I was seated at my vanity table, brushing my hair and thinking about Kent Pearson, who was in all of my ninth-grade classes except home economics. We had been classmates since the seventh grade, but suddenly, one day, when I looked at him, I saw him differently. He seemed to have become this handsome young man behind my back. He caught me looking at him with interest and blushed, but since that day, he had begun to pay more attention to me, finding every opportunity he could to talk or walk with me.
This caused me to wonder more deeply what it was that actually happened between a boy and a girl. Was it something magical, mysterious, or was it, as Cassie would probably say, simply the burst of hormones? If that were true, however, I’d have feelings like this for almost any boy, but I didn’t. I thought only of Kent, dreamed only of Kent, and was excited to be only with Kent. Were we too young to have experienced love at first sight, even though it wasn’t really our first sighting of each other?
“Did you hear what I said?” Cassie continued. She stood beside me with her arms folded under her breasts, her shoulders back.
Although Cassie was only two years older than I, she was nearly five inches taller and had what I had heard referred to as a full figure. She wasn’t at all matronly-looking, even though she often acted as if there was not even a foot left in her journey to maturity. However, no one simply seeing her would think of her as anything but a pretty teenage girl. She didn’t spend as much time on her hair and makeup, nor did she care as much for what was in fashion, as I did, but she never looked unkempt, and she did have our mother’s perfect facial features, with the same exotic speckled green-blue eyes and light brown hair that glistened golden in the sunlight. She kept her hair shorter than mine and Mother’s and wasn’t fond of wearing earrings. She didn’t want to pierce her ears, but when she heard Daddy compliment Mother on a pair of pierced earrings, she went ahead and had hers pierced and now always wore earrings.
“What?”
“What? What? How can you sit there for hours and look at yourself? The way you brush your hair makes me think you’re in some kind of a trance.”
“I’m not sitting here for hours. Mother brushes hers this way and this much every day.”
“Whatever. That’s hardly important. Didn’t you hear me? I said they’ve hired an interior decorator for the nursery. All they really have to do is put a crib and some other things in the bedroom, but now they’re going to change the wallpaper, the floor, maybe even the ceiling, and definitely all the lighting fixtures. I heard them say that they may even replace the windows to make the room brighter! That means busting out walls!”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. It all sounded fine with me.
“You know how much all that will cost? They’ll spend more money on this nursery than most people spend redoing a whole house. Before our brother is even born, they’re doting on him, spoiling him. You can just imagine what’s going to happen when he is born.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the sibling rivalry Mother had told me Cassie had had when I was born. If it was that, why didn’t I have it, too?
“They’re both so happy about it,” I said.
She stared at me and then shook her head. “Listen to me, Semantha. Read my lips if you have to, but listen. Sure, they’re happy now,” she said, “but wait until they have to go through all that parents go through with infants, waking up all hours of the night, changing diapers, fighting baby rashes, worrying over every possible infant illness, doctor visits, on and on and on.”
“They went through it with us,” I reminded her.
“Are you a total zero, Semantha? They were both sixteen years younger then. They’re so used to their own time and interests now, especially Mother. She, especially, will be overwhelmed. What it means is I’m going to have to do more, and so will you.
“Don’t you realize what the age difference between Asa and us will be?” she continued so intensely that I could see the veins in her temples. “By the time he’s ten, we’ll both be well into our twenties, maybe going to graduate school or married. Why, people might even think he’s my son and not my brother. They could even think it of you!”
“Oh, yes. I never thought of that,” I said, and she calmed a little.
“In any case, who will be here to help raise him?” she added, nodding.
“They won’t need us for that by then, will they?”
“Of course, they will. It’s harder when children get older. You know what Daddy says: little children, little problems, big children … understand?”
I nodded, again not looking sufficiently upset for her.
“Okay. Just wait,” she said. “You’ll see.”
She paused and looked at me in the mirror and squinted as if it was a window and not a mirror and she was looking at someone else some distance away.
“There’s something different about you these days. What is it?” she demanded.
I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. “What?”
“I don’t know. You’re acting flighty, like you’re always thinking about something else. I see the way you float through the halls and up and down the stairs like you’re in some kind of a movie hearing your own theme music.” She paused and narrowed her eyes again. “Are you interested in some boy? Is that it? Do you think you’re in love? Well?”
“No,” I said weakly. She smirked.
“Who is it? C’mon, out with it,” she said. “Who is this love of your life?”
“I’m not in love.”
“Semantha Heavenstone. This is your sister, Cassie, who’s talking and to whom you’re talking. You know we’re too close for you to hide any secrets very long from me. Your forehead’s like a neon sign flashing your thoughts. Well? Who?”