Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The clock above our fireplace ticked slowly, the sound almost inaudible over the beating of my heart. Only thirty more minutes and my parents would be home, my brother and his three band mates squeezed into the car with them. They left over an hour ago to pick the boys up from the airport, but called to let me know that the flight had been slightly delayed. I still wish they had let me come, though. I began to look at the pictures that were next to the clock.
The first few were baby pictures of my brother and I, both of us gaining more and more of the blond fuzz we both possessed as we got older in the pictures. Then it was a picture of both of us; I was sitting on a stool with my hands placed in my lap, white dress draped over my knees, and Tom was standing behind me, a hand on my shoulder. It was one of the many family portraits that our mother took us to get. I looked to be about eleven or twelve, so he had to be about... sixteen or seventeen. Even though he's smiling, he looks like he's in slight pain. That's because he had gotten into a fight the day before and got one of his teeth knocked out. Thank God it was his last baby tooth. Then came the birthday pictures. Our mother made the cakes for us every year- and we still agree that her cakes are better than any we've ever bought. Mine were strawberry with chocolate icing, and every year my brother had written in blue icing "Happy Birthday, Addie!" His were chocolate with vanilla icing. I always wrote "Happy Birthday, Tom!" in red. You can tell we didn't have that many friends when we were younger because it was just us and our family in the first few birthday pictures. But when my brother turned sixteen, three more people showed up. Danny, Dougie, and Harry made me and Tom grin in every picture, each of them doing something silly. In Tom's seventeenth birthday picture, Harry had taken two party hats and put them on his chest, making it look like he had extremely pointy boobs. Danny had a Styrofoam bowl over his head, icing dripping into his face. Dougie's face was scrunched into a laughing expression of pain because Tom was shoving ice cream down the front of his pants. I was the one that had "caked" Danny, and I was laughing at him while scooping a finger full of icing and eating it.
I picked up the framed photograph and held it. That one was definitely my favorite.
I heard a car pull into the driveway. Car doors slammed and voices twittered excitedly as my mother or father turned the key in the lock. As soon as the door swung open, I was attacked by four boys, knocked down to the ground and on the bottom of a dog pile.
"Tom!" I shouted, excited to find it was my brother that was directly on top of me.
"Addie!" he shouted back, equally happy. Danny and Dougie had gotten off of me to let me hug my brother, but Harry was still there, apparently wanting one first.
"I missed you so much!" I said, squeezing my brother.
"Harry, and I say this for the millionth time, get off of my daughter," my dad said as he walked through the door. Harry turned red and jumped up; Tom helped me get up.
"Yes, Mr. Fletcher, sir. Sorry, sir." I giggled. Harry and Daddy were just giving each other a hard time. Daddy thought Harry was alright and Harry thought Daddy was awesome because he used to have a mullet.
"Well, don't just stand there!" Danny said after Mum and Dad went to their rooms to watch the telly. "Give us a hug!" I laughed again and gave Danny a hug, nearly taking the life out of him. He groaned, but hugged me back just as hard. Then I gave Dougie a hug, and he blushed immensely, and finally, Harry.
"Finally!" he exclaimed, whirling me in the air as he wrapped his arms around me.
"Hey guys, do you notice something... different about Adelaide?" Tom asked, a hand under his chin. Danny, Dougie, and Harry cocked their heads to the side as they inspected me.
"Her hair is longer," Harry suggested. Tom and I rolled our eyes.
"Nah," said Danny as he started to circle me like a vulture. "There's something else."
"I know!" Tom shouted. "She's gotten taller." We all shouted with excitement and ran to where mine and Tom's rooms were and stopped outside of mine.
"Get a pen!" I shouted, prancing excitedly as Dougie pulled a Sharpie from his back pocket.
"Got one. Now, you know the drill." I backed up to my door frame, standing as straight as I could as Tom drew a line where the back of my head touched the white painted wood.
I stared at the line. "How much more is that?" We crowded around it, trying to make the difference between the new line and the previous one.
"I think it's just a few... trillion-billion-ths of a half of a millimeter," said Harry, squinting. I playfully punched him in the arm.
"Is not. I have grown taller," I said. Dougie wandered over to Tom's old room and studied the door frame, which was just as marked with lines.
"You're the same height as Tom when he was... thirteen?!" The boys started laughing at me. I felt my face heat up.
"You're lying!" I pushed Danny out of the way to see for myself. Eleven,twelve, thirteen, I mentally counted the ages next to the groups of marks, and stopped at the one they mentioned. I looked at it, then glanced back at the one they just made.
Oh, crap.
"It's okay," said Harry as he patted the top of my head. "You're not short, you're fun sized."
"Thank you, Harry," I replied, hugging him. My arms reached around his waist.
"I don't think she's much fun," Dougie suddenly said. "She didn't meet us at the airport." His lips poked out in a playful pout, arms crossed over his chest.
"Yeah, what was that about?" said Tom as we followed him into his old room. He picked up an old guitar that was sitting in the corner and sat on the bed, tuning it. I sat down next to him with a huff and rested my head on his shoulder.
"Mum and Dad said that it was a school night and that I needed to get to sleep in case you came back late. I think they were expecting me to go to bed early."
"Yeah, right," Danny scoffed. "You'll stay up until four in the morning- oh, remember that one time?!"
"You mean when Dougie fell asleep first and we turned the telly to Godzilla and told him that we dropped his lizard in radio-active waste?" I said excitedly.
"Yeah!" Tom exclaimed, out-of-tune guitar forgotten. "And he woke back up and believed us cos he was so tired!" We all started laughing very loudly, with the exception of Dougie, when Harry stopped suddenly.
