We headed to the antique store after stopping by the Yum Yum Shoppe to try some fudge and say hi to Terrance. Thankfully, he didn’t decide to take his break and tag along.
The antique store was called Bygones. It was small but crammed with stuff divided up into little booths. Nothing really of value, to be honest, unless you were interested in old embroidered dish towels and McDonald’s toys from the early nineties. Our neighbor across the street, Mrs. Cabot, had a booth there; she’d trawl through town on garbage day, picking out any furniture she could find. She’d fix the stuff up and paint it and try to resell it. I was in there once with Brit and her mom when Brit’s mom recognized a chair she had put out for the trash a few weeks previous.
She’s charging twenty-seven dollars! For my garbage! TWENTY-SEVEN-DOLLAR GARBAGE.
Today we paused at a booth with shelves lining each side. I investigated one crammed full of paperbacks with broken spines. When I glanced over at August, he was looking at an old red-white-and-blue trophy, a little gold plastic football player stuck on top of it.
“You know, Kyle played football,” I said.
“Not surprising,” he replied, and then it was quiet, except for the whir of the floor fan at the end of the aisle.
“Have you guys gotten to do any … brother-bonding stuff?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a brother.”
“Half brother,” he murmured, and put the trophy back.
“You say that like it means something.” Some particular kind of line that needed to be drawn. “Like he’s fifty percent less your brother.”
“It means exactly that he’s fifty percent my brother.”
“Well, yeah, genetically.” I thought of Ciara, her freshman-year biology course and the Punnett squares that could predict what color eyes her and Ravi’s kids would have. “But where it counts … it means nothing. You know, my sister, Ciara”—a pause—“my mom and her dad got married when I was a baby. Her dad—our dad—adopted me.”
“So you’re not actually related?”
“By your standards, she is exactly zero percent my sister. But by everything that counts … she’s—she—”
In second grade I remember a girl in my class—Lizzie Bowen—standing on the playground at lunch and telling me that Ciara couldn’t possibly be my sister.
“You don’t look like each other,” she said. “You have to look alike. Me and my sisters do. Dash and Terrance do.”
I looked over at Dash and Terrance, who were playing foursquare with Brit and Flora. They did have the same deep brown skin, the same brown eyes. But it was more than that—Dash was bigger, Terrance was small and skinny, but their faces were definitely similar. Two different takes on the same idea.
“You and her don’t look like each other,” Lizzie insisted. “So you’re not real sisters.”
“We are!”
“Not real ones. You have to say step. She’s your stepsister.”
I shook my head vehemently. I knew at that point that our family was built differently than other people’s—the events had happened out of order but put us together the same way, which was what counted the most. Ciara was my sister. I knew that at my core.
I told her as we walked home that day, trying to keep the tremble out of my voice, eyes turned down to the ground as we made our way through our neighborhood.
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Ciara replied.
“But—”
“She’s wrong,” she said firmly, and I believed her.
When I finally looked over at August, in the booth at Bygones, there was a softness to his expression that I wasn’t prepared for. I turned back to the books, pulled one out at random. It was a paperback called Summer Burn, with a man and a woman silhouetted on the cover, their foreheads touching.
I ended up getting the book, after we had passed through the remaining booths, since I felt bad coming in without buying anything. Supporting local business and all that. It put me out two dollars, which I could manage, if Brit sponsored her own french fries this week.
I read August part of the description as we stood at the front, waiting for the cashier. “‘Will Declan escape unscathed, or will Summer consume him?’”
“You’ll have to let me know,” August said.
“Oh, Summer is ten out of ten gonna consume him. But I’ll keep you posted.”
The cashier emerged from one of the aisles, an older lady.
“You should’ve rung the bell!” she said brightly, heading behind the counter. She smiled at me and then looked at August.
“Back already?”
He looked sheepish. “Yeah, just … having a look.”
“That’s how you find the deals. You gotta keep coming back around. The inventory’s always changing!”
