy events. Honest to God, unequivocally terrible luck. If something were going to happen to Frances Murphy, putting money on it going poorly was a safe bet.

The alarm blasted a deafening shriek. Before Frances could even gather herself enough to groan in an appropriate manner to the jarring jolt back into consciousness from a dream which wasn’t a gargantuan pile of suck, she was hit square in the face by a down pillow with unfairly sharp corners, one of which caught her in the eye. “Get up, fuckwit!”

Frances blinked sluggishly, slamming her fist down on the clock radio to silence the racket.

Margot carried on shouting, “If you make me late, I swear to god I will circulate as many copies of that picture of you running around in your first training bra as I can afford to print. And I babysat. All summer!”

Frances frowned at her sister, the foul-mouthed pillow flinger who had taken it upon herself to ensure Frances’s misery over the last three months. It appeared she was to be unwavering in her efforts at the dawn of the school year. “It’s only 5:45. Did you change my alarm?”

Margot rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, Frances, it’s like you’re trying to be a dipshit.” Her little sister’s angelic and impeccably made up face contorted to something horrible and ugly when she swore. The pure, unabashed disdain matched Margot’s dark red and gray cheerleading uniform incredibly well. “I have to be there early. Melanie and Courtney want to show me my locker and where all the other cheerleaders meet before school starts, so I need to be early. Super early. I told you this, like, four times!”

Margot had spent the entire summer bragging to Frances about the apparently impressive feat of making the J.V. Cheer Squad as an incoming “freshie.” According to Melanie-and-Courtney, the two-headed conventionally attractive cheerleading monster that had apparently adopted Margot, her achievement was something akin to walking on water, raising the dead, and curing acne with the wave of a single pom. Before Frances moved back home, Margot hadn’t expressed an interest in cheerleading but after Melanie-and-Courtney’s prescribed diet of regurgitated jock cock or something, Margot was a total convert to the teenage cult of popularity.

“Christ, Frankie! I do not have time for your dipshitery! I would like to make a decent impression at this school even if you don’t. Get up right now!”

Frances cast a withering look at her sister, and then rolled out of bed before another down pillow in a pastel case could make contact with her already sore face. She slouched past her teeny tiny cute baby sister and tried to remember a time when she didn’t look at Perfect Margot without her guts twisting in dislike. She and Margot had never been braid-each-other’s-hair besties, but they had once upon a time existed a bit more peacefully. Or so Frances thought she remembered. Her mind was awfully cluttered with other garbage these days; it was hard to keep track of the minute details of whether or not she had ever gotten along with her Precious Baby Sister.

Once she was locked in the bathroom, Frances raked a hand through her long, colorless hair and dropped the boxer shorts she had worn to sleep on the floor. She bent over the tub, twisting the taps to turn on the shower, and then pulled her massive, sleeveless “WORLD’S GREATEST DAD” shirt over her head. She quickly peed while squatting over the toilet, and then stepped into the shower spray before she got any wise ideas about slinking back to bed.

Last year before the first day of school, she had climbed up the drain pipe and through her bedroom window at five in the morning. She’d hidden her clothes in a garbage bag stashed in the back of the closet because they smelled like gasoline, bonfire, and weed and fallen asleep in a matching pajama set she never actually wore, looking the picture of innocence. An hour and a half later when her Dad came in to wake her, Frances had put on an Oscar-worthy performance, convincing him that she had lost track of time studying to prepare for the Ever-So-Important Junior Year at Saint Francis that she got to bed late, and no really Daddy, that’s why I slept through my alarm.

Frances snorted as she shampooed her hair. That was back before her Dad had even considered that his Gorgeous Frankie could ever be anything less than an honest, innocent little lamb. Back before her Dad could even fathom calling his child a whore.

Frances tilted her head back, rinsing the shampoo out of her hair.

“You look like shit, Frankenberry.”

“Oh Sam… You’re just jealous you didn’t spend your evening fucking The Man or any man for that matter.”

“Before the first day of school? I’m so disappointed in you. Let’s go pray about it.”

