Runaway

.03

By the time Jack and I got home that evening, Mother didn't have supper done and no one was complaining. I frowned and didn't say anything. Maybe she didn't want to cook and was going for a leftovers thing. Jack wasn't having it though.

"Hey Penny, what's going on?"

Jack and Maddie aren't Mother's biological kids. James, Natalie, and I were surprisingly enough. Mother wasn't but two years older than Father but had produced a kid who was a couple years older than Maddie and I with my jackass of a biological father.

"We're going to the Acker's house for supper. They've invited us," Mother said as vaguely as she could. None of us said anything but James looked at me like he expected me to back out of it. It wasn't wrong of him either.

Our families have been friends for a long time but normally when we have supper together, we invite them over. It was always easy to get out of the dinners then. I could claim I had a project to work on or that I needed to go help out old man Davis. There was always an excuse so that I wouldn't have to eat with her, see her, or even listen to her. I'd fake a sickness but her laughter...it resonates.

So we all went to load up. It seemed stupid to take three vehicles but we did. We're a big family, close too, but there were just some things we couldn't be too close with and one happened to be car rides. It sucked bad enough that four of us had to fit in my pickup even for a few short blocks.

We arrived at different times. Jack and I came in last partially because I couldn't get Jack to calm down about going to her house without her there. He was so sure that the dinner was the announcement of her death but...I couldn't believe it. There was no way Savannah could be dead.

Jack walked in before me, greeting Beth and Henry with a hug and a handshake. Beth smiled at me before running off to the kitchen with my mother. And Henry? Well, Henry still hated me for what I did to Savannah so he nodded to be before taking my coat and hanging it in the coat closet with everyone else's coats.

"So how's it going, Henry?" Father asked.

He looked so small compared to Mr. Acker who stood at a shocking 6'4" with his elephant skin boots on. Father was maybe 5'11" on a good day and plumper than Mr. Acker who looked like he still worked out. And I knew for a fact that he did. Savannah and him lifted weights at the school together on the off season and went for runs every morning at three o' clock sharp. I remember seeing them when I had gone up there late one evening to find Jack after a cross country meet.

"I'm a little worse for wear. How're you, Michel?" Henry asked, rubbing at his shoulder.

"Better," Father replied and continued, "James is home because of some accident that made students evacuate campus. All the kids are doing fine and even Penny's good too."

Right at that second, Carter walked in. Carter was a shit with a mouth the worked about three times faster than Maddie's. Seeing his brown hair, brown eyes, and tanned complexion made me wonder how him and Savannah were even siblings. Their attitudes and mannerisms were alike until a point. But Carter was the exact opposite of redheaded, "green" eyed, paled Savannah who couldn't tan to save her life. (One thing about Savannah's eyes: from all of the time I spent staring at them, I had come to the conclusion that they did not really want to settle on a color. Most called them green so that's what I put into her small description.)

"You're actually here, Oliver?" Carter snapped as his eyes landed on me.

"Carter," Henry ground out warningly.

Carter rolled his eyes and shut the television off, trying his hardest to avoid Natalie. No one said a word for some time after Carter had settled in beside Jack. I watched how they had interacted the whole time, my mind going over all of the ways that Jack had been welcomed into the family.