Phoenix Simpson

Chapter 7

As soon as I walked inside, I knew we had a visitor. Blinking once, hard, I headed to the kitchen to see who was round.

Maisie was sat at the dining table as if she lived here with us, and the sight made me think back to Coral in the beginning, except Coral had been meek and Maisie was not so shy. She was leaning back in her chair, a baggy patchwork looking t-shirt hung off her frame, probably something she'd stitched herself by the look of it. I could just make out the same style of baggy trousers she was wearing, this time green and tie-dyed. She could have told me she was a street urchin, and I would have believed her.

"Hey, Phoenix," Coral looked up and saw me standing in the doorway.

I nodded in response, my eyes moving straight back to Maisie.

"Hi," she smiled and waved, then pointed at me. "Must be maftin' out there!"

I frowned at her.

"Maftin'?" Coral repeated.

"Oh," Maisie smiled as she realised we didn't understand her Northern slang. "Maftin' means really hot."

It wasn't that hot, but I wasn't in the mood to explain that I'd been running. It was quite obvious.

It seemed to be a full house on first glance. Only a few of the boys weren't present. Along with Maisie and Coral, were Gomez, Giovanni, Walter and even Eli. I arched a brow at seeing Eli out of his room, but by the scowl on his face, he was only after food and not looking to be roped into the conversation the girls were mostly having.

"Where's Severn?" I asked Gio and Gomez.

"Asleep," they answered.

Walter was rifling through the fridge, his back turned to us as he looked for God knows what. Eli was clearly waiting to get a chance to find something to eat too, huffing and puffing as he stood there, arms folded across his chest. Just as Walter finally pulled back from the fridge with a punnet of green grapes in his hand, Maisie hopped to her feet and made a beeline for him. She hadn't stopped talking the whole time either. There was a constant drone in the room, and it was coming from just her.

"I don't know what you're saying," Walter said blankly as he looked down at her.

"Walter!" Coral looked at him, appalled.

It only made him crack a smile in response before he fixed his attention back to the teen in front of him.

"I was saying," Maisie slowed down and spoke with more emphasis. "Can I have some of your grapes?"

"I like the way you say 'graaapes'," Gomez grinned, mimicking her accent.

"Where in the North are you from anyway?" Giovanni asked her, smiling as he watched her pluck grapes from Walter's tray in his hand.

"It's funny how you Southerners say 'The North' as if it's one big entity. There's actually loads of places up there," she said through a mouthful of green mush.

"Well, we've never been up North, sooo..." Gomez trailed off with a smirk.

"You also didn't answer the question," Gio reminded her.

Maisie rolled her eyes and went to sit back down again when Walter pulled his grapes away – signifying he wouldn't be sharing anymore.

"I'm from Leeds, which is in Yorkshire, which is in the North," she said.

"And how come you're all the way down here in Dover?" Gomez asked a question that I was wondering myself. "This is like, as South as you can get."

She shrugged, "My family moved a couple years back. My dad got a job here."

"And where are your parents again?" Walter asked as he drew back a chair to sit himself down.

"Holiday," Maisie answered. "I'm home alone, okay? You're such a full house, I thought I'd visit you guys."

"So, what you really mean is that you're scared of being home alone?" Gomez cocked a brow at her.

"Not what I said," she grinned back.

She seemed to notice Eli then, who was shutting the fridge with a block of cheese in his hand and a loaf of bread on the side.

"I don't think we've properly introduced ourselves," her brows pulled together and then Maisie started to smile. "The bathroom incident doesn't count. What's your name?"

"None of your business," Eli replied bluntly.

Maisie frowned sharply, though more in confusion than offence.

"I see you're a mardy one," she commented.

"Mardy?" Eli turned back to glare at her.

"Moody, sulking, pathetic?" she was fighting a smile now.

Eli's face darkened and even I was surprised by how well she seemed to take it. She was either hard-headed, or plain oblivious.

"So, 'mardy'?" Gomez repeated. "That's Yorkshire slang?"

"Pretty much," she nodded. "I tone it down for you lot though. In fact, since moving here, I've lost about ninety percent of my slang."

