VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR A FOX OF STORMS AND STARLIGHT. It’s a minor explanatory thing that comes out in chapter 9 of Fox Book, which provides motivation for a major plot point that happens in chapter 12 (there are 49 chapters).
CONTENT NOTIFICATION: Kevin’s point-of-view scenes have a lot of swearing. Sorry-not-sorry. But maybe don’t read if the f-word offends you.
Also, this is an unedited draft. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you spot typos etc, but yo: unedited draft, so read accordingly.
Catch up on Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4.
5: Kevin
The problem with being a fucken gonner is that your brain is just as fucken gone as the rest of you.
Like honestly. What the fuck was I thinking?
First of all, some hot first date that was: Oh, Sunny, I think you’re incredible, let’s walk through the hot sweaty bush for fifteen minutes to go stare at a spiky animal.
Second… Fuck. She held my hand. I… kinda wasn’t prepared for that?
Like, isn’t the whole deal that you’re supposed to wait and be polite and all that shit?
To be fair, she initiated, not me.
But I just…
Fuck, man.
Holding hands?
Fuck.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that it wasn’t great.
It was fucken electric.
I just… wasn’t prepared. You know?
Like okay, it’s one thing sauntering past her desk at school every day, dropping a lil paper rose there for her to enjoy. It’s one thing watching her light up from across the room, living up to her name, Miss Sunshine Bright, giver of light and life and all that’s good in the world.
It’s another to be holding sweaty hands in the bush while the breeze rattles the gum leaves around you and the smell of them fills the air and an echidna snuffles self-absorbed at the reddish dirt for ants.
…It’s another thing again to realise that she probably expects you to take everything to the next level now, including at school. In public.
I’ll be honest. I’m not ready for that.
Thus perturbed, I enter the school on Monday morning, ignoring the sweet stench of sweat and deodorant, mildewy carpets and air-conditioned air. I’ve had the whole weekend to stew and fuck me if I don’t just want to turn around and walk straight back out again.
I haven’t felt like this, with this sour taste in the back of my throat, since Dad left. That was… just about a year ago.
For a second, I tense up all over, jaw twitching, hands fisting, and I think I could probably stand like this all day, stone statue in the corridor, stream of students cascading around me as I try desperately to hold onto my thoughts—until a voice cuts through the background noise, through the buzzing of my head.
“Look at him. Thinks he’s so special everyone has to move for him.”
I don’t have to open my eyes to recognise that particular voice. It’s Mina, Sunny’s older sister, though I only made that connection recently.
When I was in Year 7, I kinda thought I’d look up to Mina. She’s a smartass, like me, doesn’t give a shit what other people think, not afraid to call teachers out on their bullshit either.
I know a couple of kids used to bully her mum, Sunny’s mum, a while back—throw gravel at her when she picked the kids up from primary school, that kind of thing, because their parents are racist fucks and like usually breeds like.
Even though I never really cottoned to the fact that Sunny’s in my grade until recently, I always knew who Mina was. Everyone knows who Mina is.
And so even though I’m so far beyond giving a shit what other people think of me I can’t even see the concept receding in the distance… there’s a tiny, submerged part of me drowning deep inside that still stings when I think of how Year 7 me perceived Mina.
Because it didn’t take me long to realise that she was just as bad as the rest of them, never looking more than skin deep, not caring to look past detentions and yeah, okay, dickhead attention-seeking behaviour, but still.
I wanted her to like me, once.
Now I just want her judgemental ass to stop critiquing me while I’m standing here trying to keep my shit together.
I open my eyes.
She’s a bit down the hall now, heading toward the Year 12 common room with that tall, willowy friend of hers. I glare daggers at the back of her head with its stupid, stubby little ponytail.
She looks like shit in the school uniform anyway. Baby blue is not her colour.
I’m not done glaring at her until she disappears from view, and by then I’m late for class—unlike precious Year 12 princess Mina, I don’t start my week with a free study period, and I’m gonna get my ass kicked by Mr Reiger again if I’m much later for maths.
Fuck it.
If I go in, I’m just gonna see Sunny across the room and start fucken pining, even though I still don’t want to show any commitment or anything at school. Roses are fine. Roses are, like, smartass show-offery like I used to do.
Actual affection?
Fuck that.
Not here, not around this judgemental bunch of clowns. They don’t need to see that side of me, not now, not ever. They don’t get to. They haven’t earned it.
So I pivot, and stomp back outside, through the front doors to freedom, and my footsteps crunch across the gravel then swish across the grass and before long I’m running, the sweet, sharp air of the bush against my cheeks and the sound of my breaths keeping me company.
I don’t need them. I don’t need any of them. That colonialist bullshit they call school can last without me a while longer.
Keep reading: Chapter 6