The Definition of Fflur Read online

  I get called a swot by the rugby boys and the popular girls, but I don't care. I don't try and fit in, and I don't try to be what I'm not. I don't think I ever will. I'm incapable of being anything other than me. Fflur. The girl those she loved once called Flower, but now I'm just Fflur.

  I can't be like Galen or Rhys. I can't be 'in' with the popular crowd.

  Mum gave me a key to their perfect house, and now, instead of trying to ruin their emerald green lawn, I walk up the path and let myself in. I fake belonging there.

  Huh. I guess there are some places where I do try to fit in.

  The sound of a guitar comes from upstairs, and I quickly take the stairs two at a time, and stop quietly outside the TV room.

  Muttered curse words come from the cracked open door. Galen scolding himself that he messed up, but I would never have known had he not said shit, fuck, bastard, and other colourful words before starting the piece he was playing again. He's sat on a low stool, with his fingers resting on the strings of his cherry red acoustic guitar, and his chin on his chest. He stops and starts frequently, trying to perfect the melody he coaxes from the instrument.

  This time he doesn't mess up. He's absorbed in the music, and I'm absorbed with him making it.

  When the piece ends, I can’t help from saying, “That was amazing.”

  Galen startles. "I wasn’t expecting anyone to be home yet."

  I think this is the first time I’ve seen him flustered. It warms my belly.

  "I've got revision," I answer simply, dropping my satchel at my feet. "What song was that?" I tilt my head and nod towards his guitar.

  "You liked it?"

  "Yeah," I reply, and then add defensively, "I like most music."

  His gaze flits away from me, and his knees bounce. Why is he being so awkward around me? I’ve heard him play before. Still, I have the urge to make things easier between us.

  "I like the way you play."

  His head snaps up, and he studies me intently, but a few moments later his body relaxes and he admits, "I want take a year off before going to uni, but Mum says it doesn't pay to be in a band. I don't care about that, though. You gotta keep trying, right?"

  I agree with him.

  “I can stop if it’s going to disturb you."

  "No, it’s cool. Keep practicing. You’ve gotta show Mum you’re serious. I’ve no doubt you’ll make it."

  "Yeah, but I mess up and swear a lot. Especially with this track, it's a killer to master. I don't know how Jimi Hendrix managed it."

  “Practice makes perfect.”

  “I guess you’re right,” he says with a smile that says it’s not practice at all to Galen. It’s fun.

  I wonder if I smile like that when I find a new flower?

  Is his music to him what flowers are to me?

  I back away from the door, and head to my new room. A few moments later the strumming of the guitar begins once more.

  Later that night, just before I’m about to climb into bed, my head hazy from all my studying, Galen barges into my room.

  "What the hell is going on?"

  He presses his warm palm across my mouth. "Shh, be quiet and get dressed."

  Galen is already dressed but must have done so in a rush. The care instructions label and thick inside seams of his top catches my eye, and I can’t help the small smile that turns the corners of my lips.

  I'm wearing pyjamas but the bottoms are boy shorts, and I pull my jeans on over the top so that I don't have to strip in front of him, even though he's turned his back to me to give me some privacy.

  Where does he want to take me? I don't know why he's come to my room at midnight, but I want to find out.

  We pad downstairs, and out the back door. He knows what he's doing. He's done this before. He knows how to move so that he doesn't make a noise. He knows how to avoid triggering the sensor of the outdoor light by sticking close to the side of the house and keeping to the edge of the wall down towards the back of the garden.

  Mum's house edges thick woodland. They don't need a fence to enclose it. They have no neighbours close by. They sit here at the top of the hill, proudly announcing to everyone else to, 'Look at us. We're better than all of you.'

  There's no need for fences and gates when the trees provide all the privacy required.

  When we head into the thickness of the wood, the moon is impotent. It's dark here, and I don't know where Galen is taking me or why we're even out here.

  Woodland debris crunches and cracks beneath my feet as we walk.

  "Where are we going?" I ask, my softly spoken words sounding like a harsh burst of unwelcome noise in the night's silence.

  He winks at me over his shoulder. "Patience, I'll show you when we get there."

  "When we get where? You can't expect me to blindly follow you into the woods in the middle of the night and not tell me why."

  He grins his patented Galen smirk, motioning to me with a sweep of his hand. "Huh. You’d think so, but here you are, in the woods, in the middle of the night.”

  I have the urge to trip him up and wipe that smug smile off his face, but I can feel my own grin wanting to break free—one I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing.

  We walk closer together until I can hear the bubbling of water before we slowly descend the bank and come across a shallow brook.

  "I want us to be friends," he confesses, more to the darkness than to me.

  I can feel my face twist into a frown. Why does he need to drag me out of my warm bed and into the woods in the middle of the night for us to be friends?

  He takes my silence as reluctance and offers me his hand. "Can you trust me, Fflur? Can you be my friend?"

  I stare at his hand. It's bigger than mine, and the moonlight dappling through the trees has turned his usually tanned looking skin into a mottled masterpiece of darkness and light.

  Can I trust him?

  Trust Galen?

