brothers.

9~ Disapproval

Tommy

"Shirley, for the last time, I didn't want her at school. It just happened, okay?"

"There's gotta be something you can do," she replied.

I sighed, lowering my phone for just a moment as I paced around, my stress level rising to new heights. I took a deep breath and raised my phone to my ear again.

"What do you expect me to do? Tie her to her chair and lock her in her room before I get on the bus?"

"Just scare her out of going to school."

I scoffed. "Yeah, like it's that easy."

"How is that not easy? In what universe does someone actually want to go to school? Just the thought of school makes me feel like throwing up." She gagged. "I thought about it."

I sighed, finally crashing onto Harry's bed. The tension in my shoulders built up, bunching their muscles enough to give me my own personal shoulder pads.

"What made her want to go to school in the first place?" Shirley asked. "I thought you said she didn't like it."

"I..." I sighed again, massaging the bridge of my nose. "It was all Harry's fault." I paused, my pride pushing its way up my throat as I forcefully swallowed it down. "And... I guess mine, too."

"Would you get to the point?"

"Mom asked her if she wanted to go to school. She said no. And she was going to go online, but we..."

"You... what?" she asked.

I bit my lip, ready for her rant. "Later on, we told her to get some chips, and she said no, so Kyle made Harry and I go instead-"

"Point."

"Okay, long story short, Harry poured soda over her head and she decided to go to school with us."

A pause. "You poured soda over her head?"

"Well, she didn't bring us chips, so I thought-"

"Oh, un-be-lie-vable!"

I sighed for the third time and waited as she went on and on about how idiotic we were and about the consequences of Diana going to Summit High with us.

She loved repeating herself over and over and over...

At the end of the stream of curses and insults directed at me and my brothers, peppered with colorful names like 'idiot', 'moron', 'brainless', and 'dolt', I was finally allowed to speak.

"Are you done?"

"Obviously," she sighed, sounding exhausted. Well, it was a long tangent.

"Okay, look, maybe she'll change her mind. It was spur-of-the-moment. When it's almost time for school to start, most likely she'll back out and go online. So... let's just hope."

"Just tell her why you don't want her to go."

"It'll just egg her on. It's all out of spite, Shirley."

"No, tell her the actual reason. Tell her about-"

I glanced out the door before speaking. "I'm not saying anything about Amy," I whispered.

"Why not?!"

"Shirley, it's not as easy as you think to broach a subject like that!"

"Eventually, she's going to find out. Might as well," Shirley said insensitively.