You Win

“Do you like my new shoes?” Carter asked as he walked into my room uninvited.

“No,” I said without looking up from my book.

“Do you like my new shoes?” he repeated, and I knew he would continue to do so until I looked that them.

“I’m trying to read. Get out.” Couldn’t he see I wasn’t in the mood for conversation? It was only obvious with the way I was hovering over my book, soft music playing from my speakers. I was sitting in a butterfly chair in the corner of my room, Fred curled around my ankles, sunlight beaming in through the window and lighting up the words on the page. It was perfect, so of course Carter had to ruin it.

“Do you like my new shoes?”

I glanced up quickly to see his black Pumas then let my eyes fall back to my book. “They’re wonderful. Now get out.”

He plopped onto my bed and spread himself across it, making sure to put his shoes on my comforter. I glared at him, wondering why he was so set on annoying me at the moment.

“Mom wants you to clean the pool,” he said, staring at the ceiling, hands clasped behind his head.

“I always clean the pool. Why don’t you do it for once?”

“Because Mom didn’t tell me to clean the pool. She told you to.”

“No, she told you to tell me to clean the pool, which just means she told you to clean the pool and you’re trying to pass it on to me.”

“Idiot,” he mumbled, because I had caught him. The last time he had tried that was when we were still in grade school. Always doing anything to get out of doing his chores.

“Why are you in my room right now?” I asked, returning to my book.

“I was going to ask you, how’s Tulip?”

“She’s fine,” I said. But Tulip didn’t like to talk about it, so I left it at that.

“Because I—hey. Is that my sweatshirt?”

Carter pointed to a blue pile of fabric mixed in with a few other articles of clothing strewn across my carpeted floor. It was one of his soccer sweatshirts from school and it was probably the most comfortable thing ever, in the entire history of sweatshirts and comfortable things.

“No…” I said.

“Yes it is! I’ve been looking everywhere for that!” He sprang off my bed and snatched the sweatshirt from the floor. He examined it, like it might have maggots crawling out of the hood. “Ugh. It smells like girl now.”

“Oh, darn. Better let me keep it then. Don’t want you to get cooties.”

He rolled his eyes. “I went to the store and got some sugar and stuff, so you can make your damn cookies if you’re still having psychological issues.”

“I will always be having psychological issues as long as we live in the same house, Carter.” But I resisted a smile. Him actually buying me something without any prompting, especially something to help me with my “psychological issues” was the Carter-equivalent of a big bear hug.

He shrugged. “Not my problem.” He started to head toward the door, but there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, so I stopped him.

“Wait. Can you do me a favor?” I asked him.

He turned toward me. “I already bought you sugar. What more do you want from me?”

I set my book aside and brought my knees up to my chest, trying to look as innocent as possible. “Well, since I can stand to be in your presence for more than two minutes at the moment, and you aren’t trying to set my hair on fire with your evil glares… I thought you would be able to manage doing something for me?” I looked at him hopefully.

“What?” he asked grudgingly.

“Could you pretty, pretty please convince Luke that I’m not a horrible person?” I asked quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

“No,” he said, point blank.

“Please?”

“No.”

“Come on, Carter. It would really help me out here.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What will you give me?”

“Um.” I tried to think of something that Carter would want, but I came up short. “The satisfaction of knowing you helped make your only sister extremely happy?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I’m not going to do your dirty work. You can’t just sit back and expect someone else to fix your problems. Not happening.” He left my room after that, taking his cootie, maggot infested sweatshirt with him. I sat back in my chair and let out a sigh.

“Hey, Clark,” I said to my Super Fish. He just floated there, looking out of his glass prison at me. It was kind of sad, really. Clark was trapped in his fishbowl for the rest of his life. He would never see anything else but my room. His food smelled like decaying dog tongues and probably tasted worse. He swam in his own poop. He breathed his own poop.

The more I thought about it, the more depressing it was. He could look at everything I did, but he could do nothing himself except float in his own poop-water. He was subjected to a life of solitary confinement, because, why exactly? So I could look at him? So I could say, “Hey, I have a fish and he has super powers”? Clark didn’t really have super powers. If he did, I was sure the first thing he would do is stick me in my own fishbowl forever and make me eat dog tongues. And then complain to me about all the drama in his life. Female fish and whatnot.

“I’m so glad you don’t really have super powers,” I said to him.

Fred made Clark’s life worse by far, I was sure. Clark was living in constant fear of being ripped to shreds by Fred’s sharp teeth. I’d always felt bad for Clark, so I gave him fake powers and tried to make his quality of life better than the average fish. He had colorful rocks and a castle all to himself and fake seaweed to weave through. I sometimes left my music on when I left my room, just so Clark could listen to it. If he could even hear it. I often had staring contests with him, just to give him a sense that he wasn’t alone. He always won. Do fish even blink?

Fred jumped onto my lap, startling me back to the present. I pet him, still bummed out because of Clark. Really. Owning a fish should be illegal.

And then, because the most glorious, ingenious ideas come to mind in the midst of the most depressing thoughts, it came to me. Exactly what I would say to Luke, and exactly how I would say it.