A/N: I had this done before going to Germany but I was ultimately too lazy to post it before leaving. So tada! Here you go.
As of that moment, there was not one inch of the high school cafeteria that wan't covered with food. It seemed like there was no safe spot to be free of the meatloaf with the mashed potatoes with a side of corn - today's special. People had flipped over tables to block them from what they could but others were completely engaged in the war. Screams and laughs echoed through the giant room as Emma attempted to crawl through the mass of people and flying food to escape the insanity. Of course the one time out of the entire school year that she had decided to buy lunch instead of bring it from home, this monstrosity occurred. She was determined to get out of the chaos in one piece.
Just as she had reached halfway towards the exit she felt something splatter against the side of her face. The juice was now embedded into her hair and made the corner of her eye burn. She wiped whatever it was off her skin and looked over at the attacker. Her adrenaline started to pump faster as Rex had a look of success smothered across his smirking face, along with the white cream of potatoes that dripped from his hair.
It was as if in slow motion she stood from her knees and reached for a pile of muck to her right side just as he reached for another hand full from a tray on the table in front of him. Both were in their own little war, trying to nail each other with food. They didn't take any heed when the main cafeteria doors opened and a crowd of suits moved in. Rex's jaw dropped and Emma's eyes widen as their food hit the woman everyone knew to be the superintendent from both sides. The superintendent had been evaluating the school for the past two weeks and today was supposed to be the final day, which was why the rest of the school board was currently present.
The room grew deadly silent and completely still. Both of their names were being shouted by the other administrators who knew them both personally. Superintendent Remski just stood still, food sticking to her expensive looking suit, not moving which was probably scarier than her going on a rampage. Slowly she looked down to examine her, now potato covered, navy blue pant suit. Her eyes looked from Emma to Rex and then Emma again until finally she nodded and turned back around, now facing Principal Kilm. She made a 'humph' sound and shook her head in a disapproving manner.
"Trisha," she started as though she was about to reprimand a child, "I am very displeased and disappointed by the way you run your school and you want more funding. With how things are handled here I don't see how I could trust your staff to handle such a large amount money if they cannot even control a bunch of teenagers." Her voice sounded like she was shouting with how unpleasantly silent it was throughout the room. "If you'll excuse me, it seems that I need a new change of attire." The school board members and some of the other administrators left and followed her out the door, probably trying to assure that the school didn't gain too bad of a review, but Principal Kilm and the Vice Principal, Nicolas Masta, remained.
The doors slammed shut and suddenly Kilm's face had twisted into one of the nastiest looks either sibling had seen from her. Normally it was Vice Principal Masta the students had to fear. He ruled the school with an iron fist while Principal Kilm normally promoted the theory of talking it out for hours on end in detention over suspensions.
"This is not the way we run things here!" Her voice boomed throughout the room and echoed into everyone's ears. The bell rang indicating the end of lunch and beginning of seventh period but no one made a move to leave.
"Get to class," Masta said in a much lower tone. "Now!" He screeched and everyone was fighting to get out as if the cops had come and they were all in possession of something illegal.
Emma, being her naturally short self, tried and ultimately failed to hide inside the crowd of students. Rex slowly started to walk away as well, trying to blend in with the others.
"Except for you two," his voice snapped louder than the rush of students and there was no need to turn around to know who he was talking about. The sophomore and senior stopped in their tracks and groaned as they both slowly turned around.
The other students looked at the two siblings with a variety of looks. Some were amused and proud they had gotten off the hook. Others looked completely guilty like the pair shouldn't be the only ones who were in trouble. Once everyone escaped and the four of them all stood in silence was when Rex's heart started to race. He had never gotten in to major trouble before and never really planned on it.
"We should suspend both of you," his head snapped to Emma. "Especially you, if I could have it my way you would also be barred from attending graduation at the end of the year."
Emma looked down at the ground but a smirk was evident on her face. This was hardly the first time she had been in trouble with the school.
