Chapter 18: Sister

I wake up to a wind brushing across my face.

At first, I refuse to open my eyes and face the world, but then I remember what happened last night—the nightmare and Aaron coming into my room and holding me until we both fell asleep—and my eyes shoot open.

I'm facing my open balcony doors, the curtains swaying with the morning breeze.

Aaron didn't close my fucking doors.

It's dark outside, the sun just beginning to change a sliver of the sky to the glorious and various shades of red and orange and purple and pink.

I feel Aaron's chest pressed against my back, his breath hitting the back of my neck, his arm resting over my hip.

I move so I'm resting on my other side and facing Aaron. I watch him as he sleeps. He's cuter when he's asleep. No annoying smirk, and he's silent for once, which is a fucking miracle in and of itself.

And he snores. Not those loud, chainsaw snores, but a cute little adorable snore that reminds me of the dogs from where they sleep against the wall over Aaron's shoulder.

Wait—

I count the dogs—one, two—and I realize that Pickles isn't with Zeus and Blue.

I hear a whimpering sound coming from behind me, and when I roll back over, I see Pickles sitting on the floor, looking up at me.

He's shivering, and I'm guessing he's cold.

I sigh before I pat the space of bed in front of me.

Pickles immediately jumps up on the bed and begins to lick my face, before he snuggles into my chest.

I laugh softly as I pet him, settling back into Aaron and cuddling Pickles close to me.

"Cassie?" comes a sleepy voice from behind me, and damn, if it isn't the hottest thing he's ever said to me, even if this particular tone inflection was unintentional. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I whisper back to him.

He moves in even closer to me and buries his head into my neck, drawing air into his lungs, tickling my neck. "What time is it?" he asks in that same sleepy voice, though it's slightly muffled now.

I search for my phone to find it under my pillow and check the time. "Just after midnight."

His face snuggles into the space where my neck and shoulder meet. "'Kay. G'night, Cassie."

"Night."

Pretty soon, he's snoring again, this time against my neck, obviously asleep.

The room is filled with sounds of sleeping coming from everyone but me.

I don't know why I can't go back to sleep; it's like my brain won't turn off. I just can't stop thinking about that nightmare, even though I can't remember any of it. And I'm not sure if I even want to remember it.

After a while, sleep comes to take me away, and I let it, praying that my brain doesn't decide to plague me with another nightmare.

---------

Something's vibrating.

And it won't stop.

I don't think I've ever been this angry at a thing in my life because oh my God I want to break whatever is vibrating right now.

Aaron stirs from behind me and groans softly, sending heat flashing through me.

I wonder if he sounds like that during se—

Nope! Not going there. Not today, Satan.

My bedroom door bursts open, and I suddenly remember it's an alarm on my phone, and then I remember why I have that alarm on my phone.

"Cass," Gracie says in a sing-song voice. "Time to—oh." She pauses and I lift my head to squint at her, way too tired to speak. "I can wait outside if you guys were doing something."

"No, it's fine," I tell her through a yawn, and I realize that I'm exhausted. I reach under my pillow to find that my phone was behind the vibrating and I yawn again, turning in Aaron's arms to face him. "Aaron," I say softly, mostly out of tiredness and not out of niceness. "It's time to get ready for school, you have to get up, okay?"

He shifts and groans again—I can barely stop my cheeks from turning red—and squirms, nestling his head in between my neck and the pillow my head is resting on. "Five more minutes, Cassie."

"Come on," I whine, shaking his shoulder a couple of times, causing him to hold me tighter. "We have to go to school."

He pulls back slightly, but only enough so that he can look up at me with a pout on his lips. "Skip with me?"

I want to—I'm so fucking tired—but I really don't need another detention. I'm surprised by parents haven't mentioned the one I got on the first day of school yet.

"As nice as that sounds," I tell him. "We have to go to school. So that means you need to get up."

He groans and rolls out of my bed, stretching and yawning, before he picks up his shirt from the floor.

"Well," Gracie says happily, making me jump because I kind of forgot she was here. "Now that that's settled, let's go, Cass."

She walk over to me, grabs ahold of one of my arms, and yanks me out of bed.

I really don't want to go to school.

"Have I ever told you how much I want to be homeschooled?"

Aaron laughs as he walks out of my balcony doors. "I'll see you at school, guys."

Before I can see how he makes it across the gap between our balconies—it's not really that big, now that I'm really looking at it—Gracie turns me away and shoves me into my relatively small walk-in closet.

"Gracie," I whine, crossing my arms. "If you're picking out my clothes, why do I have to be here?"

"Because you need to watch. I'm not having you go back to whatever it was that you used to wear after this year."

I grumble under my breath, wanting nothing more than to crawl back into my bed and go back to sleep.

