"Is something wrong, Fred?" Nicholas, the oldest of the four Lane siblings asked.
Lorelei looked up at her brother tiredly as he sat down on the couch next to her later that night. "Please don't call me Fred."
"Fred suits you more than Lorelei," he laughed. "Come on. There's something wrong."
"Why do you assume something's wrong?" she stalled.
"You're trying to eat yogurt without a spoon by sucking it…and you're watching a blank TV…and you're sighing…and you smell like smoke…"
"I do not smell like smoke." Lorelei discreetly smelled her sweater. She did indeed smell like an ashtray.
"You only actually light your cigarettes and try to smoke them like a normal person when you're worried about something," he reminded her.
"Niko, you know me too well and it pisses me off," she growled at him.
"I'll tickle you."
"I'll yell 'INCEST!!!' And Mom will throw you in jail."
"That would never happen. She condones illegal and immoral acts."
"Dammit, that's right…" Lorelei sighed heavily for about the eighteenth time in the past hour. "Leave me alone anyway before I kill you, Niko."
Niko smiled. "Lori likes a BOY!" he sang loudly in a screechy voice. "MOM! Lorelei said she's pregnant! Can we disown her?!"
Lorelei screamed, threw her yogurt container at him and ran down the hall in the direction of her room.
"What's wrong with you, kid?" Ingrid Duchamp asked her son at supper. Propping his elbow up on the table, he had his chin resting on his hand while he stared, disinterested, at his plate.
"Nothing," Teddy muttered.
"Get your elbows off the table."
He looked at her when her eyes were averted to her food. Every night was like this. It was just the two of them now, and every night there was a huge emptiness between them. Maybe deep down, they might give a shit about each other, but on the surface they were complete strangers with the same last name, tied together by the same man.
Teddy gulped his milk down, then set the glass down on the dilapidated table with a loud sound that got her attention. "I got homework to do."
Mrs. Duchamp knew that that was a lie. Shop courses didn't give out homework because the kind of kids that enrolled in those classes would never do it. But she just shrugged, reached for her cigarette package from the centre of the table and slid one out with a bony hand. "Scrape what you didn't eat into the dog's dish."
He did as he was asked, and then trampled down the creaky uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom.
Once he'd closed the door, he took a flying leap at his bed, landing with his face in the pillow.
"Aaaaaaaaaaauughh…ggggghhh…." he groaned into the pillow.
Lorelei found herself sitting on her bathroom counter, wearing shorts and the shirt she had originally lent Teddy before he'd overflowed the toilet.
It still smelled like toilet in there rather than peaches, but for some reason, she found it easier to think about Teddy in her bathroom.
Teddy was absolutely insane; she knew that. But everyone was absolutely insane. Some people were just insane a little louder than others were. Besides, normal people annoyed her. Something about Teddy worried her though. She could tell underneath all the craziness, that he was just a little boy--a little boy with secrets and pain. And she didn't know if she would ever be strong enough to know his secrets or his pain.
Lorelei found a bottle of red nail polish, and set to painting her toe nails.
Reese, on the other hand, was less hard to read. She knew his motives. She knew the way his mind worked. All you had to do was think in the vilest way possible, and you would be thinking like Reese. When he came up to her though, there was some definite butterfly action in her stomach happening. He was tall and hot and blond and his smile was irresistible and he said all the right things…
Teddy was nothing like Reese.
"Shit," she whispered as she realized she'd just gotten nail polish on the bathroom wall. She ripped off a wad of toilet paper, ran it under water, and then rubbed at the wall. "Shit," she said again as the cherry-red paint rubbed off with the nail polish, leaving a large bleached white stain.
Jumping off the counter and forgetting about her lame-ass guy problems, she searched through her drawers for some nail polish that would match the shade of the paint that was no longer on the wall.
Then, it occurred to her that this was something Teddy would probably find very humourous and she wished he were there with her to enjoy this.
There was no way in hell some girl he barely knew was going to make Teddy this fucking miserable.
There were prettier girls in the world, that was for sure. She could be vulgar and crass and temperamental, and her mood swings were worse than a roller coaster. Half the time her socks didn't even match.
But there wasn't any other girl in the world like her--at least not the world he knew. He loved how vulgar she was, and when she was having a mood swing, he actually wanted to be there for her, and since when did Teddy Duchamp ever feel like that? And he kinda thought her mismatched socks were cute.
What was he doing, moping around his room over a girl? Tomorrow, he decided, he'd work on forgetting about her. He wasn't supposed to feel this way. Tonight, however, she would be all he would think about.