The memory skittered unwelcomed and uncoordinated across the forefront of her mind like a spider. It was a clumsy, clunky conversation, one that seemed to Frances pathetic and naive in hindsight. Nothing was ever smooth between Sam and Frances, and for maybe the hundred-thousandth time since May, a dark discomfort spread from Frances’s belly through her limbs, cool and unpleasant, at the thought of him. She was so ashamed. She was so ashamed and embarrassed, both that she missed Sam and that they had been so stupid.

There was a violent successive thumping on the door. “WHAT PART OF EARLY IS NOT PENETRATING YOUR SKULL?”

“NOT A GOOD ENOUGH REASON TO USE THE WORD PENETRATE, MARGOT!”

Frances wondered if you could drown in a shower. Frances knew you could drown in a glass of water, so a shower could do the job, couldn’t it?

“COME ON FRANCES!”

Frances twisted off the taps. She stepped out of the shower and started violently toweling off her hair, as if she could begin undoing the shame she carried around with her by making her hair dry. As if she could be clean, free of it, if she just got herself put together in this fogged up bathroom.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the steam-clouded mirror just as she was heading out of the bathroom and averted her eyes. Frances hadn’t liked mirrors, not in months. As a child she had been a classic narcissist, obsessed with her fair complexion and fine, smooth hair. All of that had disintegrated since the Spring. There was nothing to see there anymore. Nothing worth looking at. Certainly nothing worth admiring.

“It’s almost six fifteen!” Margot moaned dramatically from just outside the door. “C’mon, you promised we could get there early. Please? Please please please?”

Frances turned to snap at her sister but – in perhaps the very first and last display of warmth she would show Margot in 1994 – she chose to bite back the caustic retort she had prepared. Frances took a breath. Took another. Looked her sister in the eyes and said, “Can you just give me like… ten minutes to get dressed?”

Margot rolled her eyes, but she and her brilliant new white sneakers trounced off to the living room to let Frances get dressed in peace. She selected a pair of cut off jean shorts and a black shirt from a still not unpacked box in the corner. Her mother had been on her case about unpacking all of her things since she’d been exiled here after Memorial Day, but Frances was more than comfortable with being difficult. She supposed now that she would be wearing clothes other than her work uniform or her pajamas, it might be worth it to move the clothes from old beer boxes and back into her actual drawers for convenience sake.

And yet.

Something about the idea of moving the artifacts of her destroyed life into the baby pink plywood furniture of her childhood seemed far too morbid.

“FRANCES! COME ON!”

“God, Margot, keep your briefs on!” Frances shouted back, hopping around, pulling on a treasured pair of Doc Martens and tying a worn old red flannel around her waist. She hoisted her backpack over her shoulder and took one single deep breath. Frances emerged from her bedroom, feeling perhaps the first glimmer of optimism at the prospect of a new start at this new school. Couldn’t be all bad, right?

“That’s what you’re wearing? God, do not tell a soul we’re related. I’ll be the laughing stock of the squad if they find out I came from the same family as the Sexy Lumberjack.”

Well, so much for that theory.

Ben ***

Despite overwhelming opportunity to disprove this thesis, Benjamin Franklin had utterly fantastic luck.

Even when circumstances seemed to dictate that his luck should be shit, the universe seemed to smile upon him. Take, for example, his totally embarrassing name.

His name was Benjamin Franklin. No middle name. He shared his name with a founding

father and a chain of craft stores. His dorky parents had let their ridiculous obsession with the American Revolution overwrite the parts of their brains that did logic when he was born, and in choosing the name Benjamin Franklin, they had essentially damned him to a life of people thinking he was a) kidding b) lying or c) utterly insane whenever he said his name.

And yet, as luck would have it, Ben was actually pretty good at steering into the skid that was his sort of embarrassing name. He would play along, and people thought that was grand, By the time he was ten, Ben could charm the pants off any passerby who thought to inquire about his name.

That was just the kind of life that Ben had. It was a lucky one. His parents, history nerds though they were, were doting, supportive, and kind. His siblings were significantly younger than he was, but rather than being bratty or attention hogging, Abbie and Georgie were generally pretty self-contained and well-behaved. Even though he attended the same school where his father taught history, Mr. Franklin was by far the most well liked teacher at Antioch Community High School, considered smart and funny and fair by most students, and Ben too enjoyed a level of popularity as a result.

