Getaway

Chapter 7

“Are you sure?”

“Very.”

“Fine then.”

“Fine.”

And that was the end of that conversation.

“Hey Nell,” Kyle said, “do you think it’s possible to have a pet capybara?”

Most people would have wondered why on earth Kyle would ask a question like that but I was used to his randomness and so just pondered his question.

“I do. I mean they’re just giant guinea-pigs after all. You might need a license though Ky,” I told him.

Kyle took my answer into consideration.

“I think I’d like a pet capybara. They’re cooler than dogs anyway,” he said before skipping ahead of me, lost in his own little world.

I shook my head, my little brother was weird, and made my way to the restaurant where we ate dinner.

Dinner was as entertaining as usual. Kyle continued to ask weird questions and tell us about things that we really didn’t care about and Dad and I tried to join in with the conversation as much as we could.

When we were finished we made our way up to the reception area. I hadn’t bothered to bring my phone, I had finally realised that there was nobody I really wanted to try and contact back home, not right now anyway. I’m sure Olivia wouldn’t mind that I hadn’t tried to reach her, she wouldn’t know anyway.

“Hey Nell, do you want to play cards with me?” Kyle asked when we sat down.

Dad had disappeared to retrieve drinks and had told Kyle he wouldn’t be playing cards tonight – something about a book he really wanted to read – and so Kyle appeared to be resorting to asking me to play. He knew I was hopeless at almost all card games.

“It depends, what are you playing?”

“Go fish,” Kyle said, “I know you’re hopeless at everything else.”

Ouch. You would have thought – him being my brother and all – that he might have softened the blow a little, but no.

I nodded and sat back in my seat as Kyle began to deal the cards.

He was systematic about it, the cards had to be in two neat piles else Kyle wasn’t entirely happy.

I just waited patiently for him to finish before grabbing my pile and arranging them so they were in order, I was glad to see that I already had a set of sixes. Placing them on the table I looked up to see that Ky hadn’t set any down. I already had an advantage.

Kyle was the first to speak. It was a family tradition that Ky went first, he was the youngest after all and so I waited for him to start the game.

“Do you have an ace?” he asked, staring at his cards intently.

“Go fish.”

Kyle sighed and took a card from the top of the pile with a downhearted expression, Ky hated losing, it was a fact of life.

“Do you have a seven?”

“Go fish.”

“Do you have any eights?”

I handed over a card and Kyle’s face brightened ever so slightly.

“Do you have any threes?”

Kyle handed me two cards and his expression was downcast once more.

The game carried on like this for a while and in the end it was close, I had seven sets to Kyle’s six and he wasn’t entirely happy about that fact. He started to sulk, not in an obvious way, he just frowned and refused to talk to me for a few minutes.