Page 39 of It Started with a Sunset
Summer glanced back over at them and said, “That’s really sweet.”
By the time they were all ready to eat, the chicken was overcooked, which was fine—it was the way Brock had gotten used to eating it when he was a kid—and everyone loaded their plates up with all the sides everyone brought.
All fifteen of them found seats at the long picnic tables in the middle of the yard and weren’t too far into dinner before Summer said, “Tell me what Brock was like as a kid.”
He knew the question had been inevitable, but he still cringed a bit in anticipation of his siblings’ answers.
“Okay,” April said, her fork in her hand, “but to understand what Brock was like, you need to understand what the rest of us were like.”
“Very true,” Rylan said, nodding.
“And you have to understand that there was Brock, then a four-year gap, and then there were four of us in a two-year time span.”
“So our house was basically chaos, twenty-four seven,” Hudson said.
“It was not chaos,” Brock’s mom cut in.
April looked up, considering. “Pandemonium?”
“Anarchy?” Alyssa offered.
“Oh,” Hudson said, “I’ve got it. Bedlam.”
“Okay, fine, it was chaotic,” his mom said. But then turning to Summer, she added, “Please remember, dear, the part about giving birth to four kids in a two-year time span.”
Summer smiled. “The fact that you even survived their first few years of life speaks volumes about you.”
Brock’s mom beamed.
“Anyway,” April continued, “our house was constantly a mess. And not just a little cluttered. Whatever you’re imagining right now, double it. Or triple it. Maybe quadruple. I think it would’ve taken a dozen adults to clean the house as quickly as we messed it up. And we were very rambunctious kids.
“When Alyssa and I were about five, our dad finished the big room above the garage.” She pointed at the garage and the windows they could see from where they were sitting. “He said if we wanted, we could use it as a playroom or as a bedroom and all of us could sleep in there. Of course, that sounded like it was just about the coolest thing ever, so we all moved up into that room instead of being crowded into two bedrooms in the rest of the house.”
“But it was our playroom, too,” Rylan said. “I mean they didn’t exactly say we couldn’t, so we hauled tons of stuff up there, too.”
“But not Brock,” April said. “He chose to stay in one of the old bedrooms by himself.”
“Tell me I didn’t get the best deal out of all of us,” Brock said. But every one of his siblings just shrugged, like they didn’t actually think he did, which kind of baffled him. He glanced at Summer and saw her smiling, soaking in every bit of what they were saying.
“I think we liked the chaos,” Hudson said. “Maybe even craved it. I have great memories of the four of us in that big bedroom.”
Alyssa chuckled. “We used to always joke that since Brock was born first, he got first dibs on the ‘need to be good’— a good son, a good student, a good person—and took every last bit of it, leaving the rest of us with none of it.”
“You missed out on all the fun,” April said. “But you should’ve seen Brock’s room. Everywhere in the house was a mess of chaos and noise, and Brock’s bedroom was a pristine oasis polluted by neither noise nor clutter, not even the tiniest speck of dust.”
“She’s not exaggerating,” Rylan said. “You could peek in there at any time of day, and his bed would be made with everything tucked in exactly, his chair neatly under his desk, everything completely organized.”
Hudson nodded. “And of course, the only way it stayed that way was because he didn’t let any of us in there.”
“Oh,” Rylan said, “but the best part was when he would bring a friend over for the first time. As they were walking through the chaos of our house to get to his haven of a room, Brock would walk with his eyes straight forward, head not turning at all, like if he didn’t look at all the mess around him, the friend wouldn’t see it, either.
“But of course, the friend would actually be looking around, face full of shock, their jaw dropped. After that first time, they acted more normal as they made the trek back to Brock’s room.”
“I always wished we could be in there,” Alyssa said. “You know, so we could see their reaction when a friend walked into his room for the first time after seeing the rest of our house.”
Summer was laughing now, even wiping away laughing tears from her lower lashes. Brock, on the other hand, still felt like his face was going to remain in a constant state of heat all night long.
“I’ll have you know,” Brock’s mom said, “that it wasn’t always that way.”