And it was this, and only this, that gave Ben the ability to pull himself out of bed on the first morning of his senior year of school. Things had been shit these last few weeks, but things usually just worked out for him. He just needed to get over himself and get out of bed. Things would work out. Things always did.

Ben yanked off the covers, standing to stretch. He let himself shift into autopilot, going about the same morning routine he’d had for the last five years. Skipping and hopping over the piles of clothes and and other debris, he got dressed without thinking too hard about it - he had to spend the day babysitting freshmen for National Honor Society, so he had to wear the navy NHS shirt anyway. He was lacing his shoes when a knock came at his door.

“Ben, Daddy says fifteen minutes,” A tiny voice squeaked through the door. Ben stood up, snatching up his backpack slouched against the wall near the door, and opened the door. His little brother, George, was standing outside, all dressed in his first day of school outfit: a striped polo, new khakis that were a bit too big, and brand new sneakers that lit up when he walked. These shoes had real shoelaces, a fact that George had been rubbing in his little sister Abbie’s face since their mom had made her get Velcro shoes when they went shopping two weeks ago. George was starting the second grade; Abbie was starting first.

“Okay, I’m heading down,” Ben said, smiling as he stopped to ruffle Georgie’s bowl cut.

“Staaaaaaahp,” George whined, pushing Ben’s hand away. “Now it’s all messed up!” He was frantically smoothing out his hair, and Ben shook his head, smiling. Little Georgie was awfully finicky about his appearance for a seven year old boy. Their younger sister Abbie was content to show up to school in a mismatched outfit with her hair in a frizzy halo of red curls covered in mud, but George wasn’t happy until he had examined and approved everything their mom put out for him.

“Okay, kiddo, let’s go eat breakfast,” Ben said eventually, putting his hand on Georgie’s shoulder and nudging him toward the stairs. George took off at a run, and Ben groaned because he was sure that he would be in a full tantrum by the time he got to the foot of the stairs because Ben dared to touch his hair.

...Of course he was right. George was red faced and motor-mouthing to their mother by the time Ben ambled into the kitchen. His luck really wasn’t what it used to be.

“Morning,” his father said, looking up over his cereal. Joseph Franklin was the only self-respecting man approaching middle age who thought nothing of starting his day with Fruit Loops.

Ben nodded, heading over to the coffee pot and pouring himself a cup before moving to sit down at the table.

“Mom says that’ll make you short,” Abbie said from across the table. She was a sight, wearing yellow tights, a yellow tutu, and a yellow sweatshirt. She was sitting on her feet so she could see properly across the table, but Ben supposed she had managed to put on yellow shoes as well. “Mom says coffee will make you short,” She repeated when Ben didn’t respond. “She says it ‘stunts your growth.’”

“I’m already pretty tall,” Ben said, rolling his eyes.

“Benjamin, please stop being so grumpy,” His mother scolded as she stepped into the room, George hiding behind her legs. She was wearing a red blazer with shoulder pads that made her look kind of like a football player. Her hair was teased high in a way that seemed to only be popular among teachers and administrators these days.

“He’s just nervous about the big day.”

“What’s there to be nervous about?” Ben said quickly, feeling his blood pressure rise. He was fine. They were the ones with an issue.

“Well, you know, first day of senior year. First day of school since Penny…” His father trailed off, perhaps realizing how god damned insensitive he was being.

Since Penny had left for college, since Penny had dumped him over Dairy Queen saying he was “too depressing to be around these days,” since Penny had decided to turn into a total bitch and never actually call him to say if she got to Northwestern alright even though she promised she would and swore that they would still be friends? The possibilities were endless.

Ben breathed heavily out of his nose. He counted to three and reminded himself that he was Ben Franklin. Things just worked out for him, even when they sucked.

“Well we should hit the road,” His father said, rinsing his cereal bowl and moving smoothly toward the attached garage as if he hadn’t just accidentally reminded Ben of all the reasons he did not want to go to school that day. His dad stopped, kissing Abbie, Georgie, and their mom all on the tops of their heads as they bent over the table to finish their breakfasts, and then grabbed his keys from the hook over the counter. “Ready, Ben? Let’s motor.” He pressed the button for their new automatic garage door opener.

“God Dad, just…. don’t. Say. That.” Ben said, dumping out his coffee and following his dad out into the garage. He flung himself into the passenger seat heavily, and his dad fiddled with the radio for a moment before backing out of the driveway.

