She wanted to go home.

But there was still four minutes of class left. And then she had to wait for her brothers' P.E class to be finished at four thirty.

Brynn didn't mind the waitin thing though. It was nice.

Being outside in the crisp autumn air and reading a David Walliams' book was a feeling everyone should have at least once in their lifetime. At the same time, she also knew that she wasn't alone, her brothers were only on the field in front.

The bell ringing stopped those thoughts, dragging her out of them and into the French classroom, where people had already begun to pack up.

She followed what they were doing, half-listening to Mr Weater as he was talking about some homework that was due in next week.

Walking through the corridor and down to the bleachers was a challenge in itself. She'd finally got to the bleachers, slinging her bag on the third step up and sitting on the fourth; leaning back on the side rails.

Her brothers' class had already started laps and next they usually did two minutes planks. Brynn had an entire hour to read the same David Walliams' book she usually read. Bliss.

Brynn had found she liked re-reading books she knew the contents of. It gave a sense of familiarity, knowing what plot twists were coming up, if any and she wasn't nervous for what's ahead.

Besides, she could never get tired of re-reading a David Walliams' book.

She noticed that a few other people liked to wait on the bleachers too. They didn't wait for anyone in particular, just chilling there after school.

There was also a few younger students, doing homework or waiting for their parents to show up.

And then there was Sid sometimes. Only sometimes. But when he was there, he sat in the far corner from where Brynn usually sat. He always kept staring at the field, more specifically Zaiden. Sometimes he'd just stare at her for a while as well. It was weird.

She didn't like it. She didn't care how uncomfortable he made her, she cared that he kept staring at Zaiden. What was his deal?

She'd been trying to work it out for a while. She came to the conclusion of nothing.

Looking away from her book, she looked at the spot where he usually sat. He wasn't there.

Looking back down at her book, she traced her finger around the page to find the spot she was at. Found you.

Just as she started reading the first word, something tapped her back. She jolted forward, as one would when having something unexpectedly touch your back.

She turned around to look at what poked her through the rails. Nothing and nobody was there.

Leaning over the side rails slightly, she saw no one on the ground below. Ignoring it, she went back to finding the sentence on the page, leaning forward this time to avoid the rail poking into her back.

She jolted once again when something tapped her back. This time, she spun around faster but nothing was there.

She wasn't stupid enough to check it again.

Shuffling forward, she decided to avoid the rails at all costs. Now she sat halfway to the halfway point of the bleachers, where nobody was close so nobody could tap her.

It was probably someone messing with her. Wouldn't be the first time.

Dragging her finger along the page once again, determined to find the sentence she was on, she sighed. There you are.

Something poked her back again.

She whipped around so fast, her neck ached. Now she came to the face of Sid.

"There you are, I was looking for you," he smiled and reached into his pocket for something. She furrowed her eyebrows and awkwardly shuffled to the seat below, trying to get as far as possible from him.

He pulled out the item he was looking for, her favourite pen. It was only her favourite because of how good the ink was and how well it flowed on paper, and it seemed to never run out. How did he get ahold of it?

"Malcolm said you left it in French and was going to break it, but I got it from him for you," he propelled said pen into her face. She flinched back at the sudden action, him not paying any mind to it, just smiling and waiting for her to take the pen.

She reached forward to take it, trying to avoid touching his hand whilst doing so. It proved to be kind of hard, considering almost his entire hand was holding it.

Finally, she grasped it, having to lightly scrape his nail to do so. Inwardly shuddering, she looked down at her now not-favourite pen. Malcolm touched it, she'd have to burn it now.

"Thank you," she thanked him, because at least he got it back. She supposed that was kind of nice.

Sid smiled even wider, leaning back in his seat and looking towards the field. Brynn sighed in relief as he got further away. "It's no problem, my brother can be a twat sometimes."

She busied herself, shoving the pencil into her backpack. She hoped he'd leave any and all conversation alone at this point. She really wanted to finish this chapter.

