Lounsbury Prep

Doniya did as Zayn instructed, planting her butt on the seat and staring up at him like she had no idea who he was, her brown eyes wide and her lips pursed as she watched him start to pace anxiously.

“What you saw,” Zayn tried to start before shaking his head, erasing his previous thought. He had no idea what he was supposed to do or say to make what she just saw less incriminating or less weird. He wished more than anything that he hadn’t made that promise to his parents so he didn’t find himself in such a terrible position.

“What I saw,” Doniya finally butted in, her dark eyebrows pulling together menacingly, “I have to report to Mom and Dad.”

“Please, Donny, don’t.” Zayn snuck a look at the clock, and the numbers 12:47 blinked back at him. Which meant that he was missing class to have the world’s most awkward conversation with his sister. “I didn’t mean for this to happen when I came here. I meant to honor my promise.”

“But you didn’t,” she interrupted quickly, raising her eyebrows. “You went against what you told them you’d do, and I have to let them know. How could you do this, Zayn? It’s one thing that you’re gay. We’ve all accepted that. But we figured that you were going to school to get a better education, not to have more male options to pick from.”

“Hey.” Zayn couldn’t help but get slightly offended at the rash conclusion, since doing such a thing would have been horrible to his parents. He would have been wasting their money, money that, frankly, they didn’t really have, just to hook up with guys. The idea that his sister actually thought so poorly of him made his stomach turn. “Is that really what you think of me? That I’d take advantage of Mum and Dad like that?”

“I didn’t think you were the guy who would have a quickie during lunch with some boy in his room, either.”

The words hung between them uncomfortably, neither sibling wanting to lean forward and claim them. Zayn wasn’t even sure how to respond, since he wanted to pretend the statement had never been said.

But it was, so he finally cleared his throat and replied, “We weren’t having a quickie, not that it’s any of your business. What are you doing here, anyway?”

Doniya straightened up like she’d just been woken from a trance. “Oh, right. I wanted to show you this.” She leaned forward and extended her lean hand in Zayn’s direction, wiggling her fingers a little to make the dim lighting of the room glint off the new ring that took its place there.

“You’re engaged,” Zayn breathed in shock.

“On my birthday,” she detailed further. “We were in the middle of dinner at a restaurant, and then, out of nowhere, he just said, ‘Wanna marry me?’ And I almost had a stroke, right there, but when he pulled out the ring, I realized he was serious.”

“Sounds sweet,” Zayn commented, though the story sounded a little unromantic and strange to him. But he truly was happy for Doniya. Her boyfriend was a really cool guy that Zayn had always been able to get on with really well. “Do you have any idea when you’ll get married?”

“Probably next summer,” she replied. “Toward the end, you know, when it’s starting to cool a bit?” Zayn nodded understandingly, but her demeanor quickly snapped back to where it had been before: slightly irritated and suspicious.

“But don’t change the subject. Honestly, I do need to tell Mum and Dad. They deserve to know that you’ve been fooling around at school when you promised them you wouldn’t.”

“Donny, that’s not fair!” He was very aware that he was shouting, but the fact that he didn’t have any roommates in the dorms nearby kept him from adjusting his attitude. “They’ll pull me out and throw me back into that last school.”

“At least you focused on your studies at the other school!” his sister argued. “If that’s what you need to get into a great university, then it’s what you’ll have to do.”

“This place, here, will get me into a great school,” Zayn corrected. “That other place is just for drug addicts and the Future Unemployed of Britain.”

He should have stopped there, censoring all his other thoughts before they made way through his lips. But he didn’t, and before he could stop himself, he spewed, “And what a load of good university did for you, yeah? You’re already planning to get hitched before you’re done, before you get a job or any kind of name for yourself.”

Zayn immediately regretted speaking. It was a shame that they were fighting so badly just then, butting heads over someone who made Zayn so happy, especially when he and his sister typically got along fairly well. They bickered, like most siblings, but the fight just then seemed a little more severe than the usual bickering.

Donny’s beautiful features twisted with anger and disgust. “Well, if that’s how you really feel.” She stood up and started toward the door. “You know, Zayn, I was more excited to tell you about what happened than anyone else. I’m just sorry everything went this way.”

“No, Donny, I’m sorry,” Zayn urged, taking three large steps toward her. “I didn’t mean that. I just really don’t want you to tell Mum and Dad about Louis. I’ve been working so hard to balance my relationship with him and school, and I thought I’ve been doing a decent job. I swear, I’ll stay focused on my schoolwork, too, and I’ll continue getting great grades so the universities I’m applying to right now will accept me.”

Her face softened, and Zayn could feel his heart flutter. He was actually getting somewhere. There was actually a sliver of chance that he would get his goody-two-shoes sister to go along with his plan to keep a secret from their parents.

“This won’t derail me, okay? It’ll all be fine.”

“But Mum and Dad…” Doniya trailed off with a shake of her head. “Don’t they deserve to know that you’ve been sneaking around behind their backs?”

“No. It’ll just hurt them, and it’ll hurt me, too. Please.”

She let out a long sigh and shook her head, running her newly accessorized hand through her long hair. “I’ll give you this: I’ll think about it. On the train ride home, if I decide that I can’t lie to Mum and Dad for you, then I’m going to tell them. But I’m at least going to consider the fact that this school and Louis are important to you. Is that good enough?”

It was better than nothing, Zayn had to admit. It wasn’t a sure-fire guarantee, but at least she hadn’t stormed out of the room the second she caught Louis and Zayn together and tattled over the phone.

“Okay,” Zayn agreed, closing the distance between them and throwing his arms around her. “I love you, Donny. You know that, right?”

“I love you, too,” she replied softly, patting him a couple of times on the back. “Make good choices, okay? And make sure you always use protection.”

The embrace, in that moment, went from sincere to weird, so Zayn pulled back and ran a hand through his dark hair, trying to hide his intense blush.

“Bye. I’ll call in a day or two.”

Zayn nodded and waved shortly as his sister walked out, looking at the clock again as he closed his door. He was way too late for his chemistry class to barge in then, so he was going to have to wait for the following hour to make a reappearance among his peers. At least he knew he wasn’t going to get marked down as cutting class because the school had to know that his sister came to visit him.

He hoped, anyway.