#Chapter2
It was why I never dared allowed my Little side out when he was at home. The house had been empty the day Blake had caught me. Mom had been at work and Isaac had been at football practice.
How in the world was I supposed to know that he was going to send Blake over to bring me food, as his practice was running over and mom wouldn't be back until the small hours of the morning?
/"Oz,/" Isaac greeted. His eyes shimmered in amusement as he eyed Patch, who I had clutched to my chest, but as always, he didn't make a big deal of it. He was used to my quirks by now. Even still, I tucked him beneath my duvet, bracing myself, as I had every day since the incident, for some inkling in his tone that he had found out what Blake had witnessed. /"Are you coming to join us? We're going to order pizza and watch the Terminator trilogy./"
Looking at us, there were very little hints that we were related. Tall and broad, like our father, but blonde-haired and blue eyes, like our mom, Isaac had inherited the best qualities from both of them.
I was barely five foot six, with a mop of limp, brown hair that refused to be good and stay in the styles I had tried to force it into in the past, and brown eyes that seemed boring when I compared them to the blue ones that I could have potentially ended up with.
Personality-wise, we were polar opposites, too. Confident, cool, and always the centre of attention when with his friends, Isaac made high school look like a breeze walk. Awkward, with the irritating habit of becoming socially crippled, I had made two friends during the entire duration of enrolment. What came so easy for him were some of the hardest things in the world for me.
It was like mom and dad used up all the good stuff for him, and I was made up of the no-good leftovers.
/"I didn't think he was coming until later,/" I managed to choke out. Talking with Isaac was easy. He was my best friend and I was comfortable enough around him that I didn't feel the strangle of panic that had me stuttering or clamming up around people I didn't know very well.
/"It's almost eight, Oz./" Isaac's eyes jumped over my head, his nose wrinkling in distaste as they landed on the tiny desk in the far corner. Friday had been the last day of school. Summer had broken, and I was now free for the next one hundred and four days, before my final year began. Almost. We had been assigned a butt-load of homework. I had dumped it all in the corner and didn't plan on touching it until the day before school started again. /"He's been here for like an hour./"
It was Tuesday. It was their usual pizza and horror-flick night. It had become a tradition of theirs years ago, and it had yet to relent. The boys would fix up snacks and spend the night watching the goriest and most horrifying movies they could find. It was part of the reason why I tried my best to decline their invitations: I got scared so easily that participating in their movie marathons guaranteed nightmares.
/"Oh./" I blinked, studying his expression. No crack, nothing to show that anything had changed between us. It meant that Blake had kept to his silence. /"No. I don't want to watch that./"
/"Come on, Ozzy. We're watching the first one. The graphics are so bad, they couldn't even scare Chloe./"
Which wasn't exactly say much. Six-years-old, the heart of a princess and the spirit of a warrior, my step-sister, Chloe, was barely afraid of anything. She was the only little girl I knew that wouldn't scream at a spider. In fact, I had been the one that had screamed, and she had been the one to save me.
Chloe had been the only good thing that had come from my parent's divorce. My dad had married Chloe's mom sometime last year, and it was the only thing that made visiting his house on the weekends worth it. We played My Little Pony games together, much to my father's annoyance. Isaac had found it hilarious and had called me 'pony boy' for weeks after.
/"She's scared of Belle,/" I pointed out. /"I think that she might find a murderous machine scarier./"
/"That cat is pure evil,/" Isaac dismissed, rolling his eyes at the mention of the satanic feline. /"Everyone is scared of it./"
Which was true. When I slept over at my dad's, I had taken to making sure that every available limb was mummified before going to sleep, as the tabby had the sadistic habit of savaging poor, unsuspecting little boys.
/"Come on, Oz. I promise I'll turn it off if it gets too scary. You've been in your room all day. I miss you./"
Which was freaking cheating! He knew that saying that he missed me and wanted to hang out with me were like magic words to me. Knowing that he actually liked me instead of just tolerated me, it made me so stinking happy.
Which re-invited fear to the party; Blake would be downstairs.
I knew that I couldn't avoid him forever. I knew that eventually, I would have to face Blake.
But did it have to be today? Whined the irritating little voice in the back of my head.
It turned out that yes, it had to be today.
Isaac was relentless and bothered me until I caved. Mom was at work, so it was just the three of us, and after promising that I would join them, taking a few minutes to compose myself and give a small mental pep talk before heading down, her absence was abundantly obvious.
The television was louder than either would have dared if she was in, and Isaac had his shoes on the sofa, which would have been another no-go, had she been home. All the lights were off, plunging the room into a creepy little shrine, and I almost missed the lanky figure at first.
Almost.
Eyes of jades and hair so messy and wild that it constantly looked windswept, Blake Owen was one of the best looking boys —or rather, had been, as both he and Isaac had graduated three days ago—at Huckleberry High. The girls had used to whisper about how handsome he was. They had used to say the same about Isaac, and whilst I couldn't deny that he was stupidly handsome — in a way that had me stomping my foot in a 'it's not fair' kind of fashion — I couldn't agree with them the way I could with Blake. I acknowledged that my brother was good looking in a very different way than I did his best friend.
His head turned towards me as I made my way to the couch beside Isaac. The living room was a cramped space that birthed a doorway that led to the staircase behind the sofa, and the passageway that multiflowed to the kitchen and conservatory was behind the armchair that Blake had flipped into.
It was hard to say what I had been expecting. Maybe for him to start making the sign of the cross at me, or perhaps to thump me over the head with a bible. Or maybe just scowl at me and keep away.
None of them happened. In fact, there was something about his expression, something so far out of the realm of expectancy, that I couldn't even place it. It wasn't fear. It wasn't disgust. It wasn't even pitying.
It seemed almost like . . . curiosity?