"Go easy on 'im, yeah?" Sid started again, forcing his gaze away from the field. Brynn looked at him, unsure if he would continue or not. He did. "It's been a tough year, our mum's left our dad and moved to California with her new boyfriend. Malcolm's took it the hardest, 'specially with it only being his second year of high school."

Oh.

Brynn sat there in silence for a little while, trying to take the information in. Feeling a fair amount of remorse for them, she nodded at Sid. Losing a mother is awful.

He smiled again, sending uncomfortable shivers through her. "So you just waiting for your brothers then?"

She looked towards the field, where they were all doing different things. Zach was doing push-ups with his group, Zaiden was doing relays and Silas was talking to their teacher about something.

They don't want me talking to him.

She didn't want to talk to him. He really made her uncomfortable, if that wasn't already clear.

"We shouldn't really be speaking," she muttered, still looking at the field and aggressively picking at her right thumb hangnail.

She didn't need to see Sid's face to know it had dropped, she could tell it did by the tense air around us.

"What? Why?"

She gulped and tried to think of something to say. Something that wouldn't hurt his feelings.

"I just," she started, creasing her face a little, trying to think of a valid reason.

"My brothers don't really like you talking to me and, well, we're not really friends, are we? I'm sure you've got plenty in your own year."

Taking a chance to look at him, she saw that his jaw was clenched and his eyes seemed nothing short of mad.

"But we're friends, Brynn. You were gonna help me and Zaiden, rig-"

The coaches whistle blew, echoing across the field and to the bleachers. This was her chance to leave. She shot up and tugged the zipper on her backpack down to put the book in there.

"Sorry, I've got to go," she rushed out, flinging the bag over her shoulder. Sid didn't move or speak at all, giving her the chance to climb down the bleacher seats. She tried to go as fast as possible but had to stop occasionally when her foot slipped.

She wanted to get down fast, not embarrass herself.

Getting down, she looked back up to where Sid was, cringing when she saw him. He was now stood up, looking nothing short of pissed. His hands were clenched and his eyes were dead set on the girl.

Snapping out of his glaring, he walked along the seats to the side rails, jumping over them and falling the five foot drop. They weren't that far up. Brynn didn't see where he went after that, he just slinked off into the shadows.

Her phone buzzed, internally startling her. Getting it out, it was a message from Callan; smiling, she opened it.

Hey sweetheart, Zayne, Brayden and I have to go on a work thing tonight so we won't be home until Saturday morning at least. I won't bore you with the details, boring work stuff. I'm sorry I've got to message you this but I promise I'll call you later tonight x

BTW, tell Ezra that if he orders in food again, I'm going to castrate him x

I love you <3 x

Her smile dropped slightly. Saturday morning. I could do that, she thinks. Couldn't she? Besides she couldn't be dependent on having them around all of the time. It wouldn't be healthy, she needed to grow up a little.

She messaged him back.

That's fine, no worries at all. Good luck <3 x

I love you too. She typed it out but rapidly back-spaced. Never mind.

"Ready to go, love?" Zach's voice came from a few feet behind. Turning around, she saw him throwing his gym bag over his shoulder and chug down his water bottle. She smiled and nodded, "yeah."

---

Shoving the jumper over her head and leggings over her legs, she paused before sliding her socks on.

Her feet looked much better now. The redness had gone down and any scrapes had closed up enough to not need any more cream.

Maybe she should be a doctor like Brayden.

Still, even though they'd healed, they stung when she was on them. Slipping the thick fuzzy socks on, she trudged over to her bag and pulled out her French book, sighing/

What if she did her homework somewhere else today? The desk was getting too repetitive and boring.

The library? No, She'd just go to the David Walliams' section.

The cinema room? Stupid suggestion.

What about the living room? She'd hardly spent any time in there and it was probably one of the prettiest rooms in the house. Homely even.

And her brothers were hardly in there after school, so it was perfect.

