Physics - Newt and Lauren

Chapter 1:

He remembered the day he first arrived in the small village. Everyone it seemed to him was playing a part in some tragic comedy. The sad part was none of them knew that. He witnessed it all in those few hours through his video camera. The gambler, the clown, the mother who couldn’t bear the thought of her son being gay, and they were all playing along. All of them. If they only knew how sad they were. If they could only see.

It was his birthday. And the mother was trying so hard to impress him while the gambler tried to crack a few jokes and the clown tried harder still to impress the man she loved through an eight year old child. It was pathetic. All of it. Out of all the families who tried to make him feel at home, the family he was stuck with for now was the worst one yet.

Though the previous families he had the misfortune of being stuck with ignored him, struck him, or just plain didn’t care for him just as long as they got the government money they were owed to take him in, at least they did not pretend how rubbish they were. But this Osbourne family, they were as rubbish as they come. For his birthday the mother who tried not to think about her beloved son offered him a birthday cake decorated in a football theme. Fake Fake Fake. Why do they pretend to care? He was thinking. He hated football. And worst yet, they had put his given name on the cake too, he hated that even more.

And they kept smiling. That was what got to him. Smiling to hide all their troubles away and just pretending everything was a happy ending and at last he couldn’t take it anymore and told them exactly what they were. Told them exactly what they pretended not to be. He ran all the way to the pub he was forced to live in, inside the room of the son who left and just wanted to disappear. Hoping with all hope that by the time he woke up in the morning he’d be somewhere else where someone… anyone would at least give him a chance to let him be himself.

He turned on his video camera again, filming his surroundings, wanting to capture everything his eye had missed. One day soon, he was going to put everything together, cutting and pasting and editing… and titling his film, Society at its Worst and one day soon, everyone who treated him badly would respect him in the end. He opened the bedroom window. From the second floor of the pub, the village didn’t seem so bad when no one was around….

But then a lone figure came walking up the jetty, looking out at the lake. He focused his video on the girl who wore all black, whose wild light brown head of curly hair was kept tamed by a black bowler hat. He kept focusing on her for as long as she stood there by the railing, hoping she wouldn’t look up to see him and be suspicious. He didn’t exactly know why he kept filming her.

Maybe because she was different, because she didn’t look like she was the type to pretend, maybe it was because… she was making him change his mind about the no name town he found himself stuck in. Maybe it was because she seemed like she would accept him somehow. Maybe it was because, the more he focused on her, the more he noticed the smoothness of her face, the small nose, maybe she was even a bit pretty maybe… maybe…

He backed away from the window when she headed towards the square and closed his video camera, with his heart beating a little faster. He had to double check if he filmed all that and when he rewinded and forwarded, and everything was secure… he laid back on his bed and sort of maybe smiled for the first time in a long time. Maybe he’ll see her around again. After everything maybe his first day in the village wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was worth it to give the village a try… Maybe…