Children's and YA short story competition - Winner

The most interesting thing about the drab, narrow excuse for a garden behind 115 Castor Road is the boy sitting at the bottom of it.
I see him there every afternoon from the window of my tiny attic bedroom. The dark wooden floors are still strewn with boxes; no point in unpacking when we’ll probably be moving again before long. Instead, I sit on the little window seat each day and write stupid poems and turn the music up louder and louder until Dad comes to tell me to turn it down or Benjy knocks to tell me I have to set the kitchen table with him. Family dinners are still a novelty.
On Friday, as a door slams shut downstairs and I hear my mother’s voice rise, I decide not to stick around for the crescendo. It’s the same tune every time: You work too much; we never spend time together. Yeah, well you slept with another woman! So much for a fresh start.
‘Hey.’ I swing myself down onto the bench opposite the boy. It takes him a long moment to tear his eyes away from the dog-eared paperback in his hands.
When he finally looks up, his grey eyes are flat, stone grey – and just as impenetrable. ‘Hello?’
‘I see you out here a lot,’ I say. It’s supposed to sound like a cool observation, but it comes out stalkerish. Heat rises to my cheeks.
‘Well, I do live here.’ He raises his eyebrows. ‘So you’re the new girl in Flat B?’
‘Yeah. Anya. You?’
‘Theo.’
He says he comes out here because he ‘likes the fresh air’, with a shrug and a glance up at the sky, as if bored. But he says it like the air inside his half of the house is stale.
That night, I unpack the big cardboard box containing my favourite books. They laugh at me from the shelves.
* * * * *
On Sunday afternoon it’s raining and now I’m the one sitting at the bottom of the garden. Mum has stormed out to ‘get some air’ and Dad is trailing black clouds behind him every time he walks aimlessly into rooms.
‘You’ve stolen my seat.’
I spin around. Theo is standing behind me, his eyes as unreadable as ever. Again, I try to sound aloof. ‘You’re late. Anyway, didn’t think you’d be out here in the rain.’
‘It’s only drizzling. What are you doing out here?’
‘Oh, you know. Getting some fresh air.’ I smile wryly.
‘Parents at it again?’
The smile slides off my lips.
‘Sorry,’ he says, and for the first time he almost seems flustered. ‘It’s just… thin walls. I thought you knew.’
‘No,’ I mumble. So much for being cool.
‘I get it. My parents divorced when I was six. Before, they bickered all the time. Now Mum lives in France.’
‘Oh. That’s nice.’
‘Not really. I never see her. But she’s happier now. It’s just Dad…’ he trails off, shrugs, and takes the seat opposite me. ‘It sucks that your parents are fighting. At least you’ve got your little brother, right?’
‘I guess,’ I say. But Benjy is too young to understand.
* * * * *
Theo gets through books like he’s starving and only words will fill the hole. Every two days he’s reading a new one. But halfway through the third week he seems distracted. He’s been flicking from the book to his phone and back for twenty minutes when he closes the book and sighs loudly.
‘What’s up?’
‘This book is stupid. It’s just like every other romance plot: completely unrealistic.’ He leans back, rolling his eyes theatrically and staring over my shoulder at the house.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s so… simplistic. Real life doesn’t work like that.’
‘Isn’t that the point of fiction? To escape real life?’
‘Art is supposed to reflect reality. And apparently in reality everyone is obsessed with happily ever after.’
‘Is there something so wrong with that?’ My bookshelf is almost entirely made up of happy endings. I slide my current book a little closer to me across the weathered wood that separates us, and cover the title with my arm.
‘It’s just setting yourself up for disappointment. I expect nothing, so I’m never upset.’
I start to laugh but then he glares and I realise he’s serious. ‘So you never imagine what things could be like?’
‘No. I’m surprised you do; your parents are proof that love doesn’t last.’
I stand up, my cheeks flushing. ‘There’s nothing wrong with wanting more from life.’
My heart is still thudding when I get back to my bedroom and slam the door. There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. Isn’t that exactly what my mother said last week, to defend her long work hours?
* * * * *
‘I’m sorry.’ Theo holds out a KitKat in one hand and a tiny handful of wild, wilting daisies in the other. ‘I shouldn’t have made assumptions about your family yesterday.’