Rooting through her backpack to find her pencil case, Brynn tried to avoid her now not-favourite one. Once she'd found her pencil case, she pulled out what she needed.

With her French book, a pen and a ruler in hand, she made her way to the door, going down the hallway and into the living room, which was, like she'd predicted, empty.

The corner of the L-shaped couch seemed like the perfect place, so she sat there, using a pillow as a substitute desk for her book. She started the work. Well, started was a strong word, she mainly just stared at the words for a while and tried to understand what they were asking her to do. She had to think real hard and somewhere along the lines of trying to do this work, Zach had come in.

He was still in his uniform, minus the blazer. His tie was looser, his shirt was un-tucked and he didn't say anything as he threw his backpack on the couch, dumped himself down next to it and rummaged through it for a textbook and a pencil.

He saw Brynn looking towards him and tapped the end of his pencil on the textbook with his eyebrows raised. She smiled and went back to her own work as he opened the textbook to start his.

The two remained in silence for about ten minutes, just doing their work. Well, he did, Brynn pretended to know what she was doing, not wanting to seem stupid in front of Zach.

Zaiden came in a little after fifteen minutes, his uniform exactly like Zach's.

He did the same thing Zach did. Throwing his bag, getting out a textbook and pen and working. Brynn became thoroughly confused because since when did her brothers do homework in the living room together? Is this what happens whilst she's doing it in her room?

Even Silas came in a few minutes later to do the same. He and Zaiden were sitting on the fluffy-white-rug covering floor.

Whilst Brynn was focusing on answering her question, a scrunched up piece of paper was thrown at her from Zach's direction. She looked up at him but he was looking down at his textbook.

Confused, she picked it up and unfolded it. In scrawly, pencil writing, it said, 'I have no idea what I'm doing.'

She silently chuckled and flipped the paper over to write her own message to throw back at him.

'Me neither.'

She scrunched it up and threw it back. It landed on his open textbook. He opened it, read the wrong side first, then flipped it over to read Brynn's message and chuckled to himself.

Then we went back to our own works, that was until Zach leaned closer to her and grasped her French book and pen.

She furrowed her eyebrows as he pulled it away from her and replaced it with his textbook and pencil. He brought her book to his lap and scanned over the work, effortlessly starting it with no issues.

She looked down at his. Poetry Language and Context. She could do this.

And Zach liked, and was good at, languages so he could do French. Brilliant.

Starting the work, she annotated everything she could. She thinks she spent nearly half an hour on it all until she was finished, which was when Ezra came in, in a casual white muscle t-shirt and black jeans with black socks. She didn't even know he was home.

"What're you all doing in here?" he asked. Silas, Zaiden and Zachs' attention were drawn to him and Zaiden rolled his eyes before going back to his work.

"Practicing our ballet, what the fuck does it look like Ezra?" he snarked, not bothering to see Ezra's reaction. Brynn's stomach dropped for him.

His comment looked like it had visibly registered through Ezra's mind and Ezra nodded silently. Going over the couch end where Zach was, he grabbed the pillow there and launched it straight at Zaiden with a force, which Brynn was sure, could potentially knock him out.

"Shit!" he cursed, the pillow smacking his face and knocking his work out of his hands. Silas was chuckling to himself and Zach started smirking.

"That's what you get for being a sarcastic little shit," Ezra justified his actions. Brynn, herself, sucked her lips in to keep quiet. It was kind of amusing.

"The force was a bit uncalled for," Zaiden grumbled, launching the pillow back at Ezra at the same speed as it was thrown at him, only Ezra caught it.

"The force was necessary, hopefully it's knocked some sense into you," Ezra stated nonchalantly, placing the pillow back in its original place.

Zaiden flipped him off, maintaining intense eye contact with Ezra as he did so. Ezra gave a hard stare which shook Brynn in her place, but Zaiden was insistent on keeping his middle finger up. He raised his eyebrows up mockingly, knowing he was annoying Ezra.

"Put the finger down, before I break it."

