Erland - Ladonia
Leopold - Kugelmugel
Salvatorio "Sal" - Seborga
Logan decided to clean the house.
But only because there was nothing better to do, really. Not because he actually wanted to. He was that bored.
He searched for the broomstick, but after failing to remember where he had placed it last, he found a replacement (a vacuum) and tried to get the dust off the floor.
It wasn't his fault that he got distracted in the process.
The vacuum lay on the ground still on and running as Logan clicked away at the computer screen, searching up the NRL (National Rugby League). It was still the first of February, and to his annoyance, as the NRL season began in March.
He was going to show his support to the best team. By being over the top and cutting out giant faces of the team and sticking it on his window so everyone could see it as they walked past.
He printed out the faces of the Penrith Panthers, and began to cut them out when he heard his siblings shout from the entrance.
He glanced at the clock and realised that it was already 3:20.
"The door's unlocked, come in!" he shouted, not really bothered to ask them what they said.
Not even five seconds later, they entered the living room.
"HOLY MACARONI!" Charlie's high-pitched voice echoed around the house. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"And why is the vacuum on?" Oscar mused, walking over to it, turning it off.
"WHO CARES ABOUT THAT?! LO, WHAT-" She then lost the ability to speak and waved her hands in the air. "WHAT ARE THOSE?!"
"It's for the NRL!" he replied. "Wanna help?"
Charlotte stared at him wordlessly. "Of course not. I'm going to do my homework." she groaned, wheeling herself to her bedroom.
Logan shrugged. "Suit yourself." he continued to cut the paper, cursing softly as he made a mistake.
Oscar watched as his brother failed to cut a simple shape. He sighed, and joined him on the floor. "Pass it here."
The Australia looked up in surprise, his hair bouncing a bit. "Really?! You want to help?!"
He pulled a face (he really didn't care that much about NRL as much as his brother definitely did) but it was kind of pathetic watching him struggle.
The teenager cut out all the faces and held them up. "What were you planning to do with these?"
"Stick them up on the window so everyone can see our support!"
"Ehh?!" he spluttered. "Lo, it's... not even close to March yet..."
Logan proceeded into ignoring him. "Can you hand me the blu-tack?"
He pouted, but gave it to him anyway. "You know Charlotte's going to be annoyed, right?"
"Yeah, but I don't really care." He stuck the faces on the window. "By the way, how was school today?"
Oscar stared at him. That was an excellent questioned. He settled with; "It was better than I thought."
He let out a sigh of relief. "That's good. So on a scale of 1 - 10?"
He groaned. "Lo, I'm not a kid anymore."
"I know. But for old-times sake?"
He paused. "Fine. I don't know, maybe it was a six?" he shrugged uncertainly.
Logan grinned at him. He was expecting a lower number; maybe moving states was a good thing after all.
"How's Charlie? Did she have a good day at school?"
"I don't know, ask her that yourself." he scoffed, waving his arm around.
"I might do that."
The eldest Johnson brother stood up and walked over to her room.
"Hey, Charlie?"
"Hm?"
"How was your day at school today? Was anyone mean to you?"
Charlotte rolled her eyes. "No, not directly to my face."
"What?! What do you mean by that?!"
"As in people will always be jerks, Logan. But I did make friends." she moved on hastily, noticing the look on her older brother's face.
"Really? Who?"
Luckily for her, Logan got distracted very easily.
"There's this guy, he's called Peter. And there were two others called Erland and Leopold." she nodded, counting off her fingers.
"What are they like?"
Charlie smiled and described the boys. They talked there for an hour, before Oscar stuck his head into her room.
"Lo, you have to make dinner." he said, looking at them.
Logan stood up and nodded. "Okay, I'll do that. I'll call you when I'm done." He left the room, stretching his arms.
Oscar and Charlotte stayed where they were, studying each other.
"You weren't telling him the entire truth." It wasn't a question and they both knew it.
Charlie whirled her chair around to face her brother. "And I'm assuming that you're not telling him what happened to you today."
"What do you know?" he asked, in surprise.
"Oh, I don't. But, unlike Logan, I can tell when you're hiding something." she raised her eyebrows.
"Fine, you're right." he sighed. "But it's not important."
He walked out of her room and into his own, to supposedly to his homework. He almost dropped his bag on his foot, gasping at it.
Since when was his room littered with Penrith Panthers merch?!
"LOGAN, WHAT DID YOU DO?!" he yelled, running towards the kitchen. "I think you forgot where your room was!"
"Oh, nonsense. I thought it would be a great family activity to get everyone into the NRL season!" he smiled, cooking a batch of meat pies.
"WHAT?! But... But it's only February!" he exclaimed. "And that's my room!"
He was ignored.
"Fine, I'll let it stay 'til the Panthers lose."
"Excuse you, are you assuming that the Panthers are going to fail us?" Logan put his hand over his heart in pretend shock.
"Well, to be fair, I don't care so..." he shrugged and headed back to his room.
He glared at the random posters on the wall, their colours (black, red, green and yellow) splattered around the room, and his bed covers replaced with the words 'Penrith Panthers'.
Now that he thought about it, Charlotte's room was also covered with Penrith Panthers merch as well, but as he knew she was more into NRL as he was, he assumed Charlie decorated her room deliberately.
"Time for dinner!" Logan hollered after a good twenty minutes.
Charlotte and Oscar hurried to the kitchen and sat down at the table. She took one look at the food and groaned. "Do we really have to eat meat pies?"
"Yes, it's good for protein."
