The Sister

Is it just me or are the chocolate guys winnin? Cause they're definitely at first place at my school at the moment.

Aaaaannnnnddddd those thick white girls. Like daaaammmmnnn mama you sexy as all fuck. I don't know what's happening in their genes but it's somethin fierce. 😍😍😍😍

**~**

As soon I step out, a kid is riding full speed down the sidewalk in my direction without a care in the world. I let out a scream and just as I'm about to get run over -- one of my worst nightmares -- I'm yanked back by my hips.

"Defecation!" I yell as the kid shouts a measly sorry over his shoulder then merges into the road of traffic.

"D-... did you just..." Arthur starts laughing, his hands dropping from me as he leans his head back and barks his laughter into the air.

My face heats up, and the sound of his laugh can probably be heard five blocks away. Not only that, but the subtle giggles and chuckles come from people who were passing when I decided to make my life worse by shouting that like an idiot.

"I- it's not funny," I mutter. I start to get irritated when he continues bellowing so I limp away from him without a word. Maybe people will think he's mental if they see him just standing there laughing like a maniac.

After a while, his laughs fade with the crowd as I get farther away and I forget all about him. Soon enough, I'm a lot calmer and enjoying the sun and warm breeze while eating my ice cream. A good minute or so went by before I hear Arthur calling after me, but I ignore him. It's such a beautiful day out. I think I'm going to start taking meaningless walks now. Most likely in places where there aren't as many people though.

I finally stop when Arthur forces himself in front of me through the small crowd on the sidewalk.

"Grace." He chuckles, smiling so widely I don't know how I keep a straight face.

I stare back at him blankly. "Nice of you to join me."

He has the audacity to grin at me. "Grace." He says it so softly that I want to melt but I narrow my eyes at him to stop that from happening. "You can't honestly be mad at me?" His hands run down my arms soothingly, but I'm not soothed.

Still eyeing him, I take another spoon of my ice cream wordlessly. He rolls his eyes. "Oh come on you can't expect me to keep a straight face after shouting defecation." He lets out another chuckle and I scowl at him. "Fine. How can I make it up to you? Whatever you want."

Hmmmm... How can he make it up to us, Grace?

"Hmmmmm...."

"Just pick one already," Arthur says in exasperation. His head is thrown back and he's leaning against the shelf opposite the one I'm turned to, with his hands in his pockets.

"This isn't easy, y'know. If you'd let me focus then I'd have picked one by now." My eyes go to the ceiling in irritation, but giddy because I'm being petty and it's messing with him.

We're currently at the supermarket where I'm trying to choose what cereal he should get me. After telling Arthur that buying me a box of cereal would make it up to me, we came to the nearest supermarket. Then, he didn't know what he was up for, but now he does. We've been walking up and down the aisle for the last fifteen minutes and since I'm somewhat physically disabled right now, Arthur's my walking stick as I clutch to him like he's my lifeline even though I don't need to. My ankle still aches, especially since I'm putting pressure on it that I shouldn't, but I just want to be close to him than anything.

"Grace, please," he begs and I frown, "it's freezing in here."

Sighing, I decide to put an end to his suffering. "Fine. I want frosted flakes."

He lets out a loud, exaggerated exhale and walks over to the stack of cereal boxes.

"Hold this." I hand him my cup of melted ice cream. I'll just have to drink it. As gross as that is.

He rolls his eyes, but takes it anyway so I can grab my box of cereal. I hold it out in front of me, looking down at it with a grin. I look up at Arthur who's trying to hold back an amused smile. I think he's starting to find that I have serious problems in the head.

"Okay, let's go," I say, grinning.

"So, that's the only thing-"

I cut him off before he can finish. "Yes. Yes, it is." I shove my right hand into my back pocket. I don't want him thinking I want his money. Then again I'm just going off intuition and say I have money on me. I always find a dollar or two in any of my pants or shorts cause I throw cash around for times like these.

I feel paper in my back pocket and smile in victory. This is why I love myself.

When I take it out, however...

"Oh. My. Gosh..."

"What?" Arthur looks at me, then at what I'm holding.

"I'm rich!" I exclaim, staring down at the twenty-dollar bill in my hand. Then, just out of reflex, I search my other pocket. "Aaaaaaahhhhhh, I'm rich!" People are starting to stare now but I could care less. I found forty dollars in my shorts! I expected a five or even a ten if I'm lucky, but twenty? I can't deal.

"Seriously?"

Being a little hype at the moment, I turn to him. "Don't hate cause you broke." He raises his eyebrows at me. "Money gang!" I throw my head back shouting, followed by a loud cackle. I bet my mom's the one who stacked me up. Nope, it's my dad. I'm sure of it. Mom always makes him carry up my laundry whenever she feels the need to do it. "Moneeeeeyyyyyy!" I shout, completely ignoring the stares I was getting.

