"RICHARD! OLIVE! DWAYNE! FRANK! DINNER!" Sheryl made the dinner call, and one by one, the family entered the dining area. It was one year after the pageant had occurred, and while a lot of things had been resolved, the family still had occasional disagreements, like was healthy for any normal family. Frank was still living with them, but they had finally got the guest room, which they had been using for storage, all cleaned out, so Dwayne had his room back to himself, which made life easier for everyone.
"Spaghetti, nice." Dwayne spoke, he was serious too, and smiling, which even now, was unusual for him.
"Why are you in such a good mood?" Olive asked, still used to Dwayne's turbulent behavior.
"No reason. How was school?" Dwayne turned the subject back to his little sister.
"Oh, it was good you know, mostly same as always." Olive shrugged. Dwayne couldn't believe how much she had grown up in the last year. But then again, when you're family's that dysfunctional, you learn a few things.
"And how's the boy doing? What was his name? Jeremy?" Sheryl asked, setting the spaghetti on the table and joining everyone else sitting down.
"MOM!" Olive said, horrified.
"Oh, was I not supposed to tell anyone?" Sheryl made an 'oops' face, but didn't look too upset over it, it was, after all, the crush of an 8 year old.
"Wait, there's a boy?" Richard said, suddenly slightly concerned.
"Jesus Richard, she's 8, at most it's puppy love," Sheryl smiled at him, and his expression faded from worry to calm.
"I for one, want to know more," Frank said, spooning the spaghetti on to his plate. Dwayne nodded in agreement with his uncle.
"Well, there's this boy, named Jeremy, and he sits across from me, so I'm always looking at him and stuff, and he's kind of cute, and I like him." Olive turned slightly pink around the ears at talking about this boy.
"How are you handling it?" Richard asked. He had given up the nine steps, but occasionally, his 'have-to-be-a-winner' side came back.
"The usual stuff, chasing him at recess, pretending that I don't like him, you know." Olive smiled.
"I remember those days…vaguely," Dwayne said, as though reminiscing back to before the black hair, before he knew he was colorblind.
"Don't we all," Frank said with a chuckle. "Keep at it Olive, you'll do fine, I'm sure of it." Frank gave his niece a friendly smile.
"Why don't you invite him over?" Sheryl suggested. "You know, now that everyone knows, like for a play date or something."
"Yeah…maybe. I'm afraid the other kids will tease me though, they already tease me enough as it is," she looked as though she was thinking on it.
"WHAT? Who's teasing you? I'll kill them." Dwayne's immediate response to her statement was an outburst, something he still hadn't been able to tame.
"Dwayne, breathe, you're not going to kill anyone," Frank said.
"Just some kids at school, they tease everyone, it's no big deal," Olive pretended to shrug it off, and the family dropped it, but Dwayne sensed there was more to it. He didn't push however, not now at least, that would have to wait for later.
"Good spaghetti Sheryl," Richard said after it had been quiet for a few minutes.
"Thanks…It's not exactly difficult though…" Sheryl trailed off, making fun of her husband's inability to cook.
"Hey mom, can I have $30?" Dwayne asked out of the blue.
"Uh, what for?" Sheryl wanted to know.
"Um, school dance." At Dwayne's words, Richard began to choke on a meatball, and had to be thumped on the back by Frank (a/n I know that doesn't actually help, but it's probably what they would do). Once the hacking and coughing had ended, the focus went back to Dwayne.
"Sorry, did we hear that correctly?" asked Frank.
"Yeah…" Dwayne was starting to turn a little red too.
"Dwayne, you hate school organized activities, hell, you hate activities in general, why would you want to go to a school dance?" asked Richard, just as perplexed as the next person.
"You know what? Never mind, forget I said anything," Dwayne said.
"No, no, I'll get you the money later, can I write a check to your school?"
"Yeah, sure." Dwayne said.
"Seriously, why do you want to go to the dance?" Richard pushed.
"So, mom, do you want to chaperone the 3rd Grade field trip next week?" Olive interjected, sensing her brother needed a way out of his step father's nagging.
"Depends, where are you going and what day?" Sheryl asked. When heads were turned, Dwayne mouthed thank you to his little sister.
"We're going to see some concert thing, I have permission slip in my backpack that explains, want me to go get it?" Olive asked.
"No, that's ok, I'll look at it after dinner honey." The rest of the meal continued in roughly the same style, someone would bring up something, and eventually, the subject would move on to yet another unimportant topic. Dwayne cleared his plate, and snuck away back to his room, claiming to have homework, to avoid having to do the dishes. Olive made the same excuse, and went to her bedroom, where she lay on her floor doing a book worksheet and other homework. After awhile, her math became confusing, and she left her room to seek help.
"Mom, dad?" she said as she walked in to the kitchen, where they were sitting at the table paying their bills.
"Not now honey, we're busy," Sheryl said.
"Oh, ok." Olive walked off, and went to Frank. "Frank, can you help me with my math homework?" she asked.
"Oh, Olive I'm really bad at math…" Frank said. Olive knew that he wasn't up to helping, because it was hard for an adult to be bad at third grade math, but she nodded her head and thanked him anyway. "Why don't you ask Dwayne, he's pretty good at math, he's pretty good at everything." Frank made the suggestion, and Olive walked to his room.
"What?" Dwayne asked when Olive knocked on the door.
"Can I come in?" she asked.
