“So.” Amy sets her beer down. “We need to talk.”
“Huh?”
Usually when women say that to me they aren’t my sister, so I have the good fortune of being both anxious and confused while Amy turns to face me.
“About the house, Wes. Don’t you think it’s time we thought about...”
“About what?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. Moving on.”
A shudder rolls down my spine. This beer is no longer helping at all.
“Can we not...not today,” I say quickly, when Amy opens her mouth to protest. I can’t discuss moving out of our childhood home, out of Mom’s house, after a day like today. I glance at her from the corner of my eye. Amy spent so much of her time conspicuously Not Here over the last two years. How can she be ready to move so soon? “I need to swing a bat.” The popping sound of the pitching machine might be the only thing that can calm the resentment churning in my gut. “Do you want to come to the cages with me?”
We hit balls until we’re sweaty and the August sky is dark behind the cage’s spotlights. Until my shoulders no longer creep up to my ears, my chest is lighter, my back isn’t so sore with tension as it was when I left the office. Amy bumps her shoulder to mine as we walk back to her car in the empty parking lot, the only sound the crack of bats on balls and the drone from traffic on the highway. I shift my gym bag, filled with ripped ball gloves and old socks, to my other shoulder so Amy won’t have to smell the perma-stink that wafts from it.
“Wanna talk about it?” she asks.
The engine that normally runs my anxiety operates at a low hum rather than careening out of control. Something that only holding a baseball bat can do for me. I’m calm enough now that even though I still don’t want to share my miserable first day, I know Amy will help me figure out what to do next.
Amy was the one to come up with the idea to stuff my middle-school bullies’ lockers with raw meat on the Friday before a long weekend—I went vegetarian for a year after that. When I forgot I had an essay due on the sea as a character inMoby Dickthe day after a baseball tournament, my sister wrote it for me. She got a B+. My dad likes to say that the only reason Amy was born was to be my human vacuum.“Always cleaning up Wes’s messes!”he’ll boom, laughing at his own joke, while no one else does.
Because he’s adick.
Amy scoots onto the hood of the car, dropping her keys in my hand and pulling a joint out of her pocket like the magical cannabis fairy she is. I sit beside her, pull my Sox cap low, and tell her everything. How Ms. Blunt overheard my disappointment about not working with Richard. What Mark said, what my boss heard, and how she thinks I was in on it. How my internship is not going to be what I’d hoped it would be.
“Did you report him?” she asks after a long moment.
I blink down at my Nikes for too many heartbeats. “It...it honestly hadn’t occurred to me until just now.”
I scratch the toe of my shoe into the dark pavement as heat burns up the back of my neck. I had Richard’s ear for those few moments before I met Ms. Blunt and I never even mentioned it.
“I’msuchan idiot. I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll tell her I’ll report it and explain exactly what happened.” I nod, resolute. Just having a plan makes me feel a little lighter, looser.
“Still. That sucks, bro. She sounds...” She winces on a deep inhale. “She sounds harsh.” Amy turns to me, wide-eyed. “I bet you she doesn’t even have tear ducts.”
“What? Amy, that’s...really weird? Besides, if anything this is my...wait.” I pluck the joint from her fingers. “What is in that weed? You’re too high to have a conversation right now.”
She waves me away, suddenly lucid despite the size of her pupils. “Talk to Richard. Maybe he can change your mentor partnership?” She takes the joint back and stubs it, picking the cherry out and tucking the remainder away in her wallet.
I don’t answer her until we’re in the car, on the road home. “No. I’m not gonna talk to Richard.”
“But I thought helovedyou?” she says, her eyes closed, her head back against the headrest. “I bet he’d do it in a heartbeat.”
Amy is right. I think he would do it. But now that I’ve had some separation from it, the perspective that time, space, involuntarily seeing your sister’s bare ass, and hitting a baseball creates—the whole situation doesn’t feel as bad as it did earlier today.
“I think he would but...he seemed excited for Ms. Blunt and I to work together. And Iamexcited to work with her.” Plus, I want to make it up to her. Show her I’m not the guy she thinks I am. My hand taps a rhythm on the steering wheel as I drive us back home.
“I think I just need to stick it out. Digital marketing at Hill City is still wildly behind the times and that’s my specialty. She’s the only one really advocating for big change there. I need to show her how valuable I can be. It’ll blow over.”
My words sound stronger than the churning in my stomach makes me feel. But if there’s one thing my mother gave me, it’s a sense of optimism in the face of the impossible. I pull up to the curb and put the car in park. Amy still doesn’t answer.
“She’s probably forgotten about it already,” I say, forcing out a laugh that doesn’t sound convincing to even my ears. “It’s not like being an assistant is the worst job in the world or something. I just... I hoped that this would be the start of something, you know? Something new for me. Something where I get to control the narrative on who I am. Now it all feels a little out of control. If I can just get it back on track...”
When she’s still silent I look over. She’s fallen asleep.
Reaching over, I flick her nostril. She doesn’t wake up. But it helps.
