FOR MY FAMILY
PART1:BEFORE
PROLOGUE
See Toby like this: It's early June and the sun reflects on the waxed linoleum floors, through the windows and onto the light blue walls, which makes everything seem swimmy and surreal. The halls are empty, so I'm super aware of the silence around me. Then I see Toby. He's walking towards me in a space that's so drenched in light, it looks like he's gliding. When he sees me, he smiles. "Meals! Of course it's you."
"What are you talking about?" I ask my brother.
"I thought to myself, Whoever comes down this hall is the person I'm going to share my peace pipe with." He opens his left hand and reveals, in a flash, a joint.
"I'm just going to the bathroom. I need to go back to French."
"No, you don't."
"I'm just supposed to leave? To get high?"
He nods.
"Leave my books? My bag?"
"Yeah," Toby says, like it's no big deal. "Just leave your stuff, Amelia. What's the worst that could happen?"
What will Madame Lapelle say if I don't come back? What will she do?
"No one will steal your books. You won't fail your next test on the indicative past present subjunctive." Toby puts the joint behind his right ear.
Without thinking, I follow him down to the basement, past the art rooms, the band room, the locker rooms, and out through a door by a janitor's closet that comes out on the far end of the athletic field.
"What if someone sees us?" I ask as we make our way around the perimeter of the field.
"They won't," he says calmly.
I believe him. I believe that nothing bad will happen to my French books, that no one will catch us leaving school, that we won't get busted for smoking a joint. My older brother is a presence. A force. We smoke in his car, Prudence, and listen to songs from his "Ringo Sings!" Beatles playlist.
When I tell him I don't feel like going back in, that my last class is music and Mr. Whitman will never notice one less soprano, my brother grins. "I knew you'd be awesome-sauce," he says. "Follow me."
Walking back across the athletic field, I feel like I'm moving in slow motion. We cut across the teachers' parking lot and then over the baseball diamond till we get to a small hill overlooking the tennis courts.
I lie down next to him under a big maple tree and stare at the tree branches. "I'm really high," I tell him.
He smiles. "You got enough brain cells to play?"
"Always."
"'I'm trying to decide how stoned I am and just how on the verge of death I am right now. Like, am I seeing shit because I'm stoned or because I have no blood left in my body?'"
I don't even need time to come up with the next line. "'Well, you've been shot like seven times.'"
"Well played, little sis." Toby shakes his head. His wavy brown hair falls into his eyes and he pushes it away. I've always been jealous of his hair. We have the same color, chestnut brown, but mine is boring and stick-straight.
"George Washington is David Gordon Green's best movie. Pineapple Express is up there, especially for a stoner flick, but it's no George Washington or All the Real Girls."
Toby nods like he agrees, but doesn't feel like getting into another long conversation about movies. "So, Ari asked if I want to go to prom. With her."
"Are you going?" Ari is Arianna Kaufman, one of the prettiest and most popular girls in school. She's a senior. Toby is a junior—but a cool junior. He was a cool freshman even though freshmen are inherently uncool. I'm a sophomore and not especially cool. This is the first time I've ever cut class.
"Proms are stupid." Toby pulls on the rubber from the sole of his black Converse. "They're just another form of commodification of teens, America, popularity." When other people say things like "commodification of teens" it sounds pretentious, but Toby just sounds smart.
"She's really pretty," I say lamely. Ari is prime-time pretty—flawless skin, salon-perfect blond hair, and excellent teeth. She's sort of a smaller, blonder, less-toned Jennifer Lawrence.
Just as I'm craving something sweet, Toby takes a pack of M&M's out of his bag. "It's so much fucking money. For a dance."
"Mom and Dad will help." I shove a handful of candy in my mouth. "These are the best M&M's ever."
My brother nods. "Mom and Dad won't five-hundred-dollars help."
"It's that much? I thought it was, like, seventy-five."
"For the ticket. I'll need to tux up, money up for the limo. Go in on a hotel room." He throws an M&M up in the air and catches it in his mouth. "That's a lot of M&M's, Grasshopper."
I nod.
"Shouldn't I do something more, uh, political with all that money? If I were truly a good person, I'd donate to a school in some politically fucked-up country where they turn their children into human shields and soldiers."
"I guess." When I'm a senior, it's way more likely that I'll have a prom-themed movie night at home than actually go. Carrie, obviously, and then maybe Napoleon Dynamite and 10 Things I Hate About You.
"Then again, Ari is hot and I guess I'd get to fuck her, which would be cool," Toby says, jolting me out of Prom Movies to Watch on Prom Night. He gives me a look. "Another notch in my belt."
"Gross, Toby," I say, even though I don't really care that my brother will be Ari's date to the prom right now. It's beautiful out and it's a lot more fun to be stoned than listen to my classmates sing off-key.
But then, when it seems like only five minutes have passed, Toby looks at his phone and says, "Holy crap. Shit-head and Dipstick!"
Shithead and Dipstick are Sam and David, our seven-year-old brothers. We have to be home for them twice a week when our parents and grandmother can't be. Tuesday is my day and Thursday is Toby's, but he usually pawns it off on me. I look at my phone. It's 2:35. Where did the time go? School got out fifteen minutes ago.
But this is what it's like in Toby's world. Everything else disappears.
"Holy shit," I say. "You're going to be late."
"You're going to be late."
"It's Thursday. Your day."
Toby jumps up and does a cartwheel. "Dat vas a perfect ten," he says in a Russian accent.
"We gotta go. The driver won't let them off if no one is at the stop. Can you drive?"
"Can you drive?"
"Shut up."
"You actually can drive—you have feet to press the brake and gas, and hands to steer the wheel, and eyes to see. You have the ability to drive, but you're just a scared chickenshit."
"You got me" I say. "I am a scared chickenshit. I'm going to get therapy. One day. But seriously. We have to go. Are you okay?"
"'I just really want a milkshake.'"
"The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Seriously, you can drive?"
"I'm more than fine. I'm perfectly amazingly awesome."
We start walking back to the car. "I'm really stoned," I tell him. "I hope the twins don't notice."
"They won't," he says. "It'll be another Secret Sibling Society secret."
When Toby was nine, he decided that we were copresidents of the Secret Sibling Society. It was totally silly, but even almost nine years later we both kind of believe in it.
"A Stoned Secret Sibling Society secret!" He does another cartwheel.
And it was. No one knew about the day in June when I skipped French to get high with my brother. It was our perfect little afternoon, especially considering everything that came after.