She rang up my book, and we headed outside.
“You’ve been there before?”
“Maybe,” he said, and looked embarrassed. “I just … was trying to sell some leftover stuff. From back home. Just”—he shrugged—“make some extra money or whatever.”
I thought about the money in Creepy Cookie and wondered if he was thinking about it too.
We headed down Main Street. “My mom used to take me and my sister to garage sales all the time when we were kids,” I said after a pause. “Like on Saturday mornings and stuff, we’d drive for miles to find a good sale. Ciara called it ‘treasure hunting.’ It always felt like an adventure.”
“Do you still go?”
I nodded. “Sometimes.”
It was quiet for a moment. “That place felt kind of like treasure hunting,” he said, gesturing back to Bygones.
He was right—it did.
* * *
On Friday, we went bowling.
“I have to warn you, I’m an incredible bowler,” August said. “Like, truly, staggeringly talented.”
He bowled an impressive five gutter balls in a row.
“Is that what you mean by staggeringly talented?”
He grinned. “Yeah. I’m the best worst bowler in the world. Try to find a worse bowler than me.”
* * *
According to the song, on Saturday we were meant to go to the covered bridge and tell each other things we’ve never said out loud before: what’s in my heart, and yours …
So we went and stood on the bridge, looking out at the creek below, which was really more of a ditch, all dried out in the summer heat.
“So,” August said. “What are we supposed to do?”
I recited the lyric for him.
“Is it two separate things?” he mused. “Stuff we’ve never said out loud and stuff that’s in our heart, or stuff in our hearts that we’ve never said out loud?”
“Mmm … up to interpretation, I guess?”
“Okay, alternate third interpretation, stuff that we’ve never said out loud that happens to be in both of our hearts?” He blinked. “How am I supposed to know what’s in your heart?”
“We’re each speaking for our own hearts, I think.”
“She should’ve been more clear. Lyrically.”
“Do you want to keep analyzing this, or do you want to do what the song says?”
“Hey, this song is your bible, not mine.”
“It’s not my bible.”
“It’s your town’s bible.”
“Are we going to do this or not?”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. Ummmm …” Silence. “Maybe you go first.”
I paused. Something in my heart that I’ve never said out loud before.
I thought of band and work and the library. I thought of The College Collective.
“I don’t want to go away,” I said. “For school. Like … part of me wishes I could just stay here forever. But … if I know it’ll make me a better person, then I’ll leave. And I feel like it will. Or, like, I hope it will, at least.”
“Why do you want to be a better person? You’re already—” He shook his head. “You’re good.”
I shrugged. “Everyone can be better.”
His eyes were suddenly serious. “Do you really think that?”
“Sure.” I leaned against the railing, peering down into the ditch below. “Your turn.”
August was quiet for a moment, until: “I hate bacon.”
I looked back over at him.
“People put it in everything, and it sucks.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“What?”
“We are speaking from the heart, August.”
“My heart hates bacon. And in the long run, it’s probably a good choice. My heart is smart.”
“I told you—I just—You were the one who said you wanted to do this whole thing for real, you said—”
I pivoted away, ready to leave, but August grabbed my arm.
“Okay. All right. Sorry.”
I turned to look at him.
“But the bacon thing is real, and I’ve never said that out loud.” A pause. “Okay. I …” He sighed. “I, um. I like staying with Kyle and Heather. And the girls.”
“That’s it?”
“I haven’t said it out loud. But it’s … in my … whatever.”
“But that’s not even like … That’s normal. You should like living with them, and you should say it out loud. To them.”
“What did you want? Some deep, dark secret?”
“No, geez. Just … something …” More vulnerable. “I don’t know. Whatever. Never mind.”
“Sometimes I miss them,” he said.
“Like … when they’re not home?”
“Like when they’re sitting next to me. When we’re watching TV or doing something random.”
“Why?”
He shook his head, and I didn’t know if it meant he didn’t know or that he didn’t want to say.
* * *