Sometimes I wish that I was an only child. No constant compromising and making sure that everything is fair. I think about what life would be like without the responsibilities of looking after my brother and imagine how utterly amazing it would be. Even though my brother, Isaac, is three years older than me, I often feel like I’m the bigger one – just without the big sister title. Some days, he seriously does not have a clue and ends up getting in all sorts of trouble if I’m not there to watch out for him. It’s definitely a boy thing – sometimes he just seems to get it all wrong. It’s also a bit of an Isaac thing too – he can’t help it and I know it’s not actually his fault, but when it’s a tricky day with Isaac I sometimes can’t help wishing that he was more like other people’s brothers.
Today was one of those days. Mum asked me to go down to the shop and get her some milk and to take Isaac with me. I really didn’t want to but she said that he’d spent enough time in his room playing computer games and he needed the fresh air.
Mum and Dad worry a lot about Isaac. They think he’s got no friends and they’re always trying to figure out ways to stop him playing on his PlayStation. This makes me laugh – they think they know everything but they have no idea that Isaac has loads of friends. He meets up with them online and the reason he likes playing games in the middle of the night is so he can play with his friends who live on the other side of the world when it’s their daytime. If Mum and Dad stop his PlayStation time then he really won’t have any friends.
I know all about Internet safety because they go on about it loads at school. Isaac doesn’t really get stuff like that, so I keep an eye on what he’s doing and who he’s talking to. He knows that he can never meet his computer friends in real life but that’s the thing – he’d never actually want to. Isaac doesn’t do well when he has to speak to people but he can be really funny when he’s online. Anyway, I think most of his friends are kids just like him.
Mum wasn’t going to give up on me dragging Isaac out. She knows that I can get him to do things that nobody else can – which is a pain pretty much all of the time cos I end up being the one who has to go into his smelly room and bargain with him.
I trudge up the stairs.
‘Sooner you go, sooner you’ll be back!’ calls Mum after me. Yeah – that’s a helpful comment; thanks a lot, Mum.
I knock on Isaac’s door in the right way – he refuses to answer unless you do three knocks followed by two knocks followed by one knock. The day he decided that one, it took us an hour to get it right and persuade him to come downstairs for tea. Mum’s macaroni cheese was so congealed that it would only come out of the dish in one large lump. Dad ended up going to KFC and buying us a family meal (which Isaac refused to eat as we usually have takeaway on Friday nights but it was only Wednesday).
‘Come on – Mum wants us to get her some milk,’ I call through the door.
‘Isaac, I know you heard me. Open the door or I’ll start singing!’
That does the trick. Isaac hates my singing but I try not to take it too personally because he hates all singing. The door opens a crack, but by the time I’ve pushed through, Isaac is back on his PlayStation chair. Dad said if he was going to spend so many hours playing games each day, they could at least make sure he had good posture, so they bought him a massively expensive special chair.
‘Liv to Isaac – move your backside – we’re going out into the big wide world!’
Isaac shows no sign of actually having heard me.
‘Come on, Isaac – I haven’t got all day,’ I sigh, suddenly feeling tired.
Nothing. No reaction whatsoever. Have I mentioned that my brother can be very stubborn?
‘Get up, Isaac, now!’ I snap.
‘I don’t want to go out,’ he mutters, firing a rocket into a zombie.
‘I don’t care if you want to or not – we’re going.’
He ignores me so I have to play my ace card. ‘You know what day it is, don’t you?’ I say casually.
‘I’m not stupid, Liv – it’s Saturday,’ Isaac growls. He gets very sensitive if he thinks anyone is calling him thick.
‘Not just any old Saturday,’ I say, and I can see that I finally have his attention. His eyes dart to the wall planner above his desk and then he springs to his feet, PlayStation controller tumbling to the floor.
‘Hey – steady on!’ I yelp as he shoves past me and barrels down the stairs, just avoiding the cat who has been snoozing in the sunlight on the bottom step. She’s used to Isaac, though, and darts out of his way, giving him a very dirty look.
‘Wait a minute – we need our coats on,’ I yell at him, but he is already out of the front door and heading down the path, oblivious to the rain that has appeared from nowhere. I grab my coat and my old camera (you never know when the perfect photo opportunity might turn up), and Mum, who has raced through from the kitchen, shoves Isaac’s jacket and a £5 note at me.
‘Thanks, Liv!’ she shouts as I sprint after Isaac.
I finally catch up with him before he steps off the pavement. Our street joins on to a busy main road – I didn’t think he’d try to cross it; he hasn’t tried that before, but you can never be entirely sure what Isaac will do next, and one thing I do know is that he is not familiar with the Green Cross Code.
‘Wait for me – I’m not an Olympic athlete, you know!’ I puff, as I stagger up next to him.
‘I do know that, Liv. You could never be in the Olympics – you’re rubbish at sport,’ Isaac says, turning to look at me as if I am an idiot. That’s another thing about my brother that can be annoying – he is very literal.