Gomez just couldn't stop himself from trying to mimic her accent and Maisie smiled.

"You sound like you're more from Lancaster than Yorkshire with that accent," she said to him.

"What's the difference?" Gomez shrugged.

Maisie then proceeded to give us a run down of as many Northern accents in and around Yorkshire as she could. By the time she was finished, we were all looking at her silently.

"I mean..." Gio started. "They all sounded the same to me."

That made Gomez, Coral and Walter burst out laughing and agree with him, which only made Maisie laugh too. Eli may not have been laughing, but he was eating his sandwich in the kitchen. That was a change. He usually took his food up to his room. And that was the only reason I didn't tell Maisie to leave, because Eli was out of his room and staying out of his room. He may not have liked her much, but at least Maisie had his attention long enough to not shut himself away.

At some point, a rather large spider somehow found itself scuttling across the dining table and Giovanni, of course, was the first one to scream about it.

This caused Maisie to jump (as she probably wasn't used to the amount of noise the triplets could make) and she rounded her green eyes when she saw the spider on the table. I was expecting her to start screaming too, but instead she smiled and leaned closer.

"It's so cute –" her sentence was cut off when Walter slammed a hand down on the arachnid, crumpling it under his palm.

"That is disgusting, Walter," Gomez looked at him.

"With your bare hand as well?" Eli commented, his tone just as grossed out.

"It was asking for it," Walter only muttered, having finished eating all his grapes by now.

Our attention was promptly drawn to the sniffing that I realised was coming from the room. My eyes glanced over the faces around the kitchen and landed on Maisie whose bottom lip was wobbling as her eyes turned glassy.

"Why are you crying?" Walter frowned at her as if he didn't know what the water coming from her eyes was.

I honestly felt the same way.

Maisie sniffed, pawing at her eyes with the backs of her hands. Even Eli was giving her a look as she took a shuddery breath.

"Why did you kill it? You could ha-have taken it outside," she hiccupped. "Don't you find that so sad?"

"Not really," Walter said, making my brothers murmur in assent.

Only Coral seemed to understand Maisie, "Leave her alone, she just has a heart!"

"More like she cries too easily," Gio said with a massive grin on his face. "It was just a spider."

"Yeah. Not as if I killed a kitten," Walter nodded, seeming less amused.

"Just sweep it away, Walter!" Coral instructed as she cuddled Maisie's shoulders.

Walter rolled his eyes sky high, but he did as she said, brushing the spider into the palm of his hand before moving to toss it in the bin.

Having had enough, I drew away from the kitchen doorway and went upstairs. I could feel how much I'd pushed myself during my run from the way my legs felt so heavy to lift. I'd finally managed to burn off all those pent-up feelings, and a shower was well needed. Like most things, my en-suite bathroom was smaller than the one in the old house, but I was glad I still had my own space. Sharing with the others would have been added drama. For one, the number of times Giovanni took a shit per day was disgusting. Whenever someone had taken a spectacularly awful dump, we always blamed him.

Shutting my bedroom door behind me, I stripped out of my sweaty clothes and dropped them into my laundry basket. Opening the door that led to my bathroom, I turned the shower on and waited for it to heat up. Leaning against the wall, I looked at myself in the mirror. Tall, strong, handsome. Unbeatable. I had no cracks, no flaws, no weaknesses. Unless you counted family, but I didn't. My family was one of my strengths.

Once steam started to curl its way out of the shower, I stepped in and washed myself with the grapefruit shower gel Coral had picked up. When I'd asked her why grapefruit, she'd just said she'd liked the colour of it. The colour wasn't my thing. It was a mix between pink and orange, but at least it smelled nice.

After showering and washing my hair, I dried myself off and went to lay on my bed. Even after my run, and after the drama in the kitchen, I couldn't stop thinking about jail. About Eddie. About all of it. I let out a breath and looked up at the plain ceiling. My hand bypassed the other marks on my body, the bullet wounds, the old stab wounds. Instead, I touched the six-inch long scar on my side. It was all Jazz's fault for reminding me of all this. I still had his card in my wallet, but like hell was I going to him for help.