The pencil rolls back

Original fiction extract.

My sister and I had been told to draw the room we would share. She wanted the bed beside the window. I wanted the desk there. Between us lay a large sheet of paper on which both objects had already been drawn several times. The rubber was becoming smaller, and neither of us was becoming more agreeable.

She pushed the pencil towards me with one careful finger. It rolled across the table, a narrow bridge offered without a word. I stopped it at the edge of my hand and drew a desk so dark that the paper seemed bruised. Across from me, her silence set like wet plaster. The clock continued its small, tactless chewing. When I looked up, she was studying the window rather than the drawing. Her reflection lay faintly over the garden, present in both places and at home in neither.

I rubbed out one side of the desk. She turned back. We tried the bed against the longer wall, then moved it again. The paper grew grey with possible rooms. At last she held the sheet flat while I drew the desk smaller. Outside, our father was still measuring the door.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the tension between the two siblings at the table.

Write about 200 to 250 words.