Page 4 of Like Fathers, Like Son
As soon as she was gone, I picked up the books and ran up to my room with them. I shoved them as far under my bed as I could, and slid a box of my own books in front of them. I wanted time to read those in peace, and definitely not get caught with them.
By the time I was back in the office with the books, mum called me to the kitchen for my lunch. As I sat there eating my jam sandwiches, all I could think of was getting back to mum’s diaries, because I wanted to know more, and to work out if they were real or not.
My dads didn’t seem like bad guys, although that lady they brought in to see me seemed to think there was something strange about our family in general.
She’d said all kinds of stuff about our ’irregular family dynamic’ which I didn’t really understand, but I’d memorised those three words, because I liked how they sounded. I liked our ’irregular family dynamic’, and I knew we all did, so maybe it was a good thing. Maybe she was impressed by how our family was so close and happy.
She made comments about my maturity, and my emotions, but I had struggled to focus on much of what she said, because I got bored so easily. I wanted to go back and play with my cars, and she kept asking me questions.
She’d insisted on talking to me alone too, so I couldn’t even let my parents answer the questions for me. What did I know about anything? Despite what she said about my intelligence, and she kept saying the words ‘high IQ’, I wasn’t really following a lot of what she said in the end.
Basically, she was boring, because she kept asking weird questions, and saying weird things, and then apparently we had to move.
I’d asked my parents why they made me talk to that woman, and why my sister Ember had to talk to her, and all they did was change the subject, then they argued in private about it. I remember very clearly how mum seemed to blame my dads for it.
“What the fuck does she know, anyway? They’re our kids and we know what we’re doing.”
“For god’s sake, Gray! That was an official visit from child services, so we have to take this seriously. What if they decide we’re not good enough, and they… they…” Mum trailed off then, and daddy Dory spoke up next.
“Nobody is going anywhere, babe. We’ll figure this out, but if she’s right about Blaze, then we need to try and redirect things before he ends up worse than us. It’s time to try and fake being normal for a while. We’ll move somewhere in a good area with decent schools, and we’ll get the kids enrolled, and see how it goes.”
Daddy Gray cursed then, saying a string of words I’m not allowed to say.
“You know what schools are like, and I know I wasn’t the only one fucking bullied in school. Now you want to put our damn kids through that? We were meant to be doing better than our parents did.”
“We are, Gray, we are, but we need to take on board what she said. Genius or not, Blaze needs to be more socialised, and that doesn’t mean setting more fires.”
They realised I was listening at that point, and stopped their talk, but I had so many questions for them, about the lady, and what ‘child services’ were, and why we needed to move. All they told me was that it was ‘for the best’, and we’d still be a ‘kickass family’, even if we had to live among the ‘little people’. That part made me nervous, because little people were creepy, right?
I hadn’t seen any little people yet though, so I was starting to wonder if that was just daddy Gray being weird.
3
Anneka
Ihadn’thadthebest day at school today, so when I got home and went out to the garden to curl up with a book, I was frustrated to be interrupted almost immediately.
“Hi.”
I turned to the fence, recognising Blaze’s voice, and immediately noticed something different.The hole was bigger.That small hole in the fence was now large enough that his face was visible this time.
“Oh my god, what did you do to the fence? My dad’s gonna go mad!”
Blaze stayed silent, so I tossed my book aside and stomped over to the fence, to glare through the hole at him.
“Hi.”
“Don’t ‘hi’ me, Blaze! Dad will freak when he sees this. Why would you do that?”
He let out a little giggle. “So I can see you better. Can I touch your hair now?”
Oh god. I backed away from the hole.
“No, dammit. You can’t touch my hair!”
He wiggled his fingers through the hole he’d enlarged.
“Go on. It’s just so shiny and fiery. I feel like it’ll burn me if I touch it.”
