“Dad, can you please reply to me or call me back? It feels like I haven’t heard from you in weeks, and I’m worried about your lack of response. Please, daddy, we have a break coming up in school, and I wanted to see you….. call me back” I hang up and stare at my cell for a moment, a lump lodging in my throat as emotions rise to make my chest ache and then face it down on the table and calm myself with a deep breath. Trying not to let this get to me or show my broken disappointment.
I realize Dane isn’t continuing the motion of lifting his fork or turning pages and glance up to see him watching me silently. His eyes dart away, and he drops his head back to his previous focus when he sees I noticed but doesn’t say a word. He acts like he didn’t hear me, even though I know he has before, and flicks to the next page. It embarrasses me that he sees it so clearly and silently judges me, probably calling me pathetic and a loser in his head.
What does he know?
He has never had to deal with this because his mum begs him to come to visit as often as he can.
“Are you going to see your mom in London this break?” I ask to deflect the focus from my call, making out it was just a casual call and not my sad stalking of my own father. I’m humiliated that I almost begged in front of him and get a shrug in response. Not even eye contact.
It riles that inner anger only Dane can trigger, and my stomach tightens in frustration.
“Are you really going to be like this?... This ignorance even when sitting at dinner together. This is stupid, Dane, and immature.”
Dane sits up straight, locks his gaze back on me, sniffs, picks up his water bottle to take a drink, and then goes back to what he’s doing, making a good go of clearing his plate without complaint, even though he criticized my cooking. It’s a very big ‘leave me alone’ move that he does so very well, and I swear for once in my life, I wish it wouldn’t kill him to be a little bit nice to me.
Can’t he see I need someone to care right now, even if it’s him?
This weirdness since we had our argument on the drive is driving me crazy. In this house which isn’t all that huge, he acts as though we don’t walk right past one another. He actively blanks me here, at school, or outright avoids me. At first, I thought he was sulking, and it would pass, but now, after two whole days of this, I want to punch him in the throat and smack him about his dumb head for being like this.
It’s been irritating me and making me mad as hell, and now sitting facing him, he’s still acting like a prized asshole. He has no shame.
When he still doesn’t look at me or answer, I lean forward and forceable slam the pages shut of the damned comic he uses to ignore me and slap my hand on top of it. Almost trapping his hand if he hadn’t moved it last second to reach for his water.
Dane doesn’t flinch or react.
“Stop being a jerk. Say something, anything….. even if it’s some shitty remark about chasing after my father and acting like that. I hate this.” I spit at him angrily, disrupting my bowl and spilling my glass of water at the side of my plate, but I don’t care. My dad and Dane combined have made me feel like shit these past two days like I'm invisible and worthless, and I want to scream at his stupid head. All the bubbling internal frustration and angst needs an outlet, and with him acting this way, I am aiming it at him.
Dane leans back and fixes his pale grey gaze on me in an expressionless stare while sighing out air like I'm an irritating problem. He picks up his water and takes a long slow drink. His eyes never leaving mine for a second, nor even a blink. He moves his tongue around inside his mouth to clean the food from his teeth, swallows, then pushes his chair back and picks up his bowl with the fork balanced inside. He slides the comic out from under my palm, picks it up too, and then turns and walks off with both towards the sitting room off the kitchen. A total non-reaction to me that normally would get something, maybe sarcasm or an argument, and he disappears from view.
Just a blank look, a nothing interaction, and he leaves me sitting here like I am some crazy banshee ex who won’t leave him alone. He swaggers off with that cool boy walk and ‘don’t care’ attitude that makes me want to scream.
It wounds me as much as my dad ignoring my calls and makes me feel worthless. Clenching up my insides, so my chest aches and my throat constricts like he’s strangling me. My heart is accelerating like I’ve run a marathon and pounds so hard it feels like it might explode from my chest.
“I hate you sometimes.” My voice croaks and breaks at how he's abandoning me, and despite not even wanting his stupid company, it feels like he’s stabbed me in the chest. I loathe how, even though Dane is the absolute bane of my existence, he has this weird power over me and can make me feel invisible without doing a damned thing. I always crave his reactions and attention, even while telling myself I wish he would stay away from me.