"It's forty dollars, Grace," Arthur deadpans.

I look up at his blank face, giving him attitude when I say, "Like you have more."

He rolls his eyes and reaches into his back pocket, taking out his wallet. I frown before he even opens it. Then stare, unimpressed, when he pulls out a crisp fifty-dollar bill and starts waving it in front of my face tauntingly.

"It's just forty dollars." He smirks victoriously.

Refusing to be defeated, I grab the paper bill from his hand and start flailing it in the air with the rest of my money. "I got moneeeeyyyyyy!"

In the midst of my hyper self, I manage to smack Arthur in the eye causing him to let out a curse. I immediately sober up and stand in front of him with his face in my hands. "I'm so sorry," I say, but he might not think I'm sincere seeing that I'm laughing. I hold his face as he rubs his eye. "Don't rub it you baboon!" I exclaim, slapping his hand away.

"Grace." He wines and tries to bring his hand back up to rub his red eye. I slap it away again.

"C'mere." I get up on my tippy toes -- with my good foot of course -- and lean in, planting a soft kiss on his closed eyelid, cooing as if he's a baby. I can be real mental sometimes but it's just a thing I got from my mother. She'd always do stuff like this with me and it calms me, so why not give it a try. When I pull back, his eyes were still closed and I smile at how cute he is. "You okay now?" I brush his cheek with my thumb and his eyes open slowly.

He nods with a chuckle. "Much."

See. It works.

"Awe, it's red." I frown at his bloodshot eye. This is all your fault for being so hype! You hurt the poor boy.

"It's better." He smiles at me.

"Awwww."

I blink multiple times and turn my head in the direction that came from. The two girls we saw about an hour or two ago are standing some feet away from us, but orange hair has her phone up. I blink at them. What is going on?

I force a smile as they waved and make their way down the snacks aisle.

"That's creepy, but at least they're nice." I hear the question mark in my voice at the end of that statement.

Arthur grins and places his arm around me again, guiding me to the front of the store. Like he's been dying to for twenty minutes.

Arthur pays for my cereal at the register even though I told him I have money and he saw that I have money. He really thought his job was done after that, but once we're out of the supermarket and I open the box of cereal, I take my ice cream from him and shove the box into his hands and tell him to feed me.

So that's how our evening went, with weird stares, and me internally telling myself this is why I'm fat, but still not caring.

We walk all over the place for hours until I'm stuffed and tired. Arthur had offered to carry me back home and even though I refused and told him I could walk, he still practically carried me since I had almost all my weight on him. I blamed it on my injured foot because I'd been running over the summer and doing some heavy lifting and I hadn't felt this way in a while.

This is definitely God's way of punishing me because of what I did this morning. I'm fully convinced.

Slowly but surely, I see our houses coming up in the distance and all I can do is dream of jumping into a cold shower then burying myself under a set of sheets. It's about seven at night, but since It's practically still summer, the sun hasn't even started setting yet, so it was still as bright out.

"Can I stay at your house?" My voice is just a whisper.

What if he says no? Then we go home and endure the hours of agonizing meaningless questions and shouting.

"Sure."

That's it? 'Sure'? No questions? Okay.

Just as we're in his walkway, I send a quick text to my parents, letting them know that I'm fine and I'm staying over at a 'friend's' due to their personal struggles at the moment. They both reply that it's okay--my father's response being a little longer and consisting of some not so nice things that will happen to Arthur if something bad happens to me. I keep that from Arthur, knowing he's kinda scared of my dad.

He picked me up before climbing up the steps, then said, "Don't need any more accidents." I purse my lips at his dramatics. One of these days he's gonna drop me and we're both gonna go down but only one will come up.

He sets me down in front of his front door and unlocks it with a set of keys before pushing it open and gesturing for me to go first. I thank him before stepping in, noticing that everything is pretty dark except for the dim light coming from around the corner to my right and the soft talking coming from the television.

"You fucker where've you been? You forgot to pick me up at the airport, dumbass!" I hear the voice but I don't see her. His sister. She's just as talented as him when it comes to having a filter. "Who were you fucking this time?"

Ouch. Yeah, not really since we haven't-

But I understand her anger.

"Shut the fuck up, Andy!" I've given up trying to tell him to stop cursing hours ago so all I do is sigh.

"Come say that do my face, Arthur." Her voice drops dangerously low. "I'll show you how to shut me up." She adds threateningly.

A dark-haired beauty comes around the corner. She looks so much like Arthur, or Arthur looks so much like her, it's crazy. She has the exact same eyes, nose which is a tad smaller than Arthur's, sharp jawline -- how exactly is that possible? -- and her dark, straight hair passes her shoulders, flowing almost to her waist. I know she's taller than me, even from the distance, and probably the same height as her brother. They could be twins.

