Brothers

‘What?’ I demanded, staring at Alana.

‘It’s not a real relationship,’ she repeated, starting to walk again in the direction of the bus stop at the end of the street.

‘So it’s what? Imaginary?’ I rolled my eyes as I tripped along after her; she was taking large strides and I was having a little trouble keeping up. Both physically and mentally, it seemed.

Alana raised her fist and knocked it gently against the side of my head a couple times. ‘And you’re supposed to be a genius,’ she jibed, before turning the timetable on the bus stop bench to consult it about the next bus.

‘Just explain yourself,’ I sighed.

‘They’re faking. Don’t you see? I mean firstly, Caleb told me he was going to a meeting with his employer. Then there’s that weird thing about some guy obviously checking up on Vienna and reporting back to her dad. On top of which, Caleb looks at her like he completely detests her and he looks at you like he wants to put his dick in your ass, so, you know, I don’t think he really likes her all that much.’

I blushed as soon as she said that last part and looked away, trying to hide it. I was supposed to get mad at her when she said shit like that, not drift off into a daydream about my brother...

‘Hello?’ Alana snapped her fingers in front of my face. ‘Caught rotten,’ she smirked, and I blushed harder as the bus pulled up in front of us and we got on. ‘No Gladys this time,’ Alana said sadly and I looked at her. ‘The old lady,’ she explained. ‘I was calling her Gladys in my head.’

‘Yeah, she looked like a Gladys,’ I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes. ‘Can you please focus?’

‘Can you?’ she asked pointedly, widening her eyes.

‘Why would Caleb go out with her if he didn’t like her? It doesn’t make any sense.’

Alana shrugged. ‘I’ll admit I haven’t worked that one out yet. Maybe she’s paying him?’

I elbowed her. ‘My brother is not a whore!’ I hissed angrily.

‘Alright, alright, keep your socks on. Maybe she’s blackmailing him!’ Alana’s eyes began to sparkle with excitement.

‘What with? “Go out with me or I’ll fire you”?’

She shrugged again. ‘Maybe. You know how much Caleb thinks he needs a hundred different jobs to keep you in school.’

I looked at the floor of the bus guiltily.

‘Oh, stop it,’ Alana said, rolling her eyes. ‘You’d get a job if he let you but he won’t. It’s his own doing. Right now, we need to concentrate on working out why Caleb is going out with her, and then how we can destroy them.’ She smashed one fist into her open palm on the word “destroy”. It was kind of scary, in a somewhat epic way. I felt energized.

‘So we have a new mission?’ I asked, grinning.

‘We do.’

Caleb

‘How long were they there?’ Vienna hissed at me as soon as Alana and Aiden were out of earshot. I was watching them go, looking at the way Aiden’s tight skinny jeans curved around his ass as he walked... I snapped my attention back to “girlfriend”.

‘Huh?’

‘Has all that weed fried your brain?’ she demanded angrily. ‘How. Long. Were. They. There?’

I shrugged. ‘How should I know? I can’t see through big red banners any more easily than you can.’

Vienna was glaring at me but I couldn’t have cared less.

‘Come on,’ she snapped eventually, getting up. ‘I have an appointment at Tatu.’ I stood up as well and tried not to flinch as she slipped her hand into mine, entwining our fingers.

---------------------------------------

‘I’m not getting a fucking butterfly tattoo,’ I argued later as we stood over a book of designs. Vienna already had a small pink and blue butterfly on her right hip that I’d seen countless times over the past few months, and now she wanted to get a purple and green one beside it.

‘You fucking well are,’ she argued back, to the obvious amusement of the guy behind the desk. He was taller and broader than me with two full sleeves and large black stretchers in both ears. He had spider bites on his lip and a bar running through his septum, and seemed to find the idea that I was getting a fucking butterfly on my hip endlessly amusing.

‘I’m not,’ I spat, trying to sound masterful rather than petulant. I already had a handful of tattoos, including a tribal symbol across my right ribs, six black and white stars across my left ribs, and some writing on the inside of my left arm in Gaelic. There was no way I was ruining them by getting a butterfly on my hip. ‘Don’t you think your dad would find me a little gay if I had a butterfly tattoo?’ I asked pointedly.

Vienna seemed finally to consider my position on the matter, and grudgingly handed me another book of designs. I opened it and almost groaned. Japanese symbols. Did she even realise that tattoos were forever? Just because it was better than a butterfly didn’t mean it was okay.

‘Are you joking?’ I demanded.

Vienna narrowed her eyes at me threateningly. ‘Pick one that means “manliness” if you’re that bothered,’ she hissed, and returned her attention to her winged insects.

The guy behind the counter was laughing at me outright now and I rolled me eyes at him. He probably thought I was a total novice.

‘There are Egyptian symbols at the back,’ he said quietly to me and I scowled, thinking he was taking the piss. ‘This one,’ he said, flipping the pages of the book until he found one that looked like a cross but with multiple horizontal lines, ‘is called a djed.’ He smirked. ‘It means “backbone”.’

I continued scowling.

‘That one’s called a was,’ he continued, pointing to something that looked to me like a coat stand. ‘It means power.’

He turned the page and suddenly something caught my eye. ‘What does that one mean?’ I asked, pointing to a single thick blue zigzag line.

