The silence in the bedroom was so thick you could cut it with a butter knife.
The heavy wooden door had just clicked shut behind Phil, Claire, and Haley, leaving me entirely alone with the one person in the house who knew exactly what kind of ridiculous, chaotic situation had just unfolded.
I was still sitting dead-center on my mattress, clutching the edges of my thin summer blanket with a white-knuckled death grip, ensuring it stayed tightly wrapped around my waist.
Alex hadn't moved an inch. She stood near the foot of my bed, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her dark brown eyes were locked onto me with the laser-focused intensity of a predator studying a particularly pathetic, cornered prey.
The terrified, innocent-daughter facade she had played flawlessly for our parents was entirely gone. In its place was the sharp, calculating expression of a middle-school debate champion who had just been handed the ultimate winning argument.
A drop of cold sweat rolled down my temple. The tension was suffocating. I needed to break the ice before she decided to call our parents back into the room.
"So..." I started, forcing my voice to sound casual, though it came out sounding incredibly strained. I offered a weak, awkward smile. "Oh, such good weather it is tonight, little sister. Very... breezy. You know, we should really plan for playing some night board games someday. Family bonding and all that. Right?"
While my mouth was spouting absolute nonsense, my hands were working frantically under the cover of darkness. My right foot had managed to snag a pair of soft athletic shorts that were lying at the edge of the mattress. Using the ultimate stealth techniques of a lazy college student who didn't want to get out of bed, I started to slowly drag the shorts up my legs under the blanket.
Alex's eyes narrowed behind her thick-rimmed glasses. She heard the frantic rustling of the fabric. She heard the mattress springs creaking as I awkwardly shimmied my hips side to side, trying to pull the waistband up without dropping the blanket.
Her face contorted into a mask of profound, unfiltered disgust. She curled her upper lip, looking at me like I was a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
"Stop rustling around like a dying fish," Alex sneered, her voice dropping into a harsh, commanding whisper. "You are incredibly lucky I decided to save you just now. You should feel a lot more grateful instead of trying to act like a weirdo."
Phew. Pants secured, I thought, successfully pulling the shorts over my waist. I let out a massive, internal sigh of relief. The ultimate crisis was over. I was decent again.
I let go of the death-grip on my blanket and immediately kicked my Webnovel 'Dao of Flattery' into high gear. If there was one thing I learned from reading thousands of fantasy novels, it was that you always flatter the person holding the metaphorical sword to your neck.
"Oh, yes! Absolutely!" I nodded enthusiastically, laying the praise on thick. "I am such a lucky fellow! I am the luckiest brother in the world that my brilliant, beautiful, quick-thinking sister saved me in my time of greatest need. I really, truly thank you, Alex."
I continued rattling, "Your intellect is unmatched. Your acting skills? Oscar-worthy. If it wasn't for your quick thinking with that imaginary lizard, I would currently be getting a lecture from Mom about household decency that would last until I graduated high school. Truly, you are my savior. I owe—"
"Stop," Alex commanded, raising a hand flat in the air like a traffic cop.
I instantly shut my mouth, my rattling praise cut off mid-sentence.
Alex rolled her eyes, clearly immune to my desperate attempts to butter her up. "Stop this trick, Luke. I am not falling for this flattery nonsense anymore. You sound like a bad car salesman."
She slowly walked around the pile of laundry and stepped up right next to my bed. With a sharp, deliberate click, she switched on the small reading lamp sitting on my nightstand.
Warm, yellow light instantly flooded my immediate area, blinding me for a split second. The change in lighting instantly shifted the mood of the room. It no longer felt like a place of sleep; it felt like a police interrogation room, and she was the bad cop.
Now that the room was clearly lit, she could see my face perfectly. She stared down at me, adjusting her glasses with one finger, her expression entirely serious.
"Let's come straight to the point," Alex declared, her voice firm and uncompromising. "I know something is up with you. That little stunt you pulled in my honors algebra class today wasn't a fluke, and it definitely wasn't from some random YouTube videos. I told you I was going to put you under twenty-four-hour surveillance, and I meant it."
She took a breath, letting her terms hang in the air. "For saving your life and your dignity tonight, here is the deal: I will hang out in your room every day. Whenever I want. And you cannot stop me. You cannot lock the door, you cannot tell Mom to make me leave, and you cannot complain."
My eyes widened slightly, but I kept my mouth shut, letting her finish her villainous monologue.
"By being here, I can 'watch' you more easily," she continued slowly, enunciating every word to make sure I understood the gravity of my situation. "You will not stop me from staying here however long I please. And if I see you doing something suspicious—like solving high-level math equations, reading advanced textbooks, or acting like a forty-year-old man—you will show me exactly what you are doing. You will explain it to me."
She pointed a stern finger at my chest. "In return, I wouldn't touch any of your other things. I don't care about your comic books, your video games, or whatever weird gross stuff teenage boys hide. I will only touch textbooks or study materials if I ask. Do we have an understanding?"
When she finished, she glared at me, her eyes practically boring a hole into my skull. It felt like she was physically forcing me to accept her terms using sheer willpower.