  I grab his hand without further thought. It's rough and warm, with calloused fingertips from playing his guitar. Without saying any more, he turns and leads me towards the bank of the stream.

  There, in the moonlight, are Evening Primroses in full bloom.

  Beneath the twinkle of the clear sky, speckled with millions of faraway stars, and the soft light of the moon, these delicate plants pop open ready to die within twenty-four hours.

  "I found a bunch of them last night, but they've disappeared. I was hoping more would be further downstream." He motions to the delicate flowers. "I guess I got lucky."

  "They only bloom for one day."

  "That's sad."

  "Not really."

  I'm feeling very unlike me. I'm off balance, my emotions seesawing. I want to look at him and judge his reactions, but I don't. Instead, I fix my eyes on the fragrant yellow blooms and lean down towards them. I bring my fingers close but do not touch. I ghost my fingertips in the air around them, mapping their shape, my lips silently whispering my secrets.

  "Don't you want to take one for your scrapbook?"

  "Why would I want to take something that only has a few hours to enjoy the world?"

  "But that's what you do, isn't it? Collect flowers."

  "I take the ones that need collecting. These are happy as they are, plus I've already collected a flower for today."

  "You only take one flower a day?"

  "One flower is enough."

  Silence wisps around us like the beginnings of fog. Galen with his back to me and his eyes searching the babbling brook. Me on my knees in the damp earth, my fingers itching to touch, my heart whispering for me not to.

  "You know a lot about flowers, don't you?" It's a statement formed as a question.

  "Probably just as much as you know about music or rugby."

  He turns to face me and crouches down to my level, his eyes focused on the delicate blooms.

  "Why do you tell the flowers your secrets?"

  "Because they listen, and they keep them."

  "Why do you
collect them?"

  "To remember."

  "So they're memories for you."

  "No, they're not memories, but they hold a memory."

  We stay there for a while listening to the late pops of blooming evening primrose, watching as the moonlight beckons them to awaken.

  "Can I ask you something else?" he whispers. I turn to him; my eyes wide, waiting.

  He glances briefly at me and then his eyes trail away to the brook. "Why do you think we’re better than you?"

  "W-what?"

  "You wear your heart on your sleeve, Fflur. You're as easy to read as music, to me at least."

  He turns away from the brook for a second and regards me once more. I open my mouth to deny it, but I don't have the words, and apparently, we both know it would be a lie.

  "Besides," he adds quietly, and with a shift of his shoulders, that's not quite a typical Galen shrug, it’s something more honest. "It's what I used to think about you and Rhys before Mum moved in with us. I always wondered why she kept leaving us for you." Then with a voice that can be barely heard above the water, he adds, “But it wasn’t what I thought."

  My stomach churns, and bitterness bubbles and pops in my belly.

  "I'd like to—" Galen begins once more, but I shake my head and hold out a palm to stop him.

  "I don't want to hear it." I barge past him, and he reaches for my hand to stop me. With my head shaking vigorously and my body language screaming at him to leave me alone, he eventually backs off and his arms hang limply at his sides.

  As I lead the way back—to his home, not mine—I think I hear him say sorry, but it's muffled by the screaming of my heart.

  Chapter Ten

  Max has bought himself a new toy.

  It's a vintage, split-screen, VW campervan in a minty ice cream green. And Max hasn’t stopped talking about it.

  He tinkers under the bonnet every day. He washes it every other.

  And after a two-hour journey ended up almost four, I can tell you it's uncomfortable as hell, that's what it is. And it has a top speed of about fifty miles an hour.

  Rhys, Galen and I pour from the back, out through the squealing sliding doors, on jellied limbs. Our legs desperately needing to stretch.

  Rhys whined like a toddler the entire way. Almost three hours of, "Move, shift over, I'm squashed."

  Galen eventually swapped seats with him, and I breathed a sigh of relief until my leg began to tingle because Galen's rested tightly against it for the rest journey.

  Our first family trip together.

  Family.

  The word makes me want to vomit. Or cry.

  How can a word that signified all the most important things in my life—love, laughter, home, safety, warmth—turn into something that tastes bitter on my tongue?

  And where had Mum and Max decided to bring us for this family jaunt?

  Barry Island Pleasure Beach on the hottest day of the summer so far—and it's a Bank Holiday.

  Only one week until the end of summer break. Just seven days before we have to go back for my second year in high school.

  "Don’t forget your drinks, hats and sunblock," Mum calls out, waving around one bottle of water and another of sunscreen spray. Behind her, the gaudy sign of the Pleasure Beach beckons us forward, and throngs of people flock at its entrance.

  "Max, my love. Can you pass Rhys one of the spares I put in the back?"

  Rhys ignores Max's offer, unzips his backpack and rummages around inside until he finds his drink, before pulling it out and shaking it as if to say, ‘Don’t bother.’

  Max looks forlornly at the bottle in his hands before throwing it back inside the van.

  I smile at Mum and say, “I’m good, thanks. I have everything I need.” To which she gives me a grateful one in return.

  Galen yawns long and loud, and I turn my head to see him a few feet away with his arms stretched high above his head, and his t-shirt riding up over his waist, revealing a sliver of his naturally tanned skin.

