Chapter 11

      Someone knocked on my bedroom door while I was laying down, doing absolutely nothing except for being lazy. Dad didn't even wait for a reply before opening the door. "So, what were you doing today?"

       I wasn't an idiot; I knew he was talking about the fact that I wasn't at school all day.

       So I gave him a simple answer.

       "The horse ranch with Wilder," I said. "Did the school call?"

       "Yes, the school called," Dad said. "They said you missed all you classes. You can't just skip school whenever you feel like it, Atticus."

       "Well, you're the one who told me you don't want me around any of the Prince triplets," I said. "There's at least one of them in all of my classes."

       "Don't twist my words around," Dad said. 

       "I'm not. I'm only obeying you because you seem to get mad about every little thing I do. Didn't you skip school when you were in a bad mood?"

       "That's different."

       "How? Because you were the teenager in the situation and not the parent?"

       "Atticus...."

       "What? Whenever you didn't want to go to school, you didn't. I don't see why it's such a big deal if I skip once in a while. I get good grades, I do my homework on time, I don't fail any classes. My only problem at school is sassing the teachers, but I only sass the annoying ones, like the one who thinks it's okay reading his students' text message. Oh, and I get in trouble from getting into fights, but that's only to stand up to Nolan. Other than that, there's no negative outcomes of me skipping school."

       "That doesn't mean it's okay to skip," Dad said.

       "You know, you keep saying that, but I'm still not seeing your reasoning behind it," I said. "You've skipped school all the time when you were a teenager. You got into a lot more trouble than I did, so it makes no sense that you're telling me not to skip school when I only did it because Wilder didn't want to be at school and he's too young to have his license."

       I got a text message and after reading it, I got up from the bed and walked passed Dad to head downstairs.

       "Don't walk away from me while we're talking," Dad said.

       "There's nothing to talk about," I said as I put on my shoes. "Ground me if you want, but there's really no point in that since you've technically grounded me in the worst way by not letting me date Orchid."

       "I don't want you getting mixed into that family," Dad said.

       "And why not?" I asked. "They are literally the sweetest people ever. They don't get into physical fights, they don't get in trouble with the teachers. I'm the one that's doing all that so if anything, you should be worried about them getting mixed with me because hey, I'm bad."

       "Where are you going?" Dad asked.

       "Wilder's house," I said. Dad raised an eyebrow as if he didn't believe me. "Seriously? You think I would lie about going over to his house? Dad, they live right beside me, so you can watch me walk over if you really have so little trust in me."

       I left the house and walked into Wilder's house, only to see his two younger siblings run around the house, both with a can of silly string as they sprayed it around the house. "Hey!" I called so they would stop and look at me. "What the hell are you doing?"

      "Uh, spraying silly string around the house," Giselle said in an obvious tone. "What are you doing here?"

      "Apparently, taming two monkeys," I said. "'You seriously can't listen to your brother for one night?"

      Giselle looked over at Alec. "Dear brother, shall I spray the house with silly string?"

      "You shall," Alec said.

      "Clearly, that wasn't what I meant," I said. "You two better clean up this mess and put the cans away."

       "Uh, you're our cousin, not our dad," Alec said.

       "Yeah? And I'm going to be your worst nightmare if this isn't cleaned up in five minutes," I said.

       Alec and Giselle always liked to be pests, so naturally, they ignored me and began spraying me with the string instead. I just stood there, letting them do it until they realized I wasn't going to do anything about it.

      Yet.

      When they stopped, I raised an eyebrow. "What was that? You want me to take the TVs out of your rooms and take it to my house?"

      "You wouldn't do that," Alec said.

      "Is that a challenge?" I asked. "Because I think you and I both know that I would. I'm serious. Clean this mess up and if it's not cleaned by the time I'm downstairs, I will take that TVs and bring them to my house. I would love to have three TVs in my bedroom."

      I made my way upstairs and to Wilder's room, where he was sitting on the bed crying. "I'm such a failure," he said between sobs when he saw me. "I'm the worst son ever and I'm the worst brother. My own siblings won't even listen to me when I asked them to stop making a mess."

       I sat down beside him and pulled him into a hug. "You're not a failure, Wilder," I said. "You're not the worst son ever and you're definitely not the worst brother ever. It's not your fault they won't listen to you. They're just huge pests."

       "I am a failure though."

       "No, you're not," I said. "You're not only my cousin, but you're also my best friend. Seriously, you keep me sane and a lot more calm. I probably would have gotten into a lot more fights at school if it weren't for you. You are the most kind and heartfelt person out there. Don't listen to what anyone else says, okay?"

       Wilder nodded and wiped his tears away. "Okay. Can you stay here and help me babysit? You're more enforcing than me."

       "Yeah, of course," I said. "I already got those brats cleaning up the silly string."

       "They're probably making a bigger mess," Wilder said.

       "Not if they know what's good for them," I said as I got a text message. I looked at it and sighed. Orchid wanted to hang out and as much as I wanted to, I couldn't leave Wilder like this.

       Thankfully, Orchid was completely understanding. She didn't know exactly what Wilder was going through, but she knew it was serious and knew there were going to be times where I had to put him first.

       "You can tell her," Wilder suddenly said.

       "What?"

       "You can tell Orchid I'm schizophrenic. I saw you texting her and telling her you have to stay with me right now. She probably really wants to know."

       "I'm not going to tell her."

       "Why not? I'm saying you can."

       "Really?"

       "Yeah. I like the Princes. They're cool."

       "Are you sure? I'm only going to tell her if you're fine with it."

       "Are you fucking deaf? I'm saying you can, you dumbass."

       "You are really vulgar at times."

       "No shit."

       I rolled my eyes. "Come on, let's go see if those brats cleaned up the mess."

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I don't get it. In my house, there are two rooms where it's freaking hot; mine and my brother's. In all the other rooms, it's cool. WHY? WHY US?

(dax low key wants to send alec and giselle to the circus)(jk he high key wants to)