Future Leaders of Nowhere by Emily O'Beirne

Author:Emily O'Beirne [O’Beirne, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-3-95533-823-7
Publisher: Ylva Publishing
Published: 2017-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 43

Sunday is strange.

It’s strange because it’s both melancholy and lovely.

It’s lovely because Willa gets to carry the fact that Finn kissed her—twice—around all day. And she holds it like something precious she doesn’t want to drop. It’s lucky she owns the memory, too, because Sunday is jammed with team-building exercises and group hikes and camp chores, and they are rarely in the same place.

Even from the distance she’s forced to keep, Willa sees how Finn bears traces of last night’s sadness. Of course she does. During meals, Finn is turned inward until one of her team yanks her out of it with a joke or comment. And Willa wants to go to her and take her hand and promise her it will feel less bad soon. She doesn’t, of course. But when their eyes finally meet in the line to return dirty breakfast dishes and Finn smiles at her, it feels like a sunburst radiating through her chest.

Then there’s the melancholy. It’s a nebulous, unfamiliar sadness that drifts in while they’re cleaning the cabin. Willa doesn’t recognise it at first. Finally, it takes identifiable shape: she’s homesick.

She runs the mop over the concrete floor, and as the hot pine stink of disinfectant cloys the air, she suddenly aches to have woken in her own room. Willa loves Sunday mornings. Sundays start slow and stay slow. She doesn’t have to wake earlier than everyone and cram in the last of her homework before the day starts. She doesn’t have to drag dozy, grumpy Riley from her bed and force her to get ready for school while Willa helps make breakfasts and lunches and checks that Nan has what she needs for the day. She doesn’t have to rush them to school and jump on the last bus that will get her to Gandry on time, already weary.

Not Sundays. On Sundays they make piles of Nutella toast, and her brother and sister are allowed to ease into the day via television. Willa will sit outside in Nan’s tiny, verdant jungle and wait for Maida and Kelly to surface. When they do, Kelly will sit on the high brick wall between their houses while Maida spreads her long skirt out on the grass, and they’ll tell her about what they did last night. And while she listens to their tales, Willa will remember there’s a world beyond this house and school, even if she can’t always be persuaded to go there. Nan will come out to check what happened to her garden overnight and tell Kelly in her schoolteacher’s voice to get off the fence and act like a lady. Kelly will just laugh and tease, and within minutes, Nan will be laughing, too, because she loves Kelly as much as she disapproves of her.

Willa’s realises she’s homesick because it’s her best friends she wants to be around while she begins learning how to live with this thing that is her and Finn. She might not tell them about it straight away,

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