"Do it," Zaiden taunted, moving his finger to the left and then to the right with each syllable.

"I don't need to," Ezra said and looked at me, expressionlessly. "Brynn, what do you think about our brother's behaviour?"

For god's sake.

Brynn pointed Zach's pencil to herself, just to make sure that he was definitely talking to her. All four of them were looking at her now. She felt her face go red. What possible answer could she give?

In truth, she found it funny, but if she gave that as answer, it would not be appreciated by the fourth eldest brother.

She opened her mouth a few times to give an answer, only nothing came out. They were all waiting. Luckily, someone up above was on Brynn's side as a phone rang, filling in the tense silence around the room.

Ezra sighed, bringing out his phone from his back pocket and pressing the answer button. "What?" he growled, storming out the room.

Zaiden brought his finger down and turned to look at Brynn. His eyes held an unusual look which vanished when Silas threw a piece of paper at his face.

"Dumbass," Silas muttered, going back to his work.

"Shut up," Zaiden rolled his eyes and did the same.

"Both of you shut up, you're giving me a headache," Zach interjected.

"You're a walking headach-"

"I've got to go into the office at work," Ezra announced, coming back into the room shrugging on his black jacket. In his hand, he held two other items.

"How come?" Silas asked.

"No clue, Matt called me in to look at something," he answered, then looked at the youngest in the room, "Brynn, you're coming with me, come on."

She jumped straight up at the order, taking Zach's pencil and textbook with her. "What? Why does Brynn have to go with you?" Silas inquired, as she handed Zach his stuff, him winking and waving her now finished French work in between them.

Brynn mouthed a 'thank you' before getting closer to Ezra, although really not wanting to. She forgot how tall he was, particularly when upclose, it was intimidating.

"Because I said so. I don't trust you all alone with her, now come on," he patted her shoulder a little roughly, signalling for her to go ahead and out the door. "Silas, order something in for when we come back." She bit her tongue, remembering Callan's words.

Instead of saying anything though, she did as he signalled, him following closely behind. When they arrived at the garage door, she realised she didn't have any shoes on.

She didn't want to delay Ezra any further, it would annoy him. She could go without shoes for a while-

Ezra came in between her and the garage door, raising his brow and looking down at her feet. "Without shoes?"

Brynn rubbed her right foot over her left one nervously. Now she was embarrassed.

Ezra rolled his eyes and brought the previous items he had in his hand before up. They were a pair of her white trainers and a jacket. He placed them down on the floor so Brynn could slip them on. She did so, rather easily mumbling a thank you. Once they were on, he ordered, "turn around," which she did.

She felt him slip the jacket over her arms and shoulders. When she turned around, she inspected the jacket properly. It was black, and it came down mid-thigh.. The sleeves draped over her fingertips too.

"It was the only one I could find," he muttered, scratching his forehead.

"It's good, thank you," she tried to appease him. It was comfy.

"Hm," he hummed, kneeling down to fix the sleeves. He rolled each of them up two times, rather aggressively and stood back up, examining his work.

He looked straight at her face, then looked away to do the hand-scanner thingy for the garage door. "Come on, we've wasted enough time."

She trailed after him into the garage. He went to the key box and typed the pin in. When he retrieved the keys, he walked over to a car Brynn hadn't been in before. A black lamborghini.

The doors opened in a really cool way the second he unlocked the car. He walked to the drivers side before looking at Brynn over the hood of the car. She was still stood at the door entrance. Like an idiot.

"Brynn," he snapped, causing the girl to hurry along.

She got into the passenger side and strapped her seat belt. Ezra started clicking a bunch of buttons as the doors closed and the radio came on. It was turned down four notches and the car started.

On the road, he was silent and so was Brynn. For the duration of the journey, Brynn fiddled with the jacket sleeves and tapped her feet together a couple times. The radio playing in the background had calming, mellow music on, lowering the tension in the car a good amount.

