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“Go upstairs and talk to him,” my mom ordered the moment I got home. “He doesn’t understand what happened today. His feelings are hurt because you wouldn’t sit with him at the movies.”
“Oh, his feelings are hurt.”
The last thing on Earth I wanted to do was go up to Donald’s room and cheer him up. If anything he should be cheering me up. After all, who was the one who lost a potential boyfriend after being terrorized by high school boys for two hours? Not Donald. Donald had been allowed to gobble up popcorn and soda while watching a great movie.
There was nothing I could say about the unfairness of it all. Going against Mom’s wishes when it came to Donald’s welfare was like battling a steamroller.
From the hallway I could hear my brother playing. I could even tell which game he’d chosen for himself. He was playing with his model planes, the click-together kind. The glue kind proved to be too difficult to assemble, and after ruining the tops of his dresser and desk and his comforter, our mom said, “No more.” Donald flew the planes about the room, one in each hand. They bombed each other and his bed. I opened the door just in time to see the Stealth Bomber demolish the B-21.
“Whaa-aaa! Shh-krrr-shh!”
Donald didn’t stop playing even as I sat down on his bed. He picked up another plane and continued the air battle.
“Nn-yerrrr-rrr-ta-ta-ta-ta!”
“Donald.”
“EE-rrrr-lll-shhhhh!”
“Donald.”
“Crrr-shhh-pt-pt-pt-pt!”
“Donald!”
Donald looked up and handed me a propeller plane. Then he waved the Stealth at me and announced, “He’s winning.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Yes. Yes. See?” Donald showed me the crashed planes all over his room as proof.
“No, that’s not what I mean, Donald,” I said. “I mean that none of these planes can win a fight because they’re toys.”
“I know,” Donald said. “I’m just playing.” He swooped the Stealth down to fire on my plane. “Ee-yrrrr!”
“Stop it.”
Donald stopped and stared at me.
“Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
“Playing?”
“No,” I said. “You’re being weird. Nobody your age plays with planes like this.”
Donald immediately got that look on his face that he got whenever he struggled over his homework in front of our dad. It was immensely painful, and I felt my stomach churn, knowing that I’d been the one to put that painful expression in place.
“They don’t?” Donald asked.
I patted the bed so that Donald would sit next to me. Once he was seated, I took the Stealth out of his hand and put it on the floor.
“Do you know why Daryl and Matt pick on you all the time?”
“They’re not very nice,” Donald said simply.
“Well, yeah,” I agreed. “But it’s more than that. They pick on you because you act so bizarre all the time.”
“I don’t mean to.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going to help you act normal. Just because you learn slowly doesn’t mean you have to be a freak.”
I looked around Donald’s room. The walls were covered with baseball pennants and posters of sports stars. On his shelves were collections of model planes and seashells. In a cup on his desk were fifty mini-flags, one for each state, and a plastic coin counter.
“Let’s start with your room.”
“Okay.”
Donald didn’t jump to his feet or anything. I knew that he didn’t understand what I was about to do. Typical. Donald would just follow my lead. Hopefully, though, something good would come out of it this time.
“Right now your room looks like it belongs to someone my age or younger. Since you’re sixteen and not ten, it’s time to get your room updated.” I reached up and took down several posters and pennants. “Tomorrow we’ll go to the store and buy you some rock music posters. Got any favorite bands?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll listen to a bunch of music on the Internet until you find one or two. Would you like a poster of a supermodel in a bathing suit or a calendar of them? It’s kind of a gross thing that most teenage boys have.”
“I guess that’s okay.”
“Good.”
I went to the shelves and pulled off several of the most poorly made airplanes and put them on Donald’s lap. “Next we’ll get you some new hobbies. Hmmm. Maybe a book or two would be nice. We could get you some games like chess or checkers. Let’s think about some video games too.”
“Too fast for me,” Donald said.
I wasn’t sure whether he meant the video games or my whirlwind approach to changing his lifestyle. “You’ll learn,” I replied.
Next I went to his desk. I picked up the faded flags and raised an eyebrow. “Really, Donald? How long have you had these things?”
“Since we went to Washington, DC.”
“That was eight years ago.”
“I know. I like them.”
I shook my head. “No more. Your desk needs high school-type stuff on it. A calculator, a pen holder, a desk calendar maybe with cool cartoons on it. And these . . .” I motioned to the change counter. “Let’s get some money rollers and find out how much you have stashed away here. You could be rich and not know it. Take it to the bank.”
Donald only nodded as I cleared his walls and shelves, leaving behind dust prints and pieces of cloudy tape. He made no effort to help or stop me. When I finished, I put my hands on my hips and nodded.
“It already looks better. Don’t you think so?”
“No,” he answered honestly.
I sat down on the bed next to him and put my arm around his shoulders, giving him a little squeeze. He shrank away from my touch, like usual. “C’mon. Try to imagine how cool it’s going to be in here.” Donald didn’t answer. I guessed he couldn’t imagine it at all. So I said, “We’ll get you to be the most awesome teenager around. Just agree with me on a couple of things. No more weird noises.”
“Okay.”
“No more playing kid games.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll go shopping tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Satisfied, I left Donald’s room and went to my own room to listen to music and write in my diary. I wanted to have a brother like everyone else’s.
The next morning, I went up to Donald’s room to fetch him for our outing. “Are you ready?”
Donald stood in the middle of his bedroom. His flags, planes, posters, and banners were all back where they’d been the night before.
“Uh . . . yeah,” Donald stammered. He snapped his fingers nervously and looked out the window to the front yard. “The Kings play today. It’s on at 1:00.”
That was Donald’s way of telling me that he’d much rather do anything other than what I’d planned for him.
I picked up a roll of masking tape from his desk, ripped off a piece, and rolled it into a little sticky ball. I put the tape on the corner of a pennant that was flapping and pressed it tightly to the wall. Without taking my eyes from the pennant, I asked my brother, “Are you always going to be this way?”
“What way?”
I faced him and noticed immediately how relaxed he was compared to the night before, now that he was surrounded by all his familiar things again. “Stuck, Donald. That’s what I mean. It’s like you’re stuck at age nine or ten.”
“I’m sixteen.”
“Then you should act like it!”
I couldn’t take his questioning expression or the way he just stared at me like I was the crazy one.
“Forget it,” I mumbled. “It was stupid of me to try to change you. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I slunk out of his room, down the stairs, and out the garage door. Feeling guilty as all get-out, I took a bike ride anyway. I went to the shopping center and looked at CDs and books. It would’ve been more fun to go shopping with Cathy, but I couldn’t call Cathy anymore. It would’ve been fun to go with Kirk, but he turned out to be a bummer. It might have even been fun to go with Donald, but I’d scared him. Who knew when he would feel comfortable playing with me again?
I missed my old friend, Bobby, more than ever. He never had a problem with Donald when he came over to play, and he often joined us at the park. I remembered how he had a way of teasing Donald that was lighthearted and made Donald laugh. When he picked on Donald, it came out witty and fun-spirited, not mean and harsh like the way I sounded. If Bobby knew about the dumb makeover I’d just tried on Donald’s room, he’d give me a hard time about it for hours yet still have a way of making me feel better. That night before bed, I wrote Bobby a long letter about what was going on in my life lately, hoping he’d send me back something to cheer me up. I spent so much time on it that I forgot to study for my spelling test.