Brian retired to his room around nine. His daughter, Oswin, had been in her room reading for the past hour. Today she had started secondary school and Brian had spent the day playing with the levels on a song he was working on. He often thought about dropping music and going to get a real job, but somehow he felt that would be a betrayal to his wife, Clara. It had been five years since Clara had died and he still hadn't had the courage to clean her closet. Every day Brian missed her more and more and every day was longer than the day before.
But his music kept him through it. Clara always talked about how much she loved his music. So Brian told himself that he simply couldn't quit music because he was honouring his dead wife's memory.
As Brian brushed his teeth, he thought about his daughter. She had never really spent much time out of the house, especially not since her mum died. Oswin generally preferred to stay in her room reading or drawing. Nonetheless, Oswin had spent today with a girl he'd never met and barely made it home in time for dinner. It was an unspoken rule in their house that you were always present for dinner.
Of course Brian was happy that his daughter was making friends; he wanted nothing more in his life than for her to be happy. But somehow, the thought of losing her to her friends made him unfathomably sad. He always wanted Oswin to be right within his reach. She looked so much like her mother.
A lone tear dripped down his cheek as Brian shook himself from the memories of Clara. He couldn't go back there. He had to stay strong. For Oswin.
Oswin looked around her room. The walls were painted rose pink and the floor was sprinkled with stuffed animals. She picked up an old teddy bear sitting next to her on the bed. As she was straightening the bow around it's neck, her phone chimed with a text from Nina.
Bus stop tomorrow? I'll bring the tea ;)
~Nina
Shooting of an approbatory reply, Oswin returned to the book she was reading. It was a silly little children's novel from America. She didn't even know how it had come to be in her home in England. The cover of the book really said it all; a bodacious blonde woman wearing a fedora and a trench coat and holding a smoking gun. That woman was Melody Malone, a private detective in old New York town. The story was silly and involved time travel and heart break. It was confusing to follow sometimes and at parts even seemed like it was telling the events as they occurred in this moment.
Oswin heard her father walk upstairs. Their dinner had been relatively quiet, but that was how they both preferred it. Sometimes it was good to talk and others it was just best to bask in the silence. Meals were for silence, lazy Sunday afternoons were for pleasant conversation.
Her dad opened the door to his room and Oswin heard him sigh. She wanted to go check on him, make sure he wasn't slipping again, but her therapist had said it was sometimes good to give him space. Oswin returned to her reading and turned up the classical music playing through her computer.
By ten, Oswin had finished her book and went to ready herself for bed. Her father's door was cracked open and she could see him sitting on his bed with his back to the door. Oswin walked in carefully, doing her best not to alarm her father. She walked over to his side and sat down next to him. She could see fresh tear streaks on his chin and offered him a tissue from the nightstand.
"Are you alright Dad?" Oswin tried to keep the worry from her voice but feared she didn't do a good job.
Brian smiled somberly. "I am love." He grasped his daughters hand and stroked her thumb. She put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. They sat there in silence for another minute or so.
"I don't want you to worry about anything Dad," Oswin admitted. "I can make friends and still have time to spend with you."
Brian nodded slowly. "I know, Os. And I don't want you to worry about me, I can handle it." He tried hard to hold in the new bout of tears threatening to spill from his eyes. The silence continued.
Five minutes later, Oswin mentioned that she should probably be getting to bed. She did have school tomorrow morning. Kissing her father's cheek, Oswin stood and left the room. She turned off the lights as she left but hovered around the door just long enough to see her dad settle into the bed. Smiling to herself, Oswin laid down in her own bed and closed her eyes, reflecting on the days events. She had made her first friend.
The next morning, Oswin awoke to the bright light streaming through her window and pointed directly at her face. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she took a quick glance at the clock next to her bed. She jolted upright as she realized that the bus for school left in twenty minutes. Oswin yanked off the shirt she had slept in and put on a fresh bra and pair of pants. She grabbed a black skirt from her closet and a graphic t-shirt from her dresser.
Running frantically around the bathroom, Oswin heard her dad leave his bedroom, shuffling in a manner that suggested that he too had just awoken.
"Dad!" Oswin shouted, stretching out the word so it reached two syllables. "You were supposed to make sure I was awake! I have to be at the bus stop in ten minutes!" She yanked a brush through her tangled wavy brown hair.
"Sorry love, the time must've gotten away from me, I was a tad busy in my bed," He joked. Despite her stress over missing the bus, Oswin couldn't help but smile. She always smiled when her dad made a joke because it reminded her that he truly was better. More importantly, it showed Oswin that today wouldn't be as bad as last night was.
Oswin kissed her dad's cheek, who was now leaning against the door frame of the bathroom. Though she was still only eleven, Oswin was almost as tall as her dad, who stood five foot four on a good day. She pushed past him and ran down the stairs. Picking up her backpack and slipping on some thongs, Oswin ran out the door and in the direction of the bus stop.
"Love you Dad! Have a good day!" She called over her shoulder as he came down the stairs to close the door after her. Oswin saw Brian blow her a kiss and wave goodbye as the door closed behind her.
Arriving at the bus stop just a minute before the bus left, Oswin bent over to catch her breath. Nina was sitting in the first row on the bottom so Oswin had no trouble locating her. She looked nervous and kept craning her neck to see out different angles of the window. Catching eyes with Oswin, her anxiousness melted away into a warm smile.
"Oi, you look like rubbish," Nina said with a smile, holding out a tea mug for Oswin.
Oswin accepted the gift graciously. She hadn't had time to pick up some sustenance on her dash out the door. "I know. I woke up about twenty minutes ago. My morning's been a bit rushed so far." Taking a sip of the warm liquid, Oswin's head filled with memories of her childhood. This had been her mother's favourite tea. She forced the overwhelmingly sad nostalgia that was threatening to spill over into the back of her mind.
The bus started rolling and Oswin and Nina sipped their teas in silence. At the first stop, only a handful of people got off, but it gave the illusion of making the bus seem much emptier. As Oswin finished off her tea, she looked over at Nina. Nina looked very composed, nothing like the thirty-second outfit she herself had thrown on-certainly nothing like the floor of her bedroom would suggest. Her posture was erect, even sitting in a crappy bus seat. The biggest interest was Nina's hair. It was curly and luscious and beautiful in every way. Each single piece seemed to have it's own unique curl, which gave her hair in its whole an element of surprise. You never knew what each piece would do. Oswin suspected that Nina hated her own hair for just that reason, but Oswin thought it was the most magical thing in the world.
As they reached the school, Nina was finishing her tea. She noticed that Oswin had finished hers a few stops back and had been staring at her for the past few minutes. Nina wondered what Oswin thought of her. Did she think she was pretty? That she was nice? That she was too much of a slob to be friends with? The questions plagued her mind as she waved goodbye to Oswin and they set off in opposite directions to their classes.
Nina arrived at her class minutes before the bell rang and sat down in her seat. As she kept trying to make it past the first page of the chapter, her mind kept wandering to Oswin. To the way the sun glinted off her chocolate brown hair. How she was short yet leggy at the same time. How her face lit up so much when she talked about her dad. As the bell rang, Nina gave up any hope at getting her reading done.