I slowly close my book, avoiding his gaze. ‘No, you’re right,’ I murmur. ‘My family is a mess.’ But I take the chocolate and the daisies.
Theo takes the seat beside me this time. The bench is narrow; his knee brushes mine. ‘Well, that makes two of us, I guess. My Dad goes through these bouts of depression where he forgets to eat and stuff. Ever since Mum left.’
He says it with bravado and an eyeroll. But suddenly I understand the need for fresh air.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not your fault.’
We lapse into silence, but Theo doesn’t get up to sit on the other side of the bench. He opens the latest of his literary endeavours, and I start threading the daisies one into another until I have formed a bracelet just a little too big for my own wrist.
I glance up. Theo’s brow is furrowed, his eyes flicking left to right. His knee is still touching mine, just lightly, under the picnic bench, and something about his confession makes me brave. I take his hand, slowly slip the daisy bracelet over his tanned skin, and then don’t let go.
For the first time since we met, Theo closes the book and pushes it away from him as he turns to look at me properly.
* * * * *
Finally at dinner my parents have something to find unity in. Unfortunately, the something is me kissing Theo.
‘You should invite him round for dinner,’ Dad insists.
‘And don’t tell us you wish we hadn’t moved now,’ Mum says, annoyingly smug.
Benjy claps his hands together. ‘Anya and Theo sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G…’
‘But if you’re going to have a boyfriend, there are some things we should discuss—’
‘He is not my boyfriend, and I am not inviting him to dinner.’ I imagine the opposite: what if Theo invited me to spend an evening in Flat A? On the other side of this kitchen wall, is Theo talking about me to his father?
I doubt it.
* * * * *
For five days in a row Theo doesn’t come down to the garden, and once again I can’t concentrate. He’s only updated his social media once. In the latest photo, a sepia campfire casts a glow across two beautiful faces. Theo... and a girl. A girl who smiles brilliantly and leans her head on Theo’s shoulder.
He never said he was going anywhere on holiday. He never said he had a friend so beautiful.
Come to think of it, I don’t know that much about him at all.
* * * * *
Theo is still away and Mum is sleeping at the B&B down the road. Dad says through gritted teeth that she’s paranoid, that she’s punishing him over and over. ‘She never even lets me explain. She never listens.’ He is chopping carrots so violently that the slices keep flying off the counter onto the floor.
Maybe Theo is right. Happy endings don’t exist.
* * * * *
He’s back. I hear his soft footsteps approaching even before he speaks. ‘Hey. What are you reading?’
‘Why do you care?’ I don’t look up, don’t turn around. I got out here first; this is my bench as much as his. You thought I’d never find out, I want to say. About her. The other girl.
‘Well, the rules of conversation encourage question-asking.’
‘The rules of conversation encourage not lying about having a girlfriend.’
‘What?’
‘Thanks for telling me about your camping trip. Did you forget you gave me your instagram?’
‘My insta— oh. Oh.’ And then Theo laughs, actually laughs at me – at my naivety, at my longing. I should have known that our summer romance could never be the kind that escapes reality.
Tears prick my eyes and I stand up fast, clutch my book to my chest. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘No, Anya, listen, she’s not my girlfriend—’
But I’m already halfway up the narrow garden. I will never read at that stupid bench again.
* * * * *
In the final week of summer, the arguments stop and my parents decide to get a divorce.
‘We both love you so much.’ Mum’s eyes are shining as she cradles Benjy’s head in her lap and reaches over to pull me in for a hug too. ‘Nothing will ever change that.’
‘And we’ll never split you and Benjy up,’ Dad promises in a whisper. ‘You’ll both stay here, together. I’m sure you know, Anya, that Theo’s older sister grew up in France with his Mum.’
‘His Dad said they never talk about her at home. Too scared of upsetting each other.’ Mum’s hushed whisper betrays her horror. ‘They see each other every summer and that’s it.’
His sister. The girl in the camping photo was his sister… A sister he was separated from when he was six? I stare at Benjy’s round face, and my heart drops. ‘I didn’t know.’ I didn’t listen.
Mum starts talking about school plans and weekend visits and lawyers, but the words wash over me as I stare at the wall that separates our side of the house from Theo’s.
‘There’s something I have to do,’ I tell them, standing abruptly. ‘Next door.’
Perhaps happy endings do not exist. But there is only one way to find out – and it is on the other side of this wall.