and we went to the bars and tried to get older guys to buy us drinks, and afterward we talked about which guys were cute and which ones liked us. I even went home with a guy once, who I didn’t even like, just so I could tell the girls about it at breakfast the next morning.”
It almost made me jealous, my sister having a social life I knew nothing about.
“Where are they?” I asked. “How come you’re not still friends?”
Guys were yelling in the street outside the window. There was a football game that night, and the tailgates were starting.
“Two of the girls had a fight. Jenny and Carla. Carla wasn’t speaking to Jenny, and I met Jenny for coffee—that was something we used to do, meet each other for coffee, even though none of us liked it—and Jenny was crying because Carla wouldn’t talk to her. She said she kept thinking of things she wanted to tell Carla, just little things that only Carla would understand. She said the feeling of having no one to tell those things to was so terrible, and she said it like she knew I’d understand, but I’d never had a thing I’d wanted to tell any of them that badly. To me, hanging out together was like acting—putting on the right face, laughing at the right time. It was interesting, and I liked it in a way, but I didn’t need it like Jenny did. That’s when I knew that I could spend time with people but I was never really going to be friends with them the way they were with each other. And so I just stopped trying.”
Sophie pushed some T-shirts off her pillow and lay back with her hands behind her head. Now she looked relaxed, or resigned. I was mad at her for giving up, and also I was worried—if those girls had been so easy to give up, would she be able to drop me like that, too? When she went off to college and I was back in high school, she never called home. At the time that had made it easier for me to imagine she was cool, but now I wondered if she’d forgotten I existed.
“You’re acting like you can never feel close to people,” I said. “Does that mean you don’t feel close to me?”
She looked upset then, like I’d insulted her. “That’s different,” she said. “You’re my brother.”
“How is it different?” I asked her.
Now she was annoyed. She got up, went to the kitchen, came back with a glass of chocolate milk.
“It’s different because I love you,” she said.
It didn’t explain anything, but still I was relieved. I didn’t have to say it back; I knew she wouldn’t even want me to.
“Can I have some?” I said instead, and she handed me the glass.
N EXT WE FOLLOWED D ANIEL to a basketball game. It was a preseason game against a college somewhere in Missouri that was even smaller than ours, whose players looked kind of dazed on the court, like they’d just come up from underground. I didn’t know anything about basketball, but it was easy to see that Daniel was dominating the game. Over and over he drove down the center of the court and put the ball in the basket with total ease, leaving the Missourians just standing there blinking. Daniel didn’t yell or pump his fist after a basket, but you could tell he was enjoying himself. He was light on his feet, like my high school friend Tyler the day after he slept with his girlfriend for the first time. Daniel looked as if the ball and the basket and his team and the crowd were all pouring energy into him and he was radiating it back out.
By the half we were up twenty points. I thought Sophie would want to take a break from shooting, but she started pointing the camera into the crowd, shooting kids high-fiving and eating M&M’s and talking about the game. People were looking at us, and I tried to get her to stop so we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves, but she ignored me. Then I saw two girls stepping over the bleachers to get to us. They had long, shiny hair, one blond and the other dark, and they were wearing tight jeans and T-shirts with our college’s
It almost made me jealous, my sister having a social life I knew nothing about.
“Where are they?” I asked. “How come you’re not still friends?”
Guys were yelling in the street outside the window. There was a football game that night, and the tailgates were starting.
“Two of the girls had a fight. Jenny and Carla. Carla wasn’t speaking to Jenny, and I met Jenny for coffee—that was something we used to do, meet each other for coffee, even though none of us liked it—and Jenny was crying because Carla wouldn’t talk to her. She said she kept thinking of things she wanted to tell Carla, just little things that only Carla would understand. She said the feeling of having no one to tell those things to was so terrible, and she said it like she knew I’d understand, but I’d never had a thing I’d wanted to tell any of them that badly. To me, hanging out together was like acting—putting on the right face, laughing at the right time. It was interesting, and I liked it in a way, but I didn’t need it like Jenny did. That’s when I knew that I could spend time with people but I was never really going to be friends with them the way they were with each other. And so I just stopped trying.”
Sophie pushed some T-shirts off her pillow and lay back with her hands behind her head. Now she looked relaxed, or resigned. I was mad at her for giving up, and also I was worried—if those girls had been so easy to give up, would she be able to drop me like that, too? When she went off to college and I was back in high school, she never called home. At the time that had made it easier for me to imagine she was cool, but now I wondered if she’d forgotten I existed.
“You’re acting like you can never feel close to people,” I said. “Does that mean you don’t feel close to me?”
She looked upset then, like I’d insulted her. “That’s different,” she said. “You’re my brother.”
“How is it different?” I asked her.
Now she was annoyed. She got up, went to the kitchen, came back with a glass of chocolate milk.
“It’s different because I love you,” she said.
It didn’t explain anything, but still I was relieved. I didn’t have to say it back; I knew she wouldn’t even want me to.
“Can I have some?” I said instead, and she handed me the glass.
N EXT WE FOLLOWED D ANIEL to a basketball game. It was a preseason game against a college somewhere in Missouri that was even smaller than ours, whose players looked kind of dazed on the court, like they’d just come up from underground. I didn’t know anything about basketball, but it was easy to see that Daniel was dominating the game. Over and over he drove down the center of the court and put the ball in the basket with total ease, leaving the Missourians just standing there blinking. Daniel didn’t yell or pump his fist after a basket, but you could tell he was enjoying himself. He was light on his feet, like my high school friend Tyler the day after he slept with his girlfriend for the first time. Daniel looked as if the ball and the basket and his team and the crowd were all pouring energy into him and he was radiating it back out.
By the half we were up twenty points. I thought Sophie would want to take a break from shooting, but she started pointing the camera into the crowd, shooting kids high-fiving and eating M&M’s and talking about the game. People were looking at us, and I tried to get her to stop so we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves, but she ignored me. Then I saw two girls stepping over the bleachers to get to us. They had long, shiny hair, one blond and the other dark, and they were wearing tight jeans and T-shirts with our college’s
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