Beauty and the Bookworm (Beauties and Boys #2)

CHAPTER 1

It wasn’t a morning in the Carmichael household unless one of the siblings was screaming.

Some mornings, it was me.

This morning, it was Junie.

“Open the door, Ivy!” Junie’s shriek made me wince even from all the way down the hall. Several heavy bangs followed. “I have to brush my teeth!”

Muffled, Ivy’s smaller voice shouted back, “You already had your five minutes in the bathroom!”

Junie let out a screech. “Daaaaaisyyyy!”

I closed my eyes against the decibel squeal of my name. My two youngest sisters beating down the door of our only working bathroom was not the most pressing issue, believe it or not. No, my attention had to be on the form slumped, unmoving, under a mauve duvet cover.

“C’mon, Penn.” I kicked the foot of my fourteen-year-old sister’s bed, pain flaring in my toes. “Get up. You’re going to miss the bus.”

“Five more minutes,” she grumbled, burying her face into her pillows.

“No more minutes.” I kicked the bedpost again, hard enough that her body jostled and my foot ached worse. “If you miss the bus, you’re walking. I’m not driving you separately again.”

That was Penelope’s thing lately. Squeeze out a few more minutes of sleep—or, really, just shut-eye, because no way she could keep sleeping with the near-brawl happening out in the hall—and force me to take the extra car to drive her to school.

It was a good thing Mr. Taylor was understanding—miraculously, the Dead Dad card still worked almost five years later—or else I’d have detention three times over now.

“Penn, I—”

She cut me off with an obnoxious, fake snore.

I stared at her, trying to breathe through my nose, wondering if Mom would ground me for taking a pillow and smothering Penn with it. Mom had three other daughters. Would she really miss one?

Another heavy thud came as Junie pounded on the bathroom door. I could’ve sworn I heard something crack. “Ivy, open this freaking door!”

“Hey!” The word wrenched out of me in an instant, and I practically flew out of Penn’s room to glare at the ten-year-old down the hall. “Juniper Carmichael, watch your mouth!”

Junie’s cheeks were red when she turned around, but I couldn’t tell if it was from anger or embarrassment from being caught swearing.

Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail I’d put up ten minutes ago, exposing the scowl of her tiny features.

“Ivy won’t open the door, and I have to brush my teeth! ”

Sighing, I turned back to Penn. “Last chance, Penelope.”

She gave another fake snore.

Gritting my teeth, I ducked out into the hallway. “What were you doing when you had the bathroom earlier?”

Junie folded her arms across her chest as I came closer. “Pooping, if you have to know.”

Ugh. I’d asked. “Ivy,” I called, rapping my knuckles against the door far more gently than Junie did. “What are you doing in there?”

“Pooping!”

I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath through my nose. I am losing my mind.

It was the same every morning, just different things to scream about.

With four kids, it was always something.

Yesterday morning, it’d been because Ivy left her waffles on the kitchen table and Theo, who’d finished getting dressed first, helped himself to her plate.

The day before that, Junie couldn’t find her tie for her uniform.

The day before that, it’d been stomps and screams from all four of them, not wanting to go back to school after the weekend.

Now it was Thursday, the day before my last day of my senior year, and I was going to lose my mind.

The door to the bathroom swung inward, revealing eight-year-old Ivy. I’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail earlier after she’d gotten dressed, but the blonde hung down like a curtain around her shoulders now. “Here,” she said with all the sass of a first grader.

“What did you do to your hair?” I asked her as Junie stormed into the bathroom.

“It was too tight.” She used her palms to smack it out of her face. “I want to leave it down today.”

And now I’d have to spend an hour tonight brushing out all the knots before bed. Great.

“Where’s my toothbrush?” Junie demanded, opening up the medicine cabinet and inspecting. She whirled toward Ivy. “What did you do with it?”

Ivy walked away from the bathroom, tucking her hands behind her back, looking nothing short of suspicious. “Nothing.”

“Daisy!” Junie yelled at me, far louder than she needed to since I stood a foot away.

A headache flared behind my eye. My best friend, Nellie, had this thing of spelling words in her head when she was overwhelmed. I’d tried that once, but my house was so loud that I could barely hear myself think. I wasn’t really good at spelling, either.

One word I did have down, though, was U-G-H.

I grabbed Ivy’s small arm as she tried to walk by me. “What did you do with Junie’s toothbrush?”

Ivy blinked her doe eyes at me, instantly exposing her guilt. “Nothing! I didn’t touch it!”

