*This story is based on characters I've created for a webcomic I'm creating*

The bell blares into my ears right through my headphones, Dad's text-tone fighting with it as my phone spazzes out on the table. The library is otherwise quiet, so to save myself the embarrassment of this loud noise interrupting the peaceful silence (like the dismissal bell didn't already do that), I snatch my phone off of the fake-wood table. As I expected, it's Dad. Did you drive to school this morning? Can you please take Sammi to the doctor? Her appointment is at 3. Does he have short term memory loss or something? Of course I drove us to school. He went to work early again after all.

I run my hands through my "forest mahogany hair" as Sammi likes to describe it. Mine and Dad's are "forest mahogany," her's is "sandy caramel," and Levi's is "midnight abyss." She always talks in that strange way that sounds like she's reading from a paint catalog at a Home Depot. Normally the way she speaks is entertaining and sometimes even interesting — I tend to use her descriptions and metaphors in my own works when I'm writing short stories for class — but today I'm not particularly in the mood for her Sammi-isms being that I saw her and Levi going up the stairs to the roof again. I'll bet twenty bucks that I'm going to call her and she's going to be in the main office.

"Liam Vallot, please come to the main office." Or...that. I guess that works too.

Every eye in the library that hasn't left yet has shot in my direction. I sigh and pack up my things as quickly as possible. As I rise from my seat and place my feet down on the cheap shag carpet, I push the left headphone off of my ear so I can hear my surroundings, but I leave my music on to suppress my thoughts. I just need to focus on Sammi for now.

I still don't understand why they call me to the office every time Sammi screws up or does something stupid. I'm not even an adult yet and it's not like she's six years younger than me or anything. We're only two years apart. I wish they'd just call Dad instead of me. Or, like, literally anybody else.

I feel people's eyes dig into every part of my head as I plod past them. I feel like Sammi gets me into more trouble than she gets herself into. I don't even need to look to know that every single kid around me is judging me severely. Yeah, I'm totally the reason Sammi is the way she is just because I'm her older brother. That qualifies me to be a guardian by default even though we're both still in high school. Sure, let's just ignore the law for a moment to make this seem feasible. Ridiculous. Ridiculous and aggravating. Aggravating and ridiculous.

I climb up the stairs and reach the main office. I can see her right through the narrow window. She and I make eye contact and she grins at me, giving me a nonchalant shrug. I groan and roll my eyes, hesitating to open the door. Damn her smug face. Damn her smug hood. Oh God, that black hoodie. I really hate that black hoodie. She always wears it, sometimes even to bed. I hardly ever see it come off. You'd swear that it's sewn onto her body. Levi gave her that stupid thing and I absolutely despise him for it. She uses it to ignore Dad and I, especially when she doesn't want to hear what we – well, I – have to say.

Finally, I enter. The air is suffocating in here, stamping out creativity, emotion, and sometimes all reason and logic, only leaving what the adults feel is the atmosphere that fosters learning despite the fact that it actually kills it. I feel like I've gotten in trouble even though I know that all I'm here to do is pick up Sammi. And guess who is sitting in there with her. Good ol' "Mr. Levi Rosethorn." Why Sammi added the "thorn" to the backend of his name I have no idea. Well, actually, I do know why: she thinks it suits him better than Rose, but it just seems so unnecessary.

I shouldn't be surprised that they're both here. I really shouldn't. It's not like they're ever apart anyways. They're attached to each other by the hip. Somehow, they've got almost all their classes together. I'm sure she sees it as a sign or something. She's delusional enough to think it's some kind of divine intervention. What are you saying? Relax. You're just annoyed with her is all. No need to be so crass. She's not even that religious.

Sammi notices me notice Levi and her face turns in on itself, frowning at me or at Levi — can't tell which one. But Levi maintains his everlasting confident grin. Arms crossed, perfect posture, head at the most assured angle ever. I wonder what he did to piss her off. He certainly looks like he just won an argument contrary to the way he looked earlier today. He normally looks so complacent, but today he just had this depressive aura around him. I know Sammi sensed it immediately because it's like a sixth sense for her. But the fact that even I was able to see it, feel it, is a bit worrying.

"What did you two do?" I ask as I shut the door, eyeing the two of them down into the ground.

"What do you think, Liam?" Levi replies with his classic, brazen yet demure voice as they both trip over one another in an attempt to get an edge. Eh, maybe I should worry about him less...

I groan, not wanting to validate Levi in any way. "Why do you two insist on cutting class and going up to the roof?"

"That's exactly what I was wondering," says Principal Fong as he enters from his office. His slicked-smooth black hair gives him an air of authority even though he's shorter than Sammi. "Miss. Vallot? Mr. Rose—"

"Don't you know us well enough to use our actual names, Kevin?" Christ, her impudence is nauseating.

