Ann's Writings

Part Fifteen:

Reaching her backpack, Jagger started unzipping one of the smaller pockets. Inside of it, she had torn off one corner of the lining in such a way that it was a secret compartment, but unseen by the untrained eye. You had to know where to look and what you were looking for.

Her fingers moved slowly. When they grazed the paper, she closed her eyes and froze herself. A moment later, a hand grabbed the back of her shorts and pulled her back. Jagger kept her eyes closed as she was lifted up and taken over to the couch. Brax sat down and for a moment she thought he was going to start right in.

Jagger opened her eyes. She was sitting on his lap and Brax was looking expectantly at her.

Jagger swallowed the dryness in her throat.

“Haven’t got all day. And if you take too long, Nash is going to be done. Heath and Casey could be back. You want them to find you with your pants off?”

Brax only ever spanked them on the bare, and it was embarrassing. Anything else was considered a warning. Swats placed over their clothes didn’t seem as effective as far as Brax was concerned. Jagger wasn’t sure if it was so that he could see the damage or he knew how embarrassing it was, but it certainly was effective.

Though, for the record, at least as far as Jagger and Nash were concerned, Brax’s hand was plenty powerful enough even over their clothes. It wasn’t like they wore a lot of clothes to begin with. Heath wasn’t so inclined to hit them on the bare, not that he hadn’t but he left that up to Brax. And Casey had never spanked them though they had certainly gained a smack or two over the years from him. Usually though, the discipline in the family was left to Brax.

Jagger all but flung the letter towards him. Brax caught it, and glared at her.

“Check yourself, real quick kid.”

Jagger couldn’t help but glare back. It was stupid and wouldn’t help in the slightest, but she couldn’t pretend to like what was going on.

The sharp smack on her thigh stopped that real quick.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

It was all in the letter, but it wouldn’t be any prettier.

“I thought you said Howler called you,” Jagger frowned.

“Principal Hallman did call me, and told me, but this is your chance to tell me your side.”

“It’s probably not any better,” Jagger squirmed.

“Start talking.”

Nothing good ever came from Jagger talking. She could talk circles around people, could talk herself into and out of situations , but not with Brax. Her eldest brother could see right through all of that.

And even if she had managed to get Brax to believe whatever bullshit story she made up, there was no way that Nash’s would match.

Jagger sighed.

“I’d suggest you go with the truth,” Brax raised an eyebrow at her.

“Howler’s ancient,” Jagger groaned. Brax remained silent. Jagger shrugged.

“That’s you’re explanation?”

“Well,” Jagger tried to look away, tried to think of something that would get her brother off her back, but Brax just tilted her head back towards him.

“Patience is not my strongest virtue.”

“Well, she is old. Like sixty or something. And she wouldn’t know an actual apple from -

“Jagger,” Brax closed his eyes for a moment. “You’re wasting my time here, kid. I want you to tell me what you did to the old bat, not a retelling of her bio page!”

“You could say, she had if coming, that’s all,” Jagger mumbled. “She’s hated us from the start, and last week’s juvenile jovial –

“You mean the fact that you covered the secretary’s desk with cockroaches and worms?” Brax glared at her.

Jagger scratched at an uncomfortable itch that suddenly at her neck.

“They weren’t meant for Dahl!”

“Because that makes it okay?” Brax scoffed. “The fact that you keep trying to get at your principal doesn’t boot well for you or Nash. First the insects, now you’ve got her whole personal computer downloaded into the school system!”

“If she had the proper malware,” Jagger started.

Brax reached up and slammed her mouth shut with a clink of her teeth. Jagger frowned. She hadn’t thought that Brax would be this upset over it.

“What you two did is border on criminal,” he scolded. “How you even got into her personal computer, and were able to get that stuff in all of the school computers is beyond me! But I sure as hell know you had to be pretty damn diabolical to do it.”

“I would said clever, confident, and resourceful.”

Jagger’s mouth wasn’t always what led her to trouble, but it always did manage to make its presence known.

Brax stood her up and turned her to look at him.

“You have a way of outdoing yourself,” he told her, shaking his head. “Didn’t I just a few days ago warn you not to bother that woman again? What do you think is going to happen if she calls the police on you, or if she decides to press charges? This isn’t a joke, Jagger!”

Jagger shook her head. “She can’t.”