He raised a pierced eyebrow at me. ‘That’s called uat. It means water.’

Perfect.

‘I’ll have that one then,’ I said decisively, closing the book.

‘Better than a butterfly anyway,’ the guy said quietly, winking at me. ‘You ready?’ he asked Vienna, reaching for the design book pointedly.

‘I’ll have this one,’ she said, pointing to the purple and green butterfly she’d been admiring since we got here.

‘Excellent choice,’ the guy said, rolling his eyes and putting the books back under the desk. ‘Come through.’

Aiden

‘Where do we start?’ I asked. We had just gotten back to the house and even though it was gone midday everybody was still asleep. I was feeling energized and ready to go James Bond on this whole situation, infiltrating organizations and sleeping with the enemy, etc, etc.

‘Facebook,’ Alana said decidedly.

‘What?’ I asked, deadpan, my visions of shaken vodka martinis and car chases disappearing.

Alana shrugged. ‘Everything we need to know will be on the internet.’ She led the way down the hall to my room and pulled her laptop out from under my bed, sitting against the wall and placing it on her knees. I say next to her as she turned it on and clicked on the Internet Explorer icon.

‘Do you know Caleb’s Facebook password?’ she asked as she typed his email address into the first box.

‘Why?’

‘Because neither of us are friends with her on Facebook, duh...’

‘Oh. Right. Um, yeah, it’s, uh, Squirt94.’ I blushed.

My best friend turned away from the screen to smirk at me. ‘Your nickname and date of birth? And you thought he didn’t fancy the arse off you?’

‘Shut up,’ I mumbled, blushing. ‘He doesn’t know I know.’ Alana typed in the password and clicked “Enter”.

‘Whoa,’ we both breathed at the same time. Caleb had six friend requests, eighteen notifications and, most alarmingly, twelve messages in his inbox. ‘He was online yesterday,’ I added, my tone disbelieving. ‘Who gets that much Facebook attention in one day?’

‘Can we please click on-’

‘No,’ I interrupted before she could even finish. ‘Just go look for Vienna.’

Scowling in disappointment, Alana started to type Vienna’s name into the Search box at the top of the page.

‘Vienna Friendly?’ she asked as the first name in the suggestion box became highlighted in blue.

I shrugged. ‘I guess. How many Vienna’s can there be?’

She clicked on it and the page refreshed.

‘Do you think her surname is really “Friendly”?’ Alana asked. ‘It could be like, a scene name.’

‘I dunno. Don’t they usually have alliteration?’

‘Not necessarily... But she doesn’t look very scene.’ Alana paused, then clicked on the tab that said “Notes”. ‘Surveys,’ she said excitedly. ‘Perfect.’

Wide-eyed, we read through the first survey Vienna had filled out, which did state her name as Vienna Friendly.

‘Whoa,’ Alana stopped scrolling down as we hit on a paragraph of text. ‘ “Do you get on well with your parents?”’ she read out the question the rant was answering. ‘Somebody isn’t a fan of her dad.’ The paragraph was basically a run-on sentence of hatred directed towards a guy called “Norman Friendly” who apparently is “self obsessed” and “the worst father in the world”.

‘Norman Friendly,’ I read. ‘Why does that name sound familiar?’

Alana frowned. ‘I dunno...’ She opened another tab and typed the name into Google.

‘Holy shit!’ I exclaimed. ‘Friendly Records? No wonder Charles wanted to send the limo, Vienna must be loaded,’ I commented dryly.

‘So why is she slumming it with Caleb?’ Alana demanded quizzically. ‘No offence,’ she added when she saw my glare.

Absent-mindedly, she exed out of the tab on Norman Friendly, returning us to Vienna’s Facebook page, the clicked on “Profile” to take us back to Caleb’s.

‘What? He’s gotten like eight new messages in the time we’ve been online,’ she exclaimed, seemingly insulted that this sort of thing didn’t happen to her. ‘That’s it, I’m so checking...’ She clicked on the messages icon on the top of the page before I could stop her.

And I really wish I had stopped her.

Caleb

I managed to convince Vienna that the bandage over her new butterfly tattoo would come off if we had sex in the back seat of my car, so we arrived back at the house less than two hours after seeing Aiden and Alana in town.

‘You want something to eat?’ I asked grudgingly as I closed the front door behind us; I couldn’t really have cared less but if I didn’t play the part there would be more near misses like today and I wanted to avoid the stress.

‘I’m okay,’ she said primly, walking into the sitting room and sitting gingerly on a couch. Dylan and Damien were playing multiplayer on the Xbox and Peyton was snoring softly, his head in Jayden’s lap. I saw Vienna eyeing them strangely, but she didn’t say anything.

I was about to sit next to her when I heard a huge crash from the hallway. Everybody who was awake shifted their gazes towards the door in alarm as an elephant seemed to make its way up the hall towards the sitting room.

Dylan and Damien returned their attention to the TV screen as Alana and Aiden appeared in the doorway, but everyone else continued to stare as a shocked Alana and a furious Aiden stared straight at me.

Aiden crossed the room and grabbed my arm painfully, dragging me towards the door. ‘We need to talk,’ he hissed.