Page 38 of Spring Awakening

Mali: and I’m bored

Mali: I need you to entertain me

Zach: ASDA in fifteen? I can pick you up

Mali: It’s alright, I need to get out the office rn

Mali: Toby is here

Mali: derogatory

Mali: meet u there!!!!

Mali: xxxxxxx

Zach laughs as he tells her he’ll see her soon. His mum hums in her chair. “Such a crush.”

Zach sticks his tongue out like a child. “Anything else for your list? What do you fancy for dinner?” He wonders if he should take her out. She rarely gets to go out anymore, though Devon has taken her on a couple of walks and trips around the garden to hang the washing out. Or so he says.

“Oh. What about lamb chops? I haven’t had mash in so long. And can we go to a laundrette this weekend, if you’re not busy?”

“Is your machine broken?” he asks, folding the list and walking towards the back room, but there’s nothing there other than laundry. More laundry than she ever has at her house. Zach rarely does it for her—she likes to keep on top of cleaning.

“Ma, where are your machines?”

She looks ashamed, which is not a look he’s ever seen on his mum before. At least, not since…

“Mum?”

“Devon needed to borrow them, but he hasn’t brought them back yet.”

“Devon lives here with you, Ma,” Zach says, fury rising through his bones. Zach wonders what he sold them for. If he’s high when he comes home. If he has any ability to look after their mum. Zach needs to get her out of here. Her or Devon. Zach could move back in. It wouldn’t kill him.

“What else has he borrowed?”

“Just those and a small bit of cash, nothing big.”

“Ma.”

“He needs a little help, that’s all. My other boy’s so good—he’ssogood—and I don’t have to worry about him, but Devon needs some help.”

Zach wonders if she ever knows that he does need her to worry about him, even a little. He bends down to kiss the top of her head.

“I’ll sort the washing, okay, and bring it back when I drop the food off. If I’m going to the laund, I might as well use the big machines.”

“I’ll change my sheets,” she says, using his hand to hoist herself from her chair. Then, before he can turn, she hugs him. She never hugs him when she’s lost in her thoughts, but she hugs him now, and he hugs her back.

“You’re such a good boy.”

“Love you, Mum.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mali all but skipsto the entrance of the shops. The sun is shining, finally, and she makes a mental note to start planning what to plant in the garden. Maybe the shops will have some bulbs. Food shopping isn’t her most enjoyable chore, unless it’s the first shop in a new place or she’s in a foreign country, but the text from Zach was a lifeline. One: Toby was annoying her. And two: she kinda misses him. Zach, that is, not Toby.

Since he moved in, he avoids her more than he seeks her out, but she lives for the tiny moments in-between. When she catches him in the kitchen and he makes her a tea. When she hears him on the phone and he uses his customer-service voice, which is his normal voice with a laugh thrown in every third line. When he sits at the dining table matching his rugby socks as she makes her dinner. That’s where she learnt that his dad left when they were kids. That’s where she learnt he likes blue-flavoured things. That’s where she learnt he sings along to Beyoncé under his breath. That’s where she learnt she wants to learn everything else there is to know about him.

It’s not the same as before—when she only ever saw him across the carpark and she was nervous that if she smiled at him, he might start growling—but she wishes he’d want to spend more time with her. Most nights, she wonders how wild it would be to knock on his door and tell him something random just so she could sit on the edge of his bed. She wonders if all his stuff is unpacked. If he bought new furniture while she was at work. She wonders if he knew she would have helped him if he asked.

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