He’s not wrong; since Aunt Myrtle moved in, she’s taken a real shine to inserting herself into family drama, including creating drama where none previously existed.
Guess she’s bored as hell with nothing else to occupy her time but us.
“It’s like living with the Crypt Keeper,” Alex continues.
“Hey—don’t be mean.”
“I’m not being mean! She’s a hundred years old. Do you know how not cool it is living with a geriatric?”
I turn and level him with a stare. “Would you say that to her face?”
“No.”
“Then you probably shouldn’t be saying that in here.” I turn back toward my box. “Besides, she’s probably listening outside the door with her ear pressed to the wall.”
That makes my brother laugh. “Probably.”
I turn to face him again. “Are you leaving or not?”
“Not,” he says with a laugh that makes me want to throttle him.
“Don’t you have anything better to do? And why are you even home, anyway? It’s the middle of the day.”
“We had a half-day today. Teacher in-service or something like that.”
“Who brought you home?”
“Brandon’s mom.” Brandon is my brother’s best friend, has been since they were in kindergarten.
“You should’ve told me. I was running errands and took Aunt Myrtle to physical therapy—I could have grabbed you on the way home.”
“I think Mom forgot, so I just hopped in the car with Brandon.”
That sounds kind of like our mom; she is very forgetful and used to do the same thing to me when I was growing up. Every so often, my parents would leave me at church after dropping me off at Sunday school. Don’t even ask me how that happens—thank God we have cell phones.
“What’s in that box?” my brother wants to know.
“Just stuff from school—textbooks and shit.”
“Aren’t textbooks mostly digital now?”
“Maybe. But not at Cambridge.”
I studied over there on a scholarship I’d been fighting to earn since I was a freshman in high school, busting my ass for good grades and joining every and any club that could be academically beneficial, on top of playing tennis.
Tennis, right? Who even plays that anymore?
“Did you meet any girls while you were over there?” my brother asks as he fumbles with the remote control for my TV. I’m sure he intends to stay awhile and watch one of his favorite programs, something he’s probably been doing every day since the day I left.
“No, I didn’t meet any girls.” I fold a t-shirt that’s at the top of my box and set it off to the side. “I mean, obviously I met girls, but I assume you mean did I date any.”
“You never date any girls. Do you even know how?”
Smartass little shit.
“What do you mean I never date any girls? I’ve had girlfriends—I dated Britney Bevins for a few months my freshman year.”
“Britney doesn’t count,” Alex informs me with a scoff. “Our parents are friends.”
I mean, that’s kind of true, plus it wasn’t all that romantic of a relationship. Britney is a brainiac like me and was only enrolled at the university until she got her acceptance to an Ivy League college, which came our sophomore year. She packed up her bags and moved to California to attend Stanford and chase that doctoral degree she’s been coveting since we were kids.
I hardly hear from her anymore.
Other than that, sadly, I haven’t had any other relationships, if you don’t count family and friends. I’m talking about romantic relationships, and yeah—sexual relationships too, I guess. I would say it’s because I don’t do the casual sex thing, but that would be a lie. The truth is I don’t actually have the guts to have casual sex even if I wanted to.
Alex watches as I lift a soccer ball out of the cardboard box and toss it to the ground.
“What are you doing with a soccer ball?”
“I got it while I was in England. They’re huge into football over there.”
I bought this one during one of the playoffs when every other store in town was selling souvenirs for the different teams. It was chaos but fantastic fun and I wanted something to remember it by, so I brought home the red and blue football.
“You packed a soccer ball in your luggage? Why didn’t you deflate it?”
He has a good point—deflating it would have made more sense if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to pack up my crap at the end of this semester. Packing was the last thing on my mind; I got swept up in my new friends and working out and, of course, studying, and I waited until the last day to pack up my boxes, address them, and mail them back.
Truth be told, I didn’t have a ton of stuff—some clothes, academic tools like textbooks and my computer and other office supplies, and…that’s really about it. But I did buy some things while I was there, like gifts for my family.
Alex flips on the TV and begins thumbing through the channels, the volume blaringly loud as if he were hard of hearing.
“Turn that down. You’re going to wake the entire house.”
“It’s not even noon. No one is sleeping.”
“Aunt Myrtle might be taking a nap. Do you want her coming up here?”
“No. Besides, she wouldn’t come up here—she’d shout at us through the intercom. Myrt loves the intercom, but she doesn’t know how to work it properly so she repeats herself ten times and blows into it with her old lady breath. It’s obnoxious,” Alex grumbles.
“Well turn that down anyway, Jesus. And get your feet off my bed.” I smack at his legs.
He’s still wearing his sneakers, and I don’t want his filthy shoes on my comforter.
Where was this kid raised, in a barn? Mom would have a heart attack if she knew he was running around the house with shoes on.
“Don’t they leave you a list of chores you’re supposed to do when you get home from school?”
They used to do that with me.
“No. I’m busy with sports.”
“You don’t look that busy with sports to me.”
Alex glances over at me as I pull more stuff out of my box. “Practice isn’t until later today. Someone will have to drive me back to school if Mom isn’t home by then.”
“How about Brandon’s mom?”
“Brandon doesn’t play lacrosse.”
“You’re a real pain in the ass. Do you realize that?”
He shrugs. “I’m twelve, and it’s too far to ride my bike.”
I mean, he’s not wrong.
I take the empty cardboard box and toss it out my bedroom door into the hallway just in time to see my mother coming up the stairs. Her eyes flit from me to the box then back to me.
“Someone is getting settled in, I see. I hope these boxes make it down to the recycling. Break them down, would you? And stack them neatly next to the garage.”
That’s obviously what I was going to do with the boxes, but she wouldn’t be my mother if she didn’t constantly remind me to tidy up my things and take the trash out.
I glance back at my brother, who is ignoring us both now that he’s fixated on the anime series on the television screen.