Half of My Heart ✔️

21 | pull me under

I'm leaning against the piano, watching Levi and Dani play their duet. In the past few days, Dani has improved a lot. Now their duet sounds smooth and complete, drawing from the complexity of four hands instead of two.

Jack's helping my parents in the kitchen. Although he and Levi have been eerily civil to one another since Jack and Archer's arrival, I'm still glad that the two of them aren't in the same vicinity of one another. Just to be safe.

I hear Archer groan dramatically from the couch in the living room. He's sprawled across, watching HGTV. "Can we do something?" He yells, peeking over the couch to look at us. "Anything besides sitting in here all day."

I look out the window. The clouds cast a depressing gloom over everything, and I think it's even sprinkling lightly. "Arch, it's not exactly the best day for an outdoor adventure."

Suddenly, Archer leaps off the couch with excitement written all over his face. I sigh, knowing he must have an idea. This never goes well. "Three Musketeers," he says. I groan.

"No," I say, turning back to the piano. "We're not children."

But the look on Archer's face makes me doubt that last statement. Levi looks up at me, still playing the piano. "Three Musketeers?"

I look at Archer, mentally swearing at him for even bringing this up. Then I look back at Levi and explain, "It's a game we used to play in the forest behind our house when we were kids. Pretending we were heroes, protecting our neighborhood from crime. The whole nine yards."

"So you want to go running through the forest? Pretending to fight off criminals?" Levi asks, looking at Dani and me. "To each his own, I guess."

"No," Archer answers, coming to stand next to me at the piano. "We don't run through the forest. As we got older, it evolved into just rock-hopping through the creek. We just kept calling it Three Musketeers because why not? It's fun, trust me."

"It's more like Three Blind Mice," Dani adds. "It's stupid — running upstream and trying to not die. I don't participate. It's always been a thing between Scar, Archer, and—"

"Did someone say Three Musketeers?" Jack asks, coming into the living room while drying his hands on a towel. "I haven't rock-hopped in forever."

"And you're not going to rock-hop today," I say, cutting him off before he can get Archer even more excited by the idea. "It looks like it's about to storm. The rocks are going to be slippery."

Dad comes out of the kitchen. "Scar's right. It poured a few days before you guys got here. The creek's going to be pretty high."

"I guess it's for the best if we don't go," Archer says. Then he looks at Levi. "I don't know if Beethoven here could keep up with us."

I want to warn Levi to not take Archer's bait. "Levi, don't listen to him. He's just egging you o—"

"I'm down to go," Levi says before I can finish, and I mentally scream. "I'm a fast learner. And it's just running through a creek. How hard could it be?"

Archer and Jack are silent, and they share an amused look. I can only pray that they're not scheming together, although it sure looks like it. "Then I guess it's settled," Jack says, building off of Archer's energy. "Archer, Levi, and I will go." He looks at me. "You sure you don't wanna go, Scar?"

I look outside again. The rain is still at a light drizzle, but I don't like the look of the storm clouds above. But I know that none of the three boys will back out of this, and I can't trust Archer to keep an eye on Jack and Levi. And I can't trust Archer and Jack to not pull something; every since kindergarten, the two of them together have never failed to get into trouble at every possible chance.