Chapter 4

Tensions at home had lessened somewhat on Sunday and I had high hopes that things would slowly get back to normal. As I entered the house, however, I was reminded of something my paternal Grandfather often said: 'Shit in one hand and hope in the other; tell me which hand fills up faster.'

Things in my house had definitely turned to shit. My parents said not a word when I came in with a cheery 'I'm home!' They didn't have to. Their almost snarling faces and angry glare painted a pretty convincing picture for me all on its own.

I was definitely persona non grata.

Now, to be fair I have to admit that my parents surprised me. I can count on one hand the number of times my Mom made it home before 7pm. I don't need even that many fingers to count the number of times my Dad made it home before 6pm. Neither of which Nevaeh, Andwynn and me really minded because Dad was a better cook than Mom and Andwynn was a better cook than both of them.

It was 5:30pm. Mom was in navy shorts and a white tank top. Dad was in tan shorts and brown tee. They both wear suits to work. QED, they'd been home for a while. I had a bad, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Whoah," was my witty opening gambit. Bear in mind that I was shocked that my parents were home ... and had been home long enough to change clothes. Shock and wit are not in my repertoire; at least, not together. "What are you guys doing home already?"

"We live here, remember?" Dad snarled in response. Yes, snarled ... and the only reason he did it was because Mom was too busy growling to make coherent speech. What the hell had I done now?

I did what any self-respecting teen facing a sure and painful death would do. I got the fuck out of there.

"Uh, okay," I might have mumbled as I headed for my room as fast as my little legs could carry me – in normal speed. I was so startled that I didn't even think of switching speed zones. Still, when properly motivated the average human teenager can generate pretty significant speeds; I'm not sure my feet actually touched the stairs.

I will admit to being a little relieved when I made it to my room with all of my internal organs still internal. I will also admit to being freaking, raving, out-of-my-fucking-mind scared. I'd done some really evil things from time to time growing up – mostly at the expense of one or more of my sisters. Heck, I'd broken Andwynn's arm once when I hit her with a baseball bat – accidentally of course; I'd been pretending to play baseball, swinging the bat for the fences and she'd managed to get in my way. Of course, it was in the house ... and I wasn't supposed to be swinging a bat in the house ... and I'd been told more than once not to swing things (like bats, swords, sticks, the cat, a camera tripod, jump rope ... well, many, many things, really) in the house; It really was an accident, though. My parents had been upset and even mad but that was NOTHING compared to the sheer, unadulterated rage I had witnessed downstairs.

My Grandfather – paternal again – had a phrase that he liked to use that I never understood until just that moment: 'mad enough to spit nails'. Looking back at how angry Mom and Dad were and I suddenly knew exactly what my Grandfather was talking about. I got the feeling that if I'd remained downstairs much longer they'd have chewed up some metal and spit nails. Or chewed me up and spit nail-sized pieces of Reece.

My Grandfather had a way with words.

So, I threw myself on my bed, stared up at the ceiling and tried to figure out what I'd done that my parents could have found out about. That was the secret to remaining relatively intact through the teen years. It wasn't about what you did; heck, you were going to break rules all the time, there seemed to be about a jillion of them. It was about what your parents could possibly have caught you doing.

In addition, never admit anything. There's a point when your parents confront you – especially if your Mom or Dad is an assistant district attorney (did I ever mention that my Mom is an assistant district attorney?) – where they will just sit there silently. It's called an 'uncomfortable silence'. They aren't at a loss for words. They're trying to get you to incriminate yourself. They've figured out you've done something wrong – but they also know that you probably don't know what they know and there's probably quite a bit you've done wrong that they don't know about. So they're just going to sit there and let you blab out everything you've done wrong until you hit on the thing they do know about.

It's a trap. Don't fall for it. No matter how uncomfortable the silence gets, make them talk first. And don't fall for the old 'you know what you did' gambit. It's all part of the same thing; getting you to cough up things they can punish you for.