I wait, tilting my head towards the door, and listen because I know he heard me. The cozy is close enough, and the house is silent, yet he doesn’t bother to retaliate. There’s the faint sound of him laying his plate on a table, the scrape of a chair, and then silence again.
My eyes well up with moisture, and I swallow down the crazy insane need in me to storm through there and throw my bowl at his head. I don’t know why I am like this today, but maybe my father has me sensitive. Perhaps it’s being made to feel like I don’t matter by someone who is meant to care about me so that Dane’s behavior, which isn’t all that out of the ordinary, is way more hurtful. Getting under my skin.
I just want someone to give a shit about me, for once. This stupid house sometimes feels so huge and so empty…. I sometimes feel like I could disappear, and no one would notice.
I can’t believe there was a time, long ago, when I used to look forward to Dane coming here, thinking we would get through this together. That my loneliness wouldn’t run as deep if someone was going through the same as me and could be here to lean on. Back then, I was happy that of all the kids in school that I was forced to be siblings with, it was Dane.
I can’t believe I was ever stupid enough to think that just because we were friends when we were little, we would be something closer as siblings as we grew. That my fondness for him back then would become the toxic mess it is now. That I mistook our closeness as something positive, only to have him end up hating me and my mother for what we did to his family. Treating me like the enemy and adding to my sense of loneliness and hopelessness growing up.
I didn’t gain a brother. I lost a friend… one that I used to wake up happy to go see at school every day. It’s never stopped being a scar on my heart and left me asking myself over and over why it had to be him of all people.
“I printed off the class notes for each of you. Take them home, work through them and highlight anything you want to elaborate on tomorrow.” I instruct my study group, sliding out the paperclipped pages to each one, and Elisa slides half the pile from them to pass to the next table.We’re in the library on the second floor, taking our class free period as a time to catch up on biology. This is how I use any free time I get during school hours, unlike some I could mention. My entire existence is about doing well and getting the grades I need to go to Harvard when I graduate, so becoming our class president and the study group leader for our year feels like an achievement.“These are well laid out and really helpful, Kayla. Thank you.” Jordan, a boy from my class, flashes a shy smile, giving me those puppy dog eyes he sometimes has for me. I know he’s had a crush on me since junior year, but I don’t have time for boys. As nice as he is, I don’t need the distraction of dating.He's not u
“I don’t need a babysitter. Go back to class.” Dane sits opposite me in the waiting space outside the principal's office. He’s stretched out, legs across the floor between us and lounging casually with his head back against the wall behind, as though this is no big deal. He is infuriatingly cool despite his mess of a face and his dad being in there trying to save his ass. The school nurse has seen him, and it’s nothing but minor cuts and bruises, which now sports some sterile strips. What I thought was a burst-out piercing was instead a little cut after it broke out. His eyebrow is swelling, but his piercing is still there.I can’t believe I worried about this moron and waited with a nervous breath for him to come out and look absolutely fine. He has some bruising around his jaw and eye, but it’s barely anything compared to the mess Greg was in when he left. He had blood all over his collar and shirt. Dane’s bloody nose was gone after he blew it.“Your dad asked me to sit here while h
“Daddy still ignoring you?” he slides his legs to one side of mine, crosses his feet at the ankles, and gets comfy, propping his head forward to watch me with glee. I turn slightly away, cross mine, and pretend I am disinterested.“Get lost.” I pick up my textbook again to try and ignore him, hating how he always seems to be able to dig into my head and figure out the small things. From a look… For someone who seems oblivious in life, he always catches on real quick to what’s happening around us. It’s annoying. He’s either super observant or can mind-read.“Did I hit a nerve? Ouch…… you know….” He grins at me, and I know something hurtful or cutting is coming, and when it comes to my father, my heart is a fragile mess.“Don’t okay?... Just don’t.” My tone is clipped with an edge of pleading that I didn’t intend. A light waver to my words, and my eyes mist over. I don’t need a big finger pointing at my insecurity over whether my dad even loves me. Especially not from Dane.I don’t nee
