It all started with a knock at the door.
Shelby was sat alone in her room reading a book on the Victorian era.
Her brother, Mycroft, was in the kitchen cooking their dinner. He put down the knife he was using to chop the onions and went to answer the door. When he opened the door he was greeted by the couple that had moved into the apartment below the week before. He remembered that they usually left at erratic times.
When Shelby heard unfamiliar voices she rushed down from her window seat to see who was at the door. There were never visitors at their apartment. She recognised the couple - she'd noticed them last week and remembered the way the man had stared at the moving men's butts and also how the woman had been suspiciously texting. She had also noticed that the possessions of a girl the same age as her had been brought into the building, though she hadn't seen said girl yet.
She stood in the doorway that led into the front room; her form was hidden by the bookcase, but she could see the door in the mirror.
"You really don't mind?" the woman asked. She sounded worried, but about what? Was it because her hemline was crooked? Or because she'd realised her husband was gay? That was illogical as she had her arm looped through his. He remained silent by her side. In fact it seemed like he was staring into the apartment, sweeping and searching it with his eyes.
"Of course not! We were just about to have dinner. Send her round and she can join us," Mycroft replied. Who was joining us?
"Us?" the man asked in a deep voice. Shelby stepped backwards and jumped through the doorway to create the illusion that she had just rushed through it rather than stood behind it for a while. The couple jumped at her sudden appearance.
"Sorry, yes, I should have said; this is my sister, Shelby. She lives here with me." Her brother gestured for her to come closer. She stepped lightly towards them, avoiding the stacks of books she had left scattered around the place. While Mycroft continued to smile, Shelby adopted her more bored expression. It was her best disguise. "Shelby, this is Sally and... what was it again?"
"Never mind," was the man's reply.
"They're from downstairs. Their daughter is going to be joining us for dinner." Shelby stared at the couple who smiled back her. She blinked at them before replying.
"Why do you have a gun?" she pointed at the man's hip where a discrete yet misshapen bump protruded. His hands fell upon the bump, confirming to Shelby that it was indeed something dangerous. "Are you going away on a job like my parents?"
The woman looked confused but continued to smile. It was becoming more strained by the second.
"Yes dear, we are. Say, when did your parents leave for their job? Are they doctors or something?"
"No, not doctors, they work for the government and they left seven years ago." Everyone was silent. Shelby continued to blink at them with her bored expression. The couple were staring down at her with their mouths open wide and Mycroft had that pained expression on his face, with his eyes closed, like he often did whenever she spoke.
"Why don't you send Jane up?" He said flatly before closing the door in their face. He turned sharply on to Shelby
"Why did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Act like a freak?"
"You said I'm not a freak, I'm just special."
"Your memory is special but your obvious lack in social graces makes you a freak."
"Calling me a freak isn't very polite, Mycroft. What would mother say?"
"Mother isn't here."
"Fine, what would Mrs. Hudson say?"
"She would call you rude!"
"Yes but she wouldn't call me a freak."
Knock knock knock
"Our guest is here. Please Shelby, just try to be normal."
"I'll try, but with you as a brother, I'm afraid it's just not in my genes."
Mycroft opened the door and there stood a girl, a little shorter than Shelby, with sky blue cropped hair. She wore a heavy jumper and jeans; a violet laptop was tucked under her left arm and she held a leather satchel in the other. Her face expressed surprise.
This was the infamous first meeting of Shelby and Jane.
It all started with her mother's phone ringing.
Jane was sat in her room reading a Fanfic on her computer and listening to her wide collection of music. The ringtone cut harshly through 'This is war'.
Her mother, Sally, and her uncle... well he'd turned up last week and told them to move, he hadn't actually given a name other than Anderson, were running around collecting items and putting them into their bags. This happened every time her mother's phone rang. They didn't even need to pick it up anymore. They just knew they were needed at the station.
Jane folded up her laptop, ready to leave as well. She was usually taken along to the station as well. She didn't mind, their Wifi was usually better anyway. Today was different though.
"Jane you can't come with us this time," Anderson told her when she asked when they were leaving. "It's dangerous there at the moment."
"Where can she go then?" Sally asked him, not even bothering to acknowledge Jane in the doorway. They stopped for about a millisecond before he came up with a solution and continued with their packing.
