Roll the Dice

four. the save-a-soul mission

{Dedicated to Anha, the babe. Mostly because she thinks my butt is cute. Oh, and she is incredibly supportive and one of the best cabin mates I could ask for!}

"Wait, you're telling me that you were invited to the volleyball match from a couple days ago?" I turned my head around so quickly that I nearly whipped my brother in the face with my hair. He jerked back as far as he could on the couch, pretending to choke. "Why didn't you go?"

Carter leaned back, stretching his arms so far behind him that it looked like he was going to pop his shoulder joints. I winced. Lazily, he answered, "I don't hang with the high school crowd anymore."

"But it's not like you have friends here anyway." I stretched forward, feeling my back crack, to get the remote control for the TV. "I mean, if it weren't for Mom and Dad, you'd still be in your room doing who-knows-what."

The living room was dim; my brother and I hadn't bothered to draw open the blinds. Blinking a couple times, I yawned. My brother snatched the remote from me and turned on the TV for me, which was a good idea since I was basically capable of doing just that and nothing else. This afternoon had a sluggish, sleepy feel—I wanted to go take a nap.

But the thing was that my parents had delegated to me the task of keeping my brother from being an antisocial freak whose best friend was his laptop, so here I sat.

Carter scoffed. "I have friends." He sat up, pointing a finger at me and running a hand through his sandy hair. "In fact, I have more friends than you. They just happen to not live in Maryland."

"Mm." I took the remote control back from him and squinted down at it. Now how was I supposed to scroll through the channels? I found the button after a bit of searching, and a little over-zealously, I pressed down on it. "Ooh, look." A couple of birds were flying hither and thither on the screen. "A documentary."

"No." Carter yanked the remote control back from me. "I didn't come back from a year of textbooks and boring professors to watch some more dumb shit."

I kicked his legs off the coffee table in front of us and jumped over him, reaching for the remote control, which he held over his head. "But look at them!" I protested. The birds, which I realized were toucans in the Amazon, continued flying over the impossibly green treetops in the cerulean blue sky. "They're so cute!"

My brother dropped the remote control behind the couch. "Oops." He smirked and pushed me off him.

Grumbling a bunch of less-than-nice comments under my breath, I gingerly tottered around the coffee table and headed behind the couch to pick up the remote control. "You're such an ass."

Carter shrugged.

He wasn't even going to deny it.

I pointed the remote control and switched to a different channel, which was currently playing some soap opera in Spanish. I scowled at it. "Ew, Spanish."

"Aren't you taking that in school?" Carter stretched his arms again. He intentionally hit me with them when he swung them around. "You should be watching that to practice your skills."

I whacked his head with the remote control, and with that, he withdrew his arms. He looked a little like a kicked puppy as he hugged himself and rocked around a little on the couch—pathetic. He was such an attention whore sometimes. With a little grin, I headed back around the couch and the coffee table to sit down.

When I plopped myself down, I slung my legs over my brother's, which were once again propped on the coffee table. Carter sent me a dirty look, but he didn't bother to push me off. It was probably because he had gone to sleep at about 4am—I could tell from all the extremely graphic and explicit sounds coming from his room, which unfortunately happened to be right next to mine.