Andrea is a senior at our school. A lot more low key than Arthur but definitely more deadly. No one messes with her. Just one look and you know to switch to the other side of the hall. I hear she has anger issues and I've seen how quickly she can get flared up but I choose not to judge.

She looks me up and down. "Who's this?"

Wow, it's not like I've lived next door before they moved here, but okay.

Arthur doesn't seem to think before he answers, "My future wife." My head snaps over to him but he doesn't even look at me as I gape at his profile.

"Chick!" His sister snaps her fingers at me to get my attention. I look back to her quickly. "Your name."

"Grace." Arthur answers her. Can he let me introduce myself?

"I'm not fucking talking to you. Let her talk," she says a bit harshly.

Arthur mumbles something under his breath and she turns back to me as if he didn't already tell her my name.

"Grace..." I trail off hesitantly.

Her eyebrows raise and she's about to say something else but Arthur clears his throat, cutting her short. She was most likely about to insult me.

Arthur takes advantage of the short pause. "Do me a favor-"

"Yeah, right." She scoffs, turning away.

"Please?" I look up at him to see him giving her a pleading face with puppy-dog eyes.

"What?" She says through clenched teeth. I look down to hide my smile. They're obviously the average, day-to-day siblings who fight and jib at each other every day, but their connection was unbreakable.

Having been their neighbor for years, I've heard much worse coming from both of them, but I also see them on their good sides. Sometimes he likes to annoy her at school by either shouting her name across the hall when he sees her and waves like a three-year-old seeing his best friend, or sit with her and her friends at lunch when she obviously doesn't want him there half the time. Other times I see them play fighting on their lawn, or actually fighting. As in boxing, and her knocking him over every time. They gather crowds on those days. Especially with all that skin... They don't do it as often though, at least not on the lawn. I think they migrated to the backyard.

"Can you give Grace some clothes to sleep in?"

She looks me up and down again. Arthur clears his throat in an agitated kind of way. "You have a girlfriend," he says, sounding like he's reminding her.

She ignores it and says, "See me when you're ready," before turning and walking away.

I look up at Arthur and he flicks my nose with a smile, making me grimace and lean back. "She's pissed at me because I didn't pick her up at the airport yesterday," he elaborates.

I gathered that.

"Because you were with me?" I ask but it's not like I don't already know the answer. "You know, you should really check your schedule because you canceled a lot of things yesterday. Did you miss anything today?" I try jogging his memory with a look. He should know better than to just drop things like that. If he wanted to help me that bad he could've at least picked up his sister first.

"I forgot okay. Not you too," he wines.

"I'm just saying! She's your sister. You can't just forget." I shrug and stare up at him. "Something bad could've happened to her, you don't know."

His eyes squint at me. "Do you know who my sister is?" Is his meaningless retort.

But I totally get it cause I've seen her fight the school's quarterback. And won. He had to go to the hospital because that's how bad his injuries were. He did call her a bad name so he deserved it.

I shrug, uncaring. "Whatever. Things still happen. I mean, I'm probably just an easy lay to you-" I squeal in surprise when he grips me by my sides and pulls me toward him, gently but firmly so he doesn't hurt my foot.

"Don't say shit like that," he says lowly. Even though there isn't much light I can tell what I said doesn't sit well with him. If his actions didn't give it away.

"But it's true isn't it?" I try squirming to get out of his hold, but he doesn't let up.

I don't want to start this conversation at all, considering how well the day went. I rather go home and become the center of my parents' problems.

"Grace, stop." He moves his hands from my hips to hold my arms. "This isn't about getting laid." He makes a face at the last word. "I like spending time with you. Can I just enjoy your company?" His voice is softer and so are his eyes as holds my gaze.

It was enough to make me relax, and mutter, "Well... I am awesome..."

He grins now. "Yeah, you are. I actually have a great time not getting laid with you," he teases.

I pout to stop myself from smiling but by the stretch of his lips, I'm failing. I feel myself failing drastically.

"So, can we both go back to keeping our clothes on for the rest of the night?" He adds as his arm slides around my shoulders and he angles me into the house.

"I guess," I say halfheartedly, still acting like I'm upset. The facade broke when he pressed his lips against my cheek and starts doing raspberries.

**~**

Guys, I'm slacking with updates because life literally sucks right now.

I want to write and keep writing, but shit, I don't even know what to do with myself. I have so much I want to get out that I'm literally freezing up and not knowing what to do. And college just keeps throwing shit at me, that I don't even have time to do anything else. I'm struggling.

I really hope you guys are staying safe and healthy and not as miserable as I am LOL.