The Stepbrother

Part One - Go To Your Room

It started the year Andie's parents slid off the road during a rainstorm. Their deaths marked some of the worst times in Andie's life; starting with her then nineteen-year-old step brother moving home to take care of her. Andie was fifteen-years-old.

The four year age difference between them should have been just that—four years, which in the grand scheme of things, isn't so long. But for a fifteen-year-old girl and her nineteen-year-old step brother, it couldn't have been a more dramatic age-gap.

Eric was in his second year at university, and he wasn't remotely interested in halting his studies and his late night rendezvous to return to the snail-paced town where his father remarried and settled down with a flaxen-haired woman and her too-skinny daughter. As if the loss of his father wasn't enough, he had to uproot his life and interrupt his dreams to look after a girl he barely knew.

His father decidedly remarried just prior to the start of Eric's college education. Which meant he spent very little time with his father's new bride and her wide-eyed daughter. Six months was the longest he shared a house with his newest sister, and their encounters were brief and mostly awkward.

For starters, he spent very little time at home. His father's newfound marital bliss was nauseating to witness. Eric was also finishing up his senior year at high school and preparing for his first year at university. And the summer in between was filled with a lot of booze and fuzzy memories of nights well-spent—he thinks.

All of this to say: he didn't know Andie, the fifteen-year-old girl who used to stare at him when she thought he wasn't looking. He didn't know her at all, and the idea of returning home and entertaining her adoration for him annoyed him more than just about anything he could think of.

Eric's first week home saw little interaction between him and Andie. She was depressed, naturally, and holed herself up in her room, much to his relief. It gave him time to sit in his old childhood home and grieve the father that was once his; relishing in the years where he didn't have to share him with anyone else.

What made matters worse: his father and Andie were incredibly close despite having known each other only a few years. This tugged at his jealousy, having been an only child and the sole reciprocator of his father's affections for the majority of his life; only to share it with a tiny slip of a girl who could barely muster more than three words of a conversation with him.

One evening, he returned home after a night with friends, to find Andie settled all alone in the window bench that overlooked the driveway, as if waiting for him to come home. It was a Friday night, Eric had thought to himself. She should have had friends over, just like he had gone out to visit with his own acquaintances. Instead, she sat at home, all alone because even he, her newfound guardian, had people to see, even when she didn't.

It was that night that he recognized that he had been neglecting her, but what could he do about it? Nothing. She was a stranger living in his childhood home. It didn't matter that she was lost without her parents; he had lost the only parent he had too. They suffered in the same ways, he just knew how to deal with it.

She'd figure it out, he told himself. And that's what he told himself every night before bed to ensure he slept with a guilt-free conscience.

That was until four months into their new lives together. Eric was taking online classes since he didn't have the luxury of attending in-person anymore, and Andie had just turned sixteen. She entered her Junior year of high school as one of the prettiest girls in her class with the same flaxen hair as her mother.

She came home late everyday after school and Eric never asked about her whereabouts. They spoke little, as always, and that was that. At least until one evening when the clock ticked ten minutes after midnight, and Eric's ward was nowhere to be found.

At first his agitation brewed from an obligation to stay up and wait for her. He was losing precious sleep and this frustrated him immensely. Then, his frustrations turned to concern. She had never stayed out this late before. What if something was wrong? What if she was hurt somewhere and needed help?

Eric's mind conjured the most vivid picture of Andie's face contorted in pain as she lie injured somewhere, unable to assist herself into getting the help she needed.

This left him in a state of worry for the girl who he harbored little affection for, which only aggravated him further.

By the time midnight rolled around, Eric had settled his pacing across the living room floor. In a chair by the window he sat with his head in his hands, torn between his stewing temper and the growing concern he felt at his step sister's absence.

When the lock finally turned on the front door, Eric was just a moment away from calling the police.

Breathing a wild sigh of relief, he stood from the chair and addressed her with a deep scowl that he hoped would portray how absolutely furious he was with her.

"Where the hell have you been, Andie?"

She looked up, briefly, before lowering her head as she closed and locked the door behind her. "I was out," she answered him, her voice soft, bored, sad— the same tone she had with just about everything nowadays. "Why are you awake? It's late."

Eric's hands clenched into fists. "I know it's late, Andie," he all but growled, and for the first time she seemed to recognize that he was angry with her. Her eyes widened at the furious storm brewing behind his eyes.

"You didn't have to wait up for me..." she suggested warily, easing her bag from her shoulder and dropping it onto the couch. All the while her eyes glued to his.

"It's after midnight!" he finally raged, making her jump ever-so-slightly. "Of course I waited up for you! You never go out, so I had no idea that you were with friends. For all I knew you were injured somewhere and needed help!"

Andie appeared to be in a total state of shock as if her step-brother's ability to harbor any concern for her was an ancient legend unworthy of waiting for. It made him feel like crap, and that only fanned the flames of his frustration.

"Well," she swallowed, taking a moment to compose herself. "I'm fine."

"Where were you?" he asked again, his voice cold and steely.

"With friends."

"You don't have friends. Try again."

She glared at him then. "I have plenty of friends. Just because you're never here to see them, doesn't mean that I don't have them."

"I'm not gone that much," he growled.

And then she did something that sent him to his tipping point. She shrugged as if she didn't really care whether he was home that often or not, which they both knew was a lie.

"Go to your room."

She whirled around after just turning her back. While she gaped at him, Eric wondered what ridiculous words had just fallen from his mouth. Did he really just tell the sixteen-year-old girl to go to her room? He wasn't thinking correctly. Part of him acknowledged that. But the other part of him kept its foot down and demanded better respect; something he wasn't even sure he had earned.

Feeling very unsure of everything, he approached her with the intent of suggesting they just go to bed and discuss this in the morning, being that it was after midnight and everything. But she shocked him by pushing past and running up the stairs. A moment after she rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, he heard her bedroom door shut.

His anger forgotten, Eric stood there staring up the stairs as if he could replay the scene of her fleeing to her bedroom over and over again. He was baffled. Why had she listened to him? He had given her no reason to respect his authority—he'd never even asked for it. Yet, she did as he told her. Had he frightened her? Was his display of anger too nerve-wracking for her?

Turning, he faced a mirror on the wall and stared into his now-weary expression. His eyes were still hard, and the scowl was still deeply chiseled into his mouth. He looked tired and frustrated. But he also looked cold and unforgiving, a wretched sort-of behavior that shouldn't be delivered to a child who wasn't receiving any maternal or paternal affections.

That was the first night Eric struggled to fall asleep; unable to convince himself that Andie was fine. Clearly, she was not. Neither of them was.