Take sexual education class, grade seven. Billy is sitting in the back row. He’s the most popular guy in our year because he’s cute and not afraid of anyone, so everyone’s afraid of him. Even the teachers are afraid of him. Last week he threw Craig’s binders out the fourth-floor window and Ms. Johnson just kept on marking papers like she didn’t even notice.
Mr. Bailey: A girl’s first period usually occurs at about age twelve, but some girls experience their first period much earlier.
Billy: I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.
The guys laugh. Mr. Bailey titters nervously.
Me (in my head): An ancient South Park reference. I hate South Park.
Audrey (out loud): Clare’s had her period, but I’m still waiting.
Even now, the memory still makes me cringe. Not just because it was completely embarrassing, but because after Audrey said that everyone started laughing and calling her weird, and as her face turned red and her eyes filled with tears, I felt trapped between my own humiliation and a feeling of helplessness to protect my sister, even though she’d put me in the position in the first place.
It’s not my problem. It doesn’t have to be my problem. But even as I tell myself that, I feel the guilt rise up, and I have to shove it back down. My family assumes I’m embarrassed of Audrey the way older siblings are embarrassed of a clingy baby sister. They have no idea what it’s actually like for me, and they don’t care enough to try to find out.
Mom’s still giving me stabby eyes.
“I don’t know what you expect from me,” I tell her. “I’m down here spending time with you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Dad sighs loudly.
Mom just shakes her head in apparent disappointment and goes back to her lasagna. Her dark hair is up in a messy bun and she’s not wearing any makeup, but she doesn’t have to. She’s gorgeous with her long, dark lashes and bright blue stabby eyes. It doesn’t even matter that she’s wearing the most hideous wool sweater in the world—one she made herself—over a pair of faded leggings. She pulls the working-artist look off perfectly.
A few years ago, Mom started a store on Etsy making custom toys, and she’s actually pretty popular. She runs her business out of the attic, which isn’t technically legal. The floor used to alternate between rafter and drywall but six years ago Dad spent a weekend lining up boards on top of the rafters and nailing them down. It’s probably not legit and it definitely didn’t look like it, so they bought a few area rugs to cover it up. Every morning at seven a.m. the ladder’s down and blocking the entrance to the one bathroom we all share and I know she’s working on a knitted blue elephant that doubles as a ball or something.
Dad works downtown as an accountant. It sounds like the most boring job in the world. I think he finds it boring too, which makes me wonder why he’d even bother to go into it in the first place. He works long hours and we can’t go on vacation certain months of the year because it’s “high season.” What’s really annoying is that he doesn’t get extra time off during “low season.” It’s practically free labor, but if you tell him that, he’ll give you a lecture about having a good work ethic and how much it pays off. Yet every year he’s disappointed with his bonus. He has to go into work crazy early just so he can be home for dinner with us.
We’ve always lived in the same house. It’s super skinny and tall, like an old man of a house, with a party-hat roof and a crooked fireplace. We live on a street full of houses like ours: old and outdated but in a good neighborhood that’s close to downtown, so they’re now worth millions of dollars. Developers buy two houses and knock them down to put up three infills, which are these long homes with no backyards to speak of, but they have the good neighborhood thing, so they go for double the millions. I kind of wish that would happen to our house: that I’ll wake up one morning to see one of those big wrecking balls outside my window, and my parents will say, We feel the same way as you, Clare. We can’t live here anymore.
The tea burns my throat on its way down.
Adam was seventeen. Two summers ago he decided he needed his own space from his parents and little sisters. He preferred to live in a creepy basement in a room with shower curtains for walls than upstairs with us. He said if he moved down there, Audrey and I could have our own rooms. He wanted a drum set. He wanted to impress his new girlfriend, Dahlia, who was gorgeous. He was saving up to buy a car and working at a warehouse late into the night and he didn’t want to wake us up when he got home.
Of course, he didn’t share all his reasons with Mom and Dad, but I knew them. There were times, usually playing Nintendo in the basement together, that he would show off about his girlfriend and I would listen to him, a lot of what he said going over my head, but too cool to let him know. Adam was my hero and I wanted to be exactly like him. In fact, I wished he could be my twin.
This is the first semester Audrey and I haven’t been in school together. I want to keep it that way. I’m not going to let myself feel guilty about her anymore.
Not since she killed Adam.
* * *
Even though it’s Friday night, I tell my friends that I’m not in the mood to go out. Sharon tells me not to let Audrey coming back ruin my life. Sharon is my best friend and the only other person in the world who understands what I go through with Audrey. The only person who recognizes how guilty I feel about wanting to be my own person, separate from my twin, and who sees how hard on me my family can be. After The Accident, I moved in with Sharon’s family for two days because it hurt too much to be home. Sharon did everything she could to make me feel better. She asked her mom to buy my favorite foods. She let us watch my favorite movies. The morning of Adam’s funeral, she braided my hair and painted my nails so I’d look better than I felt.
Tonight I just want to be alone, but I need to feel close to Adam, so I hang out in the basement and play Nintendo until I can’t see straight. Adam and I used to play all the Mario games together, old-school and new, and sometimes Mortal Kombat.
It’s way past midnight when I drag myself off the couch and cross the basement toward the stairs. Something flickers in the corner of my eye and my head whips toward it. One of the dark curtains that makes up Adam’s room is fluttering. The bottom edge lifts, almost as if beckoning me to enter.
“Adam?” I whisper.
No, it’s just a breeze from the vent. You’re alone, Clare. It’s okay.
Shivering, I hurry out of the basement and to the second floor of the house, which is dead quiet. My parents like to watch renovation shows before bed, but they would have turned off the TV hours ago. There’s no light under Audrey’s door either. I brush my teeth, change into pajamas, and then climb under the covers.
But I can’t sleep.
So I sneak back into the basement and stand outside the curtains again. I’ve been hanging out in the basement almost every night since Adam died, but I’ve never gone into his room. Not even when he was alive. It’s always been Adam’s private space, and I’ve never had the desire to see it until now.
Mom and Dad told me they haven’t moved anything in his room. I know it’s partly because they can’t look at his things without crying and partly because they want to preserve him, like some kind of Museum of Adam. That’s how I feel when I push aside the curtain and step inside: I’m a visitor, an outsider, hoping to understand my brother better.