“I real y hate this,” he final y says, looking at his fingers. “I hate my brain. If it worked right my parents would—I don’t know. Not act like I was something they need to hide.” He looks at me. “What’s it like having parents that actual y like you?”
“Ask Tess,” I say, and realize how bitter I must sound because he tilts his head a little to one side, like I’ve surprised him. I immediately feel guilty, not just because my parents are amazing compared to his, but also because it’s not my parents’ fault I’m not Tess. That’s nobody’s fault.
“I don’t mean it like it sounds,” I say. “My parents are okay. It’s just that since she got hurt, it’s … I’m not Tess, and it’s become this huge, obvious thing that—it’s al I can think about. I can’t draw everyone to me like she does. I don’t know how to shine like she does. She would know what to do now, if I was where she is. She always knows what to do and I … don’t.”
“You seem to be doing okay to me.”
“But I’m not. If Tess doesn’t wake up in the next few days, she’s getting moved to a home. And my parents … it’s breaking their hearts, you know? They’re not happy and Tess could always get them—or anyone—to stop whatever it was they were doing and focus on her.”
“That sounds … I don’t know. She sounds sort of dramatic,” Eli says.
“She wasn’t—wel , she did know how to get attention,” I say. “But you’ve seen her.”
“I have,” Eli says. “You’re as pretty as she is, you know.”
I laugh for real for the first time in ages then, laugh even as my heart kick-thumps inside my chest, a throbbing, hopeful beat.
“Okay,” I say when I’m done, and stand up, start to head farther downstairs, outside. “Thanks for that, for being—for being so nice.”
“Hey, I meant what I said,” he says, getting up and fol owing me, his voice quiet. “How come you’re so sure that your sister is better than you?”
“Because she is. She always has been.”
“Says who?”
“Everyone.”
“Wel , I’m not everyone,” he says as we walk out of the hospital, and smiles at me.
I smile back. I can’t help myself.
I can’t help wanting to believe him.
We’re both silent as we cross to the bike rack, but as I’m unlocking my bike he says, “Thanks for, you know, listening.”
“I like listening to you,” I say, and then mental y kick myself. “I mean, it wasn’t a big deal.”
“It was to me,” he says. “You’re the only person besides Clement I’ve told about my OCD. And Clement—wel , it’s not like he didn’t already know.”
See, there he goes again, getting to me because he’s so—he’s so damn sweet. So not pushing back when I try to push him away. “I haven’t—
you’re the only one I’ve told about Tess. How I can’t be like her, I mean.”
“Like I said, she sounds … dramatic,” he says. “You—”
If he says I’m solid or reliable or something like that, I wil die.
“You think you’re a shadow or something,” he says. “Her shadow. But you’re not. You shine too. I’l see you tomorrow, okay? I gotta go meet Clement now.”
“Okay,” I manage to get out and then just stand there, watch him walk back into the hospital.
He thinks I shine.
I think about that al the way home. That, and Tess.
she always knew what she wanted and got it no matter what, from good grades to getting into her dream school to making sure nobody talked to Claire once Claire got pregnant, but that wasn’t drama. That was wil . And Tess had a lot of it.
But as the breeze created by the ferry cutting through the water blows over me, I start thinking about other things. Like how Tess acted when she found out Claire was pregnant. She was mad. And not just in the angry way. It was like she actual y went a little crazy. The worst was when she saw Claire walk by our house when she was just starting to show. I don’t even remember where Claire was going—she might have just been out walking
—but Tess saw her and just … snapped. She went over to the fridge, opened it, took out the Crock-Pot of meatbal s Mom had made for a week’s worth of dinners featuring them, and went outside.
The next thing I knew, Claire was yel ing and Dad had raced outside, Mom right behind him. Tess was just standing there, the Crock-Pot lying on the ground and her hands ful of squelched meat, red sauce al over them. It’s the only time I ever remember Tess acting angry where there was a chance someone outside the house could see her. No one else did but me, my parents … and Claire.
She didn’t walk by our house after that until Tess had left for col ege.
But that had been the only time Tess had been “dramatic” in the sense I’m thinking Eli means. I mean, Tess could get quiet or mean sometimes, but then, she put so much pressure on herself. It’s like when she freaked out about her grades and how she wasn’t valedictorian during the last half of her senior year and went to that stupid admissions counselor.
I was glad Claire was out of school then, so pregnant—and though she’s never said it, I think so tired of Tess ruining her life—that she’d dropped out and ended up getting her GED later. Claire was the only person Tess ever
