LEO
My pen taps away on my blank piece of paper. I try desperately to get lost in a world of music in my head. Tuning out every disruption around me, I close my eyes and focus on my thoughts.
“Alone, craving someone’s company,” I mutter slowly.
Scribbling that one line on the piece of paper below me, I place my chin in my hand and search my brain for anything creative I could make into a lyric. Just as I start to form another rhythm in my head, Elijah bursts into my room. I try to ignore him. I need to save the thought in my mind before I forget it, but it’s no use. It vanishes as I obsess over not forgetting it.
Shit.
Dropping my head in frustration, I rub my tired eyes with the palms of my hands. Why did my own brother have to do me so dirty? I actually had something, something in my mind that I knew had potential. And now, it’s gone.
Fuck.
“You got a wedgie or something?” He snorts and plops down on my bed.
I hear Amelia scream from the hallway, “Elijah, don’t bother him!”
“Oops,” he says when she storms into the room with a frown, throwing her arms up in frustration.
I match her anger with my own. “What do we always do when Leonidas’s writing?”
Glancing at me fully for the first time, Elijah suddenly slaps a hand to his mouth and eyes the paper I’m holding. I clench my fist around the edges of the notebook.
“Shoot,” he mutters.
“Continue with your writing. I’ll just be lying here, pretending that I’m dead,” he rushes out while shutting his eyes. Making him look ridiculous.
Amelia turns to me with a hopeful expression on her face.
“It’s all gone.” I sigh, defeated. I search my brain for anything, anything that could hint at what I was getting at. Yet I come up blank.
“At least you have something,” Amelia says, looking over my shoulder and eyeing my paper.
“One brief line will not make a hit,” I mutter, frustrated at myself and my brother. “I finally got something, and that dipshit had to waltz in here like a monkey.”
“I like to be called more of a chimpan—”
“Elijah,” Amelia interrupts. “Please stop talking right now. Later, when we’re out of the lion’s den, you can talk all you want.”
Raising his pinkie in the air, he eyes our sister. “Promise?”
Hooking her pinkie around his bony one, she smiles down at him.
With a sigh, I eye my brother, who acts like a five-year-old rather than a nineteen-year-old.
“What’s up?” I throw the notebook in my hand to my desk and lean back in my chair as I face Amelia.
Biting her lip nervously, she sits on the edge of my bed, facing me. “Elijah was just coming in here to tell you we have a meeting tonight with Dad and the team.”
There goes my remotely good mood.
“You need to come this time, Leo.” Amelia inhales. “He’ll get pissed. Last time, I thought he was going to come down here himself and drag you to the meeting.”
I shrug my shoulders and let out a dry laugh at the thought of pissing off my dad. “Let him. See if I care.”
She stares me down. One thing that I’ve learned over the years is not to piss off Amelia. She’s scary when she doesn’t get what she wants. Yet when it comes to my dad, I try to do everything I can to avoid seeing his face, which resembles more of a rat than a human.
“The man that we call our dad is dead to me.” My voice comes out rougher than expected. “No one who uses me for money and success should get a hint of my time.” I scoff. “Like he’s even on our team. He just sits around on his ass and bosses us around.”
