PK / PETER KAVINSKY

16.

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A soft knock at my bedroom door diverted my attention from the harshly illuminated screen of my phone. I tapped off Chris' Snapchat story, flung my phone under my pillow and reassumed my 'hard at work' position which consisted of me thoughtfully chewing the end of my pen whilst flicking through my textbook. 

My cautiousness had been all for nothing though as the door slowly opened to reveal Sam on the other side. 

"Hi J." He muttered in greeting and clambered onto the empty part of the bed next to me. I ruffled his hair absent-mindedly as he surveyed the page of the textbook with a disapproving look.

"That looks hard." He wrinkled up his nose, sighed and let his head fall back on my pillow. I could only imagine the hardships he was going through as a 7th grader. 

I took his silence as an opportunity to make a couple of notes in the margins of the book before sending him a sympathetic look.

"Rough day?" 

"Hmm." He mumbled into the pillow. My big sister instincts were going practically berserk so I put down my work to give Sam my full and undivided attention. 

"Hey, Sammie what's up?" I asked with a small smile.

"Nothing." He huffed, looking decidedly pissed off. My patronising tone probably hadn't helped things, it was just in my mind Sam was forever going to be 9 years old so I addressed him accordingly.

"I was only asking." I replied indignantly. "Guess I'll just get back to work-"

"No don't." He interjected quickly.

"What's the magic word Sam?" I teased.

 "Sorry." Sam apologised grumpily.

"So do you want to tell me what's up then?" I shifted so I was lying parallel next to him. I noticed he was doing whatever possible to avoid making eye contact with me.

"I'll tell you in a minute. Let me just think for a second." He grumbled back.

"Yeah well, unlike you, I've got a shit-ton of work to do, so make it snappy Sam." 

"You need to put a quarter in the swear jar!" He said in triumph. 

"You need to put a quarter in the swear jar!" I mimicked in a high, nasal voice and Sam kicked me pointedly in the shin. "Ow!"

"You deserved it." He said with a gleeful smile.

The little shit.

I picked up my textbook and went back to noting down any useful quotations, hoping by ignoring him, Sam would say whatever he wanted to say in his own time. 

Five minutes later: my theory had been proved correct.

"J?" His voice cracked and I tried to restrain the chuckle that rose in my throat. Sam was extremely volatile if I made fun of his voice cracks. 

"Yeah?" I kept my eyes fixed steadily on the quotation I was reading.

"Is it true that you're going out with Peter?"

It was one of those spit out your coffee moments. You know what I'm talking about, the kind of moment when you're least expecting it and then someone says something that is so unexpected, so out of the blue, that if your brain had some kind of emergency alarm it would be blaring away at the highest volume possible.

I'm pretty sure if I could pinpoint my reaction it would go something like this; a weird throaty splutter, an abysmal attempt to cover up my shocked facial expression and a deathly tight grip on the textbook as I tried look as though I was reading as naturally as possible.