I shake my head, as if I can force this information to compute by jiggling it into the proper slot. ‘Toby, if you hate it so much, why are you still there?’
He struggles upright again. ‘What else am I going to do? Drop out? Start something new from scratch when I’ve got no idea what I’m even into anymore?’ He glares at me defiantly. ‘It’s a good course. It’s the best option I have. Excuse me for giving a shit about my future.’
I baulk. ‘You think I don’t?’
He throws up his hands. ‘How should I know? You never say. And you always look unhappy lately – how am I supposed to know what you’re thinking?’
‘Well, you didn’t seem to have a problem taking a guess,’ I mutter. ‘What were your exact words? I’m selfish. I don’t feel anything.’
Toby exhales. He suddenly seems to find Dad’s fridge magnets fascinating. ‘Sophia, those things I said … well, yeah. I shouldn’t have.’
I shrug. ‘Maybe I deserved it.’
Toby looks like he’d rather be on the receiving end of that uranium enema than having this conversation, but he straightens his shoulders.
‘So … you had a date?’ he says uncertainly.
It’s my turn to slouch into my chair. ‘I don’t think it was a “date”. It was a thing that I sucked at, because apparently I suck at all the things. Maybe you didn’t mean it, Toby, but you were right. Mum and Dad should have shipped me off to one of those experimental labs when I was a kid. I might as well be just a brain in a jar. I shouldn’t be allowed to interact with normal people.’
‘When did I say any of that?’
‘Boxing Day, lunch. I was five. You were going through your My Little Pony phase. You used to wear sparkly gel in your hair and Princess Luna pyjamas.’
‘Christ, you never forget anything, do you?’ He folds his arms on the table. ‘You’ve really been holding onto that? I’d just seen The Matrix, and you’d eaten the last Choc Wedge. I was mad. I didn’t mean it.’
I force myself to meet my brother’s eye. ‘Why don’t you just say what you mean, Toby? Don’t equivocate. I’m really bad at figuring that out.’
Toby’s brow furrows. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he says slowly. And then, curiously, like he’s been holding onto the question, ‘Sophia, what are you afraid of?’
I unleash a snort of humourless laughter. ‘You want a list? I’m afraid of wasting my life. I’m afraid that I’m just synapses and neurotransmitters, but maybe there’s nothing else there. Maybe that’s all I am? I know that I’m not easy. I’m grouchy and strange, and there are so many people, Toby. So many people who can do the exact same things I can. Why would I be any different? What makes anyone think I have something special to add?’
Toby is gaping at me. ‘Sophia – is that – why would you think –’ He shakes his head. ‘That is the most I think I’ve ever heard you say since puberty.’
‘Then I guess we can add brain farts to the list of things that suck about me,’ I mumble.
Toby glances at Mum’s Elvis clock above the stove. ‘You know, Sophia, when you were, like, two years old, you were obsessed with this crappy stuffed pig toy. You’d carry that thing around with you everywhere.’
‘Mr Pinkerton. I remember. I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘He’s in a box in the shed with all your primary school stuff. I put him there when we moved.’
‘You did?’
Toby shrugs. ‘Mum was going to give him to the Salvos, but I thought … maybe you’d want him again someday.’
‘Why would you do that?’
Toby takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. ‘Because everyone thought you were too advanced for kid stuff, but you loved that pig. You were a contradiction, always.’ He gives me that pained look again. ‘I was really excited to have a sister. But I never … got you. You know?’
‘I know,’ I say, hugging my arms around myself. ‘I’m not what you guys wanted –’
‘No, stop. That’s not what I meant. Don’t be stupid.’
And even though I’m shaky on the inside and out, I chuckle. ‘Toby, I don’t think that’s a word anyone’s used on me before.’
Toby’s smile is small and wry. ‘You might be brilliant, Sophia. But yeah. Sometimes you are also pretty stupid.’
We sit in silence as the house warms, balmy air from the vents sending bits of fridge detritus blowing around the kitchen. I contemplate my brother. His body language still screams tension: shoulders hunched, sharp chin tucked in. But his face is less pinched than I have seen it in ages. I remember, suddenly, the last time I saw him looking so sheepish.
For my fifth birthday my parents took us to the zoo. I was going through an insect phase, so the only thing I was interested in was observing Ornithoptera richmondia up close – the Richmond birdwing butterfly, the largest subtropical butterfly in the country. Toby stood in the middle of the butterfly house with this glassy look on his face, eyes fluttering like he couldn’t decide where to look first. I remember him standing on the suspension bridge, mouth agape, until a Sapho longwing flew into his eye, whereby he burst into tears and we all got dragged to the otters instead.
And I think, in this moment, that I understand something about my brother. Dropped in the middle of a butterfly house, or, say, a lecture on n-dimensional Euclidean geometry, I understand exactly what’s happening. There’s a language that makes perfect sense to me. But for someone who was unfamiliar with advanced topology or the greater subdivisions of the order lepidoptera, I suppose it might be a bit overwhelming. When I think about Toby’s wide-open face, the moment of what even I could recognise as wonder before he was winged in the eyeball, I think I understand something else, too. Toby lost in the butterfly house is me most of the time.
I may not understand the technicalities of people – their behaviours are a mystery, their mating habits confound the hell out of me, and yes, okay, I get a little freaked when they come too close to my face – but that doesn’t mean I’m not fascinated. Occasionally I catch myself gaping at them, confused, but still mesmerised. And sometimes, I even think they’re beautiful.
I take an unsteady breath. ‘Toby. You are a pain in the arse. You have terrible taste in music, and I really wish you would learn to part your hair in a way that doesn’t make you look like a brown Friedrich from The Sound of Music. But … I love you.’
Toby’s face turns a shade of purple. ‘Aw, come on. You don’t need me to say that Brady Bunch stuff. When has that ever been us?’
I stare at him.
‘Right. Well then.’ He coughs. ‘Me too,’ he mumbles.
I push my chair back. ‘Toby – do you think we could … maybe go do something? I mean, something other than homework. Just for a little while? I think I really need pyjamas and Matt Smith.’
Toby stands and scrubs his palms on his jeans. ‘Is he the one with the scarf?’