"I don't remember that," he said, his blue eyes cloudy as he tried to remember.
"That's because you fell asleep second," I reminded him.
"Ahhh."
"Yeah, we dyed your-" Tom quickly did "earmuffs" to me. I watched Danny babble silently as he made weird facial expressions and made kinda scary hand motions. He finally stopped and was laughing like a donkey when Tom removed his hand from my ears.
"I don't remember any of that," I said, my eyes wide.
"You went to the bathroom when we did that. Innocent ears!" He almost shouted at Danny.
"Oh, come on! I'm not that innocent!" I wailed as I threw my hands in the air in exasperation.
"Have you-" Tom wiggled his thick eyebrows at me.
"No!" I exclaimed in embarrassment, my face quickly growing red.
"Alright then," he said smugly. "That's a good thing though, because the bloke that did that, I'd feel sorry for him! I'd-"
I lost my sense of hearing once again as this time Harry cupped his calloused drummer's hands over my ears as Tom made worse gestures than Danny. I started to cringe and turned away from my brother, hiding in Harry's chest.
"Alright, you've scared her enough," Harry claimed as he uncovered my ears, stopping Tom mid-grisly-sentence. He looked at my posture and shrugged.
"Do you want me to remain a virgin for my whole life?" I questioned. Dougie snickered.
"You know I'd make you wear a chastity belt if I could find one. I'm surprised I haven't gotten any calls from Mum or Dad about guys trying to knock down our door." A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, displaying the dimple we shared.
"Well, there is this guy at school..." I said doubtfully. "But he only fancies me because I'm about the only girl whose knickers he doesn't have a pair of."
"Ah, well, if that's why he like you, I'm glad you don't feel the same way."
"Yeah, he's not good enough for our little Addie, is he?" Danny teased.
Ugh, little Addie.
"Kids! Supper's ready!" Mum's voice rang through the small house, claiming the attention of four hungry boys and myself.
We ran out of Tom's room, getting stuck in the doorway because we were trying to get out at the same time, and, after a brief struggle, took our seats at the dinner table just as Mum set down the last dish.
"So, did I miss any important phone calls while we were away?" asked Tom, piling the mashed potatoes on his plate. I glared at him, silently telling him not to eat them all. He slowly put the serving spoon back. Mum and Dad shifted uncomfortably in their seats as they answered Tom's question, and I did too as I remembered.
"Well, we did get one call," said Dad.
"It wasn't very nice," I added, my eyes glued to my plate.
"What was it?" Tom was curious and studying each of us. Dougie, Harry, and Danny all exchanged confused looks. Tom looked me in the eye, knowing that I would crack.
"Somebody claiming to be from the hospital called and said that you and Danny got in a bad car wreck and that you were in the hospital." The boys were shocked, and Tom and Danny had their mouths hanging open. A bit of corn fell out of Danny's mouth and I cringed in disgust.
"They called your mum, too, Danny," Mum said quietly.
A sudden look of understanding dawned on Danny's face. "That's what that weird call was!" he said to Tom. Tom's face wore a similar expression, as did Dougie and Harry.
"Oh, don't enlighten us. Just sit there and communicate telepathically." Everyone at the table stared at me in disbelief. "What?" I asked, shrugging. "I like to know what's going on. And to find out that you knew? We were worried sick!" Actually, Mum and Dad and Danny's parents were worried sick; I was freaked out like hell. I mean, sure, I was worried about Danny, but Tom understands me like no one else. I swear, sometimes I think we were born five seconds apart instead of years.
"Alright, Adelaide," Dad said. "We're the parents, let us do the nagging." I couldn't help but laugh at that.
"So, you got a phone call, and...?" My mother encouraged the conversation.
"Yeah, me mum called," Danny spoke up. "She was really upset, in hysterics and everything. Turns out some one had called her too and said the same thing. She was so relieved when she found out what had happened." There was an uncomfortable silence in the room, a rare thing at our house. I guess we were all thinking the same thing: How could a person be so horrible to do that?
Dougie cleared his throat and grinned. "Thanks for inviting us to dinner, Mrs. Fletcher."
And then the tension was gone.
Mum smiled as Harry grabbed a roll from the basket in the center of the table. "Well, you boys hadn't had a real meal in a long time, so I figured I'd share Tom's homecoming feast before you went home."
"So thank Tom," I added, grinning.
"THANKS, TOMMY!" Harry shrieked. Tom smirked, his mouth full of potatoes and gravy.
I laughed so hard I rolled off the bed. "Are you serious?"
Tom nodded, brushing away tears as I crawled back on the bed. "But don't tell," he said, completely serious. I put my hand over my heart and grinned.
I have to say, the best part about Tom coming home is the one night he spends here before he goes back to his house with the guys. He tells me about all the Hi-Jinks that went on during the tour, most of the time secrets about the other boys that they don't have the slightest clue that Tom, and now myself, knows.
"Well, I guess now you know not to feed Danny before bed-time."
"You're telling me!" I giggled, but tried to be quiet about it. Mum and Dad had gone to bed about an hour ago and warned us about the volume level. Last time Tom came home, we woke up the neighbors.
But of course, we still managed to wake Mum and Dad up. Dad appeared at the doorway, a grumpy frown on his face, and I didn't have to be told twice to go to bed. I scampered off to my own room as Dad left.
"Night, Tom," I whispered loud enough for him to hear.
"Night, Addie." It was silent for a while, and I stared at the dark ceiling. Then-
"Hey, Addie?"
"What?"
"Pbttt." We both erupted in silent giggles, and I heard a soft thump as this time Tom fell out of the bed.
Author's Note: I've got many many chapters written and ready to post, just waiting to see how well-received this is :) Let me know what you think!