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The house is silent. It’s practically the middle of the night still in some people’s worlds, and here I am, crouched over my brand new stepsister, my helmet and shoulder pads on, and dark lines painted carefully underneath my eyes. In the weird half light, I look like some kind of sports monster.
We used to do this to rookies at training camps, just to see how they’d react. If they took the joke well, you knew they’d fit in. I want to see if Tilly’s got the same kind of bottle. That, and I want to spook her out for making such an issue out of sleeping in here in the first place. I mean, what’s wrong with sharing a room anyway? It’s not like I’m some kind of sex addict or anything that finds any nubile girl irresistible. If she can’t handle being in the same room as me because of some crush, that’s her issue not mine. She ought to know I’m out of the game, and anyway, like I said already, I’d have to be totally desperate to do my own step sister, no matter how much she pretends she doesn’t want it.
I get my face as close to hers as I can, crouched over so when she wakes she’s going to be practically trapped in beneath me. I can feel her breath cooling on my lips, and a heat rising off her body that feels like an invitation to join her.
She’s sleeping so deeply I’m going to have to be noisy to wake her. I begin to breathe through my nose. I tense my shoulders and I count down from three. She’s going to freak when she works out what’s going on.
“Omaha! Ten-hut, ten-hut, red eighty ten-hut.”
Tilly wakes up with a snap, smashes her forehead violently against my helmet and flails at me wildly with swinging punches of sleep tired arms. When she’s just about caught her breath and worked out it’s me, not some ax-murderer from the countryside, she’s pressed up against the far wall, and shaking like a leaf. I can’t stop laughing. It hurts so much I have to hold my sides.
A moment later Dad comes in and throws the room into light. Rachel is seconds behind him, her eye mask slid up on to the top of her head.
“You fucking ass-hole.”
In her haste to get away from me, it seems like Tilly has forgotten she’s almost naked. She looks good in her nearly see through, naughty little red panties, and I wonder if she’s put them on for me especially. There is absolutely no sign of her timidness now.
“What on earth is going on here?”
Dad looks at the scene with a face twisted by confusion. Tilly up by the wall, obviously pissed off, me standing in the middle of the room dressed for a game, laughing like I’ve just been told the world’s funniest joke. It’s kind of a weird thing to see first thing in the morning.
I compose myself as best I can, but tears are streaming out of my eyes and it takes me a moment to speak without stuttering.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Oh man, I was just heading out for some practise. I didn’t think you two would be here to be honest. I thought everyone would already be up eating breakfast or out looking for animals.”
I hold my hands up to apologize, but Tilly’s having none of it. I didn’t expect her to get this scared to be honest, but she looks like she’s seen a ghost. The whole thing has worked perfectly.
“Practise? Are you serious? Since when is waking people up in the middle of the night, dressed like some fucking cartoon character part of an American football game?”
“Tilly, language.”
I decide now might be a good time to take off my helmet.
“I’m sorry, I was trying to be quiet. I guess I got a bit excited. I didn’t mean to wake anyone up.”
Rachel looks more concerned by her daughter’s somewhat erratic appearance than mine. “Tilly, are you alright?”
All eyes go to Tilly.
“No, I’m not alright. He woke me up. On purpose.”
All eyes come to me.
“I must have tripped over the bed trying to find the door handle. I guess it’s kind of hard not to wake someone up if they sleep in the living room.”
Tilly narrows her eyes at me. “You asshole.”
“Right, that’s enough.”
This is like some kind of contemporary American Mexican stand off. It’s a weird scene - me in my team kit, Dad and Rachel in matching pajamas, Tilly like some rising star in a barely legal porn film. We could all be extras in a kind of odd theatre production.
“We might as well get up now and make the most of the day.”
At least Rachel is positive.
“I was sleeping.”
“And now you can make the most of the day. Besides which, Landon is right, sleeping in here might not be the most convenient place if you want to lie in.”
Any lower and Tilly’s jaw would be scrapping on the floor. When she realizes she’s outnumbered, unfairly so or not, she barges past me, pushing her shoulder strongly into my chest before entering the bathroom and slamming the door. A moment later, before any of us have even had a chance to say another word, she’s back out amongst us. We all watch her rifle around in her bag of clothes, pull out a suitable outfit and disappear again into the bathroom.
The walls are too thin to hide her frustrated screams.
“What an earth has got into her?” Rachel says.
I shrug. “Beats me. Maybe she’s just not a morning person like the rest of us.”
We eat breakfast in silence. Actually, that’s not strictly true. Dad, Rachel and I eat breakfast like a family would, and because Tilly refuses to sit down at the table she eats hers on her own at the very end of the garden.
I think she’s still pissed off with me. Yeah, alright, no one wants to get woken up like that, but there’s no point in dwelling on it either. It’s done, there’s nothing she can do to change it, she might as well suck it up and move on. I tell her that, but all it does is infuriate her further. I bet she’s just pissed off she didn’t think of doing it to me first.
When I’ve eaten, and Dad and Rachel have sorted out their plans for the day, I go and find Tilly to try and get her back on side.
It’s only been a couple of hours, but I don’t think I can cope with the prospect of six more days of the silent treatment, especially not here in the middle of nowhere, and even though she wasn’t exactly my number one fan before this morning, at least she was still talking to me.
Dad and Rachel want to go for a country walk, which means if Tilly’s still giving me the stink eye, I either go with them and get bored, or I stay here and get bored. If she’s going to give up so easily, just because of a little early morning fright, I might as well call it a day now and go back to the city. Whether she likes me or not I can cope with, what I can’t cope with is her ignoring me completely.
What did she expect when she was told she was getting a new big brother anyway? If she’s got anyone to blame it’s her mom and my dad for deciding to bring the families together.
I find her at the end of the garden looking out over the endless countryside beyond it.
“Nice color, red, it suits you.”
There’s that look again, like she could melt lead just by thinking about it.
“Fuck off.”
I guess I shouldn’t have started with a joke, even if I meant it.
“Come on, Tilly, I was only messing around.”
“Whatever.”
I sit down on the grass next to her.
