“Wait, you’re kind of skipping over the more important revelation here.”
“Andrew, I’m sixteen! It’s not a big deal. You just think it’s a big deal because I’m your little sister.”
Andrew looked at her for a second the way some other guy might. She was pretty, of course. When she was a kid, she’d looked like a doll, with her pink cheeks and rosy little lips. But now, though Andrew hated to even think it, little Gracie was kind of sexy. Oh god. She was. He knew that guys liked Saina, but that was different. She was his older sister, which meant that she was always part of a vague, adult world that swirled just slightly above his head, alluring and unreachable. Even when he’d hit sixteen, and then eighteen, and now twenty-one, all the ages that had seemed so wise and fun when Saina occupied them, it felt as if he were failing to tap into all the adventure those years promised. Road trips! Cigarettes! Drunken adventures! Saina had done all that with abandon, and now Grace seemed to be following her easy lead in a way he’d somehow talked himself out of doing.
“Hey, big brother,” Grace singsonged, “are you ruined forever? Have I blown your mind by admitting that I’ve blown other things?”
“Oh my god, Grace! Stop it!”
“Okay, okay! I’m sorry, that was too much—I just kind of couldn’t resist. C’mon, it was a good joke, right? Like, from a professional standpoint?”
“It was a terrible, terrible thing to say from any standpoint.”
Grace kicked at his submerged leg, splashing the chemically charged water up onto the tile, which was still hot even though the sun had been down for hours. “Do you think I’m a slut now?”
“No! Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“If I’m a slut?”
“Oh no, no. It’s just this girl that I was involved with. I really liked her but she—” Andrew paused and looked at his sister. Well, why not? “She wanted to sleep with me, but I just wasn’t sure.”
“Was she hot?”
“Grace, is that really all you think it’s about? Was she hot? Is that what you do? Just fuck anyone you think is hot?”
She looked up from braiding a strand of hair, shocked. Behind her winged eyeliner and baby hipster layers of necklaces and bracelets, his little sister was still so young. A pinprick of anger broke through his heat-heavy torpor.
“Have you fucked a lot of guys?”
“I’m not telling you!”
Okay. Andrew would have to change tack. The important thing now was to save her from becoming one of those girls that everyone wanted to sleep with and no one wanted to take out to dinner. “Grace, look, I’m not trying to shame you. It’s your choice, right? I mean, it should always be your choice. But you don’t have to choose . . . to, uh, do it with a lot of people.”
“You are so condescending.”
“You don’t know what guys are like—”
“No, you don’t know what guys are like because you’re deciding that you have to be a virgin for some reason. Dude, why is it such a big deal? Are you a Republican or something?”
“I don’t care what other people do, I just . . . I just think that things like sex matter. It’s your connection with another person. It should mean something.” He looked at her, underlit by the glow of the pool. Should he tell her about their father and his unfaithfulness? He hesitated. “Just . . . just don’t be stupid, Grace.”
Grace scraped back on the concrete and jumped up, kicking a spray of pool water in his face. She stood, looming above him, furious now. “Why are you being like this, Andrew?”
“Like what?”
“All judgy, like you’re my dad or something. Are you going to try to send me off to boarding school, too?”
Contrite, Andrew leaned over and grabbed at her ankle. “No! Hey. No. Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
“Well, you did.”
“Don’t be Gracie mad! Be my friend again.” He held up the empty minibottle of Jack. “Say hello to my little friend?”
“It’s not going to work, Andrew. Guys can just quote things from movies and everything’s cool, but it’s not going to work with me.”
It was always like that, thought Andrew. Any time Grace felt like someone was disapproving of her, even the slightest bit, it became an all-out battle. Youngest child syndrome. That had made so much sense when he first read about it. He was always in the middle, bringing Grace and Saina together, giving in to their dad, being nice to Barbra. He felt like Rodney King sometimes, arms outstretched, asking for everybody to just get along.
“So is this all real?” asked Grace.
“You being mad at me for no reason? I hope not.”God. Andrew. He should be a stupid comedian—he always tried to make everything a joke. Grace briefly considered the possibility of both of her siblings being famous. If that happened, then she’d have to be famous, too, which she was planning on anyway. It wouldn’t be fair if she was the only one who wasn’t.