"But we can't," Kilm's calm voice stated and had full attention of both students. "Since this is Mr. Stewart's first offense, and a separate punishment for both of you isn't technically allowed, you'll both be assigned cleanup duty while you wait for your entire punishment. And this is effective immediately."
"The entire cafeteria?" Emma asked, immediately regretted it when Masta's glare had practically burned her entire body from the fury in his eyes.
"Yes, Ms. Stewart the entire cafeteria," Kilm replied tartly.
"But what about class?" This time Rex asked. He had hardly ever missed class. Having nearly perfect attendance had been an ongoing thing since elementary school. This hardly seemed fair to him, he'd miss valuable class time.
"Rex is right, that's a little extreme," Emma said as Rex sent her a small smile. "You can't make us miss class."
Rex nodded, "yeah and we didn't even start the food fight. It was an accident that the superintendent got hit by food. We didn't mean it."
"Keep talking and I will suspend you," Kilm pointed with her finger at both of them. "You may have cost this school the extra funding it needed." With a few more heated glares, both administrators turned, and Masta called over his shoulder where the cleaning supplies were. Rex and Emma were left alone with a final slam of the heavy metal doors.
It was silent between them as they both comprehended what exactly just happened and then Rex let go of a long breath and scratched the back of his neck.
"This is all your fault," Emma snapped and Rex stepped back at the sudden blow.
"Excuse me?" He asked. "We both threw something last time I checked."
"Well I wouldn't have thrown anything if you hadn't purposefully thrown food at my head," she pointed to the right side of her head where the food still remained planted in her hair.
"Oh because I totally was aiming for you specifically," he narrowed his eyes at her.
"You looked straight at me, of course it was on purpose!"
It was clear Emma was growing angrier with each step she took towards the janitor closet in the corner of the cafeteria. While she walked towards it she swore she could hear him mutter something under his breath but he wasn't facing her when she turned around so she couldn't tell and didn't have the desire to retaliate anymore. She grabbed a rag and a bottle of some kind of purple liquid while inside the closet. On her way out she ran into a wall of flesh and just glared at him. Instead of grabbing what Emma had taken out, Rex pulled out the mop bucket to start on the floor. They both worked without speaking and the only noise that came from either were groans of disgust or the screeching of chairs.
Emma moved to start lifting up the fallen tables.
"Here, I'll help you so that you don't get hurt," Rex sarcastically stated, with Emma rolling her eyes, and stopped mopping to move and help her lift the table. A silent agreement seemed to be made between them and they started lifting each table that had been pushed over.
"Hold on it's boiling in here," Emma held her hand up and Rex leaned against one of the tables to wait as she took off her gray sweatshirt, leaving her in just a black tank top. After she set it down by the door with the rest of her and Rex's stuff, she walked back over to the table and Rex. Her eyes narrowed as she caught Rex staring at her. "What?"
"You have..." he slowly said as he cautiously walked towards her, "a tattoo...on your back."
Her face turned pink and her cheeks burned as she looked away. How could she forget that she had her hair up, which exposed the green ink between her shoulder blades. "Oh yeah," she mumbled incoherently under her breath.
"Well what is it?" Rex moved to walk around Emma but she angled herself so that her back was out of his sight.
"Nothing okay? It's not a big deal," she snapped with much more force than she had intended. "Can we just finish this Rex? I'd really like to be finished sometime today."
It took him awhile to respond. Emma's eyes remained everywhere but on his. Emma could tell Rex was trying to read her. He bit his lip to stop himself from answering back. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and moved back to her spot while her and Rex continued flipping the rest of the tables.
Once they were done with that, Emma had moved over to the glass windows where she wiped the gunk off and Rex continued his previous job of mopping. It felt like every second his gaze would find it's way over to his sister. They had been working for the past two hours by now and hadn't talked after Emma snapped at him. But now she had her back to him so he could distinctively see what was on her back.
"A bird?" He called out and saw her visibly tense. "That's what you were trying to hide?"
