Young Writers Society

ohk, im really scared about getting mixed reviews about this one, but its what i needed 2 write, so if u dont like it, sorry. btw, im still hoping 4 help on the title i kno it sucks so yea. enjoy-if u can, lol

One

Dan is the oldest. Following shortly after him is Michael, Cassie, then Al. After Al came D.J. and Leroy. Then, a rush of girls, Kris, Emmie, Lala, Hannah, Ellie, Kaitlyn, and Blake came. Afterwards, mom and dad had three more boys, Greg, Colin, Chase, and then, finally, I was born. Amazing little Adrian. Wow. Not. I had a co-ed name, straight, chocolate brown hair, cold blue eyes, and just an all-around plain-looking body. A pretty boring look if you asked me. There were three more kids to be born still, Isaac, Ryan, and little Jake, who was born a few weeks after mom filed for a divorce, so technically, there are twenty of us. I could go on and on, explaining all of them, but nineteen kids plus myself is a lot, so, to put it in the least, hazel eyes and medium-dark hair with olive-colored skin is dominant in our family. Us, the crazy, loud, somewhat polite (or so we try), Italian Romberches family with 20 kids.

I was there when we sent Dan away to college, which, of course, was Stanford, his first choice. That set a pretty high standard for me. Well, for all of us, I guess. Dan hugged mom and dad, kissed mom on her cheek, then, ran down the long line of the rest of us, high-fiving us, and laughing. His medium length, dark, breezy hair, was tucked behind his ear and held back with a pair of black, plastic-framed glasses. He was wearing a dark New York City t-shirt and his only pair of somewhat cool jeans, a pair of plain dark ones from A & F that Cass and Kris had convinced him to buy. His olive green North Face backpack was filled with a toothbrush, Dan’s iPod, his new Mac and an extra set of clothes. The rest was crammed into one huge, oversized black suitcase at Dan’s feet. When he finally turned and left for good, I watched him, and, coldhearted as it might be, the only thing I could think of was: One down, 19 more to go. Congrats, guys.

“Adrian. Adrian, where are you?”

“Hmm?” I was in the room I shared with five of my sisters, sprawled on the floor with my homework when Bridget and Maddy came in, trailing behind Cassie.

“Oh, hey guys,” I said, jumping up.

Bridget tossed her blond ponytail over her shoulder and smiled. She was the perfect All-American, popular-girl model, but she was probably the nicest person in the world. And, of course, she was also my best friend.

“Hey, how’s my girl,” Bridge said, hugging me and then stepping back. She scrunched up her nose and said, “You’re doing Calc homework on your first day of vaca? For real? Get out. Honestly, Adrian? Do you ever take a break?”

Maddy smiled, elbowing Bridget. “Leave her alone. She can’t help it if you’re jealous that she actually has a brain, and you’re just a dumb blonde.”

“Guys, come on,” I said. Well, okay, Bridget was nice, but when she got mad, she wasn’t so nice. Even if it was just Maddy riling her up. Because sometimes, Maddy was a bitch to her, especially, since, knowing her so well, she knew exactly where she could hit a nerve.

“Oh, you’re right, Virgin Mary, I’m just jealous. That must be it. But then, what would that make you? A lesbian?”

“Guys!”

“Well, ‘cuz that’s what comes next, you know. After being jealous? You know that if someone is jealous, the next person is either gay or dead. You called me jealous, so you must be the lesbian. Since, you can only be so jealous, and then you have to just listen to what you heart is telling you, and stop being in denial so much. Just let it happen, you know?”

“Right, so you’ve just proved my point. It’s time you realized that you’re just a pretty bitch with no future at all, no brain, no nothing,” Maddy shot back.

“What the fuck guys, I said, shut up!”

Maddy and Bridget, both breathing hard now, completely agitated looked at me. “Just chill, okay? God. You guys are supposed to be best friends, remember? And I mean, like, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants best friends, not Gossip Girl Serena and Blair best friends, got it?”

Maddy sighed, running a hand through her long, gorgeous brunette hair. She kind of gave a little nod, like I was right. I hoped I was. I didn’t even know anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Bridget blurted, though her features and her body language told otherwise.

“Oh, uh, yeah, me too,” Maddy mumbled, her fingers twitching like mad with Tourette’s.

I sighed, both in relief and slight exasperation that they weren’t putting more effort into their apologies, but mostly in relief. “Guys, really, though, what is this? You guys are constantly putting each other down over and over again. You act like you hate each other.”

