Running Towards the Light

Chapter 21 - Arguments

"Yep," I sighed. "Just seven older brothers and then me. No sisters."

"Wow! Gosh, seven, that's a lot," He ranted. "...If some of your brothers go to this school. I only know one family that would have that many kids — wait?!"

Brady's hand reached out and ripped my paper from under my arm as he pulled it towards him once again. He brought it way too close to his face and blinked multiple times before setting the paper on the desk once again and looking at me with his jaw practically on the ground.

"You're an Anderson?!"

Oh. He must have seen that I wrote "Beatrice Anderson" at the top of my page.

"Mhmm," I nodded again. "That is my last name," I plucked my paper from his hands and brought it back down to look at my name scrawled across the top.

"L-like... like, like ... the football twins — Sam and Spencer — and West! On basketball or something ... and Cameron Anderson! Those Anderson brothers?!"

I nodded my head, getting a little uncomfortable. "Umm, yeah. Those are my brothers."

"Wow!" He responded, shaking his head. "T-that's just crazy?"

"Why?" I shot back, feeling defensive. "It's not crazy to have siblings at the same school as you."

"No! No. That's not what I meant." Brady immediately assured me. "It's not crazy. I just ... I've never heard there was another Anderson sibling, nonetheless a sister. I always thought it was all boys." He shrugge. "And the Anderson siblings are quite ... notorious ... I'm sure you know what I mean, ya know being and Anderson sibling an all," — I nodded my head as a confirmation — "So you have seven older brothers? Four of them go to this school?"

"Five," I corrected. "Five of my brothers go here. Ben too, he's a sophomore —"

"He plays baseball, right?"

"Yeah, he does." I confirmed. This was my time. "So I told you about my family. Tell me about your family." I edged.

He shrugged. "My family is boring, well boring compared to yours. I have an older brother and sister and a younger brother. My sister's in college, my brother is a senior here, and my younger brother is in 5th grade." He paused for a second, fiddling with his hair and then continued. "It's just my mom and my siblings, mainly. My parents got divorced a couple years ago so I only see my dad once a month for a weekend."

"Oh. I'm sorry." I mumbled.

"It's fine." Brady shrugged, grinning.

"I-is your brother's name Lucas?" I tried, my voice at a high pitch in hesitance.

"Yeah." Brady responded, hesitantly. "How did you know that?"

"Well... the real reason I asked you if you had siblings was because I heard some of my older brothers talking about a Lucas Adams and how him and Cam — one of my brothers — don't get along. So I was wondering if he was your brother and if you knew anything about that?"

"Oh. Well I don't know ... I've definitely heard Lucas bitching about Cameron before, but I don't know about anything serious, I guess." Brady responded.

"Did Lucas do something recently?"

Brady took a second before responding: "He got into a fight a couple days ago. Was your brother saying something about that?"

"I don't know. I was eavesdropping. So they were pretty vague from what I heard."

"Yeah, well—" Brady started to say again before the loud bell stopped him mid sentence.