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Robin to his Batman, Samwise to his Frodo. He's two years older than me, which isn't a lot when you're
little kids, but it seemed to stretch to infinity as we hit our teens. Somewhere in there, maybe about the
time I was twelve and he was fourteen, a wall went up between us and I found myself on the outside
trying to catch glimpses through the cracks.
I'm not complaining about Justin. Well, I am, but I shouldn't be. I mean, how many fourteen-year-
old guys would make any time at all for a twelve-year-old tag-along brat of a little sister? And Justin
did. He didn't completely ditch me, and there were times he'd let me hang out with him and he'd let me
talk to him. But over the next year or two I began to see he was only letting me in around the corners of
his life. He listened to me, but he never talked about himself, and it hurt. He'd been my only real friend
for so long, and now I felt like I barely knew him. By the time we were fifteen and seventeen, we rarely
said three words to each other from one week to the next.
Still I'd never have started stalking him if it wasn't for Haley. Haley Braun. Doesn't that name just
make you shiver? Well, it would if you saw her. Tight curls so black the highlights were blue, skin a
perfect smooth olive-gold, dark eyes you could drown in. That Haley. My second friend.
We were sitting in my room, watching YouTube stuff and hanging out. Well, actually Haley was
sprawled on her stomach on my bed watching random videos on my laptop, and I was sitting cross-
legged only inches away, watching her. She said through a mouthful of tortilla chips,  Hey, Bri, this
guy looks like your brother.
I leaned toward the screen.  Yeah. A bit. It was the back view of a young guy with a slim build and
wavy brown-blond hair. He was doing some kind of complicated dive that involved a lot of bouncing
on the springboard first. Haley bit her full lower lip. She seemed to be fascinated by the lines of the
guy's back as he stretched his arms up. Do I have to say what I was fascinated by? I yanked my
attention from her mouth back to the screen to see the guy perform some kind of cool flippy dive thing,
and splash into the water. He did look a lot like Justin. I waited, but the video cut out before the guy
came back to the surface.
 Hell, it could be Justin, for all I know, I grumbled.  It's been years since I've had any idea what
he does in his spare time.
Haley glanced at me.  That bugs you?
 No. Well, kind of. I sighed.  It's just... we used to be friends. There was a time I could have just
yelled down the hall, 'Hey, Butthead, did you take up diving?'
Haley chuckled.  And he wouldn't have beat your face in?
I shook my head.  He's not like that. I swallowed hard, realizing how long it had been since I'd
done something like that. I used to just wander down the hall when I was bored, and stick my head in
his door to see if I could wheedle him into a session of Guitar Hero or even something boring like
Scrabble. Now I had to knock, and often there would be nothing but silence behind that unrevealing
wood, and I'd have to slouch disappointedly back to my own room.  He's busy a lot.
 Doing what? Haley rolled over on my bed and stretched, proving that she'd matured a lot more
than I had, at least on the outside. Mm, that outside... it was distracting.
I unfolded my legs and stretched out on my stomach so it was harder to look at her, and pushed the
play again on the video. It could be Justin...  How the hell should I know? He's out of the house more
than he's here.
 What does he tell your parents?
 They don't care. As long as we bring home good grades and don't get arrested, they don't have
much interest in us.
 Really? Haley's hand touched my arm for a moment and then fell away.  That's kind of sad.
 It's okay. It wasn't, actually, but I wasn't about to tell her that. That was part of what made my
chest ache when I realized how little I knew about Justin these days. I'd always felt like Justin held the
keys to understanding the universe. It was Justin who explained how the Humane Society worked when
Mom wouldn't let me keep the kitten I found. It was Justin who figured out how to get us into the
neighbor kid's pool party one hot summer day.
Our parents were nice enough, but, well, Dad's favorite way to spend his time away from work was
in front of the TV with the sound up high. If I ever tried to talk to him about something important, I'd
get a line like,  Well, on Star Trek when Counselor Troy's mother... About there I would stop listening,
because hell, if life was like TV it wouldn't be half as confusing. As for Mom, her career was taking off
and when she wasn't flying off to conferences she was talking about Powerpoint, and proposals, and
project budget meetings. If I talked to her, after a couple of minutes she would oh-so-subtly shift her
arm so she could see her watch. Time was money, calculated by the minute, and I was probably costing
her a mint.
So that left Justin. Only I didn't have Justin any more.
Haley replayed the diving video a couple of times and then sat up.  That looks so freaking much
like him. Let's go ask him.
 He probably isn't home, I snapped because it sounded like Haley was getting a crush on my
brother. That made me jealous six ways from Sunday. Haley wasn't just my first crush, she was my first
everything. First real not-my-brother friend, first person I ever had over to my room since we moved
here three years ago, first person who saw the real me and somehow still liked me.
If I'd had school friends before, I might have been less of a freak. But the best I'd had since I was
about seven was acquaintances. In middle school, everyone around me had seemed to be exploding in a
volcano of hormones. The girls were sprouting boobs, the guys were becoming hairy jerk-offs with
loud mouths and feet the size of canoes. Every move seemed to be governed by who was watching it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]