22
Then
— An excerpt from Nina’s diary, May 28, 2016
It’d been almost a year since Seth’s Mum moved out of the house. Seth always thought that theMumkept the house, not the Dad. But what did it even matter?
Mum wanted to experience the cityscape. City living. He wondered if she went to bars and clubs every night, if she sidled up next to single men.
Living with his Dad was no different. It was still quiet.Still.
Sometimes, his Dad came home so late into the night, that Seth pretended to already be asleep. Not that he’d even care.
So the new year wasn’t new for him, and wasn't worth celebrating.
When the school year started, Seth felt his energy already depleted. Year 10, and he was all ready to graduate. To leave this place. He was tempted to drop out, to take a TAFE course, but he knew deep down that he’d be hit with momentous regret.
Joshua and Will didn’t notice. Or, if they had, they didn’t ask about it. Why would they, anyway? Their friendship was built on the basis of video gaming, sports and senseless talks about girls.
Seth doubted they even knew about his home situation, because he’d never brought it up.
In class, Seth didn’t feel the drive to draw attention to himself anymore. He stopped answering questions with silly, stupid answers, and he stopped trying to flirt with the same girls over and over.
Without realising it, he’d withdrawn into himself. He played soccer every second day. He laughed and listened at Joshua’s stories about the girls he’d hooked up with over the holidays.
Yet, it was as though a part of him had floated out of his body, and he was watching everything unfold.
He wondered if he should pull himself back, to at least enjoy his time out of the house. But no one noticed, no one cared, so why should he? Why should he feel?
Except, he was wrong.
It happened on a random Tuesday afternoon. They’d just finished their practical PE lesson, where they’d played four rounds of oz tag. As always, Seth excelled at it, finding it to be a breeze.
He’d flown through it, almost thoughtlessly, mindlessly. Still unfeeling.
It wasn’t until he was putting the sports markers from the field back into the sporting shed, that a voice broke through his daze.
“Seth?”
It was just his name, yet it was the tone carrying it, the weight behind it, that woke him up. He turned, and spotted Nina behind him, carrying a few sports markers of her own. She must’ve been assigned as well, by their teacher, Mr. Bernston.
“Oh, hi,” Seth responded, “What is it?”
He and Nina…it’d been almost four years since she first confessed her love for him on the hall steps. A long time, really. Seth wondered if she still felt something for him.
I doubt it.
Since then, it's gotten easier chatting with her. Over the past year, her timidness had shrunk, and she acted normally around him now. There had still been glimpses of red on her cheeks, but other than that, it was as if there’d been no crush at all.
The thought of it made Seth oddly nostalgic. As if, he wanted to bottle up her strange feelings for him, for himself. To indulge in it, to bask in it.
Then, the smallest part of him whispered, toreturnit.
“I just - I wanted to -” Nina shifted from side to side, her gaze falling from his.
Oh gosh, is she going to confess again?
Seth’s heart hammered at the thought, his throat closing up. He swallowed, and his eyes fell to his shoes, his ears heating up in a pit of nervousness and anticipation.