A rap rap disrupts my focus on my bedroom door before it’s rudely pushed open, and Dane stands in the open space looking at me at my desk by the veranda.“Monique says to come down for food. You aren’t to eat in your room.” He tells me blankly and then pushes off from my door frame to walk off. Not waiting for a response or to see if I even heard him.I get up, drop my pen beside my notebook and laptop, and follow him out the door. Glad for the food break as I was starting to see double while working on my essay. Seeing him loitering ahead of me in the hallways as he walks at the speed of a snail back to wherever he came from, I hurry to catch up.“Move, slow ass.” I nudge him to one side with my shoulder, barely budging him as I power march up beside him to get by. Seeing as he’s taking up the center of the walkway. Thrusting myself forward to cut in front of him, yet I'm hauled mid-step with a hand on my upper arm and tugged back again, so I stumble into him.“Losers come last.” He
“Yo, virgin…?” He clears his throat, voice strained, and I glance back, seeing him getting to his feet and adjusting his shorts. A little blush on the high points of his cheekbones, but he seems to recover rapidly. He locks his gaze on mine and keeps me rooted as I walk away.“What?” I snark at him, so focused on walking while snarling his way, I walk straight into the door frame and bang my cheek, shoulder, hip, and knee simultaneously and ‘ouch’ in reaction. It’s a sharp shooting pain over the entire left side of my body that has me crumpling.“Yeah … that…. You suck at multitasking.” He laughs at me, wanders up to where I am hopping around, rubbing various sore points on my body and face, and uses his flat palm to push my head away as he passes, covering my entire cheek. I fall on my ass because of my weird posture and holding my leg up, and it only makes me rage all the more.“You’re a jerk. I hope your food chokes you.” I snort, knowing he intentionally distracted me because I wa
“Quiet now, please.” Our class professor raises his hands to bring quiet back to the chatter of our English lesson. “We have one week before break, and I know it’s agonizingly close… but you still have to work.” He turns and taps the board, highlighting random topics with his torch pen that are laid out in a numbered list. “One assignment before then… due on the last day. I want you paired off in groups of four, and we will make this a team deal where I assign you guys one topic each. A full week on nothing but this, so a little seating reshuffle before we end for the weekend. Let’s make this fun and relaxed, guys.”There’s a chorus of groans from everyone in the room, including Elisa next to me, as no one ever likes to group in for projects. Especially not pre-holiday ‘fun’ ones where the assignments are always lame. It’s always unequal pairings where certain people get stuck with the majority of work. I personally do not care, as my control freak self likes the be the one researchin
“I’m nervous. He’s never sat near us before.” She whispers as though this is some mortal sin and then sinks back within herself when he steps back to us and nods directly behind me.“We will sit there. Jordan and Sam have gone to the back.” He gestures to the two vacancies, and I turn enough to see my admirer gazing at me longingly from the back row, where he is huddling up with two of the shy girls in our class. Both are pretty smart and in the chess club, so I am glad they picked a decent group.I feel bad for Jordan that Dane always seems to pick on him in subtle ways and intimidate him constantly. I have never understood why he dislikes him so much, as Jordan is such a sweet person. It seems like since we were about eight years old, Dane just decided Jordan was someone he would always pick on.“Sit behind me … because otherwise, Dane will spend the next week prodding me, hanging over my shoulder, or pulling my hair. I know what he’s like.” I am turned in my seat and tap the desk d
It’s past midnight, long past it, and I’m standing in the kitchen drinking some water to take an aspirin before I finish up on some of my notes from school all week. I have my one full day I do monthly at the shelter tomorrow as it’s Saturday, so I want all my homework to be up to date because I’ll be too tired later. Sunday, I have plans with Elisa for a much-needed break.I’m hiding away from my parents in their room after hearing them fight again. I heard the name Dane so many times I wanted to rip my ears off and came down here to escape it instead. It sounded bad this time.My mum was yelling like a banshee, which she rarely does, and Bryan was reacting to it, which he never does. He’s such a solid, push-over guy that he normally lets my mom vent and takes it, but I could hear him shouting back.Over the past few months, it’s become a regular occurrence. It’s like it builds up, my mom finds fault in everything that Dane does, and Bryan’s lack of controlling him gets attacked. Sh