Savannah gave a smug and defiant look at her living room which now had the defeated, cluttered mark of a teenage boy. It wasn't long after her overdose that her roommate had moved out, contending that worrying about Savannah and dealing with her bouts of melancholy, alcoholism and promiscuity were more than she had ever bargained for and much more than the cost of living should have been.

Savannah had the apartment to herself: a three bedroom loft with a walk through kitchen, built-in washer and dryer and all the fixings of a starter home. And being that she taught at the university, she was perfectly close to the hustle and bustle of student life.

While Sebastian was confident he wouldn't be attending OSU, or any state school for that matter, there was the chance that Hunter would. The latter had spoken to Savannah about visiting for a weekend, and Sebastian had, more than willingly, agreed to tag along. Neither were interested in academics or the school's history— but they were interested in partying with college-age adults and meeting as many friendly coeds as possible. Savannah figured this was the case, but she wasn't one to stifle anyone's attempt at a good time.

Hedonism and all.

It was also the first time in her life Sebastian had ever made an attempt to spend time with her, though she knew that wasn't the goal that he had set after. She wouldn't try to impose on him or give him any advice, but it meant something to her to not have their last interaction sit so long and stale in his mouth. She hadn't changed much, but what he had seen was surely not rock bottom or even out of the usual.

Placing her coat on a rack near the door, Savannah caught sight of Sebastian first, looming ominously around the kitchen.

"Are you looking for something to eat,' she asked, slipping out of her shoes and walking towards her room.

"Are you just surviving on charcuterie and red wine or is the real food,' he motioned around the kitchen. "Hiding?"

Savannah chuckled, changing quickly into something more comfortable. Yelling from her room, she continued: "You didn't think I stayed this size by going to the gym, did you?"

No reply came, but she heard the defeated slam of the refrigerator door and a loud sigh.

Leaving her room, she picked up her home phone and gave the boy a pathetic look. "Why are you pouting, Sebastian? I'll order a pizza, it's no big deal… Where's Hunter?"

"In the shower,' he replied, heading over to a couch in the living room and falling without grace. "Can you get pepperoni? Get… a couple. Hunter will eat an entire pie himself… I'll give you mom's card."

Savannah, already on the phone with a number from the front of her refrigerator, shook her head. She covered the bottom of the phone, muffling her voice. "Don't insult me like that in my house. I don't need their money,' she hesitated, gave her address to the pizza shop and covered the phone again. "The sooner you can get out of their reach, the better. You need to get a job."

"I'm supposed to play tennis full-time, get good grades and work?"

As she hung up the phone, Savannah rolled her eyes. "I forget how porcelain Emmett and Tierney keep things."

"You're calling them by their first names? Does dehumanizing them help solidify the trauma that you keep claiming was enacted on you?"

Savannah stared at Sebastian for a few seconds and tried to decide whether or not she wanted to react. As she decided that, perhaps, it was worth it to watch him storm out of the room in fury, Hunter took a step into the hallway, his hair still wet from the shower.

"Hey, Sav,' he said, eagerly, running a hand through his hair and bringing the woman in for a hug. Savannah kissed him on the cheek and held him tightly.

"Hi, Hunter,' she gushed, looking him over. "The last time I saw you, you were a lot shorter… Where does the time go? Your voice sounded so deep on the phone."

"Growing young man…' Hunter said, finding his way over to Sebastian on the couch. He began: "Savannah, I noticed… you don't really have any food."

The three sat around the kitchen's island, idling between pizza, soda and greasy napkins. Hunter had talked Savannah into letting them get an early crack into a bottle of wine, but there hadn't been much persuasion needed. The boys were tipsy, but she was more than coherent, and increasingly confident that she might be picking them up, sweaty and drunk, from a sorority house later in the night.

"Your place is really nice, Sav… like, really nice. I can't believe you've got it all to yourself,' Hunter began, spinning a glass filled half with wine and half with soda.

