Something touched Gabe’s leg and he reflexively twisted onto his back and kicked out, then nearly fell out of bed when the sound of a dog’s indignant yelp and the pain of his stitches scraping against the bedsheets hit him at the same time. He squinted his eyes open to see Trist standing near the end of the bed, leant over slightly towards his dog with one hand braced on the frame of the top bunk. He was watching Gabe with narrowed eyes.

He’d obviously just accidentally touched Gabe when trying to get his dog. And then Gabe had kicked the dog. Whoops. She didn’t actually look hurt, fortunately, just startled and confused. 

Trist raised his eyebrows in a way that felt like a challenge, then bent down and picked up his dog and carried her out of the room. 

Gabe let out a long, slow breath. Well, now Trist had an actual reason to hate him, so that was great. But… Trist hadn’t actually done anything beyond look annoyed. Adam probably would have lashed out reflexively just because he was angry and some of the guys at school who liked to harass Gabe would have leapt at any excuse to punish him, but Trist was at least coming at hating him from a different, and so far less violent, angle.

In an odd way, that gave it an entirely different kind of sting. When someone was cruel towards him, it was easy to hate them back, and then the fact that they hated him as well didn’t mean much. They were assholes. He didn’t want them to like him. He didn’t want them to hate him, either, but he wasn’t really offended that they had a problem with him.

But Trist… Gabe didn’t hate Trist. Not yet. He hadn’t really done anything that bad, so Gabe still wanted him to like him. And, okay, maybe part of that was because he was hot.

Gabe hadn’t eaten anything since he’d left the hospital yesterday, so he was starving, but first he desperately needed a shower. Things were getting a bit crusty around his stitches and his shirt had started sticking to his back in a way that made him shudder.

A bit of that stickiness was blood, an examination in the bathroom mirror revealed. His dramatic wake up hadn’t been great for the healing process. He hadn’t managed to actually tear anything open, though, so it was probably fine.

The welcome smell of cooking pancakes greeted Gabe as he headed out into the main living area. A girl a few years younger than him looked up from the stove and smiled at him in greeting. The large, round glasses she wore seemed to dominate not just her face, but her entire slight form. Her ginger hair had been done into two long plaits down the back of her head.

“Good morning,” she said, her words enunciated in a careful, exact way that gave Gabe the impression she was talking around a speech impediment.

“Hey.” Gabe sat down on one of the stools that lined the living room side of the kitchen counter. “I’m Gabe. I’m guessing Alice told you why I’m here?”

Though, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure Alice knew much about why he was really here. His dad must have told her something, but Gabe doubted much of it had been the truth.

She nodded. “I’m Bee. Would you like some pancakes?”

“Bee, I would love some pancakes.”

Bee hadn’t just made pancakes, she’d made an exotic assortment of pancakes. There was one with chocolate chips and one with blueberries and a plain one she topped with lemon juice and sugar for him.

“Uh… do you have any painkillers?” Gabe asked when she turned back to her cooking.

“Oh, sure,” she said as she redirected her path to a drawer to the side of the stove.

“Thanks,” he said. “I have a headache.”

Which, now he came to think of it, was actually true. He just hadn’t noticed until then because so many other parts of him hurt much more.

From her easy acceptance of his excuse, Gabe guessed she at least wasn’t aware of his whole back situation. She brought him a couple of aspirin and a glass of orange juice and then returned to cooking.

Gabe washed the painkillers down and then set about devouring a couple of the pancakes. He then folded his arm on the counter, rested his head on it, and slowly fed himself a third while Bee continued cooking.

“Good morning!” Gabe heard someone announce from behind him. He tried to roll his head around to see, but in the end he had to admit defeat and lift it.

Of the three people Gabe had met up until now, none of them had really looked alike. Bee was tiny and ginger haired, Trist was tall and had wavy brown hair, and Alice was short and heavy framed with straight hair so dark it was nearly black. Gabe didn’t know what their family situation was, if that was even what was going on at all, but this girl definitely resembled Alice. Also, she was wearing Winnie the Pooh pyjamas.

“Good morning,” Gabe said in return. “I’m Gabe and these pancakes are the only truly good thing in my life right now.”

She pulled out the stool next to him and sat down. “I’m Sophie and that’s sad.”

Gabe made a face. “Yeah. It was meant to be a joke, but I actually just said a true sad thing and it wasn’t very funny. Whoops.”

Gabe heard the front door open and turned his head to see Trist shut the door and then bend to let his dog off her leash.

