She laughed. “You sound like you did when we were little and Mom and Dad would go out for the night.”
I nodded and started laughing too. “C’mon, Al, let’s build a fort and get some ice cream. We’re just fine without them.”
She shook her head at me and looked like she was about to cry. Then finally she said, “Syd, you’re nuts,” and got up on the bed with me and we both started jumping and dancing and shouting, “Don’t go!”
And I couldn’t stop laughing. I was having fun with my sister for the first time in years and years. We didn’t need to be apart at all. We could really be like this. I tore my Tony Hawk poster down from my side of the room and went over and hung it over her bed.
“Don’t tell me you don’t think he’s hot!” I yelled over the music.
She rolled her eyes. “Please, Syd,” she said in a mock-sophisticated tone that sounded just like our mom, “I may not skateboard but I’m not blind.” She handed me a thumbtack and pulled the top of the poster up so it would be perfectly straight.
Then she went into her closet and she got out Sparkle Pig. The stuffed animal we used to fight over when we were little. He was a little pig in a T-shirt that had glitter writing on the front that said “Sparkle.” She tossed him to me.
“Seriously?” I asked
“I know you said you hate him now. But, uh . . . actually . . . I know you don’t.”
I made Sparkle Pig dance up to her and scream “Don’t go!” and then flopped down on the bed. “Sparkle Pig, you are mine,” I said to him and set him on my pillow. “Mine and mine alone.”
I tossed him back over to Ally, but he just landed on her bed.
“Ally, listen,” I said. “I think you and I should really be unified. No more fighting. No more attitude. We’ll be stronger that way. Richards is right.”
I remember how she looked at me then; like she was scared and confused. She sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. I thought she would be happy that I had figured some things out. I thought she would be happy I wasn’t acting like a bratty little punk and wanted to hang out with her. But the way she looked . . . it was like I just told her she had a month to live.
“But we are together,” she said. “Aren’t we?”
Syd came home late as always because she had detention and I was already doing homework in our room. Daddy had a meeting with some folks at the harbor and Mom was shopping.
When we were little kids and they would be gone for a long time, we used to make up plays. I would always be the princess and she would be the witch. Or I would be the damsel in distress and she would be the mad scientist. I would be Wendy and she would be Peter. The only time she wanted to be a good guy is when she wanted to be Pocahontas.
When our parents came home we’d show them the play we made up and they would laugh. One time when I was eight, they went away for the entire day to some boat auction and we made up a play about two orphans that had everything in it: songs, dancing, jokes, costumes. It was mostly Syd’s idea. She was really good at coming up with characters. We went through our parents’ closet and put on their clothes. Syd wore Dad’s shoes with one of our princess dresses and clomped around and we fell on the floor laughing so hard.
I remember Mommy marveling at us: “How do you do those different voices?!” Sometimes I wished we could still play those games together.
Syd dumped her books on the bed and then opened the window and fished out a pack of cigarettes from the bottom drawer of our dresser.
“Can you stand by the window if you’re going to smoke?” I asked her. I had long given up on telling her about lung cancer and the general grossness of smelling like an ashtray.
She moved closer to the window and didn’t argue or have some snappy comeback, which is when I realized something was wrong. Syd rarely did anything you asked. Maybe for Declan and Becky, but not for me or Mom or Dad. She looked out the window into the little woods.
“You okay, sis?”
She exhaled a cloud of smoke and nodded, then shrugged. She went over to the speaker and took my iPod off right in the middle of Rihanna’s “Stay” and then put hers on. Something with a lot of yelling.
“I saw that kid Graham over by the skate park,” she said.
“Cute, right?” I ignored the fact that she just took my music off because I was so used to it and because I honestly didn’t care that much.
She looked up and grinned in spite of herself, gave a little nod.
“Cute, but weird,” she said.
“I think he’s just shy,” I said. “I walked home with him the other day and he seemed all right.”
“You did? What did he talk about?” she asked.
“Movies. How he spends more time on making them and working on his car than anything else. How he likes to build things. I had to ask him a million questions; otherwise I think he’d just walk along saying nothing, looking at everything. I think he really needed someone to talk to though, like he’s looking for a friend. I guess things were rough when he was living in Virginia. He had this one best friend, Eric, and they made all these movies and then I guess Eric’s parents sued his parents or something and now they don’t even talk.”
Syd’s eyes grew wide. “Whoa, I wonder what Graham did.”
She had that expression she gets when she’s strategizing. I’ve seen it plenty, like when she’s trying to figure out how to take just the right amount from the liquor cabinet without getting caught. Or how to sneak out to meet Declan. “You should try to find out what he did.”
I sighed. “Maybe he didn’t do anything,” I told her. I came over and sat on her bed—something I rarely do, but I did it right then because I felt like we were really getting along.
She stubbed out her cigarette and then went into our bathroom to flush it.
When Syd is worried she tries to look tough, so I knew just by looking at her something was really bugging her. Not that I’d seen her worried too many times. She can go months without studying or read really upsetting things or see them on TV or listen to our parents argue and she never gets worried. I guess worrying is my job, so when I saw her eyebrows furrow like that I paid attention.
She said, “Doesn’t Graham seem like the kind of kid who’s going to come to school with a Bushmaster rifle? You know, the rich, white, spaced-out loner type? That’s always the kind of kid who ends up really doing damage.”
“You’re the rich, white, spaced-out loner type,” I said, and poked her in the side.
She laughed. “Yeah, well, takes one to know one I guess.”
“You have a crush on him?”
She shrugged. “Do you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do.”
She seemed so sad and resigned when she said it. And suddenly I thought, Wow, Syd’s jealous of more than just my job. And she’s trying to be good about it. I mean that really threw me for a loop, because Syd is, like, never jealous. Of anyone. Mean? Check. Snotty? Check. Competitive? Check. Check. Check. But jealous or insecure about a boy? And trying to be reasonable? Not my sister. As crummy as she could act sometimes, she never liked it when girls got all hung up on boys or fought over them. And she had never cared before about any boy I’d had a crush on. Didn’t even pay attention to them. She always just thought they were nerdy or preppy or not her type. But this was not like her. It was confusing and honestly annoying. My feelings for Graham were strong. He wasn’t some boy I just wanted to fool around with.
I told her, “I like him, Syd. Maybe he’s more your type, but I actually like him. And you can’t tell me who to date. Besides, you already HAVE a boyfriend.”