What Goes Down: An emotional must-read of love, loss and second chances by Natalie K. Martin

Author:Natalie K. Martin [Martin, Natalie K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

LAUREL

Fifteen

October 1987

Laurel looked away from her camera at Nico. ‘Can you stop jiggling the table?’

‘Sorr-y.’

Her eyes narrowed at the way he dragged the last syllable out. It was exactly how she’d have said it if she were being nagged at by her parents.

‘What are you doing, anyway?’ he asked.

‘Practicing for a project.’ Laurel held the camera back up to her face but when he picked up one of the three mugs lined up on the table, she took it away again.

‘With cups?’ he asked. ‘What for?’

‘It’s about depth of field.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The distance between objects,’ she replied through lightly clenched teeth. She really needed to get on with it and he was being so distracting. Laurel took a breath and relaxed her jaws. ‘I’ve got to take pictures of things that are close and far away and get a focused image for each.’

He held the cup right up to his face, examining it as if it were something he’d never come across before and pulled a face. ‘Sounds boring.’

Laurel’s eyes narrowed at his increasingly familiar words. Everything was boring lately, according to him. Football on the telly was boring, the people around them were boring, the music on the radio was boring. Nothing seemed to be good enough to hold his interest these days.

‘Nico, can you put it back? I really need to get on with this.’

‘I mean, can’t you use something more interesting?’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘But I can guarantee almost everyone else will show up with the same photos. Cups and glasses all lined up like soldiers.’

Laurel put the camera down on the table and rubbed her eyes. It had been a long day sitting in class and trying to wrap her head around the depth of field concept - one she was really struggling with - and instead of being able to come home and get started on the project, she’d had to cook because, along with everything else, the food in the fridge was deemed to be “boring”. She wondered if Nico was secretly starting to use that word to describe her, too.

Was she boring? He seemed so uninterested in her lately. He didn’t seem to understand that she couldn’t just not do her homework, because she’d fall too far behind. The course moved so quickly that it would be near impossible to catch up. Then there was that time when they’d gone to the pub and he’d got completely wrecked. It had been karaoke night and he’d grabbed the microphone off someone and started drunkenly singing along to Michael Jackson’s back catalogue. He’d deliberately mispronounced words and even made up his own lyrics. He’d thought it was hilarious and it had been funny at first, until he’d refused to give the microphone back. Then he’d just got mean and he’d started screaming at them that they were lucky to have him drinking there because he was the next Alan Sugar. They’d ended up being thrown out. He’d laughed about it the whole way home but it hadn’t been funny.

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