Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [53]
“They don’t know what they’re missing, do they?” Micah said to me, as he pointed to the people sitting on the beach.
“Maybe it’s not a big deal to them. A lot of these people have traveled before.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe they never did it in the past, either. Some people just don’t know how to have fun. They aren’t even willing to try. “
I glanced warily at Micah, suddenly wondering if he was talking about me.
In seventh grade, Micah went off to Barrett Junior High School, and we continued to grow apart. My sister and I, however, were growing even closer. She laughed all the time and had a quality of sweetness that almost made me feel guilty about the kind of person I was. She seldom got angry, and I sometimes overheard her talking to mom about how proud she was of us. In her eyes, Micah and I could do no wrong, and whenever we were punished, my sister would be the one to come into our room and listen to us complain about the injustice of what our parents had done to us.
My sister always seemed to know how I felt inside; she was the only one who understood that excelling in school had more to do with an inferiority complex than any particular love of school. She would sometimes ask me to help her with her schoolwork, and used those opportunities to build my confidence. “I wish I was as smart as you,” she’d say, or, “Mom and dad are so happy with how well you’re doing.”
Growing up, Dana was the only one of us who ever had a birthday party because, as my mom explained to us, “She’s a girl.” This wouldn’t have been so bad—neither Micah nor I ever clamored for a party—but because my sister and I shared the same birthday, it always felt a little odd to have to watch my sister having a party, while I stood off to the side. If my mom didn’t understand it, however, my sister did, and one year she came into my room early on the morning of our birthday and sat on the edge of my bed. Jostled awake, I asked her what she was doing.
She began to sing, “Happy Birthday to you . . .”
Afterward, I sang the song back to her, and every year after that it was our own secret ritual. We’d sing to each other, just the two of us, and we never told anyone about it. This was our secret, as it would be for years, and after singing to each other, we’d talk for a while. I’d tell her everything—my hopes and fears and struggles and successes—and Dana would do the same.
When she was twelve, I asked her, “What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want more than anything?”
My sister looked around the room with a dreamy smile. “I want to be married, and I want to have kids. And I want to own horses.”
She got this, I knew, from my mom. More than anything in the world, my mom always wanted a horse. Growing up, she’d owned a horse named Tempo, and she often spoke of the horse and the wonderful times she used to have riding.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it. That’s all I want out of life.”
“Don’t you want to be rich or famous, or do exciting things?”
“No. That’s for you and Micah.”
“But won’t you be bored with that?”
“No,” she said, with conviction. “I won’t.”
My sister, I knew then, wasn’t the complicated bundle of nerves that I was. When she finally left the room, I remember wishing that if I couldn’t be like Micah, that I could be just like her instead.
When I started at Barrett Junior High the following year, I joined Micah on the long bus ride to school, but we never sat together, or even seemed to talk. Eighth-graders occupied a completely different realm than did seventh-graders—they were the Big Men On Campus—and our paths seldom crossed in the hallways or at