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Grian was so excited to be a big brother.
Joel was annoying and Grian was too young to remember him being born, so he didn’t count.
But this new one? He could be a great older brother for this one. He just knew it.
+++
Grian came upstairs, tired and wanting nothing more in the world than a few minutes of sleep before he was inevitably tasked with something else. He found a jumper left on the bedroom floor and picked it up, pulling it over his head to keep him warm for his nap since the blankets weren’t great at the task. He sat on the bottom bunk he often now shared with Timmy (who was meant to stay on the top bunk) with a huff and laid down. He’d almost shut his eyes when he heard a giggle come from somewhere beneath him. Grian sat up and scooted to the edge of his bed only to hear it again.
“Hey Pearlie-Pop.” Grian leaned over the end of the bed and pulled the blanket up so he could see underneath, head hanging upside-down and slowly filling with blood as he grinned down at his little sister, “What ’ya doing?”
“Teddy bear picnic.” Pearl said, thumb hanging out of her mouth. The six-year-old smiled around it, showing off her crooked milk teeth, “Wan’ join?”
Grian looked around at where Pearl had dragged an old teacup set they’d found at a car boot sale alongside some random stuffed toys they’d acquired over the years. The nice old lady selling the cups had given them to the kids for free when she realised they were sent there alone. Grian gasped dramatically, rolling over himself to fall to the floor in front of her with as dull a thud as he could, “Of course I would!”
Grian crawled under the bed, bumping his back into the frame quite a lot since the space was very much not meant to fit even the scrawny ten-year-old. The clattering of the plastic teacups was thankfully quiet, especially when insulated by the blankets hanging around them. Better yet, the sounds thundering on outside of their little cocoon made little impact on them as well. The only place unprotected was the cool wooden floorboards underneath them that shook every few minutes, though Grian felt they were both distracted enough that it didn’t ruin the fantasy that everything was quiet, just for a moment.
In fact, Grian was so caught up in this other world for a moment that he hissed loudly when Pearl suddenly poked his arm where it was sore.
“Why?” Her little voice rang out beneath the bed as stubby fingers pointed at where she’d poked, “It red.”
“Yeah, it is.” Grian confirmed, saddened but at least able to find happiness in Pearl’s correct assessment. She’d been behind her peers recently in the talking department, so any indication she knew the colours was a good thing, no matter how she figured it out. He took the edge of his jumper and wiped the area, as well as Pearl’s hand as best as he could, “It’s okay though.”
“It okay toe.” Pearl said, satisfied with that answer and returning to her teddy bears. Grian smiled at the mimicry before being distracted by the state of Pearl’s hair.
It was all knotted into a plait he’d done a few days before which had never been taken out. Grian patted his lap and, even in the confined space, Pearl managed to crawl up into it, back to her brother so she could continue playing as he untangled the hair from the bobble wrapped tightly around the end. He got it out mostly unscathed, though a worrying number of stray hairs still came out with its removal. He ran his fingers through the braid to let Pearl’s hair fall around her shoulders once more before he tentatively reached for a hairbrush he remembered seeing just outside the bed covers. His hand slipped under the blanket and grasped it, pulling it into their den so he could work out all the knots in his sister’s mess of hair.
She sat pretty still considering how painful the drag of the hairbrush must’ve been as it pulled on her head, and Grian thanked the wonders of teacups and teddy bears on the little girl’s brain for it all.
When the hair was as good as he was ever going to get it, Grian re-plaited it and tied it off with the same bobble, letting Pearl stay where she was for a moment as he placed his head onto hers fully intending to fall asleep.
His plans were inevitably interrupted when, even through the impenetrable sound barrier that was his thin blanket, he heard the distinct sound of Jimmy crying somewhere distantly in the house.
“Grian. Come get the little prick before he starts crying for real.” He heard shouted up the stairs. Grian quickly shuffled Pearl off of his lap and skidded down the landing.