“Buckle up,” his dad said after a moment, and Ben heaved an uncharacteristically moody sigh as he pulled the seat belt around himself. “You alright, champ? You seem a bit more riddled with teen angst than is your usual MO.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Ben found himself wondering aloud, the words spewing from his mouth before he could remember that his dad wasn’t actually the reason he was a in an awful mood.

Joseph Franklin had always been an incredibly patient human being, and he very politely did not react to Ben’s unnecessary level of snark. “I’m just worried about you,” he said, as if Ben had never spoken at all. “You have not been your usual self since Penny left for school. I know it’s not easy, bud, but that’s fairly common when it comes to first loves. That’s why they are firsts. They end, and there are lots after.”

“Says the guy who married his high school sweetheart.”

“We’re the exception, not the rule kiddo. Your mother and I were made for each other.”

“And me and Penny weren’t?”

“Don’t get defensive,” His father said, stopping at a stoplight. “I’m only saying that I know you feel bad, but that you can’t just expect to feel better by throwing all that badness at other people.” He made the turn into the staff parking lot, continuing to go on about being a good person and a good example, especially since Ben was National Honor Society president and he was going to working with impressionable freshmen all day, but Ben kind of just tuned him out, hoping that he could just stay positive and not bite anyone else’s head off during school today.

His father parked the car, and Ben hurried out before his dad had even finished telling him to have a good first day. Ben strode inside with single minded resolve to throw his shit in his locker and stop being a total dick for the rest of the day. Things worked out for him. He just needed to tap into some as of us untouched internal source of luck.

He reached his locker without incident, the school still sparsely populated with forty-five minutes still to go until the school day started. He had to try his combination twice to get the damn thing open.

“Hey white boy!” Ben looked up as he was closing the door to see his best friend, Joel, striding toward him with the kind of confidence that nobody wearing a National Honor Society shirt had any right to have. “Heading to cafeteria to herd some ninth graders?”

“Yeah, in a sec.”

If Ben had to pick a favorite thing about Joel Clark, it was his complete unwillingness to discuss emotional matters. When Penny had unceremoniously dumped Ben in the Dairy Queen parking lot two weeks ago, Joel had taken the news like a weather report, blinking twice before summarizing, “Oh, that’s bull,” and then dragging Ben to an end of the summer kegger that some mutual acquaintance was throwing. None this “first love” garbage that Ben’s parents had been spouting, nothing mushy or fabricated like the few girl friends he had run into since the dumping. Just beer and an agreement that Penny sucked and they didn’t talk about her anymore.

“So… should we do the whole ‘Senior Year is gonna kill it, we’re totally getting laid’ bit, or is that too Fast Times at Ridgemont High?” Ben asked as he and Joel took off the hall.

“I feel like it’s more like Carrie.”

“Skipping it then?”

“Oh, absolutely. Can’t tempt fate.”

“They always kill the black guy first,” Ben said.

Joel stopped, flinging an arm across Ben’s chest to stop him. “Dude, that’s racist,” He said in a serious voice.

They locked eyes for a moment.

Joel laughed first, like he always did, and Ben laughed with him. Joel shoved Ben playfully, Ben stumbled a little for dramatic effect, and they started off down the hall again.

Joel and Ben stepped into the cafeteria, totally empty except for the small group of navy NHS t-shirts all gathered around a table in the far corner.

They got greeted by a smattering of “hey Ben”s and “hey Joel”s as they took up their spaces in the group, falling easily into routine just-back-from-break questions.

“Sorry to hear about you and Penny,” Sarah Freeman said in the middle of the business as usual conversation, and the whole group went completely silent.

“Thanks, I guess,” Ben mumbled, feeling heat climb in his face. He was so over talking about this.

“Okay, people, buses are arriving!” sang Mrs. Williamson, the NHS advisor. “Please remember to be polite and friendly as you help the new students find their way around. And stop telling people about the pool on the third floor, Dominic, we all know it was you last year.”

Sam ***

Samuel Keddy knew better than to believe in luck.

Luck was something for children, like Santa Claus and the saying “everything happens for a reason.” It wasn’t real, it didn’t mean anything, and it certainly should not be impacting the way a person lived their life. That was the mistake that people usually made, Sam thought, trusting that the universe was controlled by something as stupid as luck.

