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"It's okay, Lou Lou," Sammy told me in our room that night, a room we had shared since I was born, a room that we would no longer have to share since Monty was gone, and Sammy could have his bigger room all to herself.
She needed it, too.
The space.
Sammy had gone the complete opposite direction than me.
Where I was still holding onto my tomboy 'phase,' dressing in baggy clothes, keeping my hair tucked into baseball caps, flattening out my new, unwelcome and - in my opinion - unnecessarily large breasts with an elastic bandage I had found in the bathroom medicine box. I refused to make myself pretty, to dress as society expected.
Sammy, though, Sammy loved all the trappings that came with being born with an innie instead of an outy.
Her dresser - and the three-fourths of the closet she took - were bursting at the seams with outfits I wasn't sure I had ever even seen her wear, had accused her of such more than once. To which she had told me that half the fun of clothes was shopping for them.
Which was so stupid that I didn't even have a comeback for it.
She hogged the bathroom for an hour every school day morning, twice that on weekends and nights out with friends. Even if all she was doing was going to a movie. She carefully styled her hair, applied the makeup that took over two drawers in the bathroom vanity, took ages to figure out what looked best on her.
Which was ridiculous.
Everything looked good on her.
That was just Sammy for you.
She had been born beautiful, had simply grown more so as she aged.
Her hair fell in natural loose waves, a gleaming near-black color that could blind you when it reflected the sun.
Her eyes were a lighter shade of brown - a honey color that I secretly envied, even though I mostly prided myself in not being vain that way.
Her skin stayed effortlessly flawless while mine broke out incessantly, bumps of icky white or under-the-skin painful spots.
And she curved.
She curved like I did, but did so with gusto, with pride in her femininity, dressing in a way to accentuate the fact without looking like she was trying to do so.
Sammy was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood.
Hell, in the Bronx.
Maybe even the whole city.
"How is this okay? Your parents disowned our brother."
"They're your parents too, Lou Lou," Sammy reminded me, reaching out to pat my leg as I sat cross-legged on my messy bed, one I was sure I hadn't made in at least a week. While Sammy made sure to close her cover and press out the wrinkles before she left every morning.
"Not anymore, they're not."
I was good at a lot of things.
Sulking was at the top of the list.
My mother and sister used to smile knowingly when I went off on a rant, sharing a look I didn't understand while making a comment about how I was due to 'start' soon.
"Oh, come on. You know they didn't want this any more than we do."
"Right, like you care about Monty."
"I care about Monty. I just don't hero-worship him like you do. I mean, I know you two have always been close, but even you must see how bad it is if he's getting involved with gangs."
"And who says he is? I've never seen him with people who look like gang members."
"And what do gang members look like, Lou?" At my silence, she nodded. "Exactly. You never know. But Mommy and Daddy have always kept a close watch on local gang activity. So if they say it's a gang, it's a gang. You know that. And they would never lie to us. And don't you dare bring up the Santa Claus thing. That was like seven years ago; let it go."
I had thrown a tantrum about them lying to us for four months when I first found out that Santa wasn't real, that my parents had been behind it the whole time, that everyone would simply lie to kids all the time.
Even when my mother insisted it was simply to help bring happiness to kids, to let them see a bit of magic in life.
There's plenty of time for reality when you grow up, Louell.
"I don't believe it. About Monty. And nothing they say is going to change that."
It didn't either.
Not for the six months that followed, when Monty disappeared off the face of the earth. This constant in my life was suddenly gone, the loss a searing thing that couldn't be denied.
We fell into a new normal, my resentment a palpable thing in the house even as Sammy packed up her side of the room, moving next door into Monty's room whose things had disappeared one day without explanation, not even when I demanded one.
Maybe they gave it to him.