Gracie seems pretty preoccupied with picking out my outfit for the day, so I sneak out of the room and grab my phone, seeing dozens of notifications on the lock screen.

This is why I didn't have social media.

I don't even know half of the people wanting to follow me.

With a sigh, I sit down on my bed and examine the profiles of people that have requested to follow me.

Autumn, Stacey, Brett, Thomas, Tiffany.

Wait, that sounds familiar.

I scrunch my nose up and furrow my eyebrows as I think of my days at school.

Tiffany...Tiffany...Tiffany...

Nope, not ringing any bells.

With a shrug, I toss my phone to the side and head back towards the closet, only to run into Gracie, who abruptly shoves a pair of white jeans and a plain black crop top towards me.

I turn around, and as I'm walking away, I feel something hit my back.

"Ow," I say, turning around and looking down to a pair of black slip-on Vans laying on the floor.

I look up to see Gracie snickering at me, and I shoot her a scowl.

"Why are you so mean to me?" I ask with a pout and Gracie giggles.

"Just put the clothes on."

---------

Walking down the hallway between classes is boring.

Aaron goes off to talk with people and he leaves me alone, and everyone else has different classes than me, so they're not with me anyways.

"Hey, Cassandra," comes a voice from my side.

My head snaps to my left to see a girl one or two inches shorter than me walking next to me.

"It's Cass," I say automatically. I want to ask who she is, but that would be rude, and, while I am mean, I'm not that mean.

"Oh, sorry," she says. "I'm Autumn." She holds a hand out for me to shake, and I grab it. "Nice to meet you."

I give her a nod, and we continue walking down the hallway in slient when I realize that her name sounds familiar.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" I ask.

"Right, sorry, I'm stupid," she says, slapping a hand against her forehead, and it's at that point that I decide I like her. "I'm in your culinary class."

"With Ferrante?"

She shudders. "Don't invoke her name."

I let out a bursting laugh because, fuck, that was funny.

Mrs. Ferrante is one of the culinary teachers. She's old—like super old—and she's one of the meanest teachers I've ever had. She's also the most terrifying.

For some reason unknown to me and the rest of my class, I'm one of her favorite students. That, or she just enjoys seeing me squirm under her uncomfortable stare.

"Oh, yeah," I say suddenly. "You sit in the front, right? Didn't she move you?"

She nods with an excited smile on her face. "Yep. I was sitting in the back, near you, I think, but then she moved me to the front, because she's crazy." She rolls her eyes when she's done, causing another laugh from me.

I don't normally like making friends with people, but Autumn seems pretty cool, so I'll give it a shot.

"Who are you eating lunch with?"

At that, her cheerful self disappears and is replaced with something else. I'd call it sadness, but it seems more like... loneliness, maybe?

"No one," is her eventual reply. "I, um, don't really eat lunch that much."

She doesn't have anyone to sit with? That makes asking her to sit with me easier, but, still, that's kind of sad, I guess.

"Do you wanna eat lunch with me and my friends?" I ask her, going for casual.

She looks surprised at first, but then it switches to suspicion. "Why?"

I shrug. "Because you don't have anyone else to sit with." I shrug again. "I get it if you don't want to."

She hesitates. "I'll think about it."

I shrug again. "Alright. Well, I'll see you later, I guess."

She looks at me weirdly. "But we're going to sixth period."

I'm the one having her a weird look this time. "Yeah," I say slowly. "Your point?"

"We have sixth period together. Culinary, remember?"

I want to bang my head into a wall.

"Right," I mutter, embarrassed.

Autumn laughs as we enter Mrs. Ferrante's room, but it quickly dies down when she sends us an evil glare. I swallow, and send a wide-eyed look to Autumn, causing her to snort as she holds in a laugh.

I walk to my seat in the back as she walks to hers in the front, and I set my bag on the desk in front of me.

The bell hasn't rung yet, so I decide to pull out my phone.

Somehow, I find myself looking at my friend requests on Snapchat. And there are a lot of them.

I'm going to kill Aaron.

I look at one of my friend requests, and am immediately taken aback.

Autumn Brewer?

Brewer? Isn't that—

The bell rings and I put my phone away, but not before accepting Autumn's friend request, hoping that this Autumn is the one sitting a few seats in front of me.

"Kids," Mrs. Ferrante begins in her New York accent that only adds to her overall creepiness level. "Today we're going to go into the labs and make that pasta with pink sauce we talked about the other day, alright? So, come up here and get your recipes and head to the labs."

She managed to make eye contact with me at least five times throughout her talking.

I go to stand up, but as I do so, my phone vibrates in my lap.

Autumn sent you a Snap!

I raise my eyebrows at my phone and look up, searching the room for Autumn. Not seeing her, I guess that she already left to go into the labs and start cooking with her group.

