Between the Lines

Chapter 1 - Wounded

June 7th, 7:30 P.M.

River set his glass cup down on the dinner table and started rolling a lone meatball around on his plate. He was uncharacteristically quiet. Too quiet. I knew something was up. The last time he'd been that quiet at dinner was when he choked on a huge piece of steak. My dad had given him the Heimlich maneuver.

“Just get it over with already,” I said. “What's your big announcement?”

River looked up at me, smiling coyly, and cleared his throat loudly so the rest of our family looked up from their spaghetti. My six year old sister, Willow, had sauce smeared all over her face, and my dad looked wearily at River. Mollie just smiled her butt-kissing smile and looked politely at River. Much to my displeasure, she and my dad were holding hands under the table.

“Guess what?” asked River smugly.

After a small pause, Willow offered, “What?”

“Lauren asked me out today,” he bragged, flexing his barely-there biceps. “Boo-yaw!”

Everyone went back to eating. I rolled my eyes. “Lauren's asked you out, like, five times now. Please tell me you didn't turn her down again.”

River gave a slimy smile. “Of course I turned her down! What part of 'playing hard-to-get' don't you understand?”

Okay, that was way too hard to get. I felt like punching him in the face for being such a jerk, but I swallowed my anger. “You're heartless.”

River just shrugged.

“So you really had to announce this like it was some big deal, huh?”

“You're just jealous that I have girls falling all over me while haven't even had a boyfriend yet. Have you?”

“Shut up,” I muttered.

“Oh, that's right, you haven't had a boyfriend. Unless you count Everett, but he's more of your friend. Your only friend, that is.

I bristled. I tried to keep myself calm by repeating insults about River in my head, but I was barely holding it together. I was falling apart at the seams and River knew it. “You've always been kind of a loner, haven't you, Ember?”

A dam burst inside me. That was the last straw. “Just stop it!” I yelled. “I'm so sick of you. You think you're so high and mighty, imagine what would happen to your social status if your friends knew what a loser you are at home. I could destroy your social life with the release of a couple pictures and videos. It would be easy, really.”

River shrugged it off, but I could tell he was shaken. In his world, popularity was everything. “I'm not scared of you, freak.”

Then I laughed. Oh, when he found out. . . “What if I told you that one of those mortifying pictures was posted on facebook? And all your friends were looking at it right this minute, laughing their asses off?”

River glared at me for a few moments before it registered in his brain what I had done. He didn't waste any time letting me sit and eat my dinner peacefully. He sprang up out of his chair and lunged toward me swinging his fists. Luckily, I saw that one coming and I leaned to the side, sending River flying into the cabinet behind me. I was so busy feeling triumphant, I didn't realize he had gotten up and was launching himself onto my back.

My chair tipped forward and my face slammed smack in the middle of my partially eaten spaghetti. Tomato sauce splattered and a couple noodles made their way up my nose. I felt River's fists pounding angrily against my back. I shook him off onto the floor and leap to my feet, ready to fight. Before I could give him a good kick in the balls, my eight year old brother Sage jumped in front of me and started pushing me away. “Stop!” he yelled. “You guys already tried to beat each other up this morning, remember?”

I tried to swat Sage away from me, but my dad grabbed hold of my shoulders and steered me back to the table, forcing me down into my seat. Glowering, River picked himself up off the ground and brushed the crumbs from his pants. I wiped spaghetti sauce out of my eyes and hair.

“This is ridiculous,” said dad, shaking his head in disapproval. “What will it take to get you two to stop fighting? You're leaping down each other's throats at every possible opportunity!”

“For good reason!” I protested. “Did you hear the things he was saying to me? He started it!”

“She posted an embarrassing picture of me online, I know she did!” yelled River. “She should be the one getting punished, not me.” He crossed his arms over his chest and pushed his chair back from the table.

“I never said anyone was getting punished,” said my dad calmly.

We both stared at him in amazement. “So we aren't getting in trouble?”

“Oh, you are. Both of you, up to your rooms while I think of a punishment. Now.”

I groaned. Protesting wasn't going to do me any good. Once my dad made up his mind about something, it wasn't even remotely possible to convince him otherwise.

River and I stomped up the stairs and climbed the ladder that led to our room in the attic. Once we were both up, I slammed the trap door. “Thanks a lot, jerkface! You scored us twenty extra chores this week.”

River rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. You're such a drama queen. You do this to me every time we get in a fight. The whole 'blaming other people for your problems' thing is getting old.”

“I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying. . . “

“See, you are blaming me! You have as much to blame for this as I do.”

I clenched my teeth together. How was he being so calm all of the sudden? A couple minutes ago, he was practically ripping my hair out when he found out what I did. “Have you forgotten what I posted on the internet, Mr. Popularity?”

River just shook his head in that infuriatingly calm way and plopped down on his bed and picked up an ancient spider-man comic book. I turned my back to him. I was tired of fighting for one night.

I collapsed onto the rope hammock that served as my bed. My family didn't get why I insisted on sleeping in something so uncomfortable. Truth was, it wasn't the coziest thing in the world, but the reason I chose to sleep in it was something else entirely. It was the same reason that I spiked my short red and black hair up in the morning, the same reason I walked barefoot to school, the same reason I caught fish in the stream with my bare hands while other kids sat with their fishing poles at the lake. Simply because I liked being different. I didn't mind being the weird girl in the class because I really didn't care what anybody thought about me.

I sat there, fuming for a while. Normally, those things River had said wouldn't have bothered me. But tonight they did. Even though they were true, hearing someone say that I was a loner out loud just made me feel sort of. . . ashamed. Had I isolated myself by being different?

I immediately shook that thought out of my head. The kids at school were the ones who had isolated me. I chose to be different, and they chose not to accept me. Their loss.

So why was it bothering me all of the sudden? I had no idea. All I knew was River had re-opened an old wound. A wound that I had worked so hard to cover up, something that never really healed. I knew that those old feelings of doubt and loneliness would slowly work their way back into my mind, but at that moment all I felt was dread.

Little did I know, it was about to get much worse.