And I can’t help but be weirded out and a little turned on, and I don’t know what’s going on, so I do what I always do when I face something unbelievable: I start recording. My expensive, awesome microphone gets the whole thing while I sit there listening for ten minutes, completely conflicted over what my body is doing and my brain is telling me and wondering whether I should storm over and . . . do what?
Here’s another weird thing I noticed that I didn’t think much of at the time: when she was done, she just . . . stopped. Like someone flipping a light switch. I crept to her room and listened at the door, but I could hear her snoring lightly; she gets that from Dad. No voices from her room, and only one person breathing as far as I could tell. She was alone.
The next morning her alarm went off seven times before I heard her get up and go to the shower. When she came down to breakfast, she dragged herself to the table, like her limbs were weighed down. She slumped into her usual chair across from me and splashed milk into a bowl of cereal. I kept watching her until she looked up.
“What?” she said, dribbling milk down her chin.
“Sleep okay?” I asked.
“I guess.”
“Any strange dreams?” I asked.
“Not that I remember.” She put down her spoon. “Why?”
“No reason,” I said hurriedly as Mom entered the kitchen. “Probably nothing.”
*
“That’s not nothing,” Ryan said. She pulled my earbuds from her ears and fanned her face exaggeratedly. “Can I have a copy of this?”
“Ryan!” I said. “It’s Allie.” I shoved my iPod back into my pocket, wondering if I’d made a mistake playing it for her. But I needed to share it with someone and figure out what to do.
“Uh-huh. I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
“What the hell do you mean by that? She’s my sister.”
“I know, but . . .” She shrugged. “She’s cute. I wouldn’t blame you for noticing, as long as that’s all you do.”
“Ew. You must have me confused with Tony,” I said.
Ryan glanced up and down the hallway. “Have you seen him today?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“You going to play that for him too?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t?”
“No, I just want to see the look on his face when you do.”
We caught up with Tony at lunch. His eyes widened when I played the file for him.
“This is Allie?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Damn, girl,” he said. “She must have been in a good mood this morning.”
“She was exhausted,” I said.
“I guess she would be,” Tony said.
“So what do we do about it?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s her business,” Ryan said.
“You know what you have to do, bro,” Tony said. “Hide a camera in her room. Find out if she’s sneaking someone in at night or going it alone.”
“That’s disgusting,” Ryan said. “Aside from the fact that it’s unethical to record someone without their knowledge, it’s almost certainly illegal. Definitely illegal since she’s a minor.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And she’s my sister.”
Tony snorted. “I’ve seen you check Allie out.”
“I have not!” I glared at Ryan. “Did you get him to say that?”
She held up her hands and shook her head.
“Relax, Day. No judgment. She’s hot,” Tony said. “If she were my sister—”
“She’s thirteen,” Ryan said. “Here’s an idea. Before you lie and break the law, how about you try talking to her?”
“That’s gonna be an awkward conversation,” I said.
“Don’t be a coward, Day. Be a good big brother.”
You know in cartoons, when someone has a crisis of conscience and a little devil shows up on their shoulder to tell them the naughty thing to do? That’s Tony. The angel on my other shoulder, always guiding me true? That’s Ryan.
I was worried something was going on with them and I would either be left out or lose one of them as a friend. Devil or angel, I needed both of them, or who knew what kind of a mess I would get myself in?
*
There are a few stages we go through when we hear something we don’t want to be true. You’re probably experiencing them right now.
Stage one: shock and disbelief. When I confronted Allie in her room after school, it took me a while to get around to what I wanted to say. But after small talk about her school project and her next swim meet, after trying to talk around the question by asking her if she was interested in anyone at school—which got me the standard-issue thirteen-year-old’s eye roll—I finally came out with it.
“Did you have a, um, friend over last night?” I asked.
“What?” Allie asked. She was concentrating on building a collage on poster board for her social studies class. She had cut images out of magazines in the shapes of each of the fifty states and was building a map of celebrity faces and ads for expensive cars, gizmos, and gadgets. One of them caught my eye: a fancy, bullet-shaped vibrator.
“Whoa, is that . . . ?” I pointed.
“Oh!” It took Allie a moment to understand what she was looking at, bless her pure, innocent heart. Then she grabbed it, her face blushing. She turned it over to hide it, and Kim Kardashian stared up at us.
“I didn’t notice that on the other side of the page!” she said. “I just took a bunch of old magazines and newspapers from the school’s art supply room.”
“It was probably just a mistake,” I said, unsure whether I was referring to the magazine scrap or what I’d heard last night. That kind of thing could cause a scandal at St. Elijah’s Preparatory School, the kind of thing that could get someone expelled or fired.
“David, I have homework.” Allie blew her bangs away from her eyes in frustration. “So much homework.” Her voice was high, the way it sounded when school was getting to be too much. Maybe she’d finally found a healthy way to relax from all that stress. Better than taking drugs, right? This really wasn’t any of my business, but I needed to know she was safe, and that included not letting our parents find out about whatever this was.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Last night I heard, um, sounds coming from your room. Kind of, um, sexual sounds?”
You know me, I’m not too shy to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how dirty or disgusting it might be. But not with her. Not with Allie. And maybe that was the problem. I didn’t want to have this conversation with her.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
“Nope. Like, maybe you were dreaming?”
She shook her head. “Maybe you were. Why would you think I . . . ? How could you . . .”
I held up a hand to stop her. “Hold on, Allie. First of all, sex isn’t something to be embarrassed about.”
“I know, it’s a ‘beautiful thing that two people do when they’re in love. And very married.’ Direct quote there from Mom when she gave me ‘the Talk.’?”
“I got the same thing from Dad, except he phrased it as a beautiful thing I was absolutely forbidden to do if I want to continue being his son. But it’s almost completely wrong. Sex is kind of ugly and messy and gross, if you want to be honest, but it’s worth it because it feels so good! And it can kind of be beautiful if you’re with the right person, and definitely if they are particularly beautiful. Just being honest here. Also, love is entirely optional, and it’s more accurate to say ‘two or more people,’ and maybe some toys.”
Allie looked stricken.