The First to Know

by Abigail Johnson

  “I don’t get why you waited to tell us about singing and Gavin,” I said. “Why not ease us into a new boyfriend and make this radical life shift...less radical?”

  “I don’t know. At first, I was too nervous. I didn’t tell any of my friends the first time I sang in public—outside of church—and I barely got through two songs before I wanted to drop my mic and flee. But there was this one guy who kept eye contact with me the whole time until I forgot about the nervous-about-singing part and just thought about the nervous-over-the-cute-guy part. We ended up talking afterward, and then I saw him the next day, and the next, and I don’t think I’ve gone a day since without talking to him. He’s so it for me, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Selena rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that. Sometimes people just know and they don’t want to pretend otherwise. Look at Mom and Dad. They met when they were both freshmen in college, and Mom said she knew she was gonna marry Dad after the first date. Here they are, two kids and twenty-two years of marriage later, and they still go to the movies and make out. I want that too.”

  Three kids later was what she should have said. I slunk off the bed. “It’s not like they have a perfect marriage.”

  “Um, yeah, they kind of do.”

  Turning my back to her, I worried my lower lip. “Wasn’t Mom just telling you the other night that they went through some problems?”

  “Obviously not big problems. We exist, and they’re still married.”

  “Yeah, but what if they just never told us? What if it was so bad they couldn’t? Did she say if they ever thought about splitting up?”

  Selena laughed. “And you just accused me of being the dumb one. Of course not.”

  “But how would we even know? I’ve never heard them talk about problems early on in their marriage. Maybe that’s because they wanted to keep something from us—something one of them did.”

  “What, like maybe Mom held up a liquor store or Dad shot a man just to watch him die?”

  “I’m being serious.”

  She threw a piece of popcorn at my head. “You’re being dramatic. They had no money when they got married. Dad had to get a second job once Mom got too pregnant with me to keep hers, and they were both in school. So, yeah—I think it was probably hard, especially when Mom moved back home for a while to help take care of Abue the first time he got sick, but—”

  “Mom moved back home?” My hands curled at my sides. “Dad didn’t go with her?”

  “Between work and school, he couldn’t. It was just for a few months. I was barely a year old, so I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter—they had normal problems and they solved them. Together. End of story.” She shook her head at me. “Now are you going to give me the remote or do I have to chuck something harder than popcorn at you?”

  I didn’t move beyond letting her reclaim the remote. That had to be it. Mom had taken one-year-old Selena with her to Texas while Dad had stayed here. I didn’t know if they’d fought about her leaving or what, but I did know that Selena was almost exactly a year and nine months older than Brandon.

  Chapter 22

  I had more softball tournaments on Saturday, which kept my mind and body distracted during the day, but the evening at home would have been hard if not for Chase. His text was waiting for me as soon as I checked my phone.

  Chase: So?

  Me: win, Win, WIN!

  Chase: You have to let me come see you play one of these days.

  Me: What about you, are you winning at work?

  Chase: Only had one guy not show up. What does that count as, a tie?

  Me: Seriously?

  Chase: I was getting ready to fire him anyway.

  Me: Did he at least call?

  Chase: Hold on, I can’t text while I’m laughing.

  Me: I would have been pissed.

  Chase: I was.

  Me: I would still be pissed.

  Chase: Come by. I guarantee I’ll be the opposite of pissed.

  Me: Who was it that bailed? Not your cousin?

  Chase: No, Brandon’s here. He’s who I called in to replace the no-show. Can you come? I’ll ply you with free smoothies and you can tell me about your games.

  Me: I’m pretty beat. It’s taking all my energy to move my thumbs right now.

  Chase: My loss.

  Me: Mine too.

  Chase: Should I let you go?

  Me: Not unless you have to.

  Chase: Never.

  On Sunday it went back to being hard. We went to church as a family, sat in our normal pew as a family and drove home afterward as a family, but we didn’t do anything else that day as a family. We didn’t talk much at all. Everyone was nursing hurt or angry emotions. We normally cooked lunch together on Sundays, but that day we just didn’t.

  Instead Selena and I disappeared into my bedroom. She job-hunted online while I lay on my bed, tossing a softball toward the ceiling over and over again, hoping Chase would text and trying not to think about Mom taking care of her sick father while Dad was here with another woman.

  “Anything promising?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. My dishwashing skills are highly in demand.”

  “No openings for spoiled princesses with no work history?”

  “You want to apply too?”

  Neither of us had ever worked. Between school and sports, we didn’t have the time. I kind of liked the idea of getting a job, though, especially now that I was trying to avoid being home with my parents as much as possible. I’d suggested Mostly Bread, but either Nick was doing such a good job that they didn’t need anyone else, or they’d only ever had the one opening.

  An hour later, Selena had a list of places she planned to apply to. She read them off to me and we narrowed the list further.

  “I think I’ll put in for Lava Java, Name Brand Exchange, AJ’s Grocery and Jungle Juice.”

  The softball I was throwing hit me smack in the face. “What—which Jungle Juice?”

