"You should totally sit with us at lunch some time. You seem really pretty. Pretty cool. Really, pretty cool."
The boy had been all ego in front of his friends, with an inflated chest and the kind of face you would never get tired of slapping. He had one permanently raised eyebrow and a side-on smirk. The signature look he felt was the perfect mix of childish deviousness and bond-villain sophistication. In reality it just made him look like a bit of a dickhead. A trio of spots sat to the left of his eye, another couple on his nose. Despite that, his blue eyes still stood out, and his strong nose was matched by an equally strong jaw-line. In ten years he would be breaking hearts.
"Wow Jordan, I didn't think you would leech onto the new girl all day, you fucking letch. Why don't you go find your dungeon team and kill the mighty wizard of Eastern Hrothgar to help Zelda save the day. Or whatever shit it is you idiots do all day."
The second boy was older, awkward facial hair had started to sprout on his perfectly defined chin and his voice had lost its childish crack. His hair was sandy blond, shaved at the sides with a pile of curls on top.
"She's in our year anyway. Why would she wanna hang out with someone who jacks to My Little Pony and spends his free time chasing Digimon or some shit." A couple of his friends laughed a little too vigorously, the younger boy shook a little with rage which just made them laugh even harder.
"I'm only a year younger than you, Rory." His cheeks flushed as he pined, making his bright acne just stand out even more against his light complexion. His eyebrows furrowed and he pouted a little, still just a child.
"You're a very important year younger than me, there's so much more that we can do-" he gestured around his friends, "that you can't. Which is why we don't hang out with the same people, which is why you need to leave." Rory waved Jordan away, a hint of pride gleaming from his cheeky grin as his cronies doubled over with laughter.
"Is that the stupid little brother you were telling me about?" The girl causing all the commotion spoke up, ignoring the fact that they had spoken about her as if she hadn't been present the entire time. "He's just like my sister, so retarded." She rolled her eyes, a hint of a smirk playing across her lips as Rory mimicked her body language."Maybe if we introduce them to each other they'd finally leave us alone."
She giggle a little, leaning back onto the wall behind her and happily noticing that all eyes remained glued to her. School skirt a little too short, one too many buttons undone on her tight shirt, and enough make-up to keep a department store going for a week. It was all having the desired effect.
"What were you saying about Saturday night anyway, Rory? Aren't you parents going out of town? Bet you could have a mental house party." She batted her eye-lashes, the biggest cliché in the book, but somehow it still worked.
"Ugh, yeah. They're going to some fancy hotel down south for the weekend with my aunt and uncle and I don't know, probably the rest of the family. But, ugh, you know neighbours, and parties and my brother... None of those really mix right." He tried to laugh it off, scratching the back of his head and awkwardly trying to laugh off the idea.
"Oh. That's shit. Didn't think you were that boring." She rolled her eyes and stood upright, brushing down her skirt gently and collecting her satchel from the ground. "D'you think anyone else would be game for having fun this weekend?" She pretended to glance around the school hall, before checking the expensive looking watch on her wrist. "My folks don't really care about what I get up to as long as I'm by ten on Sunday."
"I'm totally up for fun. My house on Saturday, early. Like, seven. Half seven." He rushed to get the sentence out as the school bell rang. How could he nearly miss his shot at the insanely hot new student? "Hunter has a brother who can get us booze, right?" One of the boys behind him in agreement as the gang realised they had managed to score themselves a house party. Identical idiotic grins sprouted across their faces.
"Perfect, I'll bring some friends if that's alright." She walked away without waiting for an answer, pulling out her phone and pretending to send a text message. "Half seven, right?" She called back, waving and sending one of her killer grins from across the hall as she headed to her first class.
The distinct scent of bad cooking was wafting it's way through the household. Burnt lasagne. Again. A tall woman, known to everyone around her as Munro, sat on a wooden stool by the oven. She had her arm propped on the worktop, her head resting in her hand. She was going through her options, the kids were relishing in the amount of take-out food they'd been chowing down on but she could hardly keep up the domestic-goddess-turned-mother act for much longer if she kept feeding her children on oversized pizzas, salty Chinese and the greasiest chicken she'd ever seen.
"What kinda food do you guys want tonight? It's BOGOF on burgers from that dodgy Indian joint with the rats." She called through the house, dumping another night's efforts into the compost bin and turning the oven off. She was going to have to buy a cookbook this weekend.
"Can't you just let Rich cook, Munro?" A young boy piped up from the bottom steps. He was pulling off football boots caked with mud and trying not to make eye-contact as Munro spied his muddy tracks from the front door. His childlike grin got him off the hook,as it always did.
"I've decided to only eat vegan, gluten free, non-GMO food from now on. A week of that stuff was quite enough. My body is a temple, and this temple needs a detox."