"I had a roommate,' Savannah revealed. "Living with people is a chore in and of itself, so it's been nice to have the space to myself. I don't mind you two being here. Just… remember, I am a professor, so… Try not to get arrested or anything. I don't know that name recognition is going to get you too far here."

"We'll be okay,' Hunter confirmed, giving Savannah a wink and smirking at Sebastian. The latter, feeling hazy from the depleted bottle, was much more interested in the pizza ahead of him than the conversation taking place.

He shrugged. "Everything will be fine."

Savannah looked between the two before biting her lip. "Do you two smoke?"

Hunter took a deep hit of a freshly rolled joint and passed it to Sebastian. The latter didn't smoke often and sputtered over the roll, hitting it once and passing it back to his sister. She smiled, her red lipstick staining the paper and hit it graciously.

"What? You don't expect me to believe you haven't experimented with anything other than alcohol, Seb."

Sebastian wiped budding tears from his eyes. "I don't have the time and leisure that marijuana demands… it's not fun."

"Your brother prefers being hungover more than half of the week,' Hunter responded, a flurry of laughter following.

Savannah ashed the joint, her pink nails playing along the smoke. "Yeah,' she began inquisitively, baiting her brother.

"You saw me hungover once,' Sebastian raised a finger at Hunter.

"Well,' the other began, another haughty laugh rolling over the diner. "I've seen you loose more than a few times, buddy."

Sebastian shrugged, his cheeks flushing red. He sighed. "What can I say? I like to have fun."

Hunter gave Sebastian an incredulous squint of the eyes but continued. "Speaking of fun… where do you suggest we end up tonight, Savannah?"

"Safely in bed,' she responded, shaking her head and continuing the wrap's rotation.

Hunter grabbed the paper from her and gauged her response. "Any cute Sigma-Phi-Whatever girls?"

Savannah gave her scalp a thorough scratch. "Wouldn't know, that's not a tree I bark up…"

"Savannah, you're not playing fair… we're two good looking guys at college for the weekend, we're looking for some fun. Give us a line,' Hunter whined.

"You two,' she pointed at both boys, her painted pink fingernails like daggers. "Are children. If anyone on that campus even takes a look at you, it's a crime. I'm not aiding and abetting someone's arrest because you're horny, Hunter… if you want to find something, look."

"We're almost eighteen,' he responded.

"Who cares?"

Hunter tried to hand the joint back to Sebastian, but the latter gave a firm wave and nodded towards his sister. They didn't say much else, just picked at the pizza, finished the wrap and tried to determine how fucked up they were or even if they were.

"So, you two just gonna walk around campus until you stumble over something to do?"

Sebastian placed his head in his hands, his elbows on the counter. His eyelids were shut softly, flittering with movement as he began to laugh and speak. "Your dad does want us to tour the school."

Hunter and the boy fell into a roar of laughter, the materialization of the high and second hand smoke. Savannah didn't feel in on the joke, instead she began to clean at the mess and put things back into their place.

"There's a little hole-in-the-wall bar I go to sometimes,' she said to herself, opening the trash can and dumping the folded cardboard boxes into the darkness. "If you're with me, everything should be fine. We can get some drinks going, play some pool… it's an older crowd, my age, so I seriously doubt either of you is getting laid, but it's what I can show you of Columbus at this time of night,' Savannah turned around finally to face the boys.

Sebastian shrugged. "I'm in."

Hunter patted his cousin on the back, "Yeah, fuck it. Do they have darts?"

The bar was dark, heady and loud but mutable. It seemed that no one had come together, but had, instead, found each other in the room where it was only light enough to see each other's eyes but not read each other's lips. The boys, her boys, her responsibility for the weekend, were drunk before they reached the premises, and on the first opportunity of drinking in public with no repercussions, were drunker than before within the hour. Savannah had drank, of course, but not enough to impair her driving or forget her maternal duty for the night. She would drink later, once they were sound asleep and her home felt like her own again, but she didn't mind the twinge of sobriety at that time of night. It had been a long time since she had been fully coherent of how ugly bodies moved once the sun went down and how foul they sounded.

