So Curtis thought she was clearly having some kind of premature life crisis.

As Keegan left his house she wondered if she had just made a terrible mistake. Curtis had cornered her after a quiet Noah had disappeared into the bathroom demanding to know what she was doing. She'd never heard him sound so much like a concerned older brother and for a minute she had felt a sudden burst of warmth for him because there he was helping her when she had nobody else to turn to.

Then he had began to question her incessantly asking her what exactly she thought she was playing at,  how she knew Noah, whether she had just brought a drug addict into his home and where her parents thought she was, and any sense of them being in this together had quickly faded. She had replied to him curtly giving him barely any information,  it wasn't her story to tell and Noah would only be there for two days while she came up with a more permanent plan. She would just have to figure out what that permanent plan was along the way.

It had been hard enough getting Noah go agree to stay with Curtis. He had emerged from the bathroom looking slightly cleaner but still sickly. His eyes had darted around nervously taking in his surroundings like he'd been in in a prison. When she'd made to leave he had taken a step towards her like he wanted to follow her. She wished that he could have come home with her, Curtis wasn't exactly the most hospitable of people.

Keegan felt an emptiness as she walked down the winding road, in in a matter of a few hours she had become accustomed to having someone walking by her side, to talking more than she had to anyone in months and now that he wasn't there, even though she knew he was moderately safe, she felt a knot in her stomach.

If only he had a phone she thought as she crossed the road. Part of her knew it was irrational to care this much about someone she had just met, she put it down to the fact that she didn't have much friends, the thought of having one, of being someone trusted with such a massive secret made her feel important, like what she was doing now mattered. Keegan barely noticed anyone as she slid change across to the unsmiling bus driver and collapsed into a seat that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a very long time, she found it hard to care about hygiene in the present moment. Her Mother's eyes would have popped out of their sockets if she'd seen her.

Her phone buzzed with an incoming text and she jumped. Curtis had sent her a brief message, 'He's fast asleep, not really what I was expecting.' Keegan found herself smiling despite everything, you had to feel at least partially safe to fall asleep in a strangers house, maybe this meant Noah trusted her. She hoped that she was worthy of that trust.

When the bus pulled up to the stop outside her house Keegan finally moved her head from its resting place on the window, wondering at how her street looked exactly the same as it always had when inside she felt like something had been awakened inside of her, a sense of purpose that hadn't been there for a long time. She was so used to running on auto-pilot going through the same motions without really giving any thought as to what she was doing. 

She walked up her sensibly paved drive, closing the white gate behind her out of habit. Her Mother's car was parked in the driveway. Keegan hadn't given much thought to what she was going to say when she arrived home, she doubted her Mum would really notice. Walking inside her nose immediately screwed up with distaste as she smelt the stench of tofu. Her Mum had different cooking crazes every week and this week her obsession was making tofu palatable. Keegan was just glad that they were past eating whey with every meal. There had been a special offer for 60 packets online and whey had haunted her every meal time, it was shocking how many different ways the cloying powder could be incorporated into meals.

"Is that you Keegan darling?" her Mum appeared around the corner. There was not an inch of her that wasn't perfectly put together. Keegan remembered sitting on her rug as a child and watching her Mum apply a perfect face of makeup like she was a barbie doll, rouge on her pale cheeks and thin lines for eyebrows that made her look permanently surprised. Even the term of endearment, darling was said with a touch of superiority.

"Yes it's me" she replied.

"I'm not feeling too good Mum, I'm just going to head on upstairs."

Anything to escape the tofu.

Her Mum's eyebrows met in the middle, she had said the right thing, both of her parents were scared of illness, it meant that they wouldn't be able to go into work the next day, they both prided themselves on never taking days off. Maybe that was where Curtis had inherited his inability to be away from his laptop for more than twenty minutes at a time from.

"Okay, feel better go and take a nap."

There was no hug, no feeling of her forehead to check if she had a temperature, no questions about when the feeling of sickness had started and she had expected no less. 

As she walked up the stairs, Keegan slipped the gold debit card from its usual spot on the mantelpiece, it was mostly used for ordering food when she was home alone, or taxis when no one was free to drop her places and she highly doubted the bank statement was ever checked, it was amazing how much she could get away with as a result of her parents indifference.

She collapsed on her bed, opening a website that offered cheap deals on phones, taking a massive gulp of air, heart pounding.

One thing was for sure, her life had changed.