Tim put the phone down and grinned down at the marble surface of the table it stood on. He then dropped into the chair to his left with a thump and rubbed his forehead, trying to process all the information he had been given.
There was a loud slam from downstairs. The front door.
"OI. TWAT. I'M HOMEEEE!"
He rolled his eyes. Here came the hard part: Lex. She thundered up the stairs, each footfall echoing again and again against the white stone cavernous walls of the high ceiling hall on which their grandfather had "spared no expense."
And then he had been eaten by dinosaurs. And they and their parents had inherited it.
The door to his room slammed open and Lex charged in, walking straight over to his bed and leaping onto it, bounding on the mattress before settling back against the wall. She was obviously angry, her cheeks a furious shade of red and her eyes hard. She yanked her baseball cap off her head and chucked it at the wall opposite.
"What's up?" Tim tried to hide his amusement, but didn't do a very good job.
She glared, hearing the trace of laughter, but then ignored it, the desire to spill her rage over-riding her desire to be irritated with her brother.
"The team! They're kicking me out! Said I'm not good enough!"
Tim frowned, surprised both by the news and the amount he found himself caring. Since the incident baseball had been the thing Lex had buried herself in, playing hard and ruthless against any opposition, and she had become one of the best players. Now she dropped her beat despondently to the floor and struggled to blink back tears of rage.
"Hey, hey. Don't cry Lexi, they're not worth it." He got up and sat next to her on the bed, putting his arm around her. She may have grown all the way to 14 but she was still his cute baby sister. She sniffed angrily and allowed him to hug her only for a second before pulling away again, blinking away the tears determinedly and raising her eyebrow at her brother.
"What you so excited about anyway? What's with the happy face?"
he looked both happy and nervous now, looking at her guiltily. She found herself dreading the answer.
"Lexi...we're going back. To the park. We won't actually go on the ground, but we've been invited on a commercial flight over the island. To look at the animals."
She stared at his evenly for a single moment. The she slapped him hard across the face and stored out the room, grabbing onto her bat and her hat as she did so, slamming the door hard on her way out.
Ti sat and watched for a moment, lightly feeling the sting on the side of his face with his fingertips.
Then he grinned again.
She would change her mind.