you do,” came the absently mumbled response along with a patronizing pat on her head that had her turning her head so that she could level a glare on him.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Mikey asked, too exhausted to do anything more than glare in his direction.
“You’ll thank me later for this,” Sebastian said, reaching over to give one of her braids a playful tug.
“I really won’t though,” she mumbled even though she knew that he was probably right.
They were scheduled to take the entrance exam next week on the one day that she didn’t have practice, which meant that when Sebastian wasn’t torturing her with early morning runs, pushups, and crunches, he was helping her study and giving her practice exams and now…
Now she just wanted the damn test to be over.
“Hey, it looks like you raised your score by twenty points,” Sebastian said, nodding in approval.
Sighing with relief, Mikey opened her mouth and–
“Run.”
“What?” she asked, blinking slowly as she raised her head and–
“Run,” Sebastian said as he reached for the paintball gun that she’d been wondering about.
“Wait!” Mikey said, nervously licking her lips as she stood up, knocking her chair over in the process and–
“Run.”
“Why am I running?” she asked, tripping over the chair as she backed away from the crazed boy following her.
“You’re running a minute for every question that you got wrong,” Sebastian answered, sounding bored as he raised the paintball gun.
“This,” Mikey said, gesturing frantically between the two of them, “is the reason why Jonathan is my favorite!”
“You probably shouldn’t have told me that,” Sebastian said as he stepped around the kitchen table, right around the time that Mikey decided that a run at this time of night sounded lovely.
With that in mind, she raced to the door, threw it open, and made a run for it, hoping to lose him in the woods and–
“Ow!”
*-*-*-*
“This was a really good idea,” Sebastian said as he loaded more tennis balls into the ball machine.
“Ow!” came the startled gasp as the ball hit Mikey in the back simply because she hadn’t moved fast enough.
“She’s not running fast enough,” Mrs. Blaine said, gesturing with her cane in Mikey’s general direction.
“I completely agree,” Sebastian said, nodding in agreement as he turned the tennis ball machine that he’d helped himself to from the tennis courts, following Mikey as she raced from second base back to first and–
“Ow!”
“She’s definitely not moving fast enough,” Sebastian said with a sad shake of his head as he watched Mikey turn around and head back to second base again.
“She needs to move faster,” Mrs. Blaine said as she reached over and turned the knob to a higher setting and–
“Ow!”
“That’s better,” Mrs. Blaine said, and he couldn’t help but agree.
*-*-*-*
This ended now, Mikey decided as she slowly, ever so slowly, pushed Sebastian’s bedroom window open. Once she was inside, she moved to close the window behind her only to rethink that plan since she would most likely need to make a quick escape.
Decision made, Mikey slowly made her way across the room, careful not to wake up the boy passed out on the bed on the other side of the room. She would make him pay, Mikey decided with a firm nod and–
“What are you doing?” came the whispered question from her left.
After making sure that Sebastian wasn’t awake, Mikey turned her attention to Jonathan and softly whispered, “Revenge.”
Nodding in approval, Jonathan laid back down and closed his eyes as Mikey slowly turned her attention to the reason that she was breaking in at two in the morning.
Sebastian.
The hell he’d been putting her through ended now!
She would no longer live in fear of having eggs thrown at her or have to wonder how early Sebastian was going to break into her room to drag her outside to run laps while spraying her with the hose.
Those days of living in fear were over!
After tonight, he would never chase her with water balloons again while yelling for her to run faster. She was going to make sure that he never–
“What’s going on in here?” Uncle Trevor asked quietly as the bedroom door suddenly opened, spilling light in from the hallway on her.
Swallowing hard, Mikey followed his gaze as he took in the large roll of duct tape in her hand before glancing back at her. At his questioning look, Mikey licked her lips nervously as she weakly gestured toward Sebastian, who was still thankfully fast asleep in his bed, and said, “Revenge?”
For a moment, he didn’t say