In the fourth grade, Sam had this stupid blue rabbit’s foot he had carried around, hoping that if he kept it close, luck would win out and save him the horrors of having his lunch stolen by the sixth graders.

He didn’t eat his lunch once in the fourth grade. It was always stolen, and he was always hungry, and nobody and nothing did a thing to change it. On the last day of the fourth grade, he chucked the damned rabbit’s foot at the head of Chuck Finn, one of his sixth grade enemies. The end result was a fist fight, which nobody won, because the playground attendant broke it up right after they had each landed a swing. Sam started the next school year with a note about disciplinary problems on his permanent record and a week of detention. Luck? Fuck no. A lie, like justice and fairness and Santa Claus. Something to tell the kids to help them sleep at night.

So Sam knew there was no such thing as luck. The world wasn’t nearly that organized.

“Samuel!”

Sam pulled the covers over his head.

He heard his door open. “Sam, you need to get up right now,” his mother’s commanding voice invaded his bedroom, and he heard her click on the lights. “I need to be in the office in forty minutes, I will drop you on the way, but you need to get up right now.”

Sam rolled over, firmly keeping the blanket over his head.

“Damn it, Sam, now!” He heard his door slam and the flimsy wooden cross above the door clattered to the floor. Sam slowly turned over, and after a moment of deliberate stalling, he pulled himself upright. He took his sweet time pulling on his white dress shirt, gray pants, and his navy blazer with the St. Francis crest on the breast pocket. He did up his shoes, annoyed to discover that they were a little tight - like his mother said they would be when she had tried to drag him shopping last week. Sam wondered how long he would be able to put up with the pinching of his toes before he finally agreed to let his mother buy him new shoes.

He glanced briefly in a mirror and saw that his dark hair was a long, stringy, dirty mess that certainly did not abide by his private school’s dress code. Good. If they were making him go back – and they were making him go back, no matter how much he had protested and fought and whined and bargained with his parents and the administration – he wasn’t going to come quietly.

Sam cut through the foyer to avoid saying goodbye to his father and went immediately to sit in the passenger seat of his mother’s Jetta.

“God, do something with that hair of yours,” Sam’s mother said, slamming the door as she climbed into the driver’s seat in a pair of royal blue scrubs. Her black hair was tied up in a neat plait, her bangs hanging heavily over her eyebrows. When she didn’t fluff them up and spray them, Sam thought the bangs made his mother look incredibly young. Like an anime character who ought to have been wearing a sailor suit uniform instead of scrubs.

His mother rooted in her purse and tossed a small, foldable hairbrush at him. Sam let it bounce to the floor while his mother pulled out of the driveway.

“Surgery today?” Sam asked, ignoring the hairbrush and playing around with the radio until his favorite rock station from Chicago came in clearly.

“Jesus, Sam,” His mother said, switching off the radio. “Fix your damn hair. You know how much trouble your father and I went to to keep you in school, and you will show up looking presentable.”

“I don’t even know why–”

“I don’t want to hear it, Sam!” His mother shouted, braking suddenly at a stoplight and flinging her arm out so it hit Sam’s chest and kept him from flying forward. “Put on your seat belt for Christ’s sake!”

Sam rolled his eyes, but nonetheless buckled himself up.

“We have been over it a thousand times. We are keeping you in this school so that you can actually get an education! We want you to stay in one place, to learn something, and now that that girl-”

“Mom, for the last time, none of this was Frankie’s fault-”

“Sam! Enough! I don’t need to explain this to you again. You are going to stay at St. Francis’s because I said so. You are going to stay out of trouble, because I said so. You’re going to join an academic club, and you’re going to improve your grades, and you’re going to go to a good college like your sisters because I said so! Is that clear?”

Sam shook his head in disbelief. “Why is it the end of the world if I don’t do well in school? Worried about what the other moms will think?”

A look crossed his mother’s face lightning fast, and it occurred to him that she could kill them both with a sharp jerk of the steering wheel. He’d hit the soft spot. His mom, Dr. Lily Keddy, had been trying desperately to fit in with the other parents at Sam’s schools, with the neighbors on their block, with her co-workers for as long as Sam could remember, but it was never easy or smooth. There was always judgment: judgment about her having married a man with two preteen girls, judgment because she was a surgeon while her husband worked in insurance, judgement because she had been in the Navy, judgment because she had married a white man and adopted his white daughters but then dared to produce a kid who was definitely not white...

