One night, after he had been wasting time on his laptop while the sun bled into the landscape outside and sunk into darkness, he realized he hadn't seen Jem in three days.
The thought made him look up from the screen and take PM his hands off the keyboard to grope for his phone. That couldn't be right. Three days?
But looking back, it was true - he had worked two of those three days, moderate shifts, and had come home to an empty house. There was no music blaring from her room and no customary slamming of doors that announced her presence. Hello, I'm here, now leave me alone.
The day between those two he had free, and flipping through the events - fake breakfast, some telly, a walk, a community meeting, few pages of a book read - he hadn't seen her, and she wasn't home tonight.
His phone read 6:29 PM. Where was she? His initial reaction was panic. His parents must have noticed - they were out at a movie tonight, one of their rare allowances for romance. He fumbled with his phone for a moment and then decided to text her.
Hey, haven't seen you in a few days. Where are you? You've been home, right?
He set the phone against his thigh and slowly resumed browsing, although his eyes flickered over to check it more than he'd like to admit, two white spheres under the glare of his laptop screen. No response. Twenty minutes, no response.
She had been very quiet last time he had seen her, which wasn't unduly strange. She had her moods. Her hair was a new rich brown, which he liked on her just as much as the red, and his parents breathed a sigh of relief as they watched her tone her clothing down. She was entering college in a few months and seemed to be readying herself for it. But why wasn't she home?
Maybe she moved out all of a sudden, he thought. Did she have savings? That'd be fantastic for her, but she couldn't afford anywhere in Roarton just yet. Kieren momentarily envisioned a small apartment with her band posters in the kitchen and the bedroom, she had tea on and a cute rug in the livingroom, curled up with her hair in a ponytail, sitting on the couch for some telly.. but she wasn't there, and she wasn't home.
It had been three weeks since the night of the last anti-PDS violence warning. There had been a squabble in the papers a few days ago about how there was some sort of uprising against the injustice by some PDS extremist group, but aside from that, everything in Roarton seemed to be calm water. So where was his little sister?
As if summoned, there were heavy bootsteps on the front porch and Kieren sat straight up and lowered his laptop screen a little. His phone hadn't buzzed. There was Jem's massive beast of a keychain clinking against the door before the lock cleaved to its form and the door swung open with too much force.
"Jem," he breathed, looking at the figure who was pulling her keys out of the lock and kicking her boots off at the door. "I texted you. Where've you been?"
"Out," she said simply, and threw her keys onto the counter. Everything she was doing seemed overdone, he noticed, with a sinking feeling - she was upset and covering it up like she did, which meant slamming everything and talking about nothing. She granted him the merest glance and he immediately caught the flinch when she saw him sitting plain-faced on the couch, partially in darkness. His pale face was outlined by a lamp in the far corner and the harsh light of his laptop screen and he looked scared, watching her stomp around the kitchen, looking for a snack.
"You haven't been home in days, I don't think," he said. No response, but she seemed to have found some pretzels. "I missed you," he tried.
"Mhmm," she mumbled, grabbing the peanut butter off the shelf and turning off the kitchen light. He sat, twisted on the couch while she darted past him like he might strike out and grab her as she went by, and the conversation ended with her customary door-slam.
What the hell was that?
Kieren turned back to his laptop and rubbed his eyes, above the patch where the skin had been ripped in a fight a few months prior. School wasn't working out well for him, and now this? This.. one-sided familial upheaval? Oh, there goes the music. Wailing guitars. She's probably laying on her bed, eating, texting.
He had a sudden distaste for sitting around on the internet and shoved his laptop off his lap. It was time for a breather. The night was cool - he couldn't feel it, but he could tell by people's dress and the harshness of the wind, so he layered appropriately, hoodie on, and stepped out of the house.
Maybe she'd want to talk later.
In the weeks that followed, Jem seemed to curl into herself like a dead spider, bringing all of her tighter and tighter to herself, further and further away from her family. With everything she cared about bunched tight behind a tired face and a rude mouth, she wore her parents out. More than one dinner was spent in silence. Kieren stopped fake-eating and sometimes bothered not to come to dinner at all, leaving his mother, father, and Jem to sit around the table, scraping forks against plates, avoiding each other's eyes, all breathing together and saying nothing.
He had no idea she was up till 3 every night cause she refused to sleep, and she had been faking friendliness towards Kieren for ages. He completely missed her shaky hands. Call it bad timing or blindness, but the more she drew away, the more he let go of her. Looking at him was like looking at a crystaline fragment of a nightmare : a thing become real, glistening with white eyes, moving and living in her house, something that slept in the room next to hers. It didn't eat, didn't breathe, and it always wanted to talk to her.
So she didn't sleep. And she held her gun. She held her gun a lot.