My Brother's Friends

“Anna, I’m having some friends over later today so you better lock yourself in your room and not make a sound.” Anna sighed. Jon always got like this when he invited friend’s over. He was afraid she would chase them off with her bitchy attitude. Either that or they’d start to come over just to visit with her and that wouldn’t be good. Anna was only sixteen and Jon’s friends were anywhere from eighteen to twenty-three. According to him, that meant they were too good for her.
She turned off the TV and went upstairs to her room. She lived on the third floor of the house, in the room at the far end of the hall. If Jon really didn’t want her around, then she’d hide herself in there. She sat at her desk, pulling out her laptop and opening up several writing files. She had better things to do than chase after boys.
The doorbell rang about a half hour later. She stood up only to lock her door and then sat on her bed, turning on the television and flipping through channels. She’d set up a surveillance system in the house about a year ago. Just got bored and thought watching the family at their daily business would be fun. Several times she’d seen her father on the screen with another woman and her brother watching porn. With her father and mother now divorced though, and her mother usually out of town on business trips, she usually only turned on the cameras when her brother’s friends came over. Studying the habits of college students was helping her with several parts of her writing and with the range of ages she had with her brother’s friends, she was getting some pretty good insight. Right now though, it was just her brother and four of his friends in the kitchen. From the looks of it, he’d invited over Mike, Keith, Laurence, and Siberio (who hated everyone and everything because his parents thought naming him after their homeland was a good idea.) They were just in there talking and so eventually, Anna turned off the TV and went back to working on her laptop.
She could easily become so engrossed in her work that everything else would be tuned out so she didn’t notice when Siberio popped the lock on her door and came in to sit on her bed. He had sat there for a half hour when she looked up, saw him, and jumped.
“When the hell did you get here?” she asked, angry at the intrusion.
“Your brother sent me up. He wanted to invite you to come watch a movie with us. But I’ve been sitting here for a while so I don’t know if they would’ve waited.”
‘I could find out,” she thought but she’d rather her brother’s friends (and through them, her brother) find out about her surveillance system. “Well, I’d rather not interrupt so you go back and watch the movie with them.”
“If I go, you come with. I am so not putting up with your brother if I don’t come back with you like he asked. He can be a goddamned asshole sometimes.”
“Like your parents?”
“Exactly!” Anna shrugged and pushed up out of her chair, stretching a bit as she did so.
“Alright, let’s go.”

“Dude, give me some of that popcorn!” Anna and Siberio walked in to see Mike and her brother wrestling over a bowl of cheese flavored popcorn. Anna sighed and fell back into one of the cushioned chairs her family kept in the theatre room.
“Bought damn time you showed up,” John said, relinquishing the popcorn bowl. Siberio shrugged and chose another chair. Anna didn’t say anything. “Now we can start the movie.” He turned on the projector and in just seconds, The Abyss was playing. The boys continued their rough housing through the movie but Anna sat in her chair, watching in silence. Siberio was the only other who didn’t join in the rough play.