“I didn’t gob in it. Jesus,” said Roland. The twist in his voice turned the words topsy-turvy.
“It has boy spit in it,” Mel informed him, “whether you gobbed in it or not. There are probably harmful microbes.”
“There’s this cupboard over the sink, right,” said Freddy, “and there are all these glasses in it and stuff.”
“You need to find something else to hate me for,” said Roland. He put down the milk, picked up the box of Cheerios, and slouched from the room, trailing smashed Corn Flakes.
“I keep telling you,” said Freddy.
Mel sat down heavily. Mel did most things heavily. “It’s just that it’s morning. He’s usually all right.”
Freddy shook her head. “He isn’t to me. You’re too nice to him. I wish you’d stop.”
Jordan and Roland had been living with them for almost a year, though Mum and Jordan had got married only four months ago. Freddy knew everyone expected her to have got over her resentment by now. She didn’t want to get over her resentment. Jordan was bad enough, but Jordan, like Mum, was out most of the time and easy to ignore. Roland was forever thundering all over the house, leaving a trail of destruction behind him. She did know he didn’t deliberately mess things up. It was more as if rooms just fell into disorder whenever he appeared. It didn’t make much sense, since to all intents and purposes, Roland was naturally neat. He would wander into the living room, fold all the newspapers, put several books back on their shelves, and wander out again, leaving the place in chaos. Freddy had never been able to figure out how he did it.
The point was that he was big. Everything he did was big. If he’d been small and humble and easy to ignore, she could have lived with his presence, but wherever he went, Roland was the centre of attention. Okay, he didn’t set out to be, but it was all just so intrusive. Their house had once been quiet, full of private corners. Now, everywhere, there was always Roland.
“He’s nice to me.” Mel was gazing sadly at the plundered carton of milk. “I like playing RPGs with him and Todd and Marcus. Our latest campaign is this hybrid fantasy-mystery thing set in an alternate dimension, and I just got piles of XP for deducing the purpose of the crystal water sphere.”
“They only let you play because they want a fourth player and don’t have any other friends,” said Freddy.
Mel regarded Freddy for a moment. “You’re not nice to me. My own sister isn’t nice to me. It’s sad.”
“RPGs. You’ve reminded me,” said Roland from the doorway, and both girls jumped. Another thing about Roland was that though it was often possible to tell where he was from all the thumping, he was also capable of standing so quietly in place that no one would know he was there until he spoke. Freddy caught his eye; he looked away immediately, his lips tightening. It was lucky she’d been facing away from the door. He must have doubled back almost immediately and heard—well, seen—most of Mel’s side of that conversation. He had pretty clearly got the gist.
Roland continued, “We’re playing later today, and I need a setting. You’re good at that kind of thing, Mel. Where should we go?”
“I thought you had everything worked out,” said Mel, sounding mildly scandalised.
Roland smiled. Freddy had to glance away. When he smiled, the sullenness vanished, and he looked like someone who might be nice to get to know. She couldn’t hate him properly when he smiled like that. “I know where the campaign is going, but I’ve procrastinated on the details,” Roland admitted. “Please? I just need a place for you guys to explore for a bit. I know what’s going to happen to you there—”
“Tentacles,” said Mel to Freddy out of the side of her mouth. “It’s always tentacles.”
“—but I’m not sure what it looks like.”
“Well, I dunno. I’m not the GM,” said Mel.
“I’m no good at imagining stuff in the morning,” said Roland.
Mel hitched her shoulders up towards her ears. “Who is? I guess it’s random book time again.”
“Random book time never works,” said Roland.
“There’s a first time for everything,” said Mel.
She leaned over and plucked a volume off the chair in the corner that always held a tottering pile of books. People left books there on the way through the kitchen or forgot them there after reading them at the table. Every once in a while, the pile would grow so tall that it would become unstable and fall over. Mel would put most of the books away, and the cycle would begin again. Some books were on the chair permanently; Bullfinch’s Mythology was the biggest of those. Freddy had read that one a lot in an absentminded sort of way. She wouldn’t have described herself as being interested in myths and legends, but she liked reading about them anyway.
Bullfinch’s Mythology would have worked well for Mel’s purposes, but it was halfway down. The book on top of the pile at the moment was a slender paperback entitled Selected Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Freddy suspected that Mum, an English professor, had been the one to leave that particular book on the chair. No one else in the family went in for poetry much.
Mel eyed the book with apparent suspicion. “Oh well. It may work.” She dramatically opened the volume to a place about halfway through. “Behold,” she proclaimed, “your setting:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.”
Mel blinked down at the book. “Hey.”
“Give that here,” said Roland. “Is there more? It’s perfect. How’d you do that?”
“Raw talent?” Mel handed him the book. “There’s lots more. You’re going to use it to kill us all, aren’t you?”
Freddy had had enough. It was excruciating to see Mel and Roland getting along, and worse that they were bonding over role-playing games. Freddy thought there might somewhere on Earth be something more stupid than role-playing games, but she honestly didn’t know what it was. She could tell the conversation was shortly going to be all about hit points and XP and other boring, incomprehensible things. She shoved back her chair. As Roland started waxing poetic about caves of ice and damsels with dulcimers and how spot checks would work in a pleasure-dome, Freddy exited quietly through the kitchen door.