I just head down to room 121B.

I wait outside the door for the students to trickle in.

“Hey, Lex,” Damian says, slinking up to me. He gives his head a little shake to get his hair out of his eyes. Smiles. Fidgets. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you finish Heart of Darkness?”

I nod distractedly. “Oh, the horror.”

He laughs. “The horror. So what are you doing here? Not that I’m complaining. But aren’t you a little old for this class?”

“An errand,” I say. “I’m running an errand. Hey, uh, it’s good to see you, Damian, but you should probably . . .” I gesture toward the classroom. “I don’t want to be responsible for you getting marked tardy.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” he says, smiling his painful-looking smile again, and then he goes to take his seat.

Ashley shows up just as the bell rings. This time she doesn’t bowl me over when she appears from around the corner. She slows down when she sees me, suddenly unsure of herself. Then she stops.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” I say back. “Sorry about before. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by . . . everything.”

She bites her lip. For some reason she looks frightened. Maybe she can sense what’s coming.

“I was wrong, earlier,” I say quickly, and before I can lose my nerve, I pull the letter from the inside pocket of my coat and hold it out. It trembles between us. “This is for you. From Ty.”

If it’s possible for her face to get any whiter, it does. Even her lips drain of color. She doesn’t reach for the letter.

“Take it,” I say, thrusting it at her. “He wants—he wanted you to have it.”

She takes it.

I feel lighter the second the envelope leaves my hand.

Ashley stares down at it, her eyes tracing Ty’s sloppy letters spelling her name.

“I didn’t read it,” I feel compelled to tell her. “I don’t know what it says, but it’s for you.” I can’t think of what else to say, and we’re both late to class, so I whisper, “I’m sorry,” although I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, for Ty or for me, and then I walk away.

I hope it’s the right thing. It feels like the right thing. Probably. Maybe.

But at least it’s all over with now. It’s done.

9 March

My parents used to tell this story, over and over, year after year, about the first time I ever saw Ty.

According to family legend, I was playing at the park by my house when it happened. I was on the swings being pushed by my grandmother, who’d been looking after me while my mother was at the hospital. When my parents came into view, walking slowly across the grass toward us, Grandma lifted me out of the bucket swing, set me on the ground, gave me a little push, and said, “Go. Meet your brother.”

I ran to my parents.

They’d prepped me about this, of course, with months of talking about a new baby brother and what a good big sister I’d be, feeling Mom’s distended belly, singing to it, reading books about how we have to be quiet when the baby’s sleeping and we have to sit down to hold the baby and never poke the baby in the eye. They’d shown me the new baby’s freshly painted room and moved me into a “big girl bed” so he could have my crib. They’d even bought me a T-shirt that had the words BIG SISTER in silvery sparkly letters across the chest. I was wearing it, that day. Or so they tell me.

It was a lot of hype. Too much hype, probably.

When I reached them, my dad knelt and showed me the blue-wrapped bundle in his arms: a tiny disgruntled person with a round, purplish face, eyelids that were so swollen it was hard to tell what color the eyes were, and a head that bore only a small thin tuft of brown hair.

He wasn’t the best-looking baby, my brother.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

Then he went cross-eyed.

“He’s not cute” is what I famously said, clearly disappointed. “I thought he was going to be cute.”

Apparently I’ve always had a problem with calling it like I see it.

But then I laid my hand on the top of the baby’s nearly hairless head. “Hello, brother,” I said, by way of introduction.

“Tyler,” Mom provided. “His name is Tyler.”

“Ty,” I confirmed. “Can I hold him?”

I sat down cross-legged right there in the grass, and Dad laid Ty carefully in my lap. I looked up at Mom and smiled. “He’s mine,” I announced. “My baby. Mine.”

Yep, that’s how the story goes. 2 minutes into meeting my baby brother, I claimed him as my own personal property. He may not have been cute, but he was my brother. Mine.

I realize that almost everybody has a story like this. It’s not unique. I read somewhere that approximately 80% of Americans have at least one brother or sister. There’s a predictable formula to these stories: Older sibling meets younger. Older sibling says something cute (or rude, or funny, but always cute) and everyone laughs, and the older sibling eventually gets used to the idea that he/she isn’t the center of the world anymore. There’s a reason we tell these stories again and again—because they define us.

The first time I was a sister.

The first time we were all together as a family.

Now I try to remember that day as more than a story I’ve heard. I try to call up the wind on my face as I ran across the field. My heart thumping. My dad smiling as he crouched down. The smooth heat of Ty’s head under my fingers. The smell of baby powder and garden roses. The grass prickly against my knees.