Placing Jayden’s sweatshirt carefully on the wooden bench near the front door, I clicked my tongue in satisfaction. The thing was like a bad omen. As soon as it was out my door tomorrow, things would start to get better. A new beginning.
I liked the sound of that.
Just as I was about to turn around, the front doorknob turned with a click. The door began to swing open slowly, as if someone were unsure what house they were entering. I watched it with narrowed eyes and slightly shaky legs, a terrifying thought niggling its way into my brain. Someone was trying to break into my house! But when a head of long, brown hair appeared a second later, relief swept over me, chasing those thoughts away.
“Oh, hey,” my sister said, grinning guiltily at me.
I gulped down the lump that had formed in my throat. “Charlotte, you almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry.” She smiled apologetically at me and ducked her head. “I didn’t want to make any noise, in case you were sleeping.”
She dropped her backpack on the bench, next to Jayden’s sweater, and began to tug her shoes off. I shook my head as I watched her, indignation filling me. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Maybe I wasn’t the biggest night owl there ever was, but I was hardly ever in bed by then. Not even on a school night.
I was seventeen years old, not ninety.
“So, how did studying go?” I smiled hopefully at her. After all the arguments this past weekend, I think I finally had her convinced to buckle down and raise her math grades. This study group session had been a good sign. It was one less thing for Mom to worry about. “Do you think you’re ready to ace the next test?”
“Yep. It was awesome.” She gave me a tight-lipped smile and nearly lost her balance. With a giggle, she righted herself on the edge of the bench. “Oops.”
All of the alarms in my big-sister brain went off at once. I moved closer to her, wrinkling my nose at the acrid smell wafting from her breath. “Are you drunk?”
She blinked her eyes slowly and then refocused on me. “It’s no big deal. Sarah’s mom had some Boone’s Farm left over in the fridge. We only had a glass to help us study. I took the bus home.”
A big part of me seriously doubted that a single glass had made my baby sister so tipsy she could hardly keep on her two feet. Still, she shrugged off her lie and began to walk away as if she’d just commented on the weather or something.
“Are you serious? You can’t be doing stuff like this.” I followed her toward her bedroom hall as fast as my crutches would allow. My best friends popped their heads out of my door to see what the commotion was about. I gave them a pleading look, then nodded toward Charlotte, hoping they were seeing what I was seeing. “You can’t be getting drunk at Monday night study sessions. You need to be focusing on your grades.”
She paused in her bedroom doorway and turned around to face me, a frown pulling at her lips. “I’m just having a little fun, Mandy. Why do you have to be such a fun sucker? Why can’t you be cool, like Trina and Audrey?”
A hollow laugh tore from my throat. As much as I loved and adored my two besties, the fact that my little sister thought they ranked way above me in coolness was utterly insane.
I was cool. I did stuff. Just as much as Audrey and Trina.
Maybe.
“You’re not allowed to have fun while you have a D in math,” I said hoarsely, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. “That’s just how it is.”
Charlotte’s own cheeks began to blaze red. She stomped her bare foot and pointed a finger at me. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
My nostrils flared with anger. I couldn’t believe we were having this argument in front of my best friends. It was time to pull the trump card. “If you’re not going to listen to me, maybe I should tell Mom and Dad what you’ve been doing.”
The blood drained from her face. She pursed her lips together in what would’ve resembled any toddler throwing a major hissy fit. I braced myself, waiting for the onslaught.
But then her expression went blank and she stared at me with as much indifference as a stranger on the street. “Fine. You win.”
Shock coursed through me. I slumped on top of my crutches, the fight going out of my body. That had been easier than I expected. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’ll go study. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” She closed her bedroom door and I turned to stare at my friends still watching from my doorway. “What was that?”
Trina shrugged, her eyes slanted down in sympathy. “Growing pains?”
“Hormones,” Audrey said with a firm nod. “Definitely hormones. My sister gets the same way. It’s like she’s two people sharing the same body.”