crystal moment of embarrassment. Moments that stay alive because of her. I wish she’d let things die.
She’s splayed in the center of the rumpled quilt. Dirty clothes, stuffed animals. Her hair everywhere. Drowning her pillow. It’s hard not to love somebody who hides nothing.
“Hey.” Double-check to make sure I said it. “Hey.” Around her, my volume turns way down. Sometimes my words don’t make it out at all.
She flings herself onto her back. She’s so tall. Six feet. I guess I’m the same height, but it doesn’t feel like it. Her shirt hikes over her hip. Her stomach’s flatter than mine. It sucks to be the chubby twin.
“So I told them that I’m sick of them treating me like their first draft, their screwup.”
This is what she does: shocks people into silence, then takes it as confirmation she’s right.
“See? You can’t even deny it.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I sound like I don’t mean it. “Maybe you could try being a little less . . . honest about what you’re thinking all the time?”
“I have to be honest,” she says angrily. “It’s the only way I can get anything from them. They’re like robot parents. Sometimes I can get an actual human being to look at me for a second, and then the overlord takes back over and it’s beep-beep, we-are-the-parents, beep, we-don’t-need-to-explain-ourselves-to-you, beep, talk-to-us-when-you’ve-calmed-down. Except to them, I’m never calmed down.”
Because she never does calm down. She slams around the house. Taking her mood out on kitchen cabinets. The fridge door.
“It doesn’t matter if I make a good point. All that matters is the tone I make it in,” she says.
“They just don’t like it when you accuse them of favoritism.”
She props herself up on one elbow. “Because that’s what it is! They’re obsessed with you, and they’re sick of me being a fuckup. Which is fair! I am a fuckup! But they should at least admit it.”
My face warms. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Ugh.” She throws her head back. Her hair springs all over the place. “You don’t know. Sneeze and they’re like, wow, Grace, best sneeze ever, A freakin’ plus. I could construct a twenty-foot-tall statue of them out of toenail clippings and they’d still be all, your sister could have done a better job.”
Her anger is always a weird soup of humor and self-loathing. Which is why it’s so hard to deal with. “I don’t have it easy, either.”
“You’ve always liked their attention.”
She tosses out words with no idea how much they sting. “You never used to be like this.”
“Oh, hush about what used to be. You don’t know.”
“You’re trying to get a rise out of me the same way you try to get a rise out of them.”
“And you’re analyzing me and taking their side and you never used to be like that.”
“You’ve always liked their attention, too.” When we were little, she was the kid everyone recorded in the hopes she’d go viral online. She was so loud. When we stood at separate ends of the playground and called for our parents at the same time, they’d go to her. They never heard me.
“Wow, okay. I’m being obnoxious. I am aware that I’m being obnoxious. I’m sorry, Grace.” She nudges my arm like a cat. “I know I’m being impossible and you’re so patient and nice and ugh.”
“You know I’m not mad.” I nudge her back. “I’d never be mad at you.”
“Remember when I buried all your Halloween candy in the yard and you didn’t get mad?”
“Because I was crying about not getting that much, and you thought it’d grow into candy plants.”
“You still should have been mad.”
If I got mad at her, I wouldn’t have anyone else.
“Change of topic. You’re in here now, we’re hanging out now. Let’s play the secrets game,” she says, like the last time we played it was yesterday and not five years ago. She sits up, grinning. I try not to want to run away. “Me first. You’re gonna die about this. I had a sex dream about Cassius Somerset last night.”
The president of the Art Club, the quiet boy with the skin condition. Adam’s best friend. Since when does she have sex dreams? Should I be having sex dreams?
“Your turn,” she says.
She hates Adam because November hates Adam. They make fun of his guitar, his band T-shirts, his hair. She’d point out all his flaws. Ruin him. I’d never see him again in any way but hers.
I don’t say anything.
My real secrets now: I’m afraid of everything. I don’t ever want to