  My eyes are drawn to the exposed slice of his stomach, and when he catches me staring, he seems to extend his stretch as if he's posturing like a preening peacock.

  When he finishes, he tucks the back of his t-shirt into his jean shorts, and grins.

  Mum herds us all towards the entrance of the pleasure beach with an overly cheerful, "Let's go and have some fun, guys!"

  Rhys drags his feet while trailing behind us with Max, who is telling him how much he used to love coming here as a kid.

  Rhys ignores him.

  We stand in line for our entry tickets, completely silent unlike the other families surrounding us who chatter and laugh and share excitement about the day ahead.

  I wonder if we stand out? I wonder if they can tell that it was only a little over a year ago when we would’ve been like them?

  Only, we lost one member and gained two we never asked for or wanted.

  "How about we all—" Mum begins, after sharing out the tickets, but Galen has already walked off towards the rollercoaster and Rhys towards the arcades.

  I shuffle from foot to foot, not knowing if I should hang with Mum and Max or go off on my own like the boys.

  Mum smiles but it doesn't reach her eyes. "We'll catch up with you later. Use your mobile phone if you need us.”

  Max wraps his arm around her shoulders, and she seems to sink into his side. He smiles at me in much the same way as Mum did. "Go and have fun."

  I push through the Bank Holiday crowds—all here for a day of family fun—and absently head in Galen’s direction.

  I have no intention of following him.

  ‘Liar,’ my heart whispers. ‘It's not like we're friends,’ I whisper back.

  The closest we've got to interacting at Mum's house before the summer break was the once Galen burst into my room in a panic as if something awful had happened, clutching a Chemistry textbook to his chest.

  “Fflur, I have an emergency,” he rushed out.

  “What’s wrong? What is it? I asked in alarm, my eyes likely as wide as saucers in my head.

  He groaned loudly before tipping his head back and thudding it repeatedly against my door.

  “I’m useless at Chemistry. Help me please?”

  “Jesus, Galen. Don’t do that. You scared me.”

  His head rolled to look at me.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to, but can you help me? I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll give you anything?”

  “Anything?”

  He nodded his head.

  Payback is always sweet. I’m asking for the big guns.

  “I want your guitar for two hours.”

  This time it was his eyes that bugged out of his head.

  “My guitar?”

  “Yep.”

  “Deal,” he said, like it wasn’t a big one, but I knew it was. His guitar was as precious to him as my flowers were to me.

  “Then fire away.”

  I helped him, of course I did. Answering questions is my thing. I’m a nerd after all, it’s in my DNA.

  That night he left his guitar outside my room with a small bunch of wildflowers.

  He let me keep it for two days before I propped it outside his room the morning I left to return to my father’s.

  People scream as a roller coaster dips and rushes over rickety tracks. The smell of candy floss, popcorn, and hotdogs battle for dominance and long queues for fast rides weave their way between the stickiness of spilt drinks and melted ice lollies.

  Galen.

  He's sitting alone on a picnic table, his bottom on the table top, feet on the seat, and his sunglasses hide the striking colour of his eyes. He doesn’t spot me because he's too busy texting on his phone.

  Mine buzzes in my pocket.

  As I dodge around groups of teenagers rushing towards the rides, I push my hand into my shorts, pull out my phone, and open the text.

  The Log Flume is empty.

  The old log flume not being busy doesn't surprise me. It’s ancien
t, and I swear the water is more slime than liquid.

  Is that a request to join him? Why would he want to hang around with me?

  Galen startles when I sit on the bench at his feet.

  I tilt my head towards the log flume that sits across the green from us. "Let's go and get wet."

  He smirks at me. I'm not sure if it’s because of my choice of words or because I'm weird. I laugh to cover up my blush.

  "Let's go and get you wet."

  Teen boys are freaks.

  Minutes later, we climb into the already soaked seat of an old flume boat. Galen is told to sit at the back of the long, narrow, single bench because he's bigger, with me in front of him a few inches.

  I didn't think this through.

  As the flume boat begins to move and climb up the conveyor belt towards the top of the first dip, my back hits his front, and he wraps his arm around my waist.

  My stomach dips but not because of the ride, and I swear it stays somewhere around my feet, near the tips of my toes, for the entire time.

  Galen’s arms are around my waist. I can feel each of his laughs right through to my chest.

  When we get off the log flume, we are soaked to the bone, and both laughing wildly. Both of us feeling lighter than the candyfloss scented air.

  Galen looks at me, and I don't know if this is where we split up and go our separate ways. I think I need to leave before he does.

  "I guess I'll catch you later."

  "Hey,” he says, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and pulling me tight to his side. “Where do you think you’re going? I need to take to you on some more rides. Big Dipper?"

  I think about sharing that last ride with him. His arm holding me tight, his legs bracketing my thighs.

  "I think I feel a bit lightheaded."

  “Come on, Fflur. Live a little. You know you can trust me,” he says while squeezing me tight.

  I think back to that night in the woods.

  “I trust you.”

  "Great.” His face stretches into a wide and dazzling smile, and whatever has decided to flutter around in my belly, stills before doing a backflip. “That's what we're going on next."