AVA

You follow the right direction when your vision and thinking is realistic. You can't tell that about me.
In what world do you live in a house where both your step-siblings have feelings for you? Apparently, my dysfunctional one.

My foot considered following the right direction. I don't understand how I find myself weaving my way through hordes of people that aren't my family; admittedly, my head was preoccupied with the burden of a nightmare that I was drowning into.

Everything was triple times louder than the city should be. I amble in the wrong directions no matter how much hard my brain tries to catch up with memories of the times I've been around here; I just seem lost like a left-behind tourist, bumping into people sometimes, stopping in the middle of places I cannot recognise so I could catch my extremely inactive breathing.

I was sweating, sort of dizzy, while around the social environment. Lots of vehicles and different weird faces skidding around me with no perception of my world falling apart.

"Ava Lancelot?" Someone called.

Boisterous voice, enthusiasm dripping from it, but I just take it as another retribution to mess with my head.

My hands pressed hard against my ears to block everything out of my head.

"Ava? Are you okay?"

This time the voice was much familiar, crammed with concern, and two seconds later, there were hands over my both shoulders.

Tilting to my left, I studied the faces of my classmates.

Lisa's fingers were waving erratically in my face.

"Seriously, are you okay?" She frowns worriedly.

Mentally, I intend to nod, but I don't know if it worked physically as my mind inclined to or was I froze in my stance as though I had just experienced a shock.

"Come, let's get her in the car." Said a male voice before I felt myself moving.

I will go with the latter. I surely am frozen.

Until I was in the vehicle did I recognise the expensive cologne of Rem's possessions; I know that because I've hung out with the boy a couple of times, occasionally with our group of classmates and once, in his closet to make out at a party for a ping pong daring game or something like that.

I would never kiss that guy willing.

Remington is Lisa's dream jock boyfriend, who happens to have zero feelings for her. Even after admitting everything she feels for him, he blatantly laugh it off with his teammates at training and throw in her face how much she has nothing interesting that he hasn't seen. It makes me wonder how she is always clinging to him even after the rejection, but I wouldn't be surprised; some girls will take any sort of humiliation for the last-minute goal. Which is having a star football or is it, soccer player? For a boyfriend in senior year.

While the car was moving and the sun was slumping behind the horizon, my head was leaning against the window, staring at the universe outside this small space. It was beautiful, and everything that came different from my own life.

I try to push back everything that wrapped in a ball and made my life dreary, but they just keep coming-occupying what is left of me.

The music playing in the car was soft and matched my emotions, it made me want to start crying, and that is something I don't have a plan for, ever, while crammed in a backseat of a sporty car of my schoolmate. So I was more than grateful when the car stopped moving, and Rem informed me we were in his location.

God, not here.

"Let's go in; my parents aren't home." He said when he adjusted the seat for me to climb out.

"I can't. I need to go back home." Or else I have to face another excruciating conflict with my mom for bailing out on what I suggested, given she's always prepared to set nothing into something these days.

Leigh, on the other hand...

Leigh! I should call him.

"Come out and stop being boring now." I heard Lisa groan from the other side of the car while I searched for my phone in my small bag and found nothing but my lipstick.

I ignored her and asked Rem if he saw my device, but his brows hardened in concern, and he shook his head. No.

Great, Ava, just great. You have to lose your phone in moments like this.

"You can use mine if you don't mind." He offered and held out his phone, but I shoved his hand back, yawning.

"I don't memorise phone numbers." I sigh and step out of the vehicle.

Seeming irritated by Rem's gentle attitude towards me, Lisa pulled me by the arm and ahead from her crush.
"So, what were you doing in Mesquite Avenue by yourself?" She inquired, pushing the door open freely. You'd swear it is her house.

"What were you doing at Mesquite Avenue with Rem?" I shot at her, and she was immediately a tint of rose.

"Nothing, he was around the eighth street with his dad, and I needed a ride from the city center motel; my car had some problems." She tries to explain in a way that tells she's apprehensive while leading us to his kitchen by herself.

I think I heard a faint voice of Rem, letting us know he will be down there in a few minutes before the stomping sound of his foot as he jogs over the wooden stairwell that leads to his bedroom downstairs; we had come across when we came in.

"You go to that two-star hotel?" I criticised when she sat me on a stool before the glossy counter and pranced around the spacious kitchen to prepare something, I think.

"God, you Boyce's family will always be so judgmental."

"I am a Lancelot." I object and take a huge gulp of water she just fetched for me.

By the fridge, she stopped and looked over to me, "Well, the name is now only a word. The transformation had already taken its action. Believe me; you're fully a Boyce."

With that, she pulled both doors open and examined the contents in the fridge, letting me digest what she had just said. And that set me on my nerves, anxiety eating me inside, and I came to terms with how valid her words are.

A teacher from my old boarding school once said, one person's opinion could be invalid, but two or three similar clues is not coincidental. This isn't the first time I've been told how much I've varied from the real Ava Lancelot, who came to this place with plans of being true to myself and nothing more.

I was thoughtfully peering at the faucet in the middle of the island when black painted nails dropped a pint-sized phish food ben and jerry's flavour and a shiny stainless spoon over it.

"This will help." She assured and squeezed my shoulder with her hand before she twirls off, disappearing through the archway that directs to the staircase.

Lazily, I peel off the cap of the cup and dig into the flavour I've never tasted, and so far, it alleviates some of my tension as I munch on the fudge calculatedly. I could have agreed on the fact that every ice cream flavour never disappoints, but there's no way I could forget a particular sour thing Lilith offered me on new year's eve at the strip fireworks.

Lilith!

My head still couldn't wrap around what had just happened. It has to be some game or something she's playing at. She had displayed nothing but contempt ever since I moved here, occasionally faking gratefulness for having a stepsister.

But she kissed me, and it wasn't just the momentary kind that goes up when you're intoxicated at a party and pulls your best friend by the neck to make up in front of every other drunk partygoer for triumph applauds that amplifier your fame for school. No, she kissed with too much emotion, which had the power of agonising torment, and no amount of ice cream will reverse the fact that Leigh sister also wanted me. At the same time, I, on the other hand, the stepsister who came along with trouble and destruction, is covered in fear of leaving this little hideaway because whatever was outside that door comes with reality, and mine is just a load of shit.

I was halfway through my ice cream when I heard distant voices, male voices to be exact, and one among those was a familiar one I quickly discerned.

Lucas Nelson.

Shit, haven't I ignored him for a couple of days ever since the camping stuff? Well, not deliberately, but I had a lot on my plate to deal with. Lucas and everything that happened that night were just for some other time.

Apart from Evie, he is the first person from school ever to see me cry, like a blubbering mess kind of cry, the sort that let you utter a lot of stupid things you will regret later. And that's not all. Affirmative, I might be clueless of what had happened after I fell asleep crying that night, but I am not unaware of the fact that Leigh found me in Lucas tent and that, I am sure, mustn't have gone very well since none of them talked about it.

Admittedly, I didn't give Lucas the chance to talk about it, but Leigh? He just didn't mention it. He went on fine the next day and followed me places, kissed me without a flinch and told me he still loved me. That's not very natural of him, except I am missing something, or perhaps through the past year he had changed too, and I don't know him anymore, and that impulse jealousy he used to feel over me with another had just washed away.

As the boy's voices started getting closer, I rose from the stool and raced towards the back door, but I was late; before I could exit the house, someone called me out.

Oh, jeez.

"Tequila and joint. who wants to try?"