"Ahem," Mr. Fong clears his throat and adjusts his tie to fit better around his neck, choosing to ignore Sammi in order to move things along. "Either of you care to explain why you did it again to your friend?"

"Explain what?"

"Pardon?"

"Liam already knows why." Sammi states definitively. All eyes are on me again. I hate being looked at like this.

"Since when? You hardly tell me anything." I lie. Sammi knows this before I even say it from my face alone and she frowns a few seconds before I finish. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I give her more reasons not to listen to me?

"Well until you two get it through your thick skulls that these repeated trips into faculty-only areas are prohibited, you will get two weeks' worth of detention every single time you do it."

Sammi shrugs again. Fong is just as frustrated with her as I am.

I turn back to Mr. Fong, deciding to ignore Sammi and Levi knowing that they'll only anger me more with their remiss faces.

"Does she have to stay today?"

"Yes, Mr. Vallot. Of course she does. They both do." he scratches his stubbly chin. I curse him, but what comes out of my mouth instead is,

"Can she just do double the time tomorrow?"

"Liam!!"

"She's not going to jail, dude."

"Worry about yourself, Levi." Sammi snaps back. Levi and I are thinking the same thing, because our reactions are identical. Out of all the people to say that, I wasn't expecting it to be her.

I shake off her response and pocket it so I can bring it up later. "Can it, Sammi, before I call you by your government name."

Sammi practically growls at me but doesn't say a single syllable. That always gets her. She knows that I'm not bluffing.

"Dad said you have a doctor's appointment." I inform her.

"I don't care," because she never does, "I don't want to stay after school for two hours. Levi won't even be there that second hour. Could you skip today with me?"

"Oh, now that you need me, you're going to act like you weren't pissed just a minute ago?" Levi asks calmly, "What happened to being angry with me?"

She averts her eyes and digs the heels of her hands into her thighs, cupping her knees with the rest of her hands. She attempts a comeback but nothing happens. It's clear she's deciding what to say, deciding what to do. Marbles made from metaphors are rolling around in the pinball machine that resides in her head. They all fall right to the bottom, missing the two arms that are supposed to flip them back, rebound them right into another wall again so they can try again. Yet, nothing but a contorted face reaches the outside world. A face laced with anxious confusion and the desire for some kind of comeuppance for the people she feels have wronged her.

I've seen this face before.

Last year, Dad decided to actually be a parent for once in his life and reprimanded her for her languidness. He told her that she shouldn't just expect things to go her way without doing anything. She shouldn't expect exciting things to happen just from "slothing around at home" as he put it.

It looks like she listened to him for once because this whole roof thing started about a week after Dad had said that. Well, that and the fact that she and Levi had just gotten really close too.

Fong steps back into the conversation, "Well, I suppose as long as she makes it up it's fine. But just this once since it's a doctor's appointment."

"Thanks, Mr. Fong." he nods at me. On his way out he passes me, says, "You're lucky I like you and your dad." and pats me on the back.

"Uh, right. C'mon, Sammi." She doesn't move. I swear, this girl, "Sammi!" I shout at her, completely at the end of my rope. A silence settles around the main office save for Levi's snickering. Sammi jumps up immediately and follows me out of the office like a disgraced puppy with its tail in between its legs.

Thank God that nobody is in the halls to see me toting around my puppy-of-a-sister. Much better than the time where she got suspended in the middle of the day and Dad couldn't get out of work so they made me drive her home and come back.

We get into the car and she refuses to look at me, but oddly enough,

"Liam," she speaks first. "What am I doing wrong?"

"Well, for one—"

She cuts me off, "No, I don't mean about the stupid roof thing. Levi told me — well, he told me that he told me since I didn't hear him the first time — that it's my fault his dad keeps incessantly squawking at him. His dad told him that I'm a "shitty influence" on him and that if Levi doesn't do something about it then he will."

I stare at her, but she still won't look at me. She's got her eyes locked onto a ladybug crawling across the windshield of my Jeep.

"All I wanted was something exciting to happen. Home and school get so boring and Levi fixes that for me faster than you can run around the bases." She pulls her hood off of her head and the hair that was tucked haphazardly into it falls tousled onto her back. "I can't have his dad take him away from me like that."

"So...what are you gonna do about it?"

"Me?! What about you?! You're his friend too! If I lose him, you do too!" She's not wrong. He can be annoying, but I've known him just as long as Sammi has. He's not someone I'd like to lose. "Help me out here a little would you? Come up with something!"

As usual, I can't think of something. Anything. I have no marbles. I have no pinball machine. Not like Sammi does. I take too long to answer her (not that I was going to) and she buckles her seatbelt in frustration.

"Typical," she crosses her arms in a huff, "You're just as useless as Dad."