“I have an older sister.” It’s my turn to pause as I consider whether I should say her name. “Brenna.”
“How many years?”
I frown. “Excuse me?”
He takes a sip of water before he repeats himself. “How many years? Between the two of you?”
“Oh, about two and a half.” I smile as I remember our adolescent hatred for one another. That was before. My life has been divided into two parts, the first one happy, the second one not so much. I’m hoping to turn that around. “She’s my best friend.”
“Whether she likes it or not?” He’s teasing me, and I laugh.
“Back when we were younger, our parents used to say that. Tell us that we needed to get along because when we were older and everyone else in the family was gone, we’d only have each other. We never believed that would happen, that we would actually want to count on each other. We used to fight all the time and it drove our parents crazy.”
“And now you don’t.”
I shrug. “She really is my best friend. I tell her almost everything.”
“Did you tell her about me?”
Would the truth hurt him? “No,” I admit, my voice soft. “I didn’t want to explain exactly how we met.”
“You mean the near purse snatching.”
I nod. “I didn’t want to worry her. She would . . . freak out.”
“Does she do that, your older sister? Worry about you a lot?”
The truth is there, sitting right on the tip of my tongue, and I’m tempted to let it all spill out. But I can’t admit everything. Not yet. He still doesn’t know my last name. I don’t know his. I want to keep this part of myself quiet for now. Maybe for as long as I spend time with Ethan, because I know this won’t last. It can’t. He’ll find out what happened and bail. He should. I’m not worth sticking around for. My problems are such a heavy burden, I don’t expect anyone to want to deal with them.
But it’s liberating, spending time with someone who doesn’t know about all your baggage. There’s a freedom in just being me versus the girl who was kidnapped, held captive for days, and raped repeatedly. No pitying looks, no hesitation. I’m not easy to be around.
It’s not easy being me. This is why I’m so reclusive, why I have such a hard time pushing myself out of my shell. All the therapy in the world won’t really help. What’s done is done. I get it. Having a father who refused to talk about what happened to me didn’t help matters. We were a solid family who became dysfunctional in a matter of days. Who remained dysfunctional for years, until my father died. We’re still not perfect.
Most of the time, I blame myself for our falling apart, for losing that sense of normalcy I so needed when I came back. I didn’t ask to be kidnapped, but I felt responsible just the same.
Easier to blame yourself and start down a path of intense self-loathing for the rest of your life.
“Sometimes,” I finally say nonchalantly. “Just like I sometimes worry about her. It’s what sisters do. We watch out for each other.”
“It must be nice, to have someone you can always count on.” His voice sounds almost wistful. “No matter what, she’ll be there for you.”
“It is nice.” I want to ask him if he has someone to count on but I don’t. It feels too personal, too invasive, and I don’t know him that well yet.
“So do you work? Have a job you love? Or are you in school? What do you do with your days?” He pushes his plate away slightly, indicating that he’s finished, I guess, and my appetite flees, too, at the tone of his questions. We’ve only made general small talk, nothing too personal, revealing nothing too intimate. Just the way I prefer it.
But now he wants more details and I guess that’s natural. I shouldn’t throw up a wall, but it’s such a natural defense mechanism for me, I almost can’t help it. “I’m a full-time college student.” All online, so I don’t have to interact with anyone else in person.
He sends me a look, one I can’t quite read, but it’s almost as if he doubts me. “What’s your major?”
“Graphic design.” When I was little I loved to create things. Draw and make crafts with lots of glitter and glue and paint. Create scrapbooks with all of Mom’s stuff that she never used. She’d get so mad at me at first but after a while, she gave it all to me since she wasn’t using it. I became the one who made the family vacation scrapbooks every year until the summer I turned thirteen.
We all know why I stopped. There were no more summer vacations after that year.
“Really?” His face lights up. “I’m in Web design.”
“You design websites?”