“About Empower. I was in no position to lead. Maybe I never was.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“It is.”
“Mara, you do a great job. You have really great ideas, and your articles for the paper are amazing. They’re important and you’re a really good writer. People actually read them. Like, most of the school, in fact. That’s pretty huge.”
A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve lapped up her words, beamed and turned a delicate shade of red, shy and proud all at once. Especially hearing them from Greta, who I always felt saw through me anyway.
Now I just feel ashamed.
“Can you take me to Alex Tan’s?” I ask her.
I feel her hesitation, so I tack on a please. She agrees and we drive the few miles in silence.
When she pulls into Alex’s driveway, Owen’s and my car is right there, parked so casually and benignly, there’s absolutely no reason for this wave of dread to wash over me.
No reason whatsoever.
Alex’s house is a Victorian-style home that looks like something right out of a ghost story. It’s three levels high and bright white, with a huge screened-in front porch and tall columns in front of a long circular driveway. Next to Alex’s sun-yellow TLB, my own car is parked crookedly, as though Owen was in a hurry when he got here.
I tell Greta goodbye, thanking her with as much sincerity as I can muster through my trembling voice. Then I wait until she drives away to walk around the side of the house, hoping I’ll find the boys playing basketball near the garage. The net hangs above the doors, tattered with age and undisturbed. Hands buried in the pocket of my sweatshirt, I round back to the front, heading for the porch stairs.
I’ve just put one foot on the bottom step when I hear my brother’s voice.
“. . . asshole about this.”
“I’m not. I just—”
“You are. You’ve been acting like a douche for a week and now my sister? Really, Alex? She’s my fucking sister.”
“We’re just hanging out.”
“Yeah, right. You’ve never wanted to hang out before. Not without me.”
I freeze, my heart huge and loud in my chest.
“I would never hurt Mara,” Alex says.
“That’s not the point. My best friend boning my sister is just weird.”
“Holy shit, dude. We’re just friends!”
“You know she’s bi, right? Can’t make up her mind.”
I suck in a breath, my hand clapping over my mouth to keep in the sudden sob strangling my lungs. Did my brother really just say that about me? Owen gets mouthy when he’s stressed, can’t shut up. I know this. But all his talk has never been directed at me quite like that, and his words feel like a knife dividing us into two.
For a few seconds, there’s nothing—?no sound, no air, no light.
Then, quietly, Alex says, “Do you even hear yourself right now? This isn’t you.”
A beat. “You don’t know what’s me or not, because you don’t give two shits anymore.”
Alex says something I can’t make out. The porch swing lets out a groan—?someone getting up.
“Fine,” Owen says. “Fuck you.”
“Owen, come on.”
