Sometimes I open my big mouth and say things I shouldn’t. Sometimes I complain when I really shouldn’t, when I should just do it. Sometimes doing the thing I don’t want to do is so much easier than trying to get out of it. And sometimes the thing I think I don’t want to do is actually really fun. Like trekking across town to get boba tea with my eleven-year-old sister, who is desperate to spend time with me. (Though she won’t say it and she’ll fob me off if I try to hug her and she won’t admit she’ll miss me when I go to college.)
I asked her if she missed me when she and my parents went to Cape Cod while I was in England at Latin Camp (yes, you read that right). Summer camp is pretty much the only experience I have of being away from home. “That was fine,” she said. “I don’t remember you.” The odd use of present tense, the nonchalance: classic.
Yesterday we spent the whole day together. I made her vow, “Promise you won’t complain about your gimp knee if we walk all the way back from town?” “Don’t say anything about all the emails you have to write,” she retorted. Turns out that was all we needed to do to have a great time. She knows me so well. (When recently asked what I love she said little cottages in the English countryside and actors with dark curly hair named Callum Turner. That’s so accurate!)
She showed me around the dingy collection of corner shops in our neighborhood where she walks around with her sweet friends trying to afford pastries on their mutual fund of four dollars. She’s basically the mayor of the place. “Here’s the trashcan where we thought we saw a dead body. It was just coffee grounds. Hey! They changed the clothes in the Talbots window since yesterday! Here’s where the waitresses have their cigarette time—see that smoking hot brown tea cartridge?”
Then we headed toward Collegetown, which I try to avoid at all costs. I had forgotten it was St. Patty's Day weekend, and all the students would be roaming around with their boozy “borgs,” crossing the street even more poorly than usual. (I’m telling you, there’s something about being Cornell students that makes them struggle to look both ways and acknowledge the surrounding cars. Maybe it’s the comfort blanket of AirPods. If I can’t hear or see you, you’re not there!)
We stopped for some boba tea where my best friend works, then ambled back across campus, stopping on the quad to drink. She was laughing so hard the boba pearls erupted from her nose and mouth and scattered on the ground like displaced tadpoles. If she wasn’t so short, someone might have mistaken her for an inebriated college student.
As we walked home, she kept stopping. I asked if her tibial tubercle was okay and she said it wasn’t that. “I don’t want to stop spending time with you,” she confessed, so sweet. I walked slower. We came across some Cornell promotional flags that read, “Community,” “Education,” “Engagement,” and “Inspire.” I asked her, both of us raised on 1970s Sesame Street, “Which of these signs is not like the other? Which of these signs just doesn’t belong?” Just like whoever made them, she wasn’t sure. “See,” I explicated, “the first three are abstract nouns—ideas or concepts. Inspire, on the other hand, is an imperative. Go out and inspire!” She looked at me quizzically. This game was not a hit.
When we reached a quiet street she said, “I’m gonna lay down in the road, okay?” I would have objected but I had promised her not to say anything along the lines of “Careful!”—my usual exclamation when she’s near a street. “Okay,” I said. The infrequent sun created stark shadows on the pavement as she spreadeagled, Christlike, balancing her boba.
At the end of the night, she made a pitiful plea. She led me to her bedroom under the impression that I was going to get a present. “Here’s your surprise!” She revealed her unmade bed in all its funky glory. “Eh?” she said with a wink. “I won’t sleep with you until you clean your room, honey,” I said. How to describe the scent of her bunk bed? Cheesy, farty, crummy, doggy, footy, sort of damp. Then I remembered how soon I’ll be leaving for college and how I’ll long to cuddle her then.
So I sucked it up and slept in the musty bed because I love her.
