Dissolving

Chapter 5 - Homebound

Being stuck at home is kind of boring.

It is now Tuesday and I have been staying home from school because I was told that I am not allowed to walk around until after I had that dreaded surgery.

Alex has put me on strict bedrest and has forbidden me from moving at all. I think he is taking it a bit too far, but unfortunately my complaints are falling on deaf ears. He claims that he is only doing what my doctor – who I have yet to meet, since I was not really conscious when the guy last saw me – has told him. And I have to believe that it is the truth.

I can't even go into the bathroom by myself, because apparently I am not allowed to put any weight on my injured knee. It is highly embarrassing to be so useless and to rely on my family for everything, including having someone take me all the way to the toilet. These are the moments when I wish there were other females living in our house.

Luckily, Hannah is coming over once a day to help me with showering and stuff since I am definitely too old to allow my brothers to come anywhere near me when I am getting undressed and might need help with that.

Because I am not allowed to go to school and because I cannot look after myself – this is according to Sam, who thinks that he knows everything – Alex has come up with a schedule to ensure that someone is always at home with me. I guess at times like these it is beneficial that not all of my brothers have a regular job. That makes it a lot easier for them to organize their "babysitting duties".

The only thing I am in agreement with is that Alex doesn't trust the younger twins yet to look after me, which means that always an adult is present. The thought of being home alone with Aidan, who, due to his suspension, is stuck in the house, too, makes me cringe. The chances that either one of us would not survive such a situation are pretty big. Although we have had a brief moment of mutual acceptance when he and Noah set up their TV in my room the other day, we are no back to our usual interactions, meaning it is a challenge for us to even be in the same room without it turning into a battle field.

Honestly, I am still in some kind of daze over the fact that Aidan willingly risked the consequences that a fight would undoubtedly entail only to defend me, of all people. He has never done anything remotely similar before – at least not to my knowledge – and it is a mystery to me why he did it this time. Because, not only did he get in trouble for it with the principal and with Alex, but it is now also the talk of the school.

So much for not telling anyone that we are related!

I don't count his completely unnecessary and petty fights with Finn here, since they definitely happened out of spite and not because there was any need for Aidan to defend me.

Finn.

I thought I had found a way to deal with having lost my newest friend so soon after our friendship started, but now that I am cooped up in bed or on the sofa all day, insanely bored, he has popped into my mind several times already. I wonder how he is doing.

The last time I heard from him was almost two months ago. In the beginning, right after he moved in with his estranged father, we texted several times a day, always on the burner phone that I still keep hidden in my bedroom. My brothers obviously don't know anything about that second phone and I plan to keep it that way.

Our messaging each other kind of fizzled out once my grounding was over and I returned to my so-called "normal life" and routine. I did send him a couple of messages from both my normal phone and the secret phone, hoping to stay in contact. But he never replied.

At first, I was a bit disappointed that he had lost interest in keeping in touch with me. Then, with the third unanswered message, I started to get pissed off because he was obviously ignoring me, since the check marks in the message bubble showed that he had received and read them. It took me more than a week to decide to send him one last message before I would delete his number if he still didn't reply. With that last communication, I noticed that the two check marks remained grey, meaning he hadn't even received them. That was when my anger was replaced by worry and I decided to keep his number, if only to be able to check up on him in the future.