She didn't turn around; she just stood there in her frozen state. Slowly she remained wiping up and down the glass. "Why are you watching me?"
"What kind of bird is it? What does it mean?" Rex set the mop aside and found himself walking closer to Emma. "How'd you get it? You're not eighteen for another four months."
"Do you always answer questions with questions?" He could see her hand started to rub harder against the window.
"Do you?" He could feel a smirk appear on his face. His arms came up across his chest in an almost dominant way. Her hand fell from the window before she turned around to face him, fury eyes and all.
"Ya know," he said dropping his arms down back to his sides, "I won't tell Mom and Dad if you tell me about it." Her posture didn't change so he added one more thing, "unless, ya know, you'd rather endure their wrath but that's cool, I guess that is more interesting." He turned and took slow steps away from her but stopped when he heard her sigh.
"Fine," this time she was the one to cross her arms but in a more defensive way. "One of my friend's older sister works at a tattoo parlor. She gave all of us free tattoos for Christmas."
She watched as he turned with a small grin. Something inside her wanted to sock him hard in the jaw. To just take that stupid expression off his face but she knew she couldn't bring herself to do that to him.
"It's a tribal, oceanic swallow. In China they're associated with springtime and thus they represent the coming of good fortune and prosperous change. There's other crap too but it's not really important," Emma said, her eyes still locked into place with Rex's. "That's what a swallow stands for. Happy? I just got it because I wanted it. I thought it looked nice."
For a long moment neither said anything to the other. Rex could tell she was lying about something; she never was good at it. As the silence continued, Emma started to shift back and forth suddenly realizing they had been staring at each other for quiet some time now. The wet rag in her hand reminded her of the task at hand and she finally broke eye contact to turn and continue wiping down the table.
"That makes sense," Rex was suddenly standing next to her with a slight smile set on his face. He leaned the back of his thighs against the table and grabbed the edge with his hands. "You were born in May after all and that's in the spring so that makes sense. And here I thought you just had some weird bird fetish," Emma rolled her eyes and listened while still wiping down the table. "Unless you got a bird because of Mom and got it in green, instead of black, because of Dad."
That made Emma stop and turn to look at him again. He bit his lip a little knowing he got her attention back. "Shut up," she swatted him with the rag in her hand.
His hand went up protectively to his shoulder where she hit him. "I'm being serious," he said, his eyes becoming brighter with the genuine smile he had. "Someone just doesn't go and get a tattoo like that for no reason. It has to have a meaning and you know what it is."
"Yeah right, okay," she shook her head and mumbled sarcastically. "There is no reason."
"Come on Em, just tell me the real meaning of it."
Emma's mouth opened to say something when one of the cafeteria doors swung open.
"Stewarts!" Vice Principal Masta came in holding a folder tightly to his chest and a briefcase in his other hand. His eyes scanned over the room with no expression on his face. "Amateur job but good enough." Both Rex and Emma seemed to stand straighter as he stepped closer to them. "Detention, both of you for a month. Skip it and I won't hesitate from suspending both of you. And you'll be happy to know that your parents are waiting for you in my office." Then he spun on his heel and was gone.
"I guess school's been over," Rex said. "It must be almost four by now. We should go and not make them wait."
Emma raised an eyebrow. "And deal with Mom and Dad so soon? You sure about that Rex?"
He shrugged, "I think they'll see things our way once we explain what actually happened. You know how Mom hates the administrators and that Dad will definitely listen."
"Wishful thinking Rex, wishful thinking."
"Told her they'd listen," Rex mumbled to himself as he laid on his bed, his laptop on his lap. "What a pessimist."
Rex continued mumbling to himself and he typed on his laptop. After a few minutes he found the page he wanted.
"The swallow is a bird that chooses a mate for life," he quietly read to himself. "Therefore a swallow tattoo is a primary symbol for love and loyalty to the family."
Rex smirked to himself as he powered down and closed the laptop. It seemed that she did have a reason after all.