Holding my crutches in one hand and the handrail with the other, I hobbled up to my bedroom, feeling fortunate to call this space mine. In fact, our small cottage now seemed palatial compared to our tent. Tired, I set Quattro’s camera down on my desk. A moment later, my cell phone, which I had left charging at my bedside, rang. All feelings of weariness disappeared. I lunged for it, hoping, hoping, hoping. But it was my brother Max, his smile beaming back at me from a photo I had shot of him long ago.
After spending the last year avoiding Max, I was a little worried about this conversation. I needn’t have been. His first “Shana!” was so enthusiastic, he might have been throwing his arms around me. As usual, he spoke at warp speed, squeezing a billion thoughts into a minute: How’s your ankle? Bloated up like a sausage? Can you believe you were in a mudslide? So were you doing early training for the Tough Mudder, or what? What do you mean, you don’t know about the Tough Mudder? It’s this obstacle course race designed by the British Special Forces. There’s an event where you crawl through mud under barbed wire. One wrong move, and BAM! You get literally nailed. Blood streaming from your head. So you wanna do it with me?
The barrage suddenly stopped. Silence is never golden when it comes to Max. It’s molten with burning questions. I braced myself by picking up the camera, switching it back on.
Max didn’t disappoint, saying bluntly, “I’ve been meaning to apologize about being a dick.”
I grimaced and moved to the comfort of my bed. “Do we have to do this now?”
“We should have done this months ago! Look, I shouldn’t have barged into your life like that.”
“Yeah, it was humiliating.”
But Max’s so-called betrayal was nothing more than him being overprotective, no different from Dad’s response to my sprained ankle. And no different from why I had wanted to barge in on Helen’s life and ask her what the heck she was doing with a narcissist like Hank. He may have had some redeeming characteristics, but he was still so self-absorbed, there was no room in a relationship for more than him and his ego.
“I was an asshole,” Max said.
“Nah, I know you pest-controlled him because you cared.”
“Pest-controlled?” Startled into laughter, he asked, “What are you talking about?”
“Scare tactics. You know how we use vibrations to scare off moles? Well, you yelling at Dom pretty much did that.”
“Whoa, pest controlling.”
“Yeah, in front of half the business school.”
He groaned. “I thought you were going to die on the spot.”
“I would have if the party had been in a frat. I would never have lived that down. You know how many kids from our school go to UW, right? People would have talked about that until I was eighty.” Mortifying almost a year ago, humorous now. Max’s boom of laughter reminded me of all the times he had tossed keys, balls, and my own stuffed animals at me to “train” my reflexes. All the hours he’d spent with me at parks, teaching me the art of throwing the perfect spiraling football. He was the real reason why I was so comfortable with guys, able to joke around with them, hold my own.
I told Max in a soft voice, “To be honest, I’m glad you did what you did.”
“What the hell was I thinking?”
“It was love,” I said, remembering what Quattro had told me. “Love makes everyone a little crazy.”
Max cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the love talk. “Well, you better tell your new guy—”
“There is no new guy!”
“Not according to Mom. So if the new guy does anything to hurt you, I’m kicking his butt.”
“You taught me to kick butt on my own.”
“That’s because you’re one Tough Mudder.”
“I am.”
“Great, I’ll send you the training schedule. Not sure how we’ll train for the Arctic Enema. Or the Electroshock Therapy. But we’ll figure it out.”
“The what? Wait, I’m not signing up—”
“Awesome. See you after Guatemala.” I heard a last evil cackle before the dial tone buzzed in my ear. I grinned. My brother was back.
Jet lag, a full belly, and a long day of travel should have left me catatonic, but the conversation with Max had pumped me up too much to sleep. Possibly the image of plunging into a floating iceberg abyss in the Tough Mudder and hauling myself out before I went hypothermic had something to do with my insomnia. So I braved the stairs—not the easiest task on a sprained ankle—and retrieved the computer I had left downstairs. Hopping one-legged back up the steps with the laptop under my arm, I felt like I was already training for the obstacle race.
Safe on my bed, I opened the computer. While I may have skipped through the photos Quattro had taken of me, I was snagged on Mrs. Harris’s pronouncement: I wasn’t just a girl to him. But what if she was wrong? The thought made me so sad that I scrolled through the photos, picking a random one to open. Stesha, standing next to a gnarled tree wearing the same soul-seeking expression when she asked me what I was supposed to learn in Peru: What’s your purpose for being here?