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Second Summer
Elliot
The kitchen is in complete chaos when I walk into it.
All three of my half-sisters are rushing about, frantically getting ready for school.
Five years after my father left us, my mom got married. Her husband—my stepfather—Jeff, is about as polar opposite to Andrew Reid as a man could be. Zero athleticism. Total dedication. Outside of his shifts at the firehouse, his sole hobby is bending over backwards to help my mom out and take care of my sisters.
He’s a hard guy to dislike.
And I don’t dislike him. I’m just detached.
My mother and father were never married. They had a brief relationship that my conception prolonged. I know my mom was essentially a single parent for most of their time together. My father was too busy living his glory days to pay attention to his girlfriend and kid. Hockey took precedence over everything for him.
I resent the hell out of him for the total disregard, for packing up and leaving when my mother told him she’d had enough and never looking back. But I’m also that little kid gaping at the lights and the sound and the excitement surrounding my father when he stepped on the ice at his home games. That level of importance, ofadoration, is something few people achieve in their life. My father took advantage of it. Selfishness may be genetic, because I know I have more in common with him than just my skill on the ice.
Pursuing goals doesn’t always leave room for other people’s feelings. In fact, it usually doesn’t.
The difference between me and him is I have no intention of dragging anyone along on the ride.
Mia, my oldest sister, eyes me as she walks over to the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal. “Can you drive me to school, Elliot?”
I drop my heavy backpack by the door and suppress a sigh. “Yeah. Sure.” A detour by the junior high is about the last thing I feel like doing on one of the few mornings I don’t have a six a.m. practice, but I’m not a total dick.
I don’t resent my sisters for the fact that they’re getting the idyllic two-parent childhood I didn’t. I’m just removed from it, looking in the window from the street. They feel more like acquaintances I happen to live with than siblings. Maybe it would be different if any of them were male. I have absolutely no common ground when it comes to pop music or dolls or nail polish. I’m like a long-term visitor, getting to know the rest of my family on a temporary basis.
Lucy pouts as she shoves her sandwich into her lunchbox. “Why does Mia get a ride? I don’t want to take the bus.”
My mom stops washing dishes and intercedes. “Your sister’s school is on the way for Elliot. Yours isn’t.”
I pour myself a bowl of cereal and take a seat at the table next to my youngest sister, Isabella, who’s scribbling on a piece of paper. Maybe it’s the fact that we share two favorite hobbies—sleeping and eating—but I spend the most time with her.
“What’s up, Izzie?”
She glances up, showing off the crooked smile that’s a result of her recently losing both front teeth. “Just drawing.”
“Oh yeah? What are you drawing?”
“The photo from your room.” Izzie nods toward the pile of Polaroids right next to her empty bowl of cereal. She got a Polaroid camera last Christmas, and I don’t think there’s a single inch of this house that hasn’t been photographed since. Mia and Lucy both steer clear of my room—I’m not sure if they think I’ll have a stack ofPlayboyslying around or something—but Izzie waltzes in and out when she pleases. “It’s a drawing of a photo of a drawing. Cool, eh?”
There’s only one drawing in my room. She’s replicating Auden’s.
“What drawing?” Mia asks as she plops down opposite us.
“The one his girlfriend drew,” Izzie sings.
“Izzie,” I admonish. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to stay mad at wide eyes and rosy cheeks.
“What? You said she’s a girl and your friend.”
Yep, I definitely said that. “That’s different from a girlfriend.”
“How?”
“It just…is.” I’ll leave the birds and the bees talk to Mom and Jeff.
None of them say anything, but I can feel the spotlight of my oldest sisters’ attention on me, along with my mom’s. I haven’t mentioned the girl I met last summer to any of them, mostly for exactly this reason—they’re all too nosy about my love life as it is.Anygirl, let alone one I’ve spent the better part of a year talking to every day, would pique their interest.
