My Stepbrother-Too Hot To Handle

DAMIEN:

“So what do you want to say?!” I demanded angrily from him, by the time we had reached the corners that led to the school garden.

“Where is Dabby? I have not seen her all day?” He asked immediately, and I was so puzzled.

‘So Dabby wasn’t in school?’

“And how is that my concern? What gives you the right to ask me such dumb questions?” I shot back at him in anger, and he wasn’t taking it lightly.

“So, it is bad if I ask you about your stepsister?” He emphasized so much on the word ‘sister’ and I became so irked. He was really getting on my nerves.

“Touch me, and I will punch you hard in the face. Whether or not she came to school is none of my business!” I spat at his face, and turned to leave immediately.

“Does your parents know that they are raising a jerk? Especially the nasty one who wouldn’t care to know if his sister isn’t in school!” He responded harshly and quite loudly too.

“They wouldn’t know. They aren’t home. Far, on a journey,” I said with my lips twisted into a derisive smirk, that was meant to taunt words into his ears.

But the expression he had on his face was so momentary, the moment I finished off my sentence. I was so elated. It seemed like Dabby didn’t tell her dear friend that we both had been home alone. By ourselves.

‘Maybe I could even spice things up in his head.’ The thought occurred to me as I went back to class, and I could find myself grinning mischievously.

The plans to ditch the remaining classes failed, because I heard new information that Dabby wasn’t in school. It made me wonder if she had run away for real, or was just playing hooky with school because of what happened.

We had settled in class already for the project submission, and out of all the girls that made their way in, Dabby wasn’t among them. The teacher had entered and started talking about the project, and yet she was nowhere in the class.

‘Had she given up on the project because I didn’t help her? Or was angry and planning to get both of us an F?’

I got my phone and tried to call her, and realized that I still didn’t have her phone number. It made me even more frustrated. And just when I thought it was over, a figure made her way into the class and it was her.

‘She hasn’t bailed out on school after all,’ I scoffed.

She was looking so gaunt and sick, so I wondered where she could be coming from in such a messy state. She was saying some inaudible things to the teacher, while stretching the project work to her.

“Hey, see your cutie girlfriend from the tabloids,” Xavier whispered into my ear from behind to piss me off, and I sneered immediately. The next question I could hear was the teacher asking about who her partner was.

I didn’t expect that out of the blue, and there was no way I was standing up in front of everyone. Everyone was all murmuring and looking back and front like they knew who it was, but I didn’t give a damn. Mason was glaring at me from the front seat that he sat in.

“Arsehole!” I murmured heavily under my breath. I just hated him.

And the next thing that happened after the teacher talked about giving both of us a low grade if we didn’t stand up, was the Dabby slumping to the floor which shocked everyone.

The class became disorganized, and the teacher was terrified. Some students on the floor rushed to pick her up, and Mason wasn’t left out. Some students were chanting that they would report abuse of power to the school management, but I was sitting in that spot still unable to grasp what happened.

The next message I would see that popped on my phone, after so many minutes had passed was my father’s text, telling me that he and his wife were back in town.

And before I realized it, I was standing in front of a hospital, where Dabby was taken too after the school called her mum to inform her. Dad was also inside.

‘Now our lives would become really messed up, as a completely scrambled family.’Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.