  She continued typing. “Whichever one will have me. I can put in for all the ones in the area and then see who responds.”

  I was overwhelmingly glad she was looking at her laptop and not at me. If I looked half as paranoid as I felt with my eyes bugging out, I would never have gotten away with the lie I told.

  “Why would you want to work there? Have you ever been?”

  “It’s a smoothie place. I like smoothies.”

  “Do you also like screaming monkey calls every time the front door opens?”

  She swiveled in the chair to face me. “Do they really do that?”

  “Yep. My friend Ariel works at one. She says most people quit within a month and the management structure is horrible. People flake on shifts all the time,” I said, using Chase’s story from the night before to lend my semi-lie the ring of truth I needed to really sell it. “Whoever is there ends up doing the work of, like, three people without extra pay. She’s planning on quitting herself.”

  Selena wrinkled her nose. “I guess that’s a no to Jungle Juice.” She turned back to her laptop, and I breathed for the first time in a full minute.

  What would I have done? There weren’t that many Jungle Juice locations in Arizona. Chase knew I had a sister named Selena, and we looked enough alike that people often mistook us for twins. On top of that, I knew that Selena would recognize something in Brandon if she saw him. She might not put together that he was our brother, but she’d know something connected them. I still hadn’t decided what I was going to say or even really if I was going to say anything at all. Right now she and Mom were happy; they didn’t know that Brandon existed. And maybe Dad didn’t either.

  I went back to throwing my softball until my equilibrium returned, but once I started thinking about Brandon, I couldn’t stop. A
nd thinking about my brother while our dad was downstairs was unbearable.

  I eventually escaped to Jessalyn’s. We still needed to talk, and not just the few sentences we’d been exchanging during games or practices since the fallout with Nick. We weren’t exactly fighting, but we weren’t not fighting either. I was mad at her and she was mad at me, but I’d also screwed up and couldn’t claim I was the only injured party. I think she felt the same way.

  Jessalyn lived only a few blocks away from me, but I still drove in case things didn’t go well and I needed to go somewhere else to avoid my family. Unaware of any rift between us, her mom let me in when I got there and sent me upstairs.

  Jessalyn’s room looked like it had been designed for a ten-year-old princess, which was exactly what she was to her parents—the princess part, anyway. Everything was pink and fluffy or pink and gauzy or pink and...pink. There was nothing that reflected the self-admitted tomboy who lived there, and it was Jessalyn’s favorite place in the world. She was particularly in love with the pink toile canopy surrounding her bed that was currently obscuring most of her body.

  The door was open, but I still knocked on the door frame.

  Jessalyn rolled onto her side, saw me, then returned to her stomach and the laptop she was using. She finished whatever she was typing, closed the laptop, then sat up and faced me. “Hey.”

  Relief hit me at the way she said that word. I hadn’t been sure if she was still angry—I hadn’t been sure if I was still angry—but there wasn’t a trace of hostility in her voice.

  “Hey back.” I didn’t flop onto her bed like I normally did. I claimed a corner, pushing the heavy canopy back so that I could sit. We didn’t say anything else. I felt like I had the grievance, but I knew she felt that way too. If we both weren’t so stubborn, we might have been able to talk it out. Instead we waited for the other to do the thing we couldn’t or wouldn’t do ourselves.

  So I deflected.

  “You didn’t tell me you were close to failing History. You know we don’t have a shot at making the finals if you get put on academic probation.”

  Jessalyn’s back stiffened. “Who told you that?”

  I wasn’t touching that question. I knew only because I’d lied to Dad about hanging out with her so that I could see Chase. “Is it true?”

  “It’s a stupid report.” She flopped back on her bed with enough force to communicate her feelings perfectly. “Who cares about a bunch of kings who died half a millennium ago?”

  “If it means the difference between you playing with us or not, you need to. Come on, I’ll help you.” I reached for her laptop, but she covered the lid with her hand before I could open it.

  “Is this really why you came over? Homework?”

  I drew my hand back and broke eye contact. After a moment, I said, “No.”

  “Okay, then, what? ’Cause last I checked, we were both pretty pissed at each other. And I know you talked to Nick and...it didn’t go great.”

  I let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

  “So are we fighting? What are we doing?”

  “We’re not fighting,” I said. “We’re just...”

  Jessalyn spun away from me and stood, taking her laptop and setting it on her dresser across the room. When she turned around and leaned her hands on the dresser, she just shrugged her shoulders. “Feels like fighting.”

  “You want to fight?”

  “No, I want to talk. I’ve wanted to talk for a long time. You’re the one who won’t tell me anything.”

  “That’s because it’s awful! Everything!” A tear that I hadn’t even felt forming escaped from one eye. “My supposed grandfather, the one I was so excited about finding? Turns out he’s my brother. Yeah,” I said when Jessalyn’s jaw dropped open. “He was even more horrified by me than I was of him. He won’t talk to me or help me figure out how this could have happened. I mean, my parents... You know them... You know my dad... How...” I was drawing in each breath faster than the one before it. “I don’t understand, and I can’t tell anyone, because then they’d feel like this too...like I can’t breathe, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and it hurts all the time and—” I finally choked off as Jessalyn wrapped both her arms around me.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t. I didn’t know if it would ever be okay again.

