I grimaced, and she continued to speak. “What if I’m one of those girls who can’t be alone? What if I’m supposed to always be with a guy? What the hell am I supposed to do with my time if there’s no guy for me to talk about? I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not really the best at making friends with girls. No females ever come over to hang out with me, probably because I’ve stolen most of their boyfriends. What the heck am I supposed to do?”
Standing from my desk chair, I moved over to my wall of books, searching for a certain read for my sister. Grabbing The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, I held it out to her.
She knit her brow as a gloomy expression overtook her face. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I cocked an eyebrow, and she raised one back. “Maggie, I don’t read.” The combination of those four words created the saddest sentence I’d ever heard. I pushed the book out toward her again, and this time she took it warily. “Fine. I’ll try it, just because I’m so fucking bored, but I doubt I’ll like it.”
It took her three days to finish the book, and when she did, she came back quoting it, her eyes wide with emotion I’d never seen from her. “You want to know my favorite line? ’Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’ God. So. Fucking. Good. Margaret Atwood is my spirit animal.” She held the book out toward me and narrowed her eyes. “You got any more like that?”
I passed her a new book every three days. After a while, we started having Friday night girls’ nights where we ate Doritos, drank too much soda, and lay on my floor with our feet propped up on my bed frame. “Freakin’ A, Maggie. All this time I thought you were reading to escape the world, but now I know, you didn’t read to escape it; you read to discover it.”
The best night by far was when Cheryl finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Throughout her read, she had tears that sometimes turned into laughter, and vice versa. “THOSE FUCKING BITCHES!” she’d holler every now and then. “No, really, THOSE FUCKING BITCHES!”
One night as two a.m. rolled around, I was sleeping in my bed when Cheryl began poking me in the side to wake me. “Maggie,” she whispered. “Sis!” When my eyes opened, she was holding the novel to her chest and had the biggest smile on her face, the kind of smile kids have when they hear the sound of an ice cream truck coming down their road and they have just enough coins in their pockets for a Bombpop. “Maggie. I think I’m that thing. I think I’m it.”
I raised a tired eyebrow, waiting for her to explain what thing she was.
“I think I’m finally it.” Her smile grew bigger somehow, which made me smile, too. “I think I’m a reader.”
As the days and weeks passed by, Cheryl started staying home more nights. She’d spent most of her time reading books. When she came to visit my room, she wasn’t telling me all the stories of her wild adventures with different guys. She started talking about her wild dreams of adventure—traveling the world, seeing some of the sights she read about in the novels. She started building her own to-do list, too.
One night when she was talking about London, I brought up sex, and her mouth hung open with bewilderment. “Oh my gosh, Maggie!” she said, ripping the paper out of my hand tearing it to pieces. “One: those are the kinds of notes you never want Dad to find, and two: are you and Brooks having sex?”
My cheeks heated up and I shook my head.
“But you are doing some stuff, right? Oh my gosh! I’ve dreamed of these conversations with you! Okay.” She plopped down on my bed and crossed her legs. “Tell me everything you two have done.” Her eyes were wide with wonderment.
Kissing.
She nodded rapidly. “Uh-huh, uh-huh! Nice! What else?”
I wrote kissing again.
“What? But you two have been dating for like, weeks now. That’s a long time to just be kissing. Why haven’t you done anything else? Are you not ready? Because if you’re not ready, that’s fine. Brooks wouldn’t care.”
No. I’m ready.
“Then what’s the issue?”
I blushed. I don’t know how to do anything.
“You mean…anything? Like hand jobs? Or rim jobs? Or blow jobs? Or nip-lick jobs? Or pineapple-upside-down-cake jobs?” I cocked an eyebrow, and Cheryl nodded. “I know what you’re thinking, all of these seem like unpaid positions, but trust me, if you do them right, you’ll be paid in full.”
Ohmygod. I couldn’t handle her sometimes. But still, I missed her so much.
She jumped up from her seat and hurried out of the room. When she returned, she had candy, bananas, and other random fruits, including rings of pineapples. “Okay, we’ll start from the beginning.” She picked up a banana. “Hand jobs 101.”
“Hey, girls,” Brooks said, popping his head into my bedroom.
Cheryl threw her body over the items. “We’re doing nothing!” she shouted.
Good job, sis. Not suspicious at all.
Brooks arched an eyebrow. “Oookay. I was just supposed to tell you dinner is ready, and your dad told me I had to go home because I’m no longer welcome in the house where Maggie sleeps.”
I smirked. Sounds like Dad.
“Okay, well, you can leave now,” Cheryl replied, giving Brooks a tight smile.
He walked over to me and kissed my forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When he left, Cheryl groaned and sat up with a banana smashed to her chest, leaving residue all over my blanket. “Sorry for the mess,” she said, wiping banana off her shirt. “But trust me, if you do it right, the messy stage is completely normal.”
On a cloudy Saturday night, I headed over to Maggie’s room to hang out. We spent a lot of time in her house, and I didn’t mind at all. As long as she was there, I was happy. I walked up to her bedroom, and she was already standing in her doorway with a stack of papers in her hands. She looked different than normal. Her hair was curled, and was she wearing…makeup? She was still beautiful, just a different kind of beautiful.
Guess what!
I smiled wide. “What?”
She dropped the first piece of paper to reveal the next one.
My parents got me a cell phone for my graduation gift.
“No way. Seriously?”
She nodded rapidly and dropped the next piece of paper.