Maybe it doesn’t matter. This is my chance to apologize for the damage I’ve caused—something I should do at least once, right?
“I’m sorry, okay?” I say as soon as I pick up. “I’m the worst older sister in the world. I should know better. That’s what Mom and Dad have said my entire life, and I never listened to them. What kind of person gloats when their little brother gets cheated on?”
“Leti, are you okay?”
I let out a wet chuckle at the bafflement in his tone.
“Are youcrying? What’s wrong?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I say, even though he probably should worry given my surroundings. “Please. Just forgive me. I know you’re not supposed to ask for forgiveness, and that coupled with the crying could be construed as manipulative, but please, Andrew. You were right, okay? I’m pathetic and I don’t have my life together and I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”
“I don’t want to fight with you anymore either,” he says. “And I’msorry too. I never should’ve called you pathetic. I didn’t mean any of that shit I told you.”
“Yes, you did,” I say. “And I can’t even blame you for it.”
“You can and you should blame me. Julian was right. I haven’t given you any of the support you needed over the years. Instead, I’ve spent it resenting you.” He lets out a long sigh. “We haven’t been good to each other, but I should’ve tried to be better. I want us to have a better relationship than the one we have. You’re my sister, Leti. I love you.”
“Good.” I sniff. “I love you too, Andrew. Probably about as much as I resent you. Guess we have that in common.”
“Well, we’ve given it enough time to build over the years.” He sighs. “But honestly? I think I’m more jealous of you than resentful.”
“Jealous?” The sound I let out is half scoff, half laugh. “In what world is the golden sibling ever jealous of the disappointment child?”
“You’ve never been a disappointment, Leti,” he says. “You carved your own path on your own time, fuck what anyone else thinks. Meanwhile, Elena and I have been carrying the weight of our parents’ expectations on our shoulders for decades, but you’ve never given a fuck what they think of you.”
“You think I don’t care how they see me?” This time, a howl of laughter erupts from my diaphragm. “God, Iwishthat were the truth. I’ve just let our parents down so many times, I’ve had to start acting like I don’t care what they think of me. It’s a middle child defense mechanism. You should know this already.”
“Well, it sounds like fake it till you make it is really working for you.” He huffs a laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, Mom will probably have a heart attack when she finds out Kayla dumped me. You know how badly she wants more grandkids.”
“Please. You got off easy with Kayla cheating on you,” I tell him. “You haveweeksof ‘pobrecito mi hijo’ ahead of you. If you’d brokenup with her for a stupid commitment-phobe reason, which was on my bingo card, by the way, then you’d really be in for it.”
“Well…” he says. “I didn’t love her. I tried to. I really liked her, but I…couldn’t get there with her.”
“Andrew, what the fuck? You were together for a year.”
“You wanna know what I loved?” he asks. “How happy it made our parents that I was in a steady, serious relationship. I should’ve broken up with her a long time ago. She knew it too. But instead of talking about it—”
“She found what she couldn’t get from you from someone else.” I put the pieces together. “You really stayed with her for that long because of our parents?”
“The real pathetic one? It’s me, I know,” he says. “I’m sorry. Again. For real this time.”
“I’m sorry, too, Andrew,” I say. “God, why is apologizing so humiliating?”
He lets out a booming laugh, and it feels good. This is about as close to bonding as Andrew and I have ever come. “It’s theworst.”
“Leticia Maldonado.” A nurse with a clipboard calls out my name. I raise my good arm before peeling myself from the armchair to meet her.
“Who was that?” Andrew asks. “Leti, where are you?”
I let out a tired sigh as I follow the nurse into a triage area. “Feel like driving me home from the hospital?”
46
Julian
I?’m getting worried as my fifth text of the day goes unanswered. We haven’t had a chance to talk through the fight we got into yesterday, but she still begrudgingly returned mygoodnighttext last night (and I know it was begrudging because it was a singlezzzemoji). All week since I stood up for Andrew, she’s been pulling away from me. Dodging my calls and returning my texts with one or two words. Making up excuses to avoid meeting me outside of school lunch hours. She never showed up today, so I don’t even have those anymore.
This nagging feeling persists all day. Is it unlike her not to return my texts, or is this her way of ending things? I’d like to think I’d at least get a conversation before that happened, but I have no idea what she’s thinking. I can’t let another day go by without talking this out with her. When my second to last period of the day files in, I try her one more time. I type into the message box and backspace about three times until Theo bounds up the ramp to my portable.
