Chapter 344 In Love With Nia:>2

• This became the pattern of my evenings. Come in, tuck Nia in if she was already in bed, answer her questions about my school, and read to her until she fell asleep. Some nights, though, she'd vary the routine. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and she'd be there, rolled up next to me, fast asleep, so I'd go and get her duvet, cover her up, and go back to sleep; the one time I tried to take her back to her own room, she made such a fuss she woke the house, and mum had to put her in bed with her just to get her to go back to sleep. It got so I became used to feeling this little body scrunched up next to me in the middle of the night, and took to keeping a spare duvet in my room, to throw over her when she sneaked in. Nia had won, again, she'd got her own way, and I had to share my room with her. Like I said, manipulative little baggage.
• On weekends, though, she was almost tentative with me, never moving more than 6 feet or so away from wherever I was, one eye always cocked in my direction, never obviously trailing around after me, but always there; if I went to the bathroom, she'd be playing in the corridor outside when I came out, If I retreated to my room to read or watch TV, she'd find a thousand reasons to come in looking for something, or ask me a question or some other reason. She also became more touchy-feely, which weirded me out, as I usually took great pains to avoid having her sticky little paws on my clothes; usually whatever she had been eating was all over her hands, and now it would be all over me. The one time she leaned over to kiss me, I honestly thought she was going to bite me, going for the germ-warfare option, and I ducked backwards, causing her to fall over, start screaming, big family post mortem, why can't you be nice to your sister, she's only young, she only has you, etc, etc. Spoiled, conniving, manipulative little troll-spawn.
• As she got older, the screaming for her own way tailed-off, and she actually became more tractable, easier to deal with. The sneaking into my room and sleeping next to me never stopped though, and it actually got to the point where I felt almost cheated if I woke up in the night and she wasn't there. When she began secondary school, at 11, like me, I fully expected this to stop; there was more scope for friends, new people, new subjects to study, so I was confident her life would stop intersecting with mine quite so much. It didn't stop, not at all.