The Hollow

Chapter 7: The City

November 2nd: 11:04am

“Jonah! Jonah! Jonah!” Zander called, bouncing up and down beside him on the bed.

“What?” Jonah groaned, peeking out to look at his little brother.

“Get up.”

“Why?” 

“I'm bored,” Zander said it like it was obvious.

“And I'm hungover. Go away,” Jonah snapped, rolling away from him.

“Jonah!” Zander whined, shaking his brother's shoulder.

“I wasn’t put here to entertain you,” Jonah growled out, pulling the blanket over his head.

“Maybe not but I was put here to annoy you. Now get up,” Zander fell over Jonah and pouted at him, “I want to go to The Center.”

“Then go to The Center.” 

“Sara will only give me healthy crap unless you’re with me,” Zander continued to whine.

“Fine,” Jonah sighed, pushing Zander away and sitting up.

“So, did you see your Outsider last night?” Zander called after him as he went upstairs to get clothes.

“My Outsider?” Jonah yelled back, taken aback at how well Zander could read him.

“The Samara girl,” Zander said as if Jonah needed clarification.

"She was there," he said, shaking out a t-shirt and trying to find a clean pair of jeans. 

"And?" Zander pressed, his voice too close.

Jonah jumped and turned to glare at Zander, who was leaning against the doorframe.

"And nothing," he said, pulling the shirt over his head, "She doesn't belong here. She'll leave soon so I don't have to worry about her."

"So, you do worry about her?"

Jonah ignored him and finally found his jeans. He couldn't tell Zander that the only thing he was worried about was the day she decided to go home. Although it didn't seem to matter because Zander already caught on to that. That boy was too much like their mom, you couldn't hide anything from them.

"Why are you afraid of her?" Zander asked quietly.

"Where'd you get that idea?"

"The way you talk about her. It's how you talk about mom and dad," Zander explained and Jonah knelt down so they were face to face, "Like the second you start to refer to her as a real person, you back up."

"The City is a different world, Zander, and the Outsiders never choose us. I'm sorry that I do that with mom and dad too but there's things I have to hold at arm's length because I need to focus on protecting you, protecting everybody."

"That's not fair," Zander pouted.

"Someone needs to keep this place running. Placed in the wrong hands and our whole way of life falls apart," Jonah told him, repeating words he had heard his whole life from his father.

"But I miss you. The ‘you’ that didn't have to protect everyone else." 

"I miss that me too sometimes, but that's life. I'm a completely different person then I was when I was your age and next year I'll be different again and so will you. We hold on to the important parts and we keep going because sometimes that's all you can do," Jonah told him, his voice soft. Zander watched him with glassy eyes. Jonah hated to see his brother like that, "Now, you didn't drag me out of bed to talk about this did you?"