Closed Life at home.

[Arriman Canker]

Arriman sighed, stroking a hand through his hair, staring down at the blank pages of his exercise book. It was pretty mean of Mr. Rogers to give them homework over the holiday. Especially maths. Who wanted to spend their precious few weeks of holiday just writing sum after sum? Not Arriman. He'd got far better things to be doing. Like playing the video games he had been given for Christmas, or going skateboarding with the neighbourhood boys.
Dan was still away on vacation. Paris, of all the places. Why anyone would want to visit Paris when France was in the middle of having their winter, was beyond Arriman's understanding.
So it was just him, his fathers, and his sisters. His Pop was always over the moon when the festive months were around; he loved decorating, baking, and doing Christmas crafts. His Dad, however, was a little less into the spirit of things. The man never stopped working. Well, he stopped if Pop absolutely begged him to, but only for long enough that he could eat dinner with the family, comment "Mm, delicious food as usual, Darling," before disappearing back into the study.

At this precise moment, Arriman was alone in his bedroom. He could hear the extractor fan, and smell whatever Pop was cooking for tonight's meal. He could hear his Dad's fingers clacking away at a keyboard, pausing to scratch at his notepad with his pen, and then return to the high-speed tapping. He could hear footsteps coming up the stairs, Ivy's groaning voice telling Hannah-Rose that she wasn't in the mood to play, and HR's complaining response.
Worst of all, Arriman could hear both girls heading towards his bedroom. He was about to get landed with babysitting duty, and he was having none of it. HR was a girl, Ivy was a girl, so why should it be his job to look after a girl?

 

[Ivy Canker]

Ivy was tired of her little sister's antics. Why did she always get landed with child-minding duty? She was sure it was because of her being a girl. Besides which, in her opinion, her big brother was a sexist procrastinator. If she knew him as well as she thought she did, he'd be up in his bedroom, avoiding the world, avoiding responsibilities, and probably not doing anything constructive at all.
Ivy had already wasted two hours playing dolls with her little sister. Hannah-Rose had then decided that she wanted to play fashion designers, so Ivy had gone along with it, finding t-shirts and old skirts that she no longer cared for, and helping Hannah-Rose to sew on new buttons, patches, random fabric scraps. It had all been going fine. Absolutely fine. Ivy had fallen into a false sense of security, turned her back to make a start on her English essay (Mr. North was not forgiving of tardy work, and she had no intention of spending her lunch break finishing the stupid thing), and became so engrossed in what she was doing, that when her little sister asked her a question, she responded "Yeah, sure. Go for it." without even listening.

Now she was paying the price.

Hannah-Rose was being dragged up the stairs with all of Ivy's strength. The once blonde six-year-old, grizzling out her complaints, was now modelling hot pink hair. How she had coloured it was still a mystery. Regardless, Ivy did not want this pinned on her. It had been her brother's shift to babysit for the last hour, and he'd shown no sign of helping, so he could have this error on his conscience, and he could have the talking to that Dad and Pop would hand out at dinner.
This was not going to be Ivy's problem.

"Arrim!" Ivy shouted, smacking her fists against his bedroom door. "Come out, you coward! I've been looking after Hannah-Rose all day. It's your turn! This is your responsibility!" With that, she released Hannah-Rose's hand, took ten steps back, and watched from that distance.