“All bugs, really.”
“Nah, I can deal with most bugs. Remember that plastic terrarium thing I got for Christmas that one year? I’d fill it with grass and dirt and twigs and catch bugs?” She smiled at the memory. “Grasshoppers and beetles, mostly. The occasional salamander. That was so cool.”
“Yeah, until you ran at me with a cricket in your hands,” I replied, though the warmth of recollecting wrapped its way around my heart too.
She cackled. “Remember the one that escaped and jumped right on you?”
“I wish I could forget. It scarred me for life.”
Phoebe beamed with the sort of pride only a little sibling could conjure at the expense of their older sister and fell back against the comforter, arms splayed. “Thanks for doing it,” shesaid after a moment. It shouldn’t have been so shocking, those words coming out of her mouth, but they sent a bolt through my body and I dropped the T-shirt I’d planned to change into. “The hike,” she added, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I know you hate pretty much all things nature, so you know, I appreciate that you went and didn’t complain the whole time.”
I swallowed hard. Embarrassingly enough, I’d fantasized about Phoebe saying things like this to me during restless nights: something as innocent as a smile, at first, and then the optimist in me would reach further forthank yous or ayou’re not as terrible at this as you think. I love you, I figured, was out of the question in a world without our dad.
This had to be a product of the conversation I’d overheard in the car. All day, I’d fought to keep it in the back of my mind, knowing full well if I gave it too much thought, a canyon would open inside my chest. But now, I couldn’t deny how much it meant to hear Dex defend me and, even more, to hear Phoebe agree with him. She didn’t hate me. It wasn’t fair to her, what a revelation this felt like for me. Of course she was angry at the world and taking it out on the only person left. Still, after nine months of wishing at my bedroom ceiling for a sliver of kindness from my sister,revelationseemed like an understatement.
And now here she was thanking me, unprompted. Tears rushed to my eyes and I bent to grab my T-shirt, giving myself a moment to get it together.
“No problem,” I said, hoping she couldn’t detect the hitch in my tone. She pursed her lips, sliding her feet up the bed until her knees pointed to the ceiling.
“Dex hated it.”
I choked out a laugh. “Yeah. He did.”
“I feel kinda bad,” she said. “We’ve only been doing stuff I want to do.”
“Dex would rather pull a tooth without novocaine than admit he wants something,” I replied unwittingly. I flinched as Phoebe turned her head to look at me and busied myself with folding my shirt. “And anyway, this is your trip. We want you to do all the things you want to do. When are we gonna get the chance to hike in Wyoming again?”
“It’sourtrip.” She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. “All of us. It’s not fun if I’m just, like, dragging you guys from place to place and you’re rolling your eyes at each other like parents when their eight-year-old watches the same movie over and over.”
“That’s not what we’re doing.”
“I just—” She cut herself off with a sigh. “I want everyone to enjoy it, you know?”
I sat down, sinking into the mattress, clutching my shirt to my chest. “We are,” I said emphatically. “I mean, I can’t speak for Dex, but he was laughing on that mountain. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
She let her chin rest on her knee. “Maybe.”
“I’m enjoying this,” I told her. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but seeing you have fun is fun for me. Genuinely. I hate the outdoors and that hike today was the best. I had fun. I had fun at Coney Island and I had fun at the gay bar. Fun is the last thing I expected from this trip, but it’s the most persistent feeling so far.”
She pressed her lips in a line, trying not to smile. “You’re so boring.”
I shrugged. “I know.”
“I was thinking about it,” she said, then paused. I waited for her to continue with the thought, but she left her words hanging in the room between us.
“Me being boring?” I prompted.
Her mouth quirked into a small smile. I wondered if the thrill would dim eventually, or if the last nine months had permanently warped our relationship into these arbitrary give-and-takes. Fourteen years of my heart existing outside my body, this tiny toddler trailing behind me like a shadow growing into her own person and still wanting to follow me. Until the day of our dad’s accident, Phoebe texted me every day about her life and her friends, asking me to come home so we could see a movie or go to the mall. I’d taken it for granted. It would break me to mourn my relationship with my sister. It broke me to realize I may have been doing it all along.
“No,” she said. “I was thinking about how we’ve only been doing stuff I want to do, so I did a little research. Did you know there’s a meteor shower happening right now?”
A year ago, I would have. I would have plugged the date into my calendar months in advance, driven down to the beach so there wouldn’t be light pollution, and spent a few hours lying on my back, counting the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stars soaring across the sky. Arden would tag along sometimes, and Shawn too if he felt like making the trip, but my dad always made a huge deal of it. It was a little thing, something I’d taken an interest in since a high school astronomy class. Things had been so upside down lately, I hadn’t taken the time to even look at the sky, let alone research upcoming meteor showers.
“No,” I said quietly. “I had no idea.”
Phoebe bit her lip. “I know you’re probably sick of outside, but I thought we could check it out. I mean, it’s Wyoming. Big open sky and all that.”
“Do you mean ‘big sky state’? Because that’s Montana.”
