If I Should Be Quite Honest

1

TW: for the whole book.

There were a lot of people in my house. If I should be quite honest, I didn't particularly like it. I had to share a room with two of my sisters. I had a single bed and a chest of drawers to my name. On the other side of the room, they had a bunk bed, where two of the rungs of the ladder were broken, so one must hop to get on the top bunk.
As of late, that is hardly the issue to me, for as life happens, a different kind of procession of issues come your way. Ones in which hurt you differently. And sometimes slap you in the face. Maybe fuck you up once in a blue moon too.

I'm the last one to the table this morning, so I can't grab a piece of toast, I have to make my own.
Except, there is no bread.
I look in the cupboard, "No cereal," Evie told me, taking another bite of her half-burnt price of bread.
I close the cupboard and open the fridge, "There's nothing in there," Ren closed the fridge on me as soon as I opened it.
She looked down on me like a menacing mother hen. Perhaps she was my mother at this point. Karen was my oldest sister, but she didn't want to be known as a Karen, standing at six feet tall and twenty two years old. Just because she had taking psychology at A Level, she thought she could try and diagnose us at unsuspecting moments. Yet, with reality standing, she worked weekends at M&S, and part time at the local bar. She wasn't a psychologist.
"So, I'm eating air for breakfast then?" I propose, and also announce to everyone, as I lean against the counter. "It appears so," Ren replies, ruffling my hair.
I don't tell her to stop, because she won't. My hair was hard to control anyway. I had two options. Have it out, frizzy and vulnerable to the impending rain of this drizzly country, or slicked back, my forehead on show, eyes tight and head throbbing. I had it out today, and I've had it like that recently, seeing as Ren had told me, and I quote, to be "Proud of my hair."
I couldn't be proud of much else to be frank. Not yet.
"All of you ain't nice," I say loudly. They don't care. The lot of them. All nine of them.
Jacob, Ren, Remy, Haven, Jae, Ollie, Evie, Amara, and Pasha.
They didn't even look at me.

I wasn't going to sit there and watch them eat, and I was going to make my grand exit early, when Jacob handed me a piece of toast from his plate, "For the genius."
I smiled at him a little. He didn't bully me. Ever. Unless he had and I never remembered.
He was going to be in the navy next year; they had accepted him. All he had to do, was wait. He didn't patronise me either, when he called me a genius.

I never call myself a genius. Geniuses don't do that. If you have to assert that you are intelligent, you probably aren't. You're better off shutting up. I had the highest IQ in my school and the county. I got an award, a small minute of fame in the local paper when I was seven, but it hardly mattered. We still lived in a four bedroom flat for eleven people. Twelve if you counted Brian.

Ugh Brian. What a jerk. What a fucking jerk.
You wouldn't like Brian. And you won't once I tell you about him.

You know that stubborn little pebble stuck in the crack of your school shoe, refusing to come out, no matter how you use the strongest of fingers, sticks or pens?

That. Is Brian.

Jacob walks the kids to school: Amara, Evie and Pasha, while this is a day where Ren can take the rest of us to school in the car.
Me, Jae, Ollie and Haven go to Cove Academy (There is no cove nearby, before you wonder). And then, Remy goes to to the community college down the road from us. I think he likes it, because that's the break he gets from the rest of us. It's loud at home and I completely understand.

Year 12 wasn't it though. I needed a do over. Like, I want to go back to the less demanding days of year seven, when my only challenge was the spots on my face. You never really notice how fast time goes until you're fucked. Jae was living it up in year 9 with his following, happy as anything, Ollie just hacking it in year 7. He's not that smart.
I can say that because I love him. And he's not. Honestly. He doesn't even try.