"Upstairs. The landlord said there was someone who lived upstairs in apartment B. We'll go up and see if she can stay with them." He said as he tucked his gun into his waistband. Sally looked up at her daughter for the first time.
"Would that be okay baby?" she asked with her straight face. There was no worry, no concern for her own child. For Jane, that was what hurt the most. She nodded and sank into the sofa to wait.
They returned and picked up their bags.
"You're okay to stay up there. There's a man that lives there with his sister, A Mr. Hounds and Shelby." Sally informed her. Anderson exited the door and headed down to the car to get things started. Her mother waited until Jane had followed suit before closing and locking the door to 221a. Sally turned to leave the building and Jane turned to head up the stairs. She tried wasting as much time as possible, so she counted each step as she ascended. In the end it was seventeen to the apartment above. She knocked on the large, red wooden door. It opened a moment later to reveal the occupants:
A tall, dark haired man in his mid-twenties stood in an untucked shirt and chinos and next to him was a girl the same age as Jane and roughly the same height. Her hair was the same colour as her brother and was rather frizzy. She wore a very old yellow sundress despite the fact it was the middle of winter.
Jane's first impression?
Brilliant!
Jane found this brother and sister duo very odd. Let's start with the dinner, shall we?
Mr. Hounds (he's said to call him Mycroft, but to Jane, Mr. Hounds was more normal) had cooked a brilliant beef stew with mashed potatoes. He'd laid out the table and they all sat down, it was then that Jane noticed the stack of bread slices by Shelby's plate. They all started to eat and they sat in silence. Jane decided to look over at Shelby to see what she did with the bread. She wished she hadn't. Shelby had taken her fork and used it to mix together the potatoes and the stew into a beige mess of beef chunks, carrots, and gravy. It looked like baby vomit. She then proceeded to shovel it onto the slice of bread and eat the concoction as a sandwich. Mr. Hounds seemed not to have noticed.
"What's with the bread?" She asked Shelby, but they both looked up and Mr. Hounds answered.
"She won't eat anything unless it's in sandwich form." He replied flatly before continuing his meal.
"Why?" This time Shelby was the one to reply.
"I'm calcium deficient and white bread is an excellent source of calcium." She said in the same flat voice, before taking a bite of her sandwich, causing a carrot slice to drop out of the bread and plop onto the plate.
"You were calcium deficient five years ago. You're fine now." Mr. Hounds sighed, his eyes still on his plate. They did not look at each other as their straight faced fight continued.
"I could still be calcium deficient. It could be a genetic condition. It could be Hyperparathyroidism."
"If it was inherited, surely I would have it to. You are most probably deficient due to your lack of vitamin D seeing as you never go outside."
"I go outside for PE every day."
"Watering the plants on your balcony does not count as PE; neither does it count as going outside"
"I'm sorry did I hit a nerve?" Jane asked nervously. She'd been here less than half-an-hour and she had already caused an argument.
"Oh, don't worry," Shelby turned her eyes on Jane for the first time since dinner had started. They were brilliant green. "We always fight. He doesn't approve any of the life choices I make."
The dinner continued in complete silence.
When they had all finished, Mr. Hound handed Shelby something which she promptly swallowed.
"Why don't you two go to Shelby's room and do whatever teenage girls do? I'll clean up" They all stood up and Shelby showed Jane to her room in the back. It was an utter mess.
"This is absolute CHAOS!"
"Yes but it's an organised chaos." She stated as she leaped over a stack of papers which all seemed to have the title 'Problem' "With your inferior mind, I wouldn't expect you to understand" Jane found that hard to believe. She was top of all her classes and was the leader of a scout unit, despite only being seventeen.
At that moment she spotted all three volumes of 'War and Peace' on the bedside table. They had a multitude of coloured post-it notes sticking out of the pages.
"What are those?" Jane asked pointing at the stack of books. Shelby followed her finger. She skipped over to the table, avoiding glass beakers and what looked like a pickled frog in a jar.
"War and Peace. My parents got them for me for my fifth birthday, just before they left." She said as she picked the top one up and stroked the leather front.
"I meant the post-it notes" Shelby snapped her head up sharply to look at Jane. She seemed angry, very angry, but before she could begin to think why, the expression was replaced with the same bored mask she had been wearing for the entire evening.
