“William, you get back here right this second! Now is not the time to go gallivanting around delivering harebrained vengeance!”
Ginny has just enough brain space left to marvel at the way her mother can turn a phrase, even in the midst of a crisis, before the turmoil around her is once again subdued. She can hear the angry tenor of their voices, see the dark, murderous rage on her older brother’s face, the pained fear on her mother’s. But the sound of their argument has disappeared beneath the water and she continues to stare at the mug of tea cooling in front of her.
“Fine!” Her brother’s voice cracks like a whip, snapping Ginny’s hearing back into place as he storms off down towards his room. The slamming of the door sounds suspiciously familiar, the sound of her anger as it wells up for a moment. He should be here, sitting next to her, not fuming in his room.
She takes advantage of the moment. Her parents are facing away from her, engaged in furious, whispered conversation and so she tries to pick up the little jug of milk her mother had set next to her tea mug. Her handshakes violently, but before the milk can slosh over the side, calling attention to her, Rob has taken the jug in his much smaller hands and poured just the right amount into her tea.
He’s been standing next to her all night, since she stepped into the front room with a split lip and muddy scrapes all down her side. He hasn’t said anything at all, but looking at him now she sees love and uncertainty in his eyes. Being so much younger than his siblings, he has always seemed so much older than his age. She’s grateful that tonight he looks so young.
“Ginny…Virginia, sweetie, why don’t you go into the living room and put on a movie, and we’ll join you in just a second.” Her father’s voice is low and loving, but she can hear the anger lining it, the desire to do what they have forbidden their eldest from. The police have left, but not the relief on her parents faces when Ginny said loudly that no doctor was needed. She’s showered already, and though her clothes were still plenty intact, they are now crumpled in the garbage bin outside.
She’s grateful for the chance at something to take up her thoughts and senses. She let’s Rob pick the movie, unsurprised to find herself immersed in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the familiar lines washing over her and Rob curled and dozing at her side.
When her parents tuck her into bed later that night, they brush her hair and smooth her covers. Will’s door is still firmly shut and she finds she’s more mad at him then at the boy-who-shall-not-be-named.
“We love you, sweetie,” her parents say they pull the door shut, just like when she was little. And for a moment she’s five and not fifteen and their worry is that she fell down, not that she had her first sip of alcohol much younger than either of them did. Not that there is a boy roaming free who had the gall to hurt their baby girl.
Ginny doesn’t want to close her eyes, so she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to sleep, doesn’t want to have to wake up tomorrow as the girl who let a boy push her around. The sky is clear and the moon full and streaming in her window, so instead she looks at that and watches the play of the light in the branches. This is why she is not scared out of her wits when suddenly there is a figure who looks suspiciously like Will tapping on her window.
She hesitates before letting him in.
“Where’ve you been?” she asks as he climbs through the window. He doesn’t answer because it’s a stupid question. Instead he just goes to sit on her bed, waiting for a moment until she follows and sits beside him.
And then she’s sobbing, the tears flowing fast and thick down her cheeks as she gasps for breath and the fear and hurt and vicious anger rise in her throat. It feels like hours before she’s calmed down, and she feels like maybe Will’s hands are leaving fingerprint bruises on her arms as he holds her.
“I love you, Gin. No one is ever going to hurt you again, okay?”
And for the first time all night she feels like maybe this might not be the end of the world. And in the morning when her mother comes in to check on her and sees her curled up in her bed with Will like they used to do when they were younger and more scared of the dark, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t say anything, either, when Will sits down for breakfast with red, scraped knuckles and a vicious grin when he thinks no one is looking.