So, I was lying on my bed trying to figure out what they knew. I didn't think it was the after school meeting with Tabitha; not only was it too soon but I just couldn't see them getting this angry over something like that. At least I sure hoped it wasn't. I really kinda liked Tabitha and I wanted to see more of her – and that would be exponentially more difficult if my parents knew about it.

The problem was, other than that, I had no clue what else it could be. I hadn't done anything wrong. Heck, I hadn't even left the house since Saturday except to go to school. There were a number of little things I'd done before Saturday – but they already knew most of them; I'd been very thorough in my confession on Saturday about all the rotten things I'd done the week before.

That only left before last week – and I couldn't even think of something I'd done that long ago that would make my Mom and Dad this angry with me. There were probably things they'd be disappointed in me about ... but 'spitting nails' angry? Nothing.

I was still reflecting on my ceiling when a knock sounded at the door. At first I thought it might be my parents but quickly discarded that possibility. The mood they were in wasn't conducive to knocking. Heck, I'd be lucky if the door survived if they wanted to talk to me right now.

"Come in," I said. It had to be Nevaeh or Andwynn and I could use the distraction. Besides, maybe they knew what the hell was going on. Any information would be helpful at this point.

I was right the second time. Andwynn came in with a serious look on her face and closed the door behind her. She leaned against it for a moment meeting my inquisitive glance with eyes that were ... worried. So she did know what was going on.

She walked over to the bed. "Scoot over," she said quietly.

This was serious. When we were kids, Andwynn used to practice her reading on me. She'd come in at bedtime and she'd lie down next to me and read stories to me until I fell asleep. My parents thought it was cute so they let her get away with it. I always loved it because listening to her voice always made me feel warm and protected and safe. It got to be that, for a while at least, I had trouble sleeping if Andwynn didn't read to me. I think part of it was because we would talk while we were deciding what story she was going to read. I could ask questions or sometimes we'd just share stuff that happened to us – how cousin Greg had dropped a small frog in the front of her shirt or how cousin Mark had sneezed on me while playing in the sandbox and the sand had stuck to my shirt and wouldn't come off. That ritual of ours continued until I was about 8 or so which meant she was about 10; she was moving on to more grown-up things and didn't have time to read to her little snot of a brother (and, if I absolutely had to admit it, I would admit I was becoming quite the little snot).

An offshoot of that that had never went away, though, was that we'd lie next to each other in bed when something significant and serious had happened. When Martin French kissed her – her first kiss – she'd come to me at bedtime and scooted me over to tell me about it. When it was my turn, when I got up the courage to kiss Ashley Portboy last year – my first kiss – I waited until bedtime and crawled in her bed and talked about it. It was ... I don't know ... sacred to us. It was an unspoken, unwritten rule; anything shared in those sessions was not for public knowledge or discussion. We could bring it up later in serious discussion but it was never for teasing or needling or being little shits to each other.

So, when she lay down quietly next to me I knew it was serious. It also worried me. I only grew more worried when she didn't say anything for a while, just lay there next to me. The silence was beginning to become uncomfortable – ironic, if you think about it – when she finally spoke up.

"I'm scared," she said softly. Andwynn was my brash, tough sister, always taking the world by the horns and wrestling it into submission but I knew from our discussions that she had a softer side. There was a soft center under her shell that she didn't let out much. When she did, like now, it only made my worries increase.

"What about?" I asked, tilting my head so it was touching hers.

"You, mostly," she replied. "I've ... I've been having dreams..."

Dreams were important to Andwynn. For a brief time a few years ago she claimed that her dreams always seemed to come true. It had scared her so Mom had made her keep a dream journal. When she had a dream, she'd tell Mom and Mom would show her how her dream wasn't coming true, it just seemed that it was; kind of like déjà vu. Andwynn had stopped troubling Mom with it after that ... but it still scared her. She had admitted to me in one of our 'serious sessions' that she'd continued keeping a secret dream journal after that ... and she'd showed me that some of her dreams HAD seemed to come true. I'd tried to help her through it – I didn't spend all my time trying to torture her – but I had always felt that it was like Mom said; it just another form of déjà vu. Still, the important thing was that Andwynn believed it – so it was my job to do what I could to support her.