"Uh, yeah, sure." She opened the door to see Dwayne sprawled on the floor surrounded by a text book, two pencils, one broken in two, a notebook, and several crumpled sheets of notebook paper.
"What happened in here?" she asked, Dwayne's room was usually very tidy, so she was a little surprised by the mess.
"Physics, anyway, what's up?"
"Math," she said. "I don't understand the difference between multiply and adding." She sat down next to him and showed him her worksheet. Dwayne sat up straight, taking his pencil and spare piece of paper.
"Ok, so you see here, when you have three plus three, you are adding to three's." He wrote out the equation three plus three for her to see. "When you have three times three, then you are just adding three together three times, so it's really three plus three plus three." He wrote out three times three for her, then three plus three plus three for her to look at.
"Oh," she said after looking for a minute. "So if you have five times four you would just add five together four times?" she asked.
"Yeah, that's why they say times instead of plus or minus."
"Oh, that makes sense." She nodded.
"Yup, and as you get older you'll eventually memorize the simple times tables, but you're not there quite yet." Dwayne gave her a small smile.
"Cool! I can't wait." She smiled. "Is it ok if I stay in here until I'm done with the worksheet? Incase I need more help I mean?" she asked, looking for any excuse to spend some time with Dwayne.
"Yeah, sure." He rolled over to face his homework, and she mimicked his action. They studied together in silence. When Olive finished, she just lay there, taking in her time spent with her brother, as it was rare; he liked to be alone.
"I give, I fucking give," Dwayne said at last, slamming his physics book shut and putting his papers away. His sudden actions startled Olive, and it wasn't like her brother to give up, she knew that he was really smart, and he almost never had trouble with school.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"It's hard, and I can't concentrate, just don't take physics if you can avoid it."
"Ok, I'll try not to." She watched Dwayne as he put his physics things in his backpack, and pulled out his book for English, The Scarlet Letter, and a high lighter. When he opened the book, a small piece of paper fell out, but Dwayne didn't appear to notice as he uncapped his high lighter, prepared to make note of any symbols found in the book, and neglected the stray paper.
"Who's Sophie Johnson?" Olive asked.
"What?" Dwayne looked over at her, a little surprised.
"Sophie Johnson," she said, and she handed him the paper that she had picked up from his book. It was a note, which read Dwayne, Call me sometime, 555-0166. Sophie Johnson. She had dotted the "i" in her name with a heart.
"Hey! Don't look at my stuff!" he said defensively, taking the paper from her and stuffing it back inside the book.
"I'm sorry, it just fell out, I didn't mean to…" she sighed. "Are you mad at me?" she asked.
"No, no, I'm not mad, I'm sorry if I seemed mad," he apologized.
"Are you going to call her?" Olive asked.
"I don't know…" Dwayne shrugged, sounding as though he was torn between two options.
"You should." Olive said smiling. "She drew a heart that probably means that she likes you. Do you like her?"
"I dunno, I guess maybe, but I don't really know if I like her or not, and maybe she's just yanking my chain," he said, then explained at the confused expression on Olive's face. "You know, just playing a trick on me, like oh, let's make fun of the kid who didn't talk for nine months, that sort of thing."
"That would be mean, that's something that Carl would do," Olive said.
"Carl?" Dwayne asked a little confused. "Is he one of the people giving you a little trouble at school?" Dwayne asked, his face serious and filled with concern for Olive.
"Yeah…" Olive trailed off, she didn't want to talk about it.
"What's he doing?" Dwayne asked, pushing her a little further.
"He just makes fun of me all of the time, and I really don't like it, but I don't know what to do about it." She shrugged.
"Have you told the teacher?" Dwayne asked.
"Yeah, but she didn't do anything about it really, she moved him for awhile, but then some other kids were having trouble, so she had to move him back. It's not really bad, he doesn't hurt me or anything, just constantly calls me names and stuff."
"Olive, that's not good…you should talk to mom or dad about it…" Dwayne said. He always referred to Richard as dad when talking to Olive, but to one else. Saying go talk to mom and your dad sounded weird to him.
"I don't want to be a tattle tale though," she said.
"Hey, Olive, is this where you've been? We were looking for you!" Richard came in. "It's time for bed."
"Oh, ok." Olive hopped up, taking her homework with her, and left the room. Richard was about to leave, but Dwayne stopped him.
"Richard, I need to talk to you about Olive." He said.
"O…k…what about?" Richard asked, coming back in to the room and closing the door.
"She's getting bullied at school, and she talked to the teacher, who did little to nothing about it."
"Dwayne, getting bullied is a part of growing up." Richard said, looking at his stepson with intent.
"Maybe, but so is stopping the bullying, if it continues, it could have a permanent effect on her, and she may be too young to overcome it all by herself. She's your daughter, it's your job to help her," Dwayne said. He didn't understand Richard, and he was beginning to think that he never would.
"Dwayne, don't tell me how to raise my daughter, ok?" Richard said, opening the door and walking out of the room. Dwayne sighed, frustrated with Richard's lack of caring about his own daughter's safety.
A/N Ok, so what did you guys think? So far this is definitely different from my other LMS fics. My goal is to focus on the familial relationship between Dwayne and Olive but to give them both subplots to (hopefully) enhance the characters. I hope I don't get too one sided though, let me know if you think I do in further chapters. At this point I'm not sure how I'm going to split the chapters, but something will work itself out.