“Yes, she could,” Brax scoffed.

“No, she’s got no proof against me. I wouldn’t ever get into something like that and leave a trail.”

Brax tensed. Hearing those words from such a little kid brought a kind of stone to his stomach. He didn’t figure that the twins were very aware of what Heath and him were up to, but the way that they carried about, you would think that they were raised as criminals.

“Then, why do you think Hallman called me, and sent that note home stating that she’s aware of your involvement in the breech?”

Jagger shrugged. “An educated guess.”

Brax scoffed.

“She’s got nothing that she could take to the cops!”

“You’re really testing my patience,” he growled.

“Wait, wait!” Jagger held up her hands. “Brax, I swear! This isn’t as bad as it seems!”

“What’d I tell you about hassling Hallman?” Brax asked instead, no longer wanting to hear about the kid’s reasoning. The more he heard, the more Brax was thinking juvie was in the duo’s future.

Jagger kept her sigh internalized. She could tell Brax didn’t want to talk anymore. She was out of chances of talking her case. And it looked like Brax hadn’t changed his mind about beating her butt sorry.

“Not to?”

“Did you think I wasn’t going to find out, or did you think I was kidding?”

Jagger had known he wasn’t kidding, and she had figured he would find out. Would saying that she had been hopeful help her any?

Brax didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead, he took her back over his knee, this time she wasn’t sitting up. Jagger closed her eyes, as if that would stop the fact that not a mere second later, her shorts were brought down, baring her skin to the sticky warm air and the added attention she was not looking forward to.

Brax hated what he was about to do. He didn’t want to think about how often he had had one of his brothers in such a position, and it certainly didn’t get any easier.

It didn’t take long to get either of the twins reduced to tears. Brax’s intentions weren’t to hurt the kid, just to get them to cry. He really did try and get them to understand that they were in the wrong and that he wasn’t happy with their behavior.

Jagger didn’t even try to keep her tears back. There was no point, as soon as Brax’s hand landed against her bared bum. She never bothered counting, but after five smacks, her tears were freely falling from her eyes.

Brax made quick work of turning the kid’s backside a whole different shade of tanned. His handprint bright and red against the whiter skin of the legs and back before him. As Jagger wiggled about, his arm tightened to keep her waist in its intended target.

“You better learn to behave yourself and fast!” Brax warned as he brought his hand down sharper than the previous smacks.

Jagger hissed, burying her head into her arms.

“If I tell ya not to do something, I better not hear that you’ve gone and done the damn thing anyway. I don’t need you getting any more attention on ya!”

The next and final three smacks were as equally as hard, getting his point across. The shorts were yanked back up in a swift, practice move and Jagger was righted up without even really noticing that Brax had finished laying into her.

Diving forward, Jagger wrapped her arms around Brax’s neck. Not bothering to apologize, she just held onto him, preferring the arms now wrapped across her back and holding her tightly to the prove of strength she had throbbing against her bum.

“You are such a brat,” Brax groaned, burying his face into her crazy mess of hair. The sun’s heat and the beach’s salty scent was embedded deep within her that it was practically a second skin.

“You suck,” Jagger, mumbled, wiping at her eyes.

“You suck,” he returned. “How you manage to keep outdoing your own badass behavior is astonishing.”

Jagger had no response. Instead, she had to hand it to her brother. She knew she was more than a handful, and between the two of them, Jagger and Nash weren’t making things any easier for their family.

Brax looked up as he heard the bathroom door opening. Nash took slow, wary steps out into the hallway, glancing over to where they sat. Brax motioned him over and Nash’s shoulders visibly tensed.

“Go take a shower,” Brax told her, turning Jagger towards the hall.

Seeing her twin approaching, Jagger’s heart dropped. Flipping around, she turned a sad desperate gaze towards Brax.

“It wasn’t Nash’s fault,” she insisted.

“Don’t start,” Brax sighed.

“Brax, really,” she tried again, pushing Brax’s hands away from her as he tried to get her to leave them. “Nash didn’t even want to be there,” she tried to tell him, hoping that she could get Nash off the hook.

Brax turned his own look towards the boy. “You know about this little so-called prank?”

Nash glanced from Jagger to Brax, wondering what Jagger had told him. He could tell that it hadn’t been enough to stop Brax from spanking her, but he didn’t want to get her into more trouble either.