Ezra, on the other hand, didn't seem to feel any of the tension she was feeling and if he did, he certainly didn't show it.

She felt the car come to an immediate stop, looking up she saw they were at Ezra's workplace. There was a man stood out the front of it, looking at Ezra's car.

The unfamiliar man looked straight at Ezra, then at Brynn, then back at Ezra again. Seemingly having a silent conversation with him, Ezra's fist tightened on the wheel.

He turned to me, "you stay here. I'm going to lock the car and if you need to get out you call me. To call me just use the touch screen. Or you can press this button to leave," he pointed at the black button next to my door handle. "But you only leave if it is the utmost emergency, got it? I mean it, Brynn. Utmost. Emergency."

Does going to the toilet count as one?

Oh. Too soon?

She nodded her head assuringly, "yes."

"Promise me, Brynn."

"I promise," she answered. She wasn't going to leave her spot.

"Good." He opened his door and got out. Brynn heard the faint click of the car locking before he jogged up to the man. They spoke as Ezra pulled the doors open and walked into the lit studio, where Brynn could faintly see people boxing. She sighed and slumped back into her seat. Now what?

She sat there, completely unsure of what she should do. Everything she could think of doing always ended up with her holding a book or her phone. She didn't even want to move in her seat at all because it felt expensive. The whole car felt expensive.

The alphabet game. She could play the alphabet game. Yes, she could do that. She'll go through the alphabet and she'll name things that she can see that will match each letter. Yes, that could be fun.

It was fun, sometimes hard too. She got to 'K' and ended up not finding anything. Deciding to skip it, she moved on to 'L'. Her attention was drawn to the car park entrance where a figure was stood behind the lamp-post next to it.

Lamp-post! she smiled triumphantly then faltered. A figure?

She furrowed her eyebrows and pushed herself into the seat further, still able to see them from the corner of the window.

The person came out from behind the lamp-post, now she could see the person fully. She couldn't give a description though, because they were in a clown suit. A red and black clown suit. What?

It just looked around the car park, at nothing in particular at all. Just roamed it's gaze around on each of the cars. She carefully looked to see if anyone was around but no one was. There were only nine cars, including Ezra's.

The clown was really starting to creep her out. The sky was entirely pitch black, the moon illuminated every car in sight yet it never outlined the clown itself. Like the moon was trying to avoid the clown. Scared of it almost.

The only thing that shone on the clown was the lamp-post it was under, and even that was slowly dimming. Flickering on and off, the light didn't give the clown an any less scary image.

Slowly reaching out a shaky hand to the car door handle, she gave it a mediocre tug, thankful when the door didn't budge.

Rapidly retracting her hand, she pushed back into the car seat and looked again towards the clown. It was still in the same spot and brought something from an axe from behind its back.

Oh my god. What was up with them?

Brynn flinched when they began walking, no, skipping, into the car park. The axe was swinging by their side, carelessly. They might have been on drugs or something with that amount of carelessness.

They got to the closest car, which was two parking spaces away and opposite from the lamp. Rising the axe, they tapped on the passenger window a few times. There was nobody in the car.

They tapped on it some more and then the tapping got more frantic. When they didn't get the response they so clearly wanted, they moved onto the back seats and then the driver's seat. Looking disappointed in the car, it moved onto the one next to it doing the exact same thing.

The clown got so mad at one point that they plunged the axe into the tyre. Brynn could hear the gas expelling from the once full tyre. It struggled getting the axe out, having to tug the axe really hard to remove it and once it did, it stumbled back a bit. Now the clown was done with that car, it was coming to the next closest car. The car that was parked right in front of the gym opposite him.

Ezra's car. The car Brynn was in.

The latter sucked in a harsh breath and brought her hand up to the car's touch screen. She clicked phone, then contacts, then Ezra.

Pausing to see how close the clown was, she froze. It couldn't have been more than three feet away.

