Page 4 of Everything That Kills Me
Zeph wouldn’t make it into any team. All he’d do was stand on the sidelines getting cold, then run onto the pitch for a few minutes if someone had to come off. No one would kick the ball to him.
“It will look good on your university application. You’ll make new friends. They’ll have your back and it’ll help with the teasing.”
What?Of course it wouldn’t. Zeph clenched his teeth.It wasn’t teasing. It was bullying. There was a difference. Teasing wasn’t meant to hurt. Bullying was. He could cope with teasing. He had a good sense of humour. Bullying was different.
Sometimes it was hard to believe his father had ever been to school. He seemed to have no idea what it was like. Either he’d never been bullied or not noticed it happening to anyone else, or maybehe’dbeen the bully. When he thought of the way the family had treated his father’s brother, Zeph’s Uncle Martin, he swallowed hard. No one was supposed to speak to Martin, though Zeph did.
“Being on a team will be good for you. Build your confidence.”
Oh, he’s still talking.
“You spend too much time on your own. It’s not healthy.”
But it was the way Zeph liked it. He drank a glass of water.
“Anyway, we’ve decided to give you more responsibility. Elisa and I are going away your birthday weekend. You can invite a few friends round for a party. Just don’t wreck the house!”
Panic fluttered in Zeph’s chest. “I don’t want a party.”
His father tossed a slice of toast onto Zeph’s plate. “Of course you do.”
He really didn’t. He spread butter so fiercely, he made a hole in the toast.
“Catch!”
A banana hit his arm and fell to the floor. Zeph picked it up.
“You need to eat more. Build some muscle. You have your…”
Zeph knew what he’d been going to say. At least he thought he did. That he had his mother’s physique. His dad avoided talking about her. That had been an uncharacteristic slip. His mum had been waif-like even before she’d been ill. Cancer had turned her into a skeleton. Literally. Zeph was lucky his cancer hadn’t done the same to him. He rarely thought about it coming back but that earlier comment from his father… It showed he cared, didn’t it? Sometimes it didn’t feel like it.
His stepsisters waltzed into the kitchen in matching fluffy pink dressing gowns covered with large white hearts. “Morning, Dad!”
It was a source of annoyance to his father that Zeph didn’t call their mother Mum. He just couldn’t. Elisa was nothing like his mum. A lump formed in his throat.
“Morning, girls. I was just telling Zeph he can have a party on his birthday. Your mum and I are going away on the Saturday morning and we won’t be back until Sunday afternoon. No alcohol.”
“You aren’t going to drink?” Georgia gaped at him.
“Ha ha.”
“I don’t want—” Zeph tried again.
Georgia thumped him hard in the back. “Yes, you do. We’ll sort everything.”
Zeph pushed his glasses back up on his nose.
“Don’t abuse this opportunity.” His father looked at him. “I mean it about the alcohol. No smoking or vaping in the house either. No drugs. Not even weed. Those rules are not to be broken. Nor are any glasses, ornaments or windows. No going upstairs. Assumenoif you think I won’t approve.”
Zeph bristled. His father didn’t know him at all.
Georgia was the next to come under his father’s scrutiny. “You’re the oldest, so you’re in charge. Zeph’s friends and a few of yours. No open invites on social media. I do not want to find the whole of Middleton and beyond were invited. If the weather forecast is good, stay in the garden. I’ll give you money for pizzas and soft drinks.”
“We’ll move anything precious,” Georgia said to Alice, who nodded.
Zeph quickly finished his toast and went upstairs to the bathroom before his stepsisters decided they needed to use it again. He didn’t want a sixteenth birthday party. He had no one he wanted to invite. Once the themed parties of his childhood had come to an end with the death of his mother, he’d never had another party, nor had he been to one.
His bedroom door had a lock, so he’d stay in there. He rolled his eyes at the thought of Georgia being in charge. She might be turning eighteen in a month but she was far less responsible than him. There might be nothing he could do to stop the party happening, but that didn’t mean he had to be part of it. Maybe he should go out, then he couldn’t get blamed if things went wrong. Except, he would be blamed.