"You're fifteen, Carly. Fifteen. Your body can take as much junk as I can throw at it and bounce back in a week. Go and ask Hayleigh what she wants, she probably can't hear us over that bloody racket."
The sweet sounds of My Chemical Romance were floating out of the oldest girl's room as Carly gently chapped the door. She rapped it a bit harder when she didn't get an answer. "Hayleigh? I'm coming in-"
The room was meticulously clean and tidy, a laptop computer sat on the desk next to a pile of neatly stacked note pads and a cup full of pens. The window was slightly ajar, the blinds rolled as high as they went, and the sun was casting an orange glow as it set. There was a wash of lavender as the room's occupant rolled out of bed. Her long hair was high in rollers and she had a dark mud-mask covering half of her face. Glancing down, Carly spotted fluffy rabbit slippers. Hardly the look to match the darker music.
"What the hell do you want, Carly? Can't you see I'm trying to have a conversation?"
"There's no need to be so rude, Leigh. Mun-" She spied the mobile phone in Hayleigh's hand, apparently she was still playing the game. "Mum wants to know what you want for dinner. We're eating out again."
Carly traipsed down the stairs to the kitchen, Munro was pouring over the vast collection of take-out menus the house had managed to accumulate despite the fact that they had moved in just a fortnight ago. Her husband, Rich, sat across the table from her. He was flicking through his phone bemusedly, giving little hums of agreement when prompted. Leo was sitting half out the kitchen door, scraping the mud off of his football boots and complaining loudly that it should be Munro's job. She's meant to be a house-wife, I'm meant to be the football genius kid. Football genius kids don't clean their own bloody boots. Munro swooped across the kitchen and smacked him on the back off the head for bad language, before returning to her menu search.
"Hayleigh is on the phone. As always." Carly slumped into one of the empty chair by the table, her bare toes just brushed the ground as she swung her legs back and forth.
"Well that explains why the music was up so loud, giving off those angsty teen vibes." Munro rolled her eyes, as Rich chuckled a little. "Did you see who she was on the phone to? I reckon it's a good night to have a progress meeting, see how you're all getting on. Maybe we should chat over dinner. Any suggestions?" She picked out a few leaflets from the pile. "I fancy Mexican, there's this place just round the corner with a really good Trip Advisor write up." Rich nodded along in agreement and Leo piped up talking about how he loved spicy food.
"They aren't going to keep giving us expenses for take out food, darling. Maybe you should learn to cook something. Might make a difference at home as well." Rich glanced over his phone at his wife, even with the majority of his face hidden his smile was still still apparent in his eyes.
Munro squinted through her glasses before breaking into a grin. "We can fight to decide who's cooking then, you know fine well who would win." Everyone laughed at the idea of Rich, just over six feet tall and built like a rugby prop, being put into submission by his barely-five-foot-tall wife.
Light footsteps bounced down the stairs, as if on cue, as Hayleigh made her way into the kitchen. "What are you guys laughing about?" She jumped up and perched on the edge of the worktop. "Mexican sounds good. I want burritos." She was already back to tapping away on her mobile. "Rory is such a sweetheart, y'know? And super gullible."
"Hayleigh, you know how dangerous their family is. You really shou-"
"I know, I know." A click as the phone locked and she glanced up, cutting off Rich mid-sentence. "Shouldn't underestimate the Byrne family. Even if their teenage son falls hopelessly for anyone and everyone." She pretended to swoon before swiping away at her phone again. "Party on Saturday. Late, should be fun."
"I hope by fun you mean useful, or a good opportunity, or maybe you're implying it's a chance to get into the house? And not just a bit of fun?" Munro raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at her pretend-daughter. "Maybe you need to take things a bit more seriously, Leigh. Just because you haven't failed a mission yet doesn't mean you're immune to failure."
"Trust me, Munro. Trust me. I know what I'm doing. Even if you don't think I'm as experienced as you, I know exactly how to play my games."
"She doesn't understand that isn't just a game." Munro and Rich were sitting on the couch,a thin blanket stretched over them and a silly Christmas film was playing in the background. "It scares me a little, she's gonna make a mistake one day."
"You should be more worried about the mission than Hayleigh. She knows what she's doing." Rich ran his hand over her head, smoothing down her blonde curls. He could feel her huff and sigh between his arms.
"I am worried about the mission, Rich. She's a big part of it. She's probably the biggest part of it – and sure everything's going well now – but what if something goes wrong in a fortnight and they find out?" She shuddered at the thought.
"Why on earth would the Byrne family ever expect that their son's new girlfriend is working for the government? She's sixteen for crying out loud." He chuckled, trying to break the tension Munro had created.
Munro just sighed again. "She's sixteen, she's just a child. You saw what happened to the last agents that got too cocky and got themselves caught, and they were supposed to be the best in the business." She shuddered again, remembering the crime scene photographs. Nothing was going to happen to these kids, not on her watch.