“It’s just teasing,” Maddy pleaded quietly.

Bridget, of course, had reached her limit of playing nice and snapped. “God, what are you, our mother?” she spat, her voice low, furious and fast, the way it got when she was about to swallow you whole, digest you up, and then spit you out. The way she got when she was about to take everything she knew about you that you had trusted her with and throw it out in the open and take jabs at it, ripping out the seams of trust that you had built with her. She had burned a lot of bridges with this temper of her. “Every time, you act like you have some sort of, of, authority to just, like⎯”

“Bridge, stop. Now. Before you say something you’ll regret, just stop.” Sometimes, if you caught her right at the perfect time, when she’d had enough time to blow off some steam, but not quite hurt you yet, you could stop her from breaking any bonds you’d formed with her.

Bridget stared at me, her eyes wild and hazy, her hair perfectly straight, her side bangs curving just perfectly off her face. She shook her head softly, her entire body slowly calming down. “No. No, Adrian, ‘cuz you know what? I wouldn’t have regretted anything.” Her voice was soft but cold, and she shook her head at me before turning around and leaving, for all I knew, for good.

After Bridget left, Maddy hung around awkwardly, not really knowing what to do, kind of like when somebody loses a lot of weight, and the skin leftover from all that weight just sort of hangs there, with nowhere to go. Eventually, it will go away, but for the time being, it’s stuck there, being awkward and doing nothing.

I loved Maddy, but that was what she was like to me at the moment. Like leftover skin. She made a lot of weak, pointless attempts to make me feel better, gave me some well-thought about, but, knowing Bridget, probably useless advice about what to say to Bridget next time I saw her, and then she finally, with a sad smile and a, “Call me if you need anything. I’ll be there,” she left.

The next few hours, I busied myself with more Calc homework due on the Monday we got back from break, and I even worked on Biology some (I was in all advanced class, probably the nerdiest thirteen year old alive for taking biology and calc in eighth grade) before finally throwing down my burnt out looking pencil and cradling my throbbing wrist.

Of course, out of the six girls I was sharing my room with, four of them, for some insane reason (actually, no, they probably all got grounded), were there, watching with satisfaction and pity for being such a nerd as I worked my way through lunch, then dinner.

“What?” I blurted out, defensively, because they were all giggling at me and doing impressions of me with my nose stuck in my huge, and heavy enough to knock someone cold, Biology textbook. “God, I like doing stuff early. That a problem?”

“Oh no, no problem,” Blake said, grinning at me, but not making fun of me. Out of all my sisters, Blake and I were the closest, probably because of the minimal age difference between us. She was like, the first person I’d go to if I couldn’t talk to Maddy and Bridget about something. But there was also another reason we were so close. Actually, it was probably the thing that pulled us together. I mean, yeah, she wasn’t that much older than me at all, so anything that she went through, I was pretty much guaranteed to go through shortly after. But that wasn’t the thing that made her and I connect, that made her watch over me more closely than she did anyone else, that made her stand up for me, no matter who it was that was being mean to me. It was mostly the fact that I was the only person on the planet that she’d shared her secret with. I was the one she told. And I kept it to myself, too.

It was kind of a simple secret, really. Lots of people had one very similar to it. That didn’t make it any less important, though. It happened on one of the famous “Family Outing Days” (kind of ironic if you ask me, now that I know about Blake). What that meant was that mom and dad would take an age group of kids out, and the rest of us had to do our chores. But as long as they were finished, we could go out. Blake and I, for some reason, had no plans, so we had been stuck sitting around in our room for the whole day, her on one of the top bunks, me on the bottom. She was staring straight at the ceiling, just staring, and I was blasting Fall Out Boy and the All-American Rejects on my iPod, the purple Nanochromatic I’d earned with babysitting money from Bridget’s parents, since Bridget hated babysitting, and she’d only do it if I came with her. Suddenly, Blake had rolled over to the edge of my bed to see what I was doing.

“Hey,” I said, unplugging one of my earbuds.

“Hey,” she said softly. I waited around for a few seconds, to see if she wanted to talk, but she didn’t say anything else, so I put the earbud back in, and put on “Gives you Hell.” A few minutes later, though, Blake was watching me from her top bunk again.

“What?” I asked, taking out my light blue SkullCandy.