  * * *

  I told Jessalyn everything. About Chase being Brandon’s cousin and his having no idea who I really was. I told her about the picture I’d stumbled upon and how I still didn’t know if my dad knew he had a son. She listened, but there wasn’t much she could do besides offer a shoulder to cry on, which she did—both of them. When she’d asked me what I was going to do, I could only shake my head. I left sometime before my eyes completely swelled shut from crying and after Jessalyn promised she’d let me know if she really did need help with her report.

  Despite Jessalyn’s best efforts, I still felt too miserable to go home, so I drove past Jungle Juice instead, hoping Chase might be working and Brandon wouldn’t. I was wrong on both counts.

  I parked out front and watched my brother through the windows, the lights inside making the interior visible against the dark outside. Ariel was working with him. Every time he thought she wasn’t looking, he was staring at her. It was almost pathetic the way he watched her, but the expression on his face—even from thirty feet away in the parking lot—was so nakedly adoring that I found myself smiling at his complete lack of girl game. Ariel knew he was staring—of course she did. He couldn’t see the small smiles on her lips each time she caught him and he looked away. I wanted to shake him and tell him to just ask her out already. If we’d grown up together like a real brother and sister, I would have. Selena would have helped. My chest tightened at that thought.

  The three of us. Brother and sisters. Selena and I had a brother. Nothing else I found out about our parents would change that.

  I’d never pined for a brother like some kids. It had never been an option. Mom’s pregnancy with me had been hard, and it was never a secret that she couldn’t have more kids after me. We’d always known Selena and I were it. But watching Brandon, I could imagine what it might have been like. Learning to ride bikes, hitting our first ball, catching our first fish. And then there were all the memories he would have been a part of: Christmases and birthdays and visits to Mexico and body surfing and learning to make Tía Magdalena’s refried beans and camping and road trips and playoffs and putting up posters when our dog, Slammer, ran away. I didn’t even realize I was crying until the first tear dripped onto my collarbone.

  We’d missed all of that. And we were missing more, every day. These were memories we couldn’t have. And the more I thought about them, the more the idea of them shifted and faded. Even if we could go back, knowing about Brandon, it wouldn’t be as simple as reliving life with him in the picture. He wasn’t Mom and Dad’s son. He was the son of Dad and another woman. It would never have been the five of us singing carols around the Christmas tree or squished together in the back seat during a family road trip with Mom and Dad yelling at us from the front. It might not have been Mom and Dad at all.

  Inside Jungle Juice, Brandon and Ariel were doing one of those awkward two-steps where they both kept moving in the same direction trying to pass the other. Finally, Ariel stopped and slapped her hand on the counter. Whatever she said to Brandon made his eyes go wide. He said something short back to her, and she responded with a quick nod before grabbing the front of his shirt and kissing him. My brother might have been weak in the warm-up department, but he wasn’t lacking in follow-through. I could almost hear her squeak of surprise when his arms circled her and he kissed her back. I joined her in laughing at the look on his face when they broke apart. I looked the same way every time I won a softball game. Selena and I both did. All three of us had inherited the
same expression from our dad.

  * * *

  I made it home just before curfew and ducked into the office to say good-night when I saw that Dad had already gone to bed.

  “Wait, wait, wait. How was studying?” Mom asked, her head turned in my direction but her eyes still locked on whatever she was typing on her computer. “Did you actually do homework this time?”

  “We talked about homework—does that count?”

  With a dramatic mouse click, Mom turned her full attention to me. “There, I—” Her smile was replaced by a frown. “Honey, what happened?” She was at my side in a moment, her voice matching the softness of her hands as she cupped my face. “You look like you were crying.”

  She let me pull away. “Oh yeah. Jess and I—we kind of had this fight, sort of. It was dumb, but it’s fine now.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  She tilted her head to the side, holding my gaze as she brushed her thumb over my cheek. “Wanna talk about it? I’ll share my Kisses with you.”

  I hugged her. Mom didn’t like sharing her chocolate.

  “Is that a yes?” she asked when I held on too long. I could hear the smile in her voice.

  Not yet, I thought, not yet.

  In my room, Selena was snoring on the side of the bed I usually slept on. I changed into shorts and a T and slipped into the other side as quietly as possible. After a minute, I whispered, “Sel?”

  No answer. I looked over at her. Not so much as a twitch in her eyelid moved.

  “Sel?”

  Still nothing.

  I took a breath. Saying it out loud was so bittersweet. “We have a brother. His name is Brandon, and I think you’d like him. I think we both would.”

  Chapter 23

  Between his work and class schedules and softball, I had to wait another two days before I saw Chase again. I met him in the parking lot outside Jungle Juice after practice on Tuesday. He’d told me just to come in when I got there, but I’d caught a glimpse of Brandon through the window and knew that couldn’t happen. Just being in the parking lot when Brandon was working was a risk, but I was too eager—for a lot of things—to care.