"Mistakes, missing information, just stuff that bothered me." She put the book down and pranced over to the desk in the corner. On the beige wall were scribbling: equations, workings and small quotes she recognised from books she'd read in school. She made her way to bed and sat down. She picked up one of the books when Shelby had her back turned. The post-it notes were full with things like: 'Doesn't make sense' and 'idiotic'. Before Jane could read further it was snatched out of her hands. Shelby stood above her holding the book tightly to her chest.
"Please don't touch anything" She ordered sternly and through the mask, Jane saw a little anger once again. She stalked off back to her desk, taking all three books with here.
Jane found an electrical outlet and plugged in her computer. She logged into Tumblr (woolly-jumper-girl) and began to scroll through the flurry of text and pictures and GIFs. She didn't turn on her music as Shelby was humming some melody to her and Jane knew it would just annoy her. As she scrolled through the various posts, she failed to notice that Shelby had changed tunes, or later when she had stopped humming altogether. She scrolled down onto to the anti-joke Sherlock post she had seen a million times before on her dash when a hand shot from behind her and pointed to the screen.
"Who's that?" Shelby asked from behind, her finger stabbing at Benedict Cumberbatch's flawless face.
"That's Benedict Cumberbatch; he plays Sherlock Holmes on the TV programme"
"Who's Sherlock Holmes?" She asked innocently. Jane turned round to face, a horrified expression implanted onto her face.
"Who's Sherlock Holmes..?" she echoed in a weak whisper. Granted, she hadn't seen a TV in neither the front room nor the bedroom, so she probably wouldn't have seen the show, but for a girl that read so many books, how had she never come across the beloved Sherlock Holmes.
"Well," she began, not entirely sure of where to actually start "he's a detective. He solves crimes the police can't. He lives with a doctor called John Watson and he helps him solve said crimes." Shelby nodded content with this description.
"Is he smart?"
"Very." They sat quietly, Shelby still staring intently at the computer screen. "Do you want to watch some of the episodes?" Shelby nodded very enthusiastically.
As she pulled up her iTunes library, Jane began to think about Shelby. She was one of those girls that thought she could experience the world through books, that if she knew the theory behind it, she could do it. She was a clever girl that wasn't able to do anything. What was sadder is that her brother seemed to make no effort to change this. No doubt she was bullied at school.
"What school do you go to?"
"I'm homeschooled."
"Your brother teaches you?"
"No, Mrs. Hudson. She comes to the apartment every weekday."
So no bullying then, but she was severely isolated. It didn't seem like she had any friends. Jane felt a little sympathy for her. The episode popped up ready to watch when there was a knock at the door.
"Hey girls, Shelby's not attacked you yet?" Mr. Hounds asked poking his head round the door. He didn't seem to be joking.
"No, but we're going to watch a television programme!" Shelby exclaimed, her face lighting up with a smile and the whole thing exaggerated by a twirl on one foot. Wait had she just done a perfect pirouette? He seemed to be taken back by this display.
"Okay... one thing we don't have a TV..." Jane lifted her laptop to indicate their plans, he nodded.
"Before I go, are you going to be staying Jane?" She usually did spend the night. Better to be safe than sorry, plus she really wanted to show Shelby the wonders of Sherlock.
"I think so, if that's not a problem?"
"Of course not, I'll get the air bed"
Within the space of half an hour, a space had been cleared in Shelby's belongings and there sat the air mattress with a sheet and duvet ready for use. Mr. Hounds had disappeared off to bed and the girls were starting their first episode.
Shelby was surprising quiet throughout the screening of the first season. She would only point out things that the characters got wrong, but she never once interrupted Sherlock.
When they settled down to sleep, Jane began to think about how similar Shelby and Sherlock were: Their impressive knowledge; their keen sight for details. It was strange, plus her brother was called Mycroft! He was a lot younger than Mark Gatiss though and better looking!
Shelby couldn't help but think that out there somewhere, it was possible that there was someone else like her. Someone else who saw what she saw; someone who wouldn't call her a freak, but an equal. As she reached the edge of the abyss that was sleep a thought flashed through her mind: Jane hadn't called her a freak, not yet. Unconsciousness pulled her under before she could properly dwell on this though.
