"She… she doesn't like me," Brian stuttered. "She told me she likes you."
"Get real. Sometimes you can be as dumb as a pile of dirt," he muttered as he turned and walked to the front door. "Go ask her to the dance and see if she doesn't say yes. She doesn't want to go with me, she wants to go with you. She's just using me to get to you."
Sean yanked open the ragged screen door and stalked inside, letting the door slam behind him. He stormed through the house, past his little brother Liam, who was sprawled on the floor watching television, and past his oldest brother Conor, who had just come home from the police academy. Dylan, a high school senior, was off with one of his friends and Brendan was sitting quietly at the kitchen table, his nose buried in some dumb book about India.
Life was relatively normal, now that their father, Seamus Quinn, had left for another sword-fishing run on the Mighty Quinn. They'd be without their only parent for at least another month, but Sean almost wished his father wouldn't bother coming home at all. His infrequent periods of residence only threw the family into turmoil and emphasized the fact that the six Quinn brothers were existing on the edge, just a few steps ahead of the social workers and the bill collectors, just a few dollars away from eating ketchup soup for dinner.
Conor had managed pretty well over the years and kept the family from falling apart. Now that he'd graduated from high school and was bringing home a regular paycheck, the future looked a little brighter. Their father's luck at poker no longer determined whether or not they'd go to bed with empty bellies.