𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 [𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫 - 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭]

2 | Phantoms

"I'll make hot chocolate when we get in," He promises. Adam grins triumphantly against his skin, trying to hide it from where he huddled closer in the skin of Rune's neck.

Reaching the porch of Charlie's house, the one right next to their own, Rune sets his little brother down on the steps and leaves him to watch the deer grazing across the road, barely visible through the inky blue gaps in the trees. Night is already edging in and Adam fails to hide how grey his fingers are turning in the chilled air, so he hurries to climb onto the empty upturned plant pots next to Charlie's front door, cringing as they groan under his increasing weight. He'd shot up in height since the last time Charlie'd babysat, so he's nearing that crucial point of too heavy to step on the pots to reach the spare key hidden on the overhead porch light, but too short to reach it himself.

He unlocks the door and waves Adam's flurrying form in, eyeing the deer with a predatory gaze he doesn't understand. "In you go," He mumbles, shutting the door behind him and flicking on the catch, softly reminding Adam to take off his muddied wellington boots, ignoring the little boy's grumbling that "Charlie never takes off his boots," hanging up the matching red cagoule when Adam makes a grabbing motion for the coat pegs.

The five-year-old trundles off into the lounge, the sound of after-school cartoons shortly following, blaring through to the adjoined kitchen where Rune settles in; turning on the hob to heat some watered down milk in a pan, rifling through the cupboards for the chocolate powder Charlie had somewhere. He hums happily when he finds it, Adam giggling at Scooby Doo in the other room.

Hot drinks soon deployed, Rune doesn't know what to do with himself. Charlie is a little later than usual, having to drive out to the reservation to collect the Buckley's middle child from where he'd been left with the Clearwaters. That meant he wouldn't be able to access Charlie's computer for a while, not knowing the password. Well, he did, actually, because Charlie Swan isn't great at keeping secrets, but it's the principle of the thing that stops Rune from going online to finish the history assignment he'd stuffed in his pocket. The one that required information from encyclopaedias he didn't have. And Adam wasn't in the mood to play, already nodding off on the rug in front of the TV because the harsh weather always took it out of him. They weren't allowed in their house alone for very long, so they had to stay at Charlie's when his parents were absent, even if Charlie would be out for a little while, which means he can't even pick up a book. And he'd left his backpack and homework in his school locker, foregoing taking the thing home because he knew Adam would want to be carried.

So Rune opted for sitting in the bay window seat, the one that faces the street and opposing houses and the bend in the road that quickly vanishes into thick forest. The glass is a little damp against his forehead when he leans against it to doze, head feeling too sharp, vision flashing into acute awareness in the way it does when he isn't distracted and keeping busy.

In an awful onslaught, the blurred incline of the surrounding trees suddenly snaps into clarity. He thinks, with sickening certainty, that he can see a pack of wapiti moving through the undergrowth, stirring the dark brush that didn't seem so dark now, all stark shades of evergreen and deadened brown. Head pounding, he blinks rapidly, doesn't like he way he can pick out the specific thrum of Charlie's car two streets away, hates how his senses have tuned in to the laugh track crackling over technicolour cartoons and makes the buzz of electricity all through the house seem inescapable.

He scrambles up the stairs and shuts himself in the bathroom, slumping against the rim of the bathtub.

Is this what puberty is like? Because if so, Ms Drew has seriously skipped out on 6th Grade Biology.