Page 47 of The Incredible Ordinary

“Stop being weird,” I mutter under my breath.

And I don’t stop smiling the whole way home.

MILÁN

I stopat the half-open door of Rory’s bedroom. He’s sitting on his bed, feet perched on his desk chair, eyes firmly on the science textbook he has balanced on his chest.

Nothing about his room says a teenager lives here. It’s neat to the point of impersonal. There are no pictures or posters on any of the generic, light gray walls. No plants on the windowsill. No books on the shelves. No photos. No trophies. The only things that give any indication that somebody lives here are Rory’s backpack stashed in the corner and his art supplies by the window.

I’m one to talk. My stuff is mostly still in boxes, piled in the corner of my own room.

I don’t want to care about the fact that Rory’s room looks less personal than a prison cell at this point.

And yet, surprisingly, I find that it bothers me. It feels like more failure when it comes to him, and there’s already plenty of that to go around, all achieved in the course of a mere three months. It’s actually pretty impressive if you think about it.

Anyway.

Here goes nothing.

I give the door a cursory knock and wait until Rory looks up from his book.

“I ordered dinner,” I say.

He puts the book down and sits up.

I take one more look around the room.

“You know, if you want to paint the walls, we can do that,” I say.

He takes a startled look around like he’s never even paid attention to his surroundings before he meets my gaze.

“Why?” he asks in a perplexed tone.

I shrug. “It’syourroom. I figured you might want to make it your own. It’s a bit sterile right now. No real character. We can change that, though. Maybe get some frames, and you can… put up some of your drawings?”

He takes one more look around. Slower this time, like he’s considering it. There’s something in his eyes. A flash of wistfulness. He shuts it down in the next moment.

“This is fine,” he says.

I think about that wistfulness for another moment.

“If you ever reconsider…” I say.

His chin juts out. “I won’t.”

“Okay, but?—”

“It’s not like I’m here to stay.”

We both eye each other warily for a few seconds before Rory looks away, gets up, and stalks past me into the kitchen. I follow him wordlessly. We plate the food in silence and sit down to eat.

Rory pokes his noodles with his fork for a bit.

“Sorry,” he mutters to the noodles.

Life would be so much easier if somebody would give me a script with the right things to say.

The silence stretches to the point where I’m desperate to break it.