Page 18 of Bite Me

“You’re as bad as Grandfather.” I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose.

“Never say that to me again.”

“Why are you calling me?”

“You don’t remember the drunk text you sent me?”

“Oh, no.”

She clears her throat before reciting the words.

“‘Florence. Don’t worry about anything. Just focus on school and rowing, and everything will turn out okay. I promise I’ll never let anything happen to you. I’m taking care of things. I love you.’”

I have no recollection of that text. The cringe of it all is enough to make me hide my head in my pillow.

“Fuck.”

“I thought it was sweet. But too sweet for you. Who is she?”

“She?” I perk my head up.

“I’ve never seen you drunk. That means either you’re on a mental health spiral toward disaster or . . . there’s a girl.”

“There is no girl.”

“I know if there was a girl, you wouldn’t tell me.” She sighs. “But you could.”

Yes, because I’m totally going to talk to my little sister about girls. I roll my eyes.

“I have to go. I’m late, and you know how Grandfather gets.”

“I haven’t heard or seen anything unusual here, so I’ve been less worried. I love my new team.”

Rowing is the only thing she’s ever cared about for more than five minutes. I encourage it. It keeps her out of trouble.

“Good. I’m glad.”

She wants to talk about it more, but I don’t have it in me.

She’s always been the wild one. The youngest Everhart—well, I guess not now after the name change—but the youngest of our immediate family, which includes our two older brothers and me.

They always teased her that she was an accident, and when our parents died, well, there was no one around she could relate to. She threw tantrums, was defiant at every turn—Grandmother hated her.

So it was instinct to be there for her. To be the only one who would go after her when she’d scream and storm off, or be there to bring her the dinner that my grandmother tried to withhold as punishment.

“She’s not an Everhart,” Florence was told enough times by enough people that she started to believe it. She ran away at fifteen, and she’s been running since.

“You’d tell me if you knew something, right? If you overheard Clyde saying anything about me?” she asks.

“Of course, I would.”

She only needs to wait to get her trust fund when she turns eighteen. Then she can go and do whatever she wants. Until then, I’m the one looking after her.

Paying for boarding schools that she either gets kicked out of or leaves because she’s paranoid our grandfather planted someone to spy on her. This is the third time I’ve had to relocate her.

Unlike Florence, I’m not naive enough to think our grandfather doesn’t know where she is. He knows everything, even whether I’m late to a class or a meeting.

“Don’t take that as an invitation to get all buddy-buddy with him and keep secrets. Remember our deal?” she says.