First Person: Gina

Even though the bedroom door was closed, I could hear my housemates’ conversation. It grated on my nerves, my ears aching with each syllable. I had to kill them all. Or drink their coffee.

“Did you like it?” Jenna, so hopeful. I groaned.

“Not at all.” Thomas, so insensitive. Or dense - he probably didn’t know Jenna had been fretting over whether he’d like his birthday party for nearly a month.

“Really? I thought it was at least halfway decent.” And Matthew, too lighthearted for his own good, and naive enough to think he could hide from me, his own sister, the fact that he was in love with my best friend.

“Halfway decent? That’s not really flattering,” Jenna said.

I winced. I knew that tone - hurt.

Matthew was just as dense as Thomas. “Were you asking for flattery? Because last night you insisted on a whole lot of honesty --”

“I wasn’t talking about last night, and you know it!” That sounded better. Amused.

Thomas wouldn’t be amused, though. I heaved myself out of bed, dragged on my bathrobe, and stumbled into the kitchen. Being so suddenly upright upset my equilibrium, and I felt the urge to puke.

“Now, now, children,” Thomas said, paternal and condescending. Time to defuse a bomb.

“Don’t even start with the children. Please. Not this morning. I never want to see another human being under the age of fourteen for the rest of my life.” I made more of it than it was, being hung over. I rested my head in my arms and wished I’d stayed in bed.

Thomas’s riposte was unsympathetic. “Don’t you teach first grade?”

Matthew prodded me in the shoulder. “A little hung over, are we?” His voice was light, teasing.

I opened an eye and glared at him. I was the older one and the better fighter by far. “Not so hung over I can’t pound you into the ground.”

“I’d like to see that.” Matthew puffed out his chest, but darted a glance at Jenna. He was grandstanding to keep her cheered up.

I glared again and closed my eye. I needed sleep.

Matthew’s tactic worked, at least, for Jenna sounded cheerful when she said, “So would I.”

(369 words)