We cross the road and head in the direction of the corner shop.
‘Can’t wait, can’t wait,’ chants Isaac as we get closer.
I can see a group of boys from my school coming towards us and put my hand on Isaac’s back, rubbing gently in a circle. He gets nervous when he sees other boys his age – he’s had some horrible experiences and he’s always worried that it’ll happen again.
‘When we get in the shop, I’ll fetch the milk and you can go and choose your magazine,’ I say to him, trying to distract his attention from the boys who are nearly next to us.
Isaac turns to me in surprise.
‘I don’t need to choose, Liv – I know which magazine I’m getting. It’s the one I always get, every first Saturday of the month. It’s called How Stuff Works. I thought you knew that.’ His voice is incredulous and a bit hurt, but it’s worked. The boys are past us now and I can stop rubbing his back.
‘Sorry, Isaac – I do know that – silly me, hey?’ I grin at him and he smiles back. Isaac may be quite irritating in lots of ways but he doesn’t hold a grudge. We’re nearly at the shop now and Isaac starts striding ahead of me, desperate to get there. We walk past the gates to the park and I see a welly, lying on its side in a puddle. It’s tiny – I reckon it’s probably fallen off some little kid in a pram. It looks kind of cool, though, so I whip my camera out of my coat pocket and take a picture, zooming in close on the muddy water and the bright red welly. I love taking photographs like that – little snapshots that tell a story. Every time I look at the photo I’m going to imagine a small child having to hop everywhere so that he doesn’t get a wet foot. Or maybe a lonely welly, abandoned and all alone, pining for its welly twin. Then I look up and see that Isaac is way ahead of me, so I shove my camera back in my pocket and run after him again, thinking that my brother is like my very own personal fitness instructor.
We get to the shop and I relax. This is Isaac’s favourite thing to do and he would never, ever do anything that might mean he wasn’t allowed to come and buy his magazine. His wall planner has a bright red star on the first Saturday of every month to remind him. I leave Isaac in the magazine aisle and head for the milk. Once I’ve got that I wander in the direction of the chocolate. Mum always lets me choose something that I like with the money that’s left over and today I feel like taking my time and really getting my money’s worth.
The first sign that something is wrong is when I hear the shop lady shouting.
‘Stop that at once! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
I look up and my heart sinks. She’s heading down the magazine aisle – the aisle where I left Isaac. I drop the milk and run round the corner, reaching Isaac at the same time that she does.
My brother is sitting on the floor of the shop, grabbing magazines frantically off the shelf and throwing them to one side. He’s not saying anything at the moment, just whispering under his breath.
‘You can’t behave like that in here! What are you playing at? Stop that this instant!’ screams the shop lady.
‘Don’t yell at him,’ I tell her and sink down on the floor next to Isaac.
‘Talk to me – tell me what’s wrong,’ I say to him gently.
‘It’s all wrong, Liv, all wrong,’ mutters Isaac, still yanking magazines out of the rack and on to the floor.
‘Just be calm and tell me what it is,’ I say, keeping my voice quiet. I can see a crowd gathering at the end of the aisle, trying to see what’s going on.
‘I’ll give him calm!’ shrieks the shop lady. ‘Get out now – and I’ll expect you to pay for the damages.’
She takes a step towards Isaac.
‘Don’t touch him!’ I shout at her but it’s too late. She grabs his arm and tries to haul him up.
Big mistake.
Before she touched him, Isaac was upset but I could have talked him round. By grabbing him she has made a huge error. Mum and Dad have taught Isaac lots of rules and one of them is that it’s really important not to touch other people unless they say it’s OK (he didn’t used to get the difference between gentle and rough touching and he can be a bit, well, in your face, so we all make a point of letting him know if we want to give him a hug and we would never hurt him). The shop lady broke a big rule when she grabbed Isaac, and Isaac cannot stand people breaking the rules, which is fair enough when he has to work so hard to keep them.
To put it simply, he goes ballistic.
Instead of throwing the magazines, he starts ripping them up and doing this high-pitched scream that goes right through you. People say that the sound of nails on a blackboard makes them shiver – that sound has nothing on Isaac when he’s really going for it.
The shop lady backs right off, which should have been a relief, except I am trying to figure out how to get Isaac out of the shop without us both being arrested. I can hear lots of tutting from the onlookers and I really want to swear at them, but Mum says not to sink to their level and that they don’t understand.
‘Isaac, it’s OK, it’s all right. We’ll go home and Mum will sort it out,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady. If Isaac knows that you’re freaked out it just makes him worse. ‘Let’s go home, Isaac. Leave all this here. Turn it around now – make a good choice.’
I am running out of things to say and am just pulling my mobile phone out of my pocket to ring Mum when Isaac stops screaming.