I tap on the notification and unlock my phone, coming to the white screen that holds all of my friends—which isn't a lot—and I see Autumn's bitmoji, which looks almost exactly like her—black hair and green eyes. Guess it's the right Autumn.

I open the snap, and it's a picture of the floor, but she added text.

Finally added me back, huh?

I chuckle.

I glance up, making sure Mrs. Ferrante is monitoring the other students and not me, and I take a picture of myself making an 'oops' face.

Sorry?

I put my phone in the back pocket of my jeans and stand up, walking into the labs.

I head over to my station to see my group members already there and waiting for instruction. It was pretty clear by the first time we cooked that none of them had any idea what they were doing, so I was put in charge.

For the record, I didn't have any idea what I was doing, either—turns out I'm just better at bullshitting my way through things than the.

As I tie my apron on, I direct my attention to my two other group members, who are just standing around.

"Sasha," I say to the girl, who immediately turns to me. "Get an apron and wash your hands. Tie your hair up, too."

She goes to follow my directions, but then stops. "I don't have a hair ti—"

I stop her, taking the extra hair tie from around my wrist, and hold it out to her.

She smiles gratefully. "Thanks, Cass."

I turn towards Tyler, my other group member. "Did you wash your hands?" He nods and I eye him. "Wash them again," I say. "And get an apron on."

I turn away and head to the sink to wash my own hands and I hear him mutter under his breath.

"Bitch."

I grit my teeth, but I manage to convince myself to not beat the shit out of him and continue washing my hands with soap, drying them off when I'm done.

As I move to the side to let Tyler wash his hands, however, I can't resist sending him a single glare, and he flinches before moving to wash his hands, this time with no muttering.

Better.

Let's hope nothing goes wrong this time.

---------

"Good job, Cass," Mrs. Ferrante says to me as I head out the door, prepared to head to my last class of the day. "Much better than last time."

I send her a hesitant smile before hurrying away.

Her voice is straight out of a horror movie, and she's freaky short. She's like that evil little leprechaun in that one movie—the one where he granted this girl's wishes, only he took them literally and whatever.

I couldn't finish the movie because I was so freaked out, but she reminds me of that.

It's creepy.

"Cass!"

I stop walking and turn at the sound of my name to see Autumn rushing towards me, weaving in and out of the throngs of people walking down the halls.

"Hey," she breathes.

"Hi," I say, and we both start to walk out of the building and into the bright afternoon sun. "Where are you going next?"

"AP Environmental. You?"

"Health." With Aaron. I let out a groan at that, and Autumn looks at me weird.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just have that class with a guy who I'm getting convinced stalks me because he's always wherever I am."

She pauses. "What's his name?"

"Aaron. Aaron Brewer." I pause too. "Isn't that your last name, too?"

She sheepishly scratches the back of her neck. "Yeah...he's my brother."

"He's your what?" I screech, gaining my looks from the people around us as we walk across campus. Health and AP Environmental are both considered science classes, so they're in the same building. "He's your what?" I ask again, quieter this time.

"My brother," she repeats, and I stare at her. "Twin brother, actually."

There's no way—none—that this sweet girl I'm considering being friends with is related to that, to that person. No way.

"But why weren't you at the dinner the day they moved in?"

"I went out to California to visit my grandma and I got in early the day school started."

"Okay," I say slowly. "But that still doesn't explain why I've never seen you around the house, or even leaving your house in the mornings."

"I mostly stay in my room, and I have two virtual, off-campus classes, so I don't come to school until around nine-ish."

It's silent as I think before I let out a sigh. "So, you're really his sister, huh?"

She laughs. "I think I would know if I wasn't."

I laugh too, and we both enter the science building, pausing at a fork in the hallway.

Looking at her, now that I know she's Aaron's sister, there are many similarities between them; their hair and eyes are the same color—and they both have wonderful cheekbones—but the thing that sticks out the most to me is that they both have this air of humor surrounding them.

Aaron's eyes are always noticeably filled with amusement, and, though Autumn's aren't, her lips looked curved up, as if she's always laughing.

It's a little creepy, but I don't dwell on it because the warning bell rings and Autumn smiles at me before turning away.

"Well, bye," I yell after her, and she just laughs over her shoulder as she continues to walk down the hallway. Seems like something Aaron would do.

Aaron. He never told me he had a sister.

I turn around and practically sprint down the hallway, coming to a stop and walking inside my Health class.

I immediately spot Aaron in the back of the classroom, turned around in his seat as he talks to a group of guys behind him.

"Aaron Brewer," I say loudly as I approach him, and he turns to look at me, that trademark look of amusement in his eyes. That look turns to pain once I slug him on his shoulder. "You never told me you had a fucking sister!"