"Protein-shrotein." she mumbled, but ate it anyway.
They ate in silence and twenty minutes later, the siblings finished eating, and they all headed to the living room together.
"Let's watch something!" Logan smiled, while Charlie cut across him. "I swear, if it's related to NRL-"
"Nonsense!" the eldest laughed. Picking up the remote, he turned on the TV...
And it happened to be soccer.
"Oh, you're joking!" Oscar cried out. Of course, it had to be a sports channel.
"It's better than NRL, I guess." Charlotte shrugged, staring at the screen intensely.
He groaned, annoyed that he was the only one who didn't like sports. He probably got his mother's genes.
He slouched on the couch, and crossed his arms while the other two cheered along with their team.
Mumbling to himself, he watched rather reluctantly. After long last, it was Half Time.
"I'm going to bed." he announced, standing up, stretching.
"What, already?!" Logan gasped. "Don't you want to see how it ends?"
"No, not really. You can tell me who wins tomorrow."
Charlotte shrugged. "Alright, if you say so."
The two watched he trudged back to his room.
"Wow, he's in a mood today." He heard Logan comment.
Oscar flopped on his bed, staring at the wall. He reached over his artbook and found a pencil under his pillow.
He knew he was different from his siblings in several ways.
They loved sports. He didn't.
He loved art. They didn't.
They were optimistic. He wasn't.
He was picky at just about everything. They weren't.
He flipped open the artbook to the next free page and began to sketch him and his siblings from before the accident.
It was a quick drawing, so when he finished he wasn't at all satisfied with the result. Grumbling to himself, he ripped the page out and crumbled it in one hand.
So instead, he looked through his previous works.
There were drawings of Charlotte and Logan, their parents... He quickly turned those pages, not wanting to look at them. He saw doodles of his childhood friend, Sal, who he left behind in Western Australia.
With a pang, he remembered that he promised he would call him. He sat up, and found his laptop under his bed and connected a video call to him.
"Heey!" Sal trilled, waving at his friend.
"Sal!" he smiled. "It's great to see you again!"
"Yeah, definitely! Did you have school today? I did. I miss you a lot, you know..." he sighed wistfully.
"You got that right, I had school."
"Really? How was it? Was it better than this one?"
Oscar grimaced. "It was only the first day. I'm not sure yet. But I hope."
"What would you rate it on a scale from 1-10?"
He groaned. "I'm not a kid!"
"I'm joking!" Sal laughed.
He pouted.
The two talked mindlessly thing about anything and everything before Logan poked his head into his room.
"Oz? The game's finished. My team won." he announced smugly. "Anyway, we're going to bed now."
"Is that Logan?"
"Oh, hi Sal!" he waved at the screen. Then he turned back to his brother. "If you still want to talk to him a little longer, go ahead." He headed over to the bed and ruffled Oscar's hair. "Good night."
"Wow, your brother is still as cool as ever!"
"You think?" Oscar blinked in surprise, he had never really thought of him like that. "Well, I guess you're right..."
"Man, I wish my brothers were like that. I mean, they're nice and all, but your brother is cool!"
"Really? I like your brothers. I mean, I love Logan, but your brothers are very... chill."
"Seriously?! They're the opposite of chill!"
They burst out laughing, and once they started they couldn't stop.
When they had finally calmed down, Sal took a wheezy breath. "Okay, I have to go now. Same time..."
"Wednesday?" Oscar proposed. "We can call on Monday, Wednesday and Friday."
"Of course!"
And with that, Sal logged off.
He placed his laptop back under his bed, and grabbed his art supplies and chucked them across the room. Then he crawled under the blankets and fell asleep.
"Is he-"
"Shh!" Logan hissed, Charlotte throwing her hands up.
"Fine." she whispered. "Is he asleep now?"
"I'm not sure about asleep, but he's definitely resting."
The two moved away from Oscar's room.
"You need to go to bed too."
"I don't think so." Charlie scoffed.
"Charlie."
"What? I'm not tired!"
"But it's past your bedtime-"
Charlotte rolled her eyes. "It's only nine. That's not even that late. And you need to stop treating us like little kids!"
Logan sighed. "I know you're not."
"Then stop acting like we are! Oscar's turning sixteen in April, he's not eight anymore!" she snapped.
They stared at each other, before Logan deflated. "You're right, I'm sorry."
"Don't be." she interrupted, shaking her head. "I lost my temper. You shouldn't be sorry. Well, I'm going to bed."
Charlotte wheeled herself in her room.
"Um, can you help me?" she mumbled, embarrassed.
Logan helped changed her into pyjama pants, while she changed her shirt. When they were done, he carried his sister and tucked her in bed.
"Can you tell a story?" she smirked.
"Once upon a time, there was a little girl..."
He rambled on about a young girl who had been confined to a wheelchair but still managed to achieve her dream of being a professional rugby player.
"Do you think that's possible, Loggie?" she mumbled tiredly.
"Anything's possible." he replied. "Sweet dreams, Charlie," he muttered, kissing her forehead.
She smiled. "You too." she whispered as Logan shut the bedroom door closed behind him.
Logan walked in his bedroom, and collapsed on his bed, groaning. Charlotte was right, he had to stop treating them like children.
But he was scared.
He was scared that he would fail them and that they would hate him. He couldn't handle that.
He stared at the ceiling and frowned. He had been stuck in the house for ages now, and he could see that he was not coping.
He knew what he had to do.
Quickly, he found where the closest stadium was and decided that tomorrow afternoon, he would go and check it out.