Blake shrugged. I stared her down, but my pale blue eyes were apparently no match for her soft, hazel ones because, finally, she gave in and said, “How’s it going?”

I shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess.”

Blake nodded. “Cool. That’s good, I guess.”

“What about you?” I asked.

Blake did her casual, head-and-shoulder shrug and I nodded. I was about to tune out with my music again, when suddenly, out of nowhere, Blake said, “Hey, Adrian? Have you ever loved someone?”

“What?” I sputtered, caught completely off guard.

“You know. Loved someone.”

Blake was staring at me expectantly, so I gave a little half-shrug and, knowing it wasn’t what she wanted, said, “Well, I mean, yeah, I love you guys, and mom and dad and my f⎯”

“No, idiot. Not your family. Or your friends. I mean, like a guy. A crush. Have you?”

I sighed. “Not really. Why, have you?”

Blake ignored the question, saying, “Do you like anyone now?”

“Um, er…well….” I could feel my face getting hotter and hotter, even though there was really nothing to be embarrassed about.

Blake grinned. “Who?”

“No one.”

“Who is it?”

“I said, NO ONE, okay?”

“No. Not okay. Tell me who you like. Now.”

I sighed, even though inside I was practically having heart palpitations. “Um…”

“Adrian. Now. Tell me. You’re my sister. I won’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Oh…kay…”

Blake sighed. “Here, how ‘bout this. You tell me who you like, I’ll tell you a secret. You give some, you take some. Deal?”

“Okay, sure,” I said, breathing a little easier now that I knew Blake was going to have to spill too.

“All right, let’s hear it,” Blake said in a smiling voice. “Spill.”

“Um. Well, er, his name’s…his name’s… Sam…”

“Sam…?”

“Sam…Rentjay.”

“Aw, I love his brothers! Andrew’s like my best bud, well, guy friend, and David is hilarious! Ha, Sam. He’s so cute.”

“Yeah, well…” I said, my face bright red now, even in the dim light. “Your turn. What’s your secret.”

“My secret?” Suddenly, Blake’s voice was quiet and slightly nervous-sounding.

“Oh, don’t even try that with me, Blake. You know you promised to tell me a secret after I told you, so spill. Now.”

“No, no, I know, I know. I’m going to cheat you or anything. I’m just…thinking.”

“Well, think faster please.”

There was a long silence following, as Blake took forever to think, even though I’d asked her to hurry it up. Finally, in a low, quiet voice, she said, “Know how I asked you if you ever loved someone?”

“Um, yeah,” I said, wondering where this was going.

“Well…I have,” she said, and then started crying soft, quiet tears.

“That’s your secret?” I blurted. I knew it was mean, but I couldn’t help it.

“No, no, that’s only…like, half of it.”

“Then what’s the other half?”

“Um…” Blake’s voice was loud and high-pitched and funny-sounding, like she was trying to talk while holding her breath. She had started to wipe away her tears when I finally had the decency to be sympathetic, so I crawled up the small, wooden ladder with four rungs on it and rolled down next to her on the bed.

“Blake, sweetie,” I said. “What is it?”

Blake gave a shaky sigh and, after a long pause, she slowly said, “What if I told I was different?”

I shrugged. “Everyone is different.” No question about that.

“Yeah, but. Different in a way that other people might find…gross. Or offensive. To God.”

“Blake…” She was starting to make me nervous.

Blake shut her eyes for a long time, then slowly opened them and said, “What if I told you I was gay?”

I took in a breath of air, forgetting, for a moment, about everyone else in the world but my sister, who, as things started to come together slowly, I could tell was suffering.

“And what if I said the person I loved was a girl?”

I didn’t say another word, just laid perfectly still next to my sister, completely unsure of what I should feel other than sympathy for her.

“And what if…what if she didn’t love me back?” Blake’s voice had dropped to a heart-wrenching whisper and it broke a few times. She was close to tears, close to crying again, which, for Blake, was like using up her whole year’s allowance of tears.

“Oh, Blake, sweetheart,” I said, putting my arms around her and holding her tight. So what, she was gay, or at least thought she might be? Was it anyone’s business who she loved? She was my sister, and I couldn’t hate her just for that. The only thing she was guilty of was falling in love, and in who’s book was that a crime?

That night, I’d answered my own question, as my older sister cried, for the life she’d never have, for the looks she’d always get, for the girl who’d never love her back, for all the injustices in life…and I told myself that nobody ever said loving somebody was a crime. Nobody.