Sitting in a corner, a glass of wine in her hand, she watched her brother put an arm around Hunter, sing a merry tune of his own and sloppily throw a dart to the wall. By the expression on his face and the excitement in his body language, she assumed that he had scored impressively, and she smiled. He was, despite all the armor he had built up, just a child, and much like she herself had been, just a child being treated like an impenetrable adult at the hands of two psychotically unempathetic elitists. It had taken years for Savannah to finally cry about her childhood, and those tears didn't come out easy. They felt like a reiteration of all the daggers Emmett and Tierney had shoved into her side over the years— she knew Sebastian hated her— most days, it took every fiber of her being not to hate herself, but she loved him purely. Her love for him was the only pure thing about her, and while untapped and usually left on the back burner, she knew she wanted to have a relationship with him— a good one. But, with retrospect, she knew had their roles been reversed, had she been the brainwashed younger sister of a headstrong, chaotic older sibling, she wouldn't have revered him. She would see him as a stain.

Savannah looked down at her arms, her dress, the wine glass— the stain of the Smythe family, and though she would like to laugh, though she would find it comical in her art groups and her literature houses, she was humiliated. Embarrassed of where she had come from, embarrassed at what she had become, embarrassed that she had to convince her little brother, a child, that she was so much more right than their parents, and though she hadn't made right look good, it was still better, and even though better didn't feel much better than wrong, it was… freeing?

She could only ever equate it to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Of course, humans are forced to suffer human life separated from God, a veil between Him and his greatest creation. But, the knowledge?

Was it worth it?

She thought about Eve, how she bit the fruit and tried to show it to Adam, and in the end, Adam rebuked her.

It was better to know, but was it better to show someone a wrong they didn't know existed?

Sebastian looked over to Savannah. They made eye contact, and he gave her a small smile. He walked over to her smoothly, a postured gesture, and sat beside her. The two didn't speak for minutes; they sat and watched the room pulse around them and sighed heavily when it was appropriate. Eventually, Savannah looked over to the boy. His hair was past his ears, but not messy, she could see that he had often pulled it back with a headband or glasses, it perfectly framed his face. His eyes were green, but dim, around his eyes, he had heavy rings of exhaustion or stress. Despite the eerie melancholy that hosted itself above his brows, he was starkly attractive, almost the male equivalent of herself. She had paler skin and hair down to her breast, but they both had pointed noses and hollow, high cheeks. Savannah had fuller lips, but they both had thick eyebrows and perfectly white teeth.

It was if they were models; the perfect siblings.

Eventually, Savannah spoke, elevating her voice for him to hear over the loud, indistinguishable roar of the club.

"Sebastian, I love you, you know that?"

He cut his eyes over to her, tilted his head as if irritated, but sighed. "You're my sister,' he replied, as if love was only a symptom of familial relationships. As if it were his burden.

"I know you hate me, but I'm trying. I don't want to fight with you."

"I don't hate you, Savannah,' he hesitated, thinking, but knowing what he would say already. "You're just confused."

She touched him, first his cheek, and then she ran her fingers through his hair and behind his ear. The graze was sad, he felt her melancholy slide over his skin, but he couldn't move. At the age of seventeen, he could hardly determine that what he was feeling, no matter how cold and pathetic, was human intimacy born from tenacity, duty, love— not lust or desire. The type of touch that only comes from someone who has known you for years, perhaps your entire life, and has seen how you reacted to so many other touches, embraces, gestures or how you cowered away —how a mother might know that her daughter likes for fingers to be ran through her hair, mimicking a brush. The touch does nothing to satisfy the doer, but appeases the touched— to have been seen, known. The type of embrace from a father after a long, hard football game. An older brother patting your back after you stand up from your first scraped knee.

Savannah, tucked his hair behind his ear, as if putting the charade to rest. "Are you not?"