I hurt Molly.
Now Claire and JJ areyellingat each other?
Claire and JJ never yell or fight with anyone, but especially not each other. Ignoring one another is one thing but this—?
What is even happening right now?
“For fuck’s sake, Claire! Will you just listen to me for one bleeding second!”
Claire’s face is flushed a deep red, and she whirls around at the bottom of the stairs she had been about to mount. “No! I won’t! You’re acting like an absolute—” she stops dead when she sees me standing there with the glass of water. JJ’s eyes flick over to me too, noticing me for the first time.
I glance over my shoulder when the both of them do, seeing Molly—who still looks a bit dishelveled—standing just beside me. She looks as confused by what I’m seeing as me.
Maybe there’s been a gas leak?
I look back at Claire in time to see her bottom lip wobbling, her brown eyes welling up with tears. “You forgot me.”
“What?”
“You were supposed to pick me up at half-five, Niall!” she shouts, her voice trembling. “I reminded you like twenty times and you said you would be there! I tried to call you but you didn’t answer!”
I think about my phone, in the pocket of my bag I’d thrown on the dining room chair earlier. The clock in the hall tells me it’s 5:58 now.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.“Claire... Jesus, oh, I’m so sorry. I lost track of the time and it slipped my mind—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, and I watch as one of the tears slips down her cheek but she pays it no mind. Brushing it off, like it doesn’t exist at all. “It’s fine. Stephen gave me a ride home.”
Please don’t mean Stephen Rafferty—
“Are ya hearing this, Niall?” JJ finally speaks again, reminding me he’s here. His voice is strained. “She got into a car with that prick!”
Move, brain, work. “How did Stephen Rafferty drive you? He’s only in third year, same as you. He isn’t even eligible to take his theory test.”
I say as if I didn’t start driving my Escort at fifteen. But this is different. This is my baby sister and some lad who shoved her on the ground and made her flash her knickers to the whole school a few weeks ago. Accident or not—I don’t care.
Then again, you weren’t there to pick her up either.
I might as well have not said anything at all, because all my sister does is scream at JJ. Actually screams.
“He was apologizing, Jonathan! He said he felt like a scumbag for what happened in the canteen and he wanted to make things right. He was beingnice. Maybe read a book on it sometime—oh, wait, I don’t think you can focus on one thing that long, can you?”
I glance at Molly, whose mouth is gaping open.
What is happening, I mouth to her. She shrugs, wide eyed.
“Stephen Rafferty is not ‘nice,’ Claire! He’s a bottom-feeding waste of space who thinks he can put his hands on whoever he wants,” JJ bellows. “You do NOT get in a car with a lad like that. Ever!”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk about being nice lately?” Claire shouts, her voice reaching a fever pitch. “You act like a total prick yourself, and now you’re going to lecture me? Go fuck yourself, JJ!”
The feeling of my jaw hitting the floor is actually painful. I’d never heard my sweet sister speak to anybody like this in my entire life. I’ve seen her at sunshine, and I’ve even seen her sad and cloudy.
But this?
“What has gotten into you?” is all I can think to say.
“You can shut up, too! You’re not my father, Niall, so don’t even try telling me what to do. And you, Jonathan Jarlath, are definitely not my boyfriend. Neither of you gets to tell me who I can talk to or whose car I can get into when I’m stranded in the rain! So why can’t you both go back to leaving me the fuck alone, because you’ve both beenreallygood at that lately.”
Without waiting for a response, she turns and stomps up the stairs, her door slamming moments later.