Immediately pulling her hand back, she shot back into the seat and slouched as far down as she could go. The seat belt rubbed painfully against her chin and upper stomach, creating uncomfortable friction and she held her breath as it came closer, right up to the tinted windows. The windows were tinted from the outside, but if you really looked and focused in, you'd be able to faintly see inside the car.

She hoped that the person truly was high or on drugs, because if they were, focusing in would be an issue. She didn't think she was going to be lucky this time though.

The clown brought its left red-gloved-hand up and tapped on the glass three times. She let out a shaky breath, hoping it would leave and not see her. However as the seconds progressed on, she became aware that they had already seen her.

They tapped three times slowly. Then the tapping became louder and faster, still only coming in beats of three. The mask was looking down in the car, which she assumed was just what it naturally looked like. Though those assumptions went down the drain, when the clown crouched down to the bottom of the window gazing curiously.

It was definitely looking at her.

Stupidly, she stayed still hoping that maybe they would leave once again. Maybe they could think she was part of the seat or something. The black jacket and leggings would blend in perfectly with it; especially with the tinted windows. All she had to do was be quiet.

The car's phone started ringing.

Brynn's heart skipped a beat as the clown's gaze was now directed towards the flashing screen which read "Brayden".

It started to look around wildly, and then back down at the car. Rather quickly, it backed away and rose the axe in the girl's direction then spun around to run.

She sat up fully, seeing them fully leg it out of the car park and down the street.

The phone was still ringing, Brayden's name still flashing across the screen. Thank you, Brayden.

Gathering her breath, she pressed the green answer button. His voice immediately filled the car, "hey, bambina. You alright? Took you awhile to answer."

It took her awhile to form an answer, "uhm, yeah, I'm fine."

It was silent for eleven seconds before there was some shuffling, "Brynn?"

"Yes," she answered immediately.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked more firmly.

"I'm fine, Brayden," she did her best reassurance voice, "just waiting in the car for Ezra."

"Hm," he did not sound convinced.

"Where are you?" he changed the topic, so she didn't have to. "At Ezra's gym, he had some work to do," she answered, then proceeded to talk more.

"He was going to leave me at home, but he said he didn't trust me alone at home which I suppose was fair. And he and Zaiden had a funny argument, well I suppose it wasn't funny to them but it was kind of funny to me. Then Ezra gave me this jacket to wear to go out and the sleeves were absolutely humongous but I'm not complaining because that was nice of him. And then he took us to his cool lamborghini which is so cool and now I'm talking to you." Shut up.

She pursed her lips to stop anymore words escaping. What the hell was wrong with her? He only asked where she was.

She cringed at the silence on his end of the call. That was, until there was some shuffling and his deep chuckle came out the speakers. "Well that sounds interesting, what else happened today, hun?" He wanted to know more?

"Erm," she started started looking down and playing with her hands on her lap, "nothing much. School was the same as usual."

That's how you answer someone correctly.

He was silent and spoke again, "come on. Where's my Brynn answer?"

Brynn answer?

Another voice from the background of Brayden's side came into the speaker, "what? Brynn? Let me speak to her."

Some loud noises came from the other end of the call before Brayden muttered, "no. Fuck off, Callan."

"Did you just swear?" she asked which got her a few seconds of silence.

"No."

"But I just heard-"

"It must've been the plane engines, messing up my words," he excused which made Brynn's lips quirk up. She didn't dwell on the excuse for too long, more interested in the fact that they were on a plane. What kind of business trip required travelling by plane?

"Brynn, Callan's pestering me for the phone, I'll give you to him and then we'll finish this conversation about how I would never swear and it's not a nice thing to do."

She smiled at the screen, even though he couldn't see her. Not long after he spoke, shuffling came again and Callan's voice sounded throughout the car.

"Hey, sweetheart, how are you?"

She looked up at the gym, to see Ezra now walking out. He had a large wad of papers under one arm and closing the door properly with the other.

Tuning back to Callan on call, she felt something inside her that she hadn't felt in, well, forever.

"I'm brilliant."

---

<3