THE FIRST TIME I MET Carmen was at school in ninth grade. She was older than me, a senior like my brother should’ve been. He had been held back in his freshman year, so he was a year behind. Dad was furious, told him he was stupid, useless, never going to amount to anything. I knew that wasn’t true, though. Aaron was really smart. He just didn’t care about school, not the way that I did. I was actually happy that he’d been held back because that meant we’d be together for an extra year, and then I didn’t care so much about transferring out.
When I walked into the cafeteria the first day of high school, I was hoping I’d see him. We’d compared our schedules that morning and he’d assured me we were in the same lunch. But, as I would soon learn, he spent so much time in in-school suspension for one thing or another that it hardly felt like we even went to the same school at all. After one lap around the cafeteria I gave up and sat down at a table in the corner by myself. That was when Carmen came over and introduced herself, inviting me to sit with her. “This is Brooke,” she told her table, which was filled with seniors. “It’s her first day, so be nice.”
“You’re a freshman, right?” one girl asked as she slid over to make room for me.
Then the guy next to her cupped his hands around his mouth and megaphoned, “Fresh meat.”
Before I could answer, Carmen intercepted the conversation and told the guy, “She might be fresh meat, Mark, but she’s already a million times more mature than you.”
Carmen tried to include me in the table’s conversation, asking about my classes, whether or not I was planning to join any teams or clubs. I was not. I could feel myself blushing, all awkward and plain and boring, the complete opposite of everything she seemed to be: confident, smart, beautiful. I barely spoke. I was too stunned that she had even noticed me in the sea of fresh meat, let alone singled me out to take under her wing. There must have been something about me, something she saw that I couldn’t, I thought. Something special, even.
For all of five minutes I thought she actually liked me.
“Dude!” Mark shouted, looking somewhere behind me. “What is up, man? We thought you got busted already.”
I turned to see my brother leaning over Carmen, wrapping his arms around her like he was going to scoop her up and take her away. She turned her head and smiled through the words “Hey, you,” and then they kissed. A deep, serious one.
Something inside of me ground to a halt. Of course this wasn’t about me. I was stupid to think otherwise. After they disentangled themselves, Aaron straightened up and grinned, patting me on the back before tumbling into the last open chair. “Thanks for rescuing my kid sister,” he told them. Then he looked at me. “So, how’s the first day so far?”
I shrugged while I tried to find my voice. “Okay, I guess.”
“Dude, she’s really chatty,” Mark interjected. “Couldn’t get her to shut up this whole time.”
“Yeah, maybe you should take a lesson from her,” Carmen said, blowing on the end of her straw so that the wrapper launched across the table, hitting Mark square in the forehead.
“She’s just a loner, is all,” Aaron said. I gave him my deadliest eyes. “What? Nothing wrong with that.” Then he added, hitching his chin to point in Mark’s direction, “Some people should be loners.” He knocked his shoulder into mine, and then everyone started laughing.
Mark looked around, taking a second too long to get it. “Fuck you,” he finally said, hesitating before he joined in the laughter at his expense, which, I realized, was for my benefit.
I was grateful to Aaron, of course. He was only trying to look out for me. But damn, it had felt good to think that I’d made some friends all on my own for once, to think, for even one minute, that someone had actually, voluntarily, wanted me.
It was weird to see Aaron like this. Part of me wondered if he was only pretending. We never laughed like this at home anymore, never joked around or even spoke too loudly. But when I saw the way that Carmen and Aaron looked at each other, I knew, somehow, this wasn’t pretend. He had friends, and a girlfriend who clearly cared about him enough to gather up a lowly freshman on his behalf. He had a life. He had all the things I never thought I’d have.
I was envious; I knew that even then. I thought he’d found a way to get out from under the weight of our family, found a way to be happy. It gave me hope that maybe one day I could too.
But now I know he was never out from under anything, that weight was just building pressure, slowly crushing him, like it was crushing all of us. I just didn’t see it then, didn’t want to see it.