We didn’t have time for this. Their bus would be here any minute. Junie still didn’t have her teeth brushed, Ivy didn’t have her backpack, Penn wasn’t out of bed, and I hadn’t even checked on Theo again. Please, God, let him still be dressed. Please.

“Ivy,” I began slowly, fighting for patience I was running out of. “I need you to tell me what you did with—”

“It’s in the garbage!” Junie’s shriek reached eardrum-piercing levels. “Ew, Ivy, why is it wet?”

Ivy smiled, exposing her missing front teeth. “I accidentally dropped it in the toilet.”

Yeah, and I’d bet money there’d been nothing accidental about it.

Letting out a rageful sound, Junie grabbed the plastic cup that we kept on the counter and launched it.

Instead of hitting Ivy, though, who I was sure was her target, the cup flipped up and caught me square in the eye.

My head cracked back as half of the world exploded into white, painful stars, and suddenly, the hallway plunged into silence.

The only sound in the house was the plastic cup clattering to the ground.

My skin flared hot and cold at the same time, body vibrating as fury whipped through me. I had to clamp my jaw shut to keep from screaming.

Whenever I’d reached my boiling point in the past, I’d always use the same self-soothing technique. It’s okay, I’d tell myself. It’s not forever. You’ll be off to NYU in the fall, and this won’t be your problem anymore.

Now, though, the words were empty. A lie. Forever loomed like a dark shadow, swirling around me in silence.

Swallowing hard, I bent down and picked the cup up, ignoring the pulsing ache and the little girl beside me with her hands over her mouth. I walked toward the bathroom, not meeting Junie’s wide eyes. “I-I’m sorry,” she whispered as I came closer. Her red cheeks were now pale. “I—I didn’t mean—”

“Use your finger to brush your teeth,” I told her in a forcefully calm voice, flipping on the faucet and filling the plastic cup with water. “I’ll get you a new one today.”

Junie nodded silently.

“And if you throw anything at your sister again, Junie, I’ll tell Mom.”

If possible, Junie paled further.

I walked down the hall with the cup full of water, barely pausing at my littlest sister, who still hadn’t moved from the middle of the walkway.

“Ivy, if you touch her toothbrush again, I’ll put yours in the toilet and make you brush your teeth with it.

Got it?” Those doe eyes filled with tears, but she still nodded.

“Get your bag and get downstairs for the bus.”

She skittered into the bedroom she shared with Junie, and for a moment, I just stood in the hall, feeling sick.

Threats. It was bad parenting, but I wasn’t their parent.

I wasn’t supposed to be. I hated that it took me getting angry for them to listen, but there wasn’t time to have a productive chat about it.

I ducked back into Penn’s room, finding her still sprawled out on her bed. This time, I gave no warning.

I threw the water straight into her face.

Penn screamed as she shot out of bed, face dripping. “Daisy!”

“Good. You’re up.” I tossed the now-empty cup onto her covers. “Bus gets here in five. Take this back to the bathroom when you brush your teeth, would you?”

I took her yelled response as a yes.

With everyone else moving, I poked my head back into the last bedroom, finding my six-year-old little brother sitting on his bed with my phone in his chubby little hands. He liked to play a tile-matching game on my phone, but I only let him if he got around early in the morning.

Bribery. Another bad parenting technique. Ugh.

But that was the key, because Theo had been the first one up and dressed for almost the entire school year. And in the ten minutes that I’d left him alone, he hadn’t decided he didn’t like his outfit and changed like he sometimes did. Thank God. “It’s time to pause for the day, kid.”

Theo sighed. “Why is everyone so loud in the morning?” he asked, hopping off his bed, and like Ivy, he used his palms to get his red hair out of his eyes. It was even brighter than mine. “It’s too early to be loud.”

I patted the top of his head. “Go get your shoes on, please.”

Unlike the girls, Theo simply said, “’Kay.”

At least one kid was easy. This morning, at least.

Though the last five minutes were like pulling teeth, the next five went by smoothly.

Junie still felt bad for clipping me in the face, so after she scrubbed her teeth, she hurried downstairs.

Penn only took a few minutes in the bathroom before she emerged in her school uniform, which was slightly rumpled since she had a bad habit of not hanging it up the night before.

She glared at me as she breezed past, the strong scent of her vanilla perfume nearly choking me.

I wouldn’t say anything about it, though. It was only recently that I’d convinced her putting on deodorant wouldn’t kill her.

“It’s not fair,” Ivy muttered as she sat on the bench near the front door, kicking her feet against it. “I want to skip school, too.”