“Sadie!” Sophie said in a high pitched voice, and the dog wiggled excitedly and ran over as fast as her very old body would allow. Trist followed much less enthusiastically. He seemed determined not to look at or in any way acknowledge Gabe.

Bee poked Trist in the arm with her spatula when he took a pancake and immediately shoved it in his mouth. “Just get a plate and sit down.”

Trist shook his head. “Nah. I gotta go now.”

Sophie looked up from feeding Sadie pieces of pancake. “I thought you didn’t have work today?”

“Other stuff,” Trist said, already heading back towards the front door.

“Other stuff,” Sophie echoed skeptically, but Trist had already exited the conversation. When the front door shut behind him, she turned to look at Gabe. “Okay, what was that?”

Gabe held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged. “How would I know? I don’t know him.”

“Yeah, and I do, and he’s not normally like that. Quiet, sure, but that was downright unfriendly. Did something happen between you two?”

“Uhh… I kicked his dog?”

“You what!?” Sophie shouted way too close to Gabe’s ears.

“Not intentionally!” Gabe clarified, leaning away from her because loud, and also kind of scary. “She was sleeping on the end of my bed, and I guess Trist touched me when he tried to get her and woke me up and I kicked out reflexively, and yeah. But he’s hated me since he first laid eyes on me, so I don’t think that has anything to do with it.”

“I think he might just be less comfortable around other guys,” Bee suggested, placing a pancake she’d drawn a smiley face on with chocolate sauce onto Gabe’s plate.

“Oh, hmm,” Sophie said. “Yeah, maybe. I mean we don’t exactly have many guys around, so I guess I wouldn’t know.”

“He lived with his dad and his brother and then he moved here because things went badly with them,” Bee said as she poured more pancake mix into the pan. “He might just feel less safe around guys because of that.”

“Yeah, it’s probably not personal,” Sophie agreed. “You seem pretty harmless.”

“Being non-threatening is my greatest skill and weakness,” Gabe said. “So, are all of you related somehow, or…”

“We’re cousins and Alice is our aunt,” Sophie said. “Well, that’s the short version, anyway. Alice is my aunt and the rest is more complicated.”

Bee turned away from the stove and leant back against the kitchen counter. “My dad is Alice’s brother, but he was adopted so I’m not related to them by blood. And then Trist is my cousin on my mother’s side, so he is related to me but not to Alice or Sophie.”

“But basically, cousins,” Sophie said.

Bee nodded. “Basically.”

“I’m not related to you guys, am I?” Gabe asked. If he was, it was going to make him sort of checking out Trist really awkward.

“Uh, no?” Sophie said.

“I didn’t think so,” Gabe said. “It just seems like the sort of thing my dad would completely forget to tell me and I don’t actually know how he knows Alice.”

“I think they were briefly housemates many years ago,” Sophie said.

“Oh. Cool.”

Great. It always gave Gabe such a nice feeling inside when he found out about another person his dad had made more of an effort to maintain a connection with than his own son.

“Anyway, we thought today since you’re still sick we’d just relax and watch some movies, maybe order some pizza for dinner,” Sophie said.

So she did have some idea that something was wrong with him. But… still sick. That didn’t sound like she knew he’d been physically injured. Maybe they were just being tactful, though. There were stitches on the back of his hand and in a few places on his arms and nobody had asked about them yet.

“We were actually going to do that anyway, but now we can pretend we’re being considerate instead of just lazy,” Bee added.

“It’s true. It’s how we spend most of our days.”


“Well, we don’t normally have pizza,” Bee corrected. “But Alice has a work dinner tonight, so we get a treat.”

“Yeah, she won’t be home until late,” Sophie said. “Which would be cool, except we like her and enjoy her company.”

“That’s the unfortunate thing about having a cool parental figure,” Bee said. “You don’t really enjoy their absence.”

“Pizza, though.”

“Mm,” Bee agreed. “I do enjoy pizza.”

Gabe definitely hadn’t enjoyed whenever Sally had been absent. Adam was always worse when he was completely unsupervised. Normally Gabe only had a couple of hours alone with him before Sally got home, but it was summer holidays right now, so it had been half of his waking hours. 

It hadn’t been fun. Things had gotten so bad he’d actually started missing the days when they were young enough to go to vacation care, and he’d hated vacation care. It wasn’t like other kids had ever been particularly nice to him, but at least they’d been limited by adult supervision. Unlike Adam, this summer.