“The truth, Nash,” Brax insisted, seeing the uncertain hesitation.

“Well, I guess you could say that.”

“You know Jags was going to get into Hallman’s computer?”

Nash sighed. “I knew she was going to get on the computer and that she was going to make Hallman regret picking on us. I didn’t know how far she could get it, but,” Nash shrugged. “I’m not really – He stopped himself from talking, deciding instead to look at his bare toes against the floor.

“You’re not sorry either,” Brax sighed. There was just no way that he could have the twins growing up thinking that taking revenge and hurting people was okay. He was setting an awful example for them, and for Casey and Heath too. But while Heath was old enough to do his own thinking, and Casey was old enough to know right from wrong, the twins were at the point where they were starting to set their own morals for themselves.

The next ten years were going to be hell for him if he didn’t get them to calm themselves down.

Nash shook his head.

“But he didn’t know,” Jagger instead.

“He knew enough,” Brax groaned. “Why must you two insist on aggravating that woman more and more?”

“We don’t mean to,” sighed Nash.

“She has it out for us,” Jagger insisted.

“Right, she totally deserves to have animals in her office and her personal information displayed for the school and anyone to see!”

“The computers were all shut down,” Jagger told him. “Nothing got outside of the school.”

“Unless someone else decided it would be funny to copy things!” Brax yelled at her. “You can’t honestly know what you let lose.”

“The network is on lockdown,” Nash told him. “Nothing was able to print, and nothing was able to be saved or copied. Jags was careful.”

Jagger nodded when Brax turned to look at her. Her affirmative made Brax cringe, wondering what else these two were capable of.

Brax pushed Jagger enough to get her away from him. He stood up and tugged Nash forward by the arm.

“I don’t care how careful you guys were.” Brax sat down, standing Nash between his legs. “I don’t care what she’s said to you or what punishments you think she’s unfairly given you. I care that I told you to leave her alone!”

“Go shower, Jags,” Brax instructed, glaring at her until she finally sighed, defeated. Even punished and smarting as she was, Jagger couldn’t stop herself from trying to get Brax to listen.

Jagger turned then, giving Nash a last look of apology, and then heading into the bathroom herself.

Nash was already close to tears as Brax tugged the towel from his waist. He had probably already heard the end of Jagger’s punishment and already knowing that he was in trouble and what he was going to receive wasn’t helping.

Brax picked him up and placed him over his lap. Like Jagger, Nash’s body was tanned and slim from an active outdoor life. It wasn’t often that either twin was found inside. Nash was more inclined to run and climb, while Jagger really thrived in surfing and an accurate throwing arm. Both twins were learning how to do gymnastics and parkour, things Brax hadn’t thought would interest them. Things that they had managed to get in trouble for using as well.

“I’ll tell you like I told Jagger,” Brax lectured him, his hand placed around the slim hips. “I better not hear you doing something I’ve specially told you not to do again! We do not need the added attention.”

“I’m sorry,” Nash sputtered out, his voice thick with tears already.

“I know,” Brax sighed. “And I really hope you learn to behave yourself,” he added.

The kids weren’t ever in any position to count the hits as they landed, but it was all that Brax could do to keep his arm swinging. In his mind, he would set a target, something that he had to reach before he even thought about letting the kid off the hook. Twenty was the number he had thought with Jagger, and he figured fifteen would be a better number for Nash. The kid needed to learn not to give into his sister’s schemes, no matter who they were going up against. So while the numbers were going to be less, the intensity would have to be more.

Nash hissed as the first of the spanks were brought down against his bared cheeks. The cut through the air of the swing made his small body rigid in anticipation. But a few more smacks and he could no longer take the pressure. His whimpers were soon gasps and cries. Brax’s movements were quick and Nash barely had a chance to think between the hits, each igniting the area it struck like fire ants.

“Behave yourself,” Brax said, landing the final three smacks against the bright red skin, he had made the twins’ butt cheeks deeper shades of crimson before, and he probably should have then too, but he felt that their actions were partially his own fault. The kids were running wild, even more so than usual, with Brax and Heath focusing on getting into Summer Bay’s businesses.

“Sorry,” Nash repeated as he was stood up and wrapped up into the towel once again.

Brax took Nash into his arms, standing up and heading towards the small room in the back of the house that the twins shared. He was glad to have that particular task behind him, it was never easy.