+++
“How’d your test go?” Grian asked, bumping shoulders with his sister as they walked down the street. She’d finally moved up to “Big School” with Grian and Joel and was thriving under the academic attention.
“Okay.” Pearl shrugged, though by the slight bounce in her step, Grian was assured she’d aced it and didn’t want to brag, “Miss Moon says I should make buildings when I grow up. ‘Cos I like maths so much.”
“Did she now?” Grian asked, letting his proud older brother voice show, “Look at you, Little Miss Future Architect. Promise you’ll build me a really big house for being the bestest older brother in the world?”
“Bestest isn’t a word, Grian.” Pearl said, bumping Grian back harder than he had done to her.
“Oh and you’re a linguist too. I didn’t realise the Slayers had a genius in the family.” Grian said, drawing a laugh out of Pearl.
“What’re you two laughing about?” Both siblings shot up ramrod straight at their father’s voice, not realising he was stood outside of their house. They relied on their parents’ schedule and patterns of behaviour, and were almost always scared out of their skin when they deviated from it. Normally, it forbode something awful. Their parents only ever went out of their way to interact with the children when something awful had happened, or was about to happen.
“It was nothing, sorry Dad.” Pearl said, much braver than was Grian already.
“You, upstairs. Stay up there until I tell you to come down.” Their father responded, and Pearl scurried past, looking back briefly to send an apologetic look to Grian, who didn’t react, only looking back at their father, “Your brother skipped school again. Went out robbing. Now, I don’t give a shit what he was doing, but the little bastard got caught, and I had to sort him out.”
Grian nodded like a volt had been sent through him.
“You’re gonna clean up the mess, alright?” His father continued and gestured for Grian to go inside. When the boy went to find Joel and fix whatever his father had broken, the man thwacked him on the back of the head as he passed, “That’s for raising such a disappointment.”
Then he his Grian on the other side of his head.
“And that’s for being one too.”
+++
Pearl woke up from a nightmare one night, eyes hurting from where she’d been screwing them shut in her sleep.
She immediately turned to her big brother’s bed for comfort, delicately stepping on the floorboards she knew didn’t make a sound between her bed and his. When she got there, even in the dark, she could tell the only shape asleep under the blankets was too small to be Grian. Jimmy laid there alone, cuddled up around a teddy bear Grian had bought for him.
She stood there puzzled for a long second. Grian never got up at night. He was grown up and didn’t get nightmares, and he never went to the toilet because Mum and Dad didn’t like it when they left their room while they were asleep.
“Pearl.” She jumped slightly at the shouted whisper and turned to see Joel leaning down from his top bunk. She relaxed slightly in the knowledge it was him, and not their parents who had caught her awake, but still remained on high alert due to their missing brother, “What the hell are you doing? Go back to sleep.”
Joel blew out a frustrated sigh and turned around to face the wall. Pearl could see the light of his secret phone he thought none of them knew about, but she didn’t mention it, “Grian isn’t here.”
The light disappeared and Joel turned back around, looking beyond Pearl to the mostly empty bottom bunk on the other side of the room, and then to the top one in the meagre hope Grian had simply moved there to avoid Jimmy’s incessant clinginess. When he saw that bed was empty as well, panic set in.
Joel quietly slid from his bed, using Pearl’s mattress as a ladder rung on his way down to the floor. He stopped halfway though, captured by his view out of the window. Pearl climbed to the same position, holding on to the bars around Joel’s bed, and stepping on her own.
On the street outside, they watched as a small figure walked down the street away from their house, backpack clung tightly in his hands as they warded off anyone who might want to steal the beaten-up old thing. His hood was up, and his posture low, but both siblings left awake in the room knew it was Grian.
“Maybe he’s just sneaking off, he’ll be back before Mum and Dad wake up.” Pearl said out loud, hoping doing so would make it come true. Joel sometimes did that; he would disappear for a few hours and then climb back in the window before the sun had even come up.
But Grian didn’t do that.
And by the next morning, when even their parents realised Grian wasn’t in the room, they knew he was never coming back.