Winter Tales

Chapter 6 - Frozen

++Sam's POV++

We have just finished dinner and are now comfortably sitting at the table. The younger kids have run off a while ago and we are just hanging around, none of us willing to get up and clear the dishes just yet.

I am still musing over Will's motivation to surprise us by making dinner. I wasn't the only one practically lost for words when we came inside after our legendary snow fight and found our fifteen-year-old brother in the kitchen, rustling up spaghetti. He was acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world, while everybody was just staring at him, wondering what was going on.

Will has always been different from the rest of us. And by different, I mean difficult. He has been our family's problem child for as long as I can remember. And that has only been accentuated when he started high school last summer. He is like a walking trouble magnet, and most of the time it is his own wrongdoing. If there are two ways to go about something, or if there are several options to decide on, you can bet your money on Will taking the worst possible one. It is like he is deliberately putting himself on the wrong path, and in harm's way. I sometimes wonder if he is just doing it to rebel against Alex and Josh, who are basically his substitute parents, or if he really thinks that he is on the right track with his life.

Anyway, we unanimously decided not to question his actions tonight, since none of us are in the mood for yet another fight with this stubborn teenager. The most recent one has only occurred the night before, when he tried to once again weasel his way out of coming on this trip with us.

Of course, Alex was having none of it. First of all, he is adamant that this is a family vacation and that it isn't asked too much to expect everyone to participate. And secondly, he would never leave a minor unsupervised for a week. Even less so, if said minor is bound to get himself into trouble the moment we turn our backs on him.

Will even tried to talk Alex into letting him go to Chicago to stay with Sean instead, but that plan was immediately shot down, too. After all, the only reason Sean isn't here this year, is him writing an exam to get a step closer to getting his PhD.

That is Sean for you. He is our family's prodigy, so to say. That makes him the exact opposite of Will. Sean has always been the one with the brains. Which is why he ended up getting a full ride to Stanford, where he got his masters in psychology in record time. For the past two years, he has been at the University of Chicago, working on said PhD. If he keeps going at this rate, he will finish his doctoral studies in a year or so. I guess I don't have to mention that he is the pride of our family.

"That was pretty weird, wasn't it?" Luke remarks, taking a sip of his beer.

Alex, for a change, is generously overlooking the fact that Luke is still just underage. He would probably not be allowing this if Will were still at the table. The kid has been caught more than once smoking and drinking with his no-good-for-anything friends in the past year, and Alex certainly wouldn't want to encourage him any further by setting a bad example. It would totally undermine anything he has been trying to achieve on the parenting front lately.

"What are you on about?" Ben asks.

"He means Will cooking us dinner," I speak up.

It is pretty clear to me that that is what my younger brother is thinking about.

"He did say that he thought he would have to starve if he didn't get on with it, seeing as we were too busy being childish outside," Jordan reminds us with as smirk, making quotation marks with his fingers when he says the word childish.

"Yeah, but normally that would mean Will cooking something for himself, at most, and certainly not for the rest of us, too," Josh says.

This may sound mean, but I silently agree with his assessment. Not only is Will moody and boisterous, he is also incredibly selfish. It seems totally out of character for him to care about our well-being.