Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [64]
“You’ll make it,” I said.
“How about you?”
I smiled. “I want to be a millionaire by thirty.”
Micah said nothing. Our strides moved in unison, our feet slapping the ground with almost perfect precision.
“What?” I finally asked. “You don’t think I’ll make it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just think thirty-five is more realistic.”
“So what are you going to do to make it?”
“Who knows. How about you?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
My brother and I ran together, worked together, and in our free time began to hang out with the same friends. Harold, Mike Lee (another member of the cross-country team), Tracy Yeates (California state champion in wrestling), Micah, and I called ourselves the Mission Gang.
In spite of our general reputation as model student- athletes, we shared a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde-type existence. It was with them that I got drunk for the first time in my life, and we found tremendous joy in using fireworks in ways that weren’t entirely smart, or even legal. We regularly blew up various friends’ mailboxes, whooping with delight when they were launched into the air with big kabooms. We also teepeed friends’ houses with so much toilet paper that it looked like it had snowed the night before. Once, around Christmas, we came across a street where every house was decorated with twinkling lights. Over the next two hours—thinking we were soooooo funny—we unscrewed every lightbulb and hauled them off. We’d filled six plastic garbage bags with lights, and the houses looked as if they’d been visited by the Grinch. I really and truly can’t explain why we did such things. It’s juvenile and embarrassing, but I can’t help but think that if we had a chance to go back in time, we’d end up doing those things again.
Due to the time we spent together, my brother and I grew close again. By then, however, our relationship had changed from what it once was. We weren’t simply brothers anymore; we’d become good friends. From my sophomore year on, we never had another argument or fight about anything.
In the spring, my brother and I competed in the same events, and my training had begun to pay off. With me leading off and Harold as the anchor, we set meet record after meet record, and our distance medley team ended up running the fastest time in the country. Harold won the state championship in the two mile, and my time in the 800 was tops among sophomores nationwide.
Among my family, only Micah was there to cheer me on. My parents rarely made it to meets; in fact, in my entire career they would see me run—and break records—only once.
While some might think my parents’ lack of interest as odd, it never bothered me. After all, they didn’t watch Micah run, or see Dana participate on the drill team either. More important, we were doing these things for ourselves; we’d been on our own for so long by then that we didn’t expect them to attend these events, and I think all three of us kids understood that our parents were so busy during the week—working, keeping up the house, tending to daily responsibilities, taking care of us, and struggling with finances—that it didn’t seem fair to ask them to devote their weekends to us as well, when we all understood that other activities were more relaxing for them.
My mom, for instance, loved to work in the yard or on the house, and nothing made her happier than planting bushes or trees, or painting one of the rooms. Whenever I’d return from a meet, she’d have a smudge of dirt or paint on her cheeks; her jeans were spotted and stained like a laborer’s. My dad, on the other hand, used the weekends to catch up on work in a quiet house, and enjoyed organizing—and reorganizing—the books that lined his shelves. And no doubt it was nice to have a quiet house once in a while. Whether they took advantage of that to spend some quality time together, none of us ever knew. Our parents were very private when it came to their personal relationship and told us little about their days. And none