The silence is as surprising as the noise had been. I look at him and see huge tears dripping down his face as he starts sobbing, great big sobs that make him breathe in air in huge gulps. Right now, my big brother looks about five years old.
I take hold of his hand and start leading him down the aisle, past all the nosy shoppers who step aside as if we’re contagious.
‘Honestly, what a way to carry on!’ tuts one old bag.
‘Well, he’s got a lifetime ban from this shop,’ whines the shop lady. ‘He’s probably on drugs.’
I’ve had enough. I know that Mum says we shouldn’t have to explain about Isaac to anyone, but these people are judging him in a way that I can’t bear – not when they’ve all been happy to stand and gawp and act as if they’ve never made a wrong decision in their lives.
‘If you must know, he’s got Asperger’s Syndrome,’ I inform the tutting woman and the shop lady. ‘He doesn’t always see things the way that you might see them. Sometimes things get a bit much for him but he never means to cause any trouble. He can’t help it – and something must have upset him.’
The shop lady goes a bit red in the face and the other shoppers melt back into the shop – amazing how people aren’t so interested when they feel a bit guilty.
‘I’ll get my mum or dad to ring you up and you can tell them all about how much they owe you. Perhaps you can explain the lifetime ban to them too.’
I turn to the door and pull Isaac with me, my heart beating so fast that I think it might come right out of my chest. We walk down the road, me ignoring the curious looks of people walking past and rubbing Isaac’s back so hard that he winces and pulls away.
After a few minutes I feel calm enough to speak to him, although I don’t actually want to look at him right now.
‘Care to explain that little drama then?’ I ask, my voice sounding harsh even to my own ears. ‘Seriously? It mattered that much to you, did it? I mean, is it actually too much to ask that you behave like everybody else just for once? Because, maybe I’m massively selfish, but I would really like to go out of the house occasionally and not have people stare at me because you’re doing something weird. Why me, Isaac? Why do I have to put up with this all the time? It’s so unfair …’
I stomp along, not even caring for a moment whether Isaac is behind me or not. I can’t stop thinking about the people in the shop – and everyone else who has ever ground to a halt and just stood there, watching our family try to do normal things like everyone else but usually messing it up. I try to tell myself that I don’t care, that Isaac’s my brother and I’m not embarrassed – but sometimes, I really am.
I stop, and turn round. Isaac is trailing behind me, looking a bit confused. He’s stopped crying and is sniffing loudly, great big disgusting sniffs that yank the snot back up his nose. He has no idea why I am upset.
I sigh. ‘What was wrong in the shop?’
‘My magazine. It wasn’t there. Somebody must have taken it, Liv, and that’s not right.’ He takes the tissue I am offering him and blows his nose loudly, startling a passing pigeon. ‘It’s my magazine and somebody took it. They didn’t ask me if they could have it and that’s breaking one of the rules.’
He hands the tissue back to me. I scrunch it up and put it in my coat pocket, making a mental note to get Mum to remove it and wash my coat before I next wear it.
There is no point trying to tell Isaac that nobody has stolen his magazine. Not up to me, anyway – that’s Mum and Dad’s job. My only responsibility is getting him home safely, preferably before my stupid, lame coat actually dissolves in the rain.
‘Where’s my milk?’ asks Mum when we finally get through the front door.
Oh yeah – the milk. The milk that I dropped on the floor when I raced to rescue Isaac. I think about how I felt in the shop and how scared I was that Mum wasn’t there to handle Isaac – and the relief of having actually got him home in one piece suddenly hits me and I start laughing hysterically. By the time I have calmed down she has cleaned up Isaac’s face, got the gist of what has happened from him, promised to drive him into town later to buy his magazine from a bigger shop that won’t have sold out and brought me a calming bar of chocolate. Then she sits down on the sofa next to me and lets me cry for a bit. She lets me moan about what a nightmare it is, having to protect Isaac all the time, and she doesn’t say a word. She only stops me when I start going on about his rules.
‘His stupid, pointless rules. They cause more trouble than they’re worth. Life doesn’t have rules for everything – I don’t think we should keep telling him that it does.’
‘You’re wrong, Liv,’ says Mum. ‘There are rules for every situation you will ever find yourself in. The problems come when you don’t understand what those rules are. Isaac needs us to explain the rules to him in a really clear way – your rules can be less clear but they’re still there and they’re still just as important.’ She bends over and kisses me on the forehead. ‘Now, I’m going to take Isaac to get his magazine because I promised, and that’s one rule that definitely cannot be broken. However, the rule about you not watching TV before your room is tidy is slightly more flexible!’
I sink back into the sofa and listen to the sounds of Mum and Isaac getting ready to go out. Dad is pottering around in the kitchen and has already stuck his head through the door to tell me that, in honour of my awesome little-sister skills, he is cooking up a Mexican feast of all my favourite foods. And that he is proud of me. I think that really, even though my family cause me more than my fair share of embarrassment and humiliation, I wouldn’t change them for anything.