“It’s mine?” Lucy asked. “All of them?”
“Yes. All yours!” I said.
She hugged the unopened boxes of various collectible figures that I’d bought and saved over the years. The ones that she pulled down from my shelves and admired but knew better than to take out. I’d lectured her so many times on what “mint condition” meant that I’d lost count. Here I was, with a closet full of toys I’d never played with, pristine in their packaging, bringing me so little happiness. What was the point in that?
I wasn’t stupid, though. There were dozens of toys I had in a foot locker by my bed that she would never touch with those Play-Doh and slime-covered fingers of hers. Those were kept safe with my two-pronged combination and padlock containers. The rare ones that did bring me joy.
It pained me to see her pull the Princess Leia and Rey dolls by their necks, taking off their clothes and swapping them with Wonder Woman’s. But she was my kid sister, and this nerdy memorabilia was my gift to her. She played quietly next to the foot of my bed while Jaxon and Zach came over for my belated birthday to play VR boxing games on my new PlayStation console (no zombie games allowed). Looking super daft in those headsets that resembled oversize swim goggles, they tried to knock each other out for top score. They’d gotten good enough to unlock special game features.
“I won!” Jaxon yelled, tearing off his headgear. “Wanna play?” he asked me.
“Nah, it’s all sweaty.” Truth was, every spare second I had, I stared at my phone, willing it to light up.
Kate hadn’t shown up for work for weeks now. They said she had put in her two-weeks’ notice before the competition and assumed I had known she’d done that. Nope, but I played it off like I did. I couldn’t help but think that she’d left because of me. Because of the competition. But I knew deep down that she was probably going to leave no matter what, that she’d planned it all along. I had hoped that I was enough to make her stay. That she’d stay here until we figured our shit out and made it all work. But she’d left me anyway.
“You’re looking pretty down for someone who just got the early nod for valedictorian.” Jaxon grabbed my shoulder and shook it a little. Our midterms had been tallied, and I’d come out on top of the class.
One person who hadn’t been thrilled about my class standing was Pete Haskill Number Four. The morning after the competition, Annie and some of my fellow skids marched into the headmaster’s office to tell him about Pete’s GPA scheme. He wasn’t expelled or suspended from CHA thanks to his dad’s influence, but he was prohibited from playing any varsity sports for the rest of the school year, which made his college applications look even worse. School-wide, all the skids mobilized. Jock skids, genius whiz skids, politically and socially active skids—all of us—outnumbered Pete and his friends tenfold, so they left us all alone.
Zach muttered while playing a new racing game, “His heart is broken.” He threw the controllers on the ground, yelling, “Damn it, I’m dead too!” He took off his sweaty headset and grabbed a handful of chips.
“Ix-nay on the amnit-day,” I said, jerking my head toward Lucy, who had put Leia’s hair in pigtails.
Jaxon shrugged. “It’s not like he said the F word.”
Lucy looked up. “What’s the F word?”
“Nothing!” we all shouted in unison.
“Well, look, life goes on,” Jaxon said, licking brownie crumbs and melted ice cream off his plastic spoon. “You’re going off to college soon, where you’ll meet tons of girls. If I get into Trinity, and you go to Yale, we can hang. With Zachary too, at MIT. And you’ll have tons of girlfriends when you get to be CEO of your company with a gajillion-dollar net worth.”
Mom walked in with a pizza box and a bowl of grapes. She smiled at us. “They can call you Nate Worth!”
Oh no, more Mom jokes.
Jaxon and Zach snorted. “Your mom should be a comedian,” Jaxon said. “I’m serious. Her deadpan slays me.”
Mom beamed and left the room.
Jaxon and Zach lifted the top flap of the pizza box. Steam rose and fogged up Zach’s glasses. Temporarily blinded, he asked, “What kind of pizza is it?”
“Pepperoni,” Jaxon said, digging in.
Zach took a bunch of grapes and pulled them off from the stem one by one with his teeth. “What’s it like to be rich?”
It was funny. I wasn’t rich by any means, but we were so financially challenged that my windfall made it feel like I went from skid to Zuckerberg. I chewed my pizza slice and swallowed. “I thought having money would make me happier, but nope.” Biggest surprise about my winnings? Having more money didn’t make me feel any different. “Maybe this whole skid thing wasn’t all about money after all. It was more in my head.” I shrugged. “I’ve started to pare down my schedule, though, to make more time for fun stuff. Been doing more things that make me happy, like playing games with you plebs.”
A flash memory of Kate popped into my head. Please make sure you don’t forget to enjoy your life, okay? A long sigh escaped. “I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.”
“Oh, I get it,” Lucy interjected.
“What, Luce?” I asked.
“Now I know why the chicken crossed the road.” She paused. “Because the grass was greener on the other side.”
Jaxon gaped. “Nate, dude, I thought you were smart, but I think your sister might be a damn genius.”
“Ix-nay on the amnit-day,” Lucy said.
Jaxon, Zach, and I busted up laughing, to the point none of us could breathe.
Mom came back into my room and handed me a two-liter bottle of Coke. Then she pulled out a postcard from her jacket pocket and handed it to me. “Special mail delivery!”
On one side was an illustration of the Statue of Liberty in sunglasses, GREETINGS FROM NEW F*CKING YORK in bold black letters across her chest. On the other side, to the left of my handwritten address, were three words that took my breath away.
I miss Dicks