Realign: A Drake & Megan Parker Bonding Story

Realign

"It's gonna take some time to realign, but if you look inside I'm sure you'll find over your shoulder you know that I told you I'll always be picking you up when you're down, so just turn around."
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"Yeah, take that, you big monkey!" Josh exclaimed. His eyes were glued to the television screen and his fingers moved speedily across the game controller. He was jabbing at buttons and shoving the joystick in all different directions as he continued to loudly insult the cartoon characters. The hyper teen was practically bouncing on the edge of his seat.

Drake was, like in most things, the exact opposite of Josh. He was laying sideways in the recliner, relaxing with his feet dangling over one arm and his back pressed against the other. He occasionally glanced to check Josh's progress in his game since there was nothing better to do. In between doing this, he took bites of his super sugary cereal. The bowl rested in his lap.

"Ha!" the gamer exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "I won! What did I tell you?! You can't defeat The Joshy!" He looked over at his step-brother as if he had been talking to him the entire time he'd been playing. He did this a lot actually. He was so video game-obsessed that he would completely forget about everyone and everything else and focus only on the little thirty-two inch pixelated world in front of him, but in between each level, he would rejoin everyone in reality and converse with them as if he'd never even left.

Drake gave him a slight nod to acknowledge him, but for the most part, he pretty much ignored his goofy celebration. His attention was on the last bite of his cereal. He used his spoon to fish around for the tiny o-shaped pieces and scooped up the leftover few.

Seeing that Drake really didn't care about how great he was at video games, Josh sat back down. His sugar-fiend step-sibling huffed after swallowing his last bite. His stomach was so full that he was too lazy to reach all the way towards the coffee table, so he just set the bowl on the floor. It was still half-filled with milk, Josh noticed. Something very few people knew about his popular older brother was that he was lactose intolerant. He even had to take supplements for it before eating a dairy-included meal. Drake kept that on the down-low as if having stomach issues was uncool and would ruin his reputation somehow. Maybe it would. High school's cruel. Josh knew this from experience. He watched his roommate rest his hand on his stomach, probably already regretting his snack choice.

"Why do you eat cereal if you know it's gonna give you stomach cramps?" He's asked this before. He's asked this just about every time Drake's eaten something that he probably shouldn't have. The answer was always the same, but it still didn't make sense to him.

"Because I love cereal," he said, then he added, "and it's fend-for-yourself night."

Walter had a business dinner to go to with his boss and his boss' wife right after work and Audrey had to meet him there. Josh faintly remembered his step-mother coming downstairs in a frazzled rush, complaining about being late and saying something about Megan before hurrying out the door. He really hadn't been paying much attention because of his video game.

A lot of times when both were going to be away for dinner, Audrey would make something beforehand or order a pizza. Today, she'd been running so behind that she didn't have the time to cook. After checking her wallet, she saw that she had no cash on her for a pizza and she didn't trust Drake with her debit card after a previous incident. Therefore, it was fend-for-yourself night. Drake could've waited for his stepbrother to cook something nice, but when Josh was playing video games, he could go for hours and not even feel hungry. Therefore, the lactose intolerant teen's impatience led him to make something quick and easy. It'll probably come back to bite him in the butt later.

Josh popped his aching fingers, then picked up the game controller again. He moved on to the next level and was just waiting on the loading screen when all the lights flickered. He had a mini panic attack then — not because of them almost losing power and forcing them to be left home alone in the dark, but because he forgot to save his progress to the memory card and feared having to restart from his last save point, which was over an hour ago. Luckily, the lights stopped flickering and his game was just fine. The second the level started, he pressed pause and clicked save. As he waited, he realized that it was storming outside and that's what had caused the power surge. Somehow, he hadn't noticed this before, even with all the thunder.