All of Us and You

[intheheart]

Title: All of Us and You
Rating: PG
Summary: Brendan knows this won't last.
Warnings: emotional scarring from the foster system
Notes: none


A twig snapped outside and Brendan went on high alert, fingers white-knuckled on his dad's Swiss Army knife. He tensed, ready to jump forward, and then Ahava said, "Settle down, kid, it's just me," before pushing the bush aside and looking at him, solemnly.

Brendan scowled, and flipped the knife shut. "What are you doing here."

"Looking for you, duh," she said. "Can I sit down?"

"No," he said, but she sat anyway, which was Ahava for you.

"So," she said, shifting until she sat cross-legged on the carpet of old leaves and dirt that covered the floor of the little, hidden cave. "You want to tell me why you ran away?"

"No," Brendan said again. "Go away."

Ahava just gave him a look. "What kind of sister would I be if I did that?"

A good one, he thought, but what he actually said was, "You're not my sister."

"Yeah, I am," she said. "You might not really believe it yet, but I am."

Whatever, she totally wasn't. Brendan flicked the long blade open again and stared at it for a minute. His father'd had his name engraved on it when he first got the knife—Adam Bishop Calvey, his wife Sofia, and his sons, Brendan and Kyle. No daughters. No Ahava. Just Brendan and Kyle, the only Calveys left, and now they were supposed to become Jacksons? That was stupid.

Besides, it wasn't like it was going to last. Kyle thought it was, but he was only four, and he was getting his hopes up anyway, no matter how hard Brendan tried to persuade him that he knew better. The Jacksons were going to get rid of them like every other stupid foster family that they'd stayed with. Nobody else wanted them, so how could these people? Anyway, they already had three kids, what did they want with two more?

It was really kind of mean for Ahava to call herself his sister, when she probably knew all of that.

"Whatever," Brendan said, finally. "What do you want?"

She looked at him, brown eyes steady. "It's dinnertime soon. Mom and Dad are really worried. You should come back and eat even if you don't want to talk."

Brendan dropped his hand and started digging at the dirt with his knife. "They don't want me," he said, flatly, and when Ahava opened her mouth, he cut her off. "How did you find me, anyway?"

"Everybody knows about this cave," Ahava said. "I used to run off here when I got in trouble, too." She reached up and patted the rock ceiling, not more than six inches above her head. "I'm almost too big for it now, I guess."

"You are," he said. "You should leave."

She grinned at him. "Not likely, but nice try." She leaned back against the rock, wiggled her shoulders for a moment, then folded her hands in her lap. "So, spill. Why'd you run off? Mad at Dad? He can really be pigheaded sometimes, I'm not surprised."

"No," Brendan muttered, almost against his will. "Mom."

Ahava tilted her head. "Really, Mom? What'd you do?"

"What did I do?" he snapped. "It's what she did. I was watching TV and she just turned it off and yelled at me! What's wrong with TV?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. Did you do your homework?"

He scowled, and started chipping at the dirt again. He had a nice little hole by now. "No, what's the point?"

"You got to turn it in at school tomorrow," Ahava said. "Pretty big point. Unless you want to flunk second grade. Which is okay, I mean, if that's really your thing, but you can't just skip out on homework, you gotta commit."

He did not want to flunk second grade, but how could she possibly understand? Ahava had been adopted when she was a baby, little and cute and all theirs. It didn't matter if he did his homework or not, because in another couple of weeks he and Kyle would be off to another stupid foster family in another stupid town, and he'd never see this teacher or this grade again. He pulled his knees up to his chest and stared at the wall, refusing to answer.

"Okay," she said, after a minute. "You can sit there and sulk if you want, but I'd come home and eat dinner. It's tacos. Plus Mom and Dad will be so glad to see you you probably won't even get punished for skipping homework."

"They're not worried," Brendan mumbled.

She looked at him for a moment, eyebrows arched in surprise. "They are, actually. I think Dad was gonna call the police if you weren't home by dinner. You know you're like, actually adopted, right?"

That was such a weird change of subject that Brendan actually looked at her. "What?"

"You're adopted," she said. "For real. They can't send you back adopted. Not that they want to, even when you're weird."

He ignored the second part and focused on the first. "Bullshit."

Ahava wrinkled her nose at him. "You're seven. How come you know that word?"

"Bullshit," he said, again. "They're going to send us back. Everybody does."

"Not Mom and Dad," she said, with certainty. "I don't know what they told you, but before you came and lived with us, they were telling me and Tim and Miri that we were going to have two new forever brothers, and that it was going to be awesome. Miri was pissed," she added, "because now the boys outnumber the girls. But that's okay, because Mom said the next one's going to be a girl."

"Well, it's not us," Brendan said, but he felt less certain of that now. Ahava just seemed so... sure, absolutely positive that this was true. And yeah, she'd probably just misheard it, but... "You're sure?"

"Completely one hundred percent," Ahava said, with absolute authority. "Look, come home, ask Mom and Dad that, and I guarantee that not only will they tell you it's for real, but that they will show you your adoption papers so you can be completely sure. And also, it will definitely get you out of trouble." She gave him a thumbs up. "Play that card for all it's worth, brother, because after a year or so it doesn't work anymore."

Whatever she meant by that. But it wasn't important. Brendan lifted his knife and looked at the blade for a moment, rubbing dirt off the engraving of his father's name.

Maybe. Maybe.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Fine. Whatever. I'll come back."

"Good," Ahava said, and crawled far enough out of the cave that she could stand to dust the dirt off her pants. "Hurry up, or Dad really will call the police and then you'll be in trouble again."

They were probably going to send him and Kyle back. Really, they shouldn't get too comfortable.

He could ask, anyway.

And there were tacos.

Brendan crawled out of the cave, and followed his sister home.