They had pulled into the school’s parking lot. “Can you just drop me off here?”

His mom stopped the car, her brown eyes flashing as she through the car into park. “I’ll walk you to your first damn class if I have to, Samuel. You’re going to do better this year, is that understood?”

“Yeah, fine, got it! Whatever!”

“And drop the goddamned attitude!” Sam’s mother shouted.

“In a church!” Sam shouted as he unbuckled and pointed to the steeple of the chapel on the high school’s campus.

“I think God will understand! He had a smart ass for a son too!”

Sam slammed the door of the car, his hands curling into tight fists. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to just become this perfect kid his mother thought he should become. He had been trying for as long as he could remember, but Sam had never been able to measure up to his sisters Dorian and Iris who were perfect and brilliant and responsible. Dorian was a lawyer, and Iris had started her surgical residency, and Sam was the fuck-up.

Sam had always been the fuck-up, who struggled in school and couldn’t play nice and who stole money from a Catholic School fundraiser to pay for an abortion. He argued with teachers, his grades were unimpressive, his focus was shit and his talents mediocre. Sam was good at the guitar and good with fixing cars, but his parents didn’t reward that. Those weren’t desirable strengths. They were signs that he simply wasn’t applying himself in the areas that his parents thought mattered. He just got trapped in the middle of the road, never being good enough for his parents or bad enough to get sent away from them.

Sam hurried to his first class, slinking into the only empty seat just two minutes before the bell was set to ring, earning a sidelong glance from the teacher.

“Hey, sweetheart, having a rough morning?”

Sam turned to see he had chosen the seat in front of Jim Peterson, who was possibly the worst human he had ever had the misfortune of encountering. Jim was your typical brand of asshole, who liked to zero in all everything that made a person different and then make sure that everyone around him noticed too. When it came to Sam, Jim had a few favorites he liked to share: Sam being half Japanese, Sam getting caught ditching gym class to smoke cigarettes and having to serve weeks of detention by cleaning up the bathrooms after school, and Sam being the only person who still talked to Frances at the time that she got kicked out of school last year.

At least Jim never made a big deal out of Sam liking boys.

That was the only secret Sam seemed to still have left. Sam supposed that, if nothing else, those drunken make out sessions with Jim the summer after their sophomore year had bought his silence in that respect. At least Jim hadn’t been the shining example of asshole he was now when they fogged up the windows of Jim’s Volvo… Though that brief escape from Jim’s predictable bullying and assorted other bullshit was mostly Frances’s doing.

Frances had been really very popular, due mostly to having an older boyfriend who bought beer for underage morons, until she broke up with Kurt and was expelled last May. Apparently Jim and his jock friends only liked the parties, and when those stopped, Frances, and Sam by association, were quickly phased out of the reigning teen royalty at St. Francis. Before long, Sam was back to being shoved into lockers, called unrepeatable names, and having zero friends at this damn school.

“Come on, Spicy Tuna Roll, how come you won’t talk to me? Run late because you were working in the rice field?” Jim leered, and his other jock friends tittered with low laughter as their teacher brought the class to order.

Jim was too stupid to even properly be racist. He started miming karate chops and reversing his R’s and L’s just before the class let out, and Sam bit his tongue. His mother would be so proud. As the jocks all chuckled and high fived over Jim’s blatant display of racism and idiocy, Sam decided he needed to put his foot down. He was not going to spend his senior year of high school playing punching bag to the closet case who was far too comfortable living in a shit hole excuse for a suburb.

Parents be damned, he just wasn’t capable of shutting up and staying out of trouble.

Sam winked at Jim on his way out of class. “Catch you later, stud.” Sam exaggerated the swing of his hips as he walked out of the door on his way to gym class, and there was a collective “ohhhhhhh” of schadenfreude from the football and lacrosse players still loitering in the back of the math class.

Sam Keddy didn’t believe in luck because he didn’t have any, good or bad. He just had himself.

#three on a match #ya #YA literature #young adult #young adult fiction #young adult novel

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