The Bro Code

by Elizabeth A. Seibert

  “Why can’t you be happy for me?” she cried, and I realized that while I’d seen the O’Connor siblings shout at each other before, I’d never seen either of them cry. “This is a good thing. We can all be happy together.”

  I still crouched, trying to catch my balance. I wanted to stop him as much as she did. But I couldn’t move.

  All I could do was play my final card, getting real skin in the game. If Carter could go there, then I could too.

  “Sarah Rosen,” I called after him.

  Austin, Eliza, and Carter each froze. “Don’t,” warned Austin.

  “What?” asked Carter.

  “You don’t get to lecture me about keeping secrets,” I said. “When you weren’t ever going to tell me what really happened. You can’t build a friendship on lies.”

  “Good,” said Carter. “You’re starting to get it.” He stepped back into the shadows. “I’m going to miss hanging out with you, Maguire.” Finally, he relaxed his fists. “Always made me look so good.”

  The entire school watched us from Jeff’s kitchen. None of them mattered. The key actors in this little drama were outside. One sobbed, one (me) was sprawled into the railing, one kicked the grass, swearing, and the other had run away. A long shadow stalking off into the night.

  Done.

  RULE NUMBER 20

  A bro shalt not complain about working out.

  I spent the next day in bed. My phone was annoying me with texts and DMs, and I’d thrown it to the other side of the room onto my dirty laundry. Apparently, this was the most interesting gossip to have hit Cassidy High since a few years before when this girl had tried to marry her stuffed animal. Apparently, her parents had officiated the wedding.

  Carter had taken it exactly as we’d expected him to, which was why this unfortunate reality was so disappointing. Even though I hated putting this whole situation on Carter, it was his scene that he’d caused and his misery that we were now all living in.

  But I was the one who’d pushed him there.

  And I was the one who should’ve known better.

  It felt worse than any breakup I’d had. This fight with Carter, it left my heart like a dark bubble camping in the middle of my chest. It hurt to move. It hurt to think. This was truly heartbreak.

  Though it could have been the tequila.

  “Hey.” My dad came into my room. “Let’s get up, kiddo.”

  I put my pillow over my face. Protecting myself from the world with its plushy softness.

  “Nick.” He fought me for it, trying to pry the pillow out of my cold, dead hands. “Get up.”

  “No.”

  “It’s three in the afternoon. If you don’t eat something soon, you can kiss those six-pack abs good-bye.”

  I lifted up my cheek. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

  “But do you want to find out?”

  He had me there.

  I sat up and he tossed me a sweatshirt. He handed me my running shoes and a pair of socks. I groaned.

  “Moving’s going to be good for you,” said my dad. “Endorphins and all that.”

  I stared at the sneakers he put on my bed.

  “Chop, chop. While it’s still light out, please.”

  Fifteen minutes later, I ran next to my dad on one of our old routes, a stony path through the woods behind our house. The two of us hadn’t gone on a run together for a few years, since his knee had started acting up again. I had to wonder if he’d be able to do this with me, but as I panted like I was about to have a stroke, my dad hadn’t broken a sweat.

  After Carter ditched us the night before, Austin and I coped by taking tequila shots and eating mini donuts. I didn’t even remember making it home, which meant there was a 100 percent chance my dad knew what I’d been up to. I’d never been good at going that hard and hiding it from my parents.

  “I’m going to throw up,” I announced, after about three more minutes. My dad didn’t stop running. I trailed behind him for as long as I could, until I finally dropped to my knees and hurled my guts out.

  “Feel better?” My dad jogged back to me.

  “Nope.”

  “Come here.” He extended his arm to pull me up.

  “Thanks.” I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “How much trouble am I in?

  “Not sure yet,” said my dad. He stepped over a rock jutting out of the path and I plodded along beside him. “Your mom was going to ground you, if you were ever actually ungrounded. We’re not great at enforcing that, huh?”

  Blurry pebbles scattered as we walked.

  “Mr. Maxin told us what happened,” he said. “Robert tells that guy everything. Not sure grounding you would matter, since you don’t have anywhere to go now anyway.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  He hit my shoulder. “Mostly kidding.”

  We reached a fork in the trail. One side went to this secluded cranberry bog that Austin swore was where ghosts went to swap murder stories, and the other side went to the back of a cul-de-sac. Instead of choosing, my dad turned around, heading back.

  “Carter’ll change his mind.”

  “You didn’t see him last night,” I said.

  Except for our slow footsteps, the nature around us was eerily quiet. It was too far into the fall for bugs, and still too early for birds and squirrels to prepare for winter. My dad’s uneven walking thumped against the path. His knee was starting to get to him.

  “He will,” said my dad. “Might take years, though you guys are too close to never see each other again.”

  “No offense, but you’re wrong.”

  He chuckled. “I want to tell you something.”

  Awesome. That meant I could focus on trying not to throw up again.

  “I’ve never shared this,” he said. “I was waiting for, I don’t know. I guess a good moment.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “This guy,” my dad patted his knee, his bad one, “wasn’t some overuse injury.”

  He was right that this was a big deal. My dad had spoken about his injury only one time—when I was six and I asked why he never played goalie for me. He’d answered that he didn’t want to risk twisting his knee again. Again? I had asked. And he told me that a long time ago, he’d twisted his knee and couldn’t play soccer anymore. That’s why he’d had to quit, even though he’d been really good. Later, from my mom, I found out he was USA National Team–level good, but he’d had to halt his career before he could make it there.

  “What happened?”

  “’Bout twenty-five years ago. It was a Tuesday. Few weeks after junior year of college. Just started dating your mom.”

  “Gross.”

  “Right. Anyways, that day I was supposed to try out for the USA National Team.”

  What? I had no idea my dad had actually tried out for the team. Everyone had said he got hurt before he actually could. “You did try out for them?”

  “I was supposed to,” he said. “Had my Wheaties that day and everything. Wore my lucky socks. I was too nervous to drive, and your mom volunteered. Got to take the Green Machine.” Ah yes, my dad’s favorite car: the 1980s Volkswagen. I’d heard countless stories about that car and the trouble my dad had gotten into while driving it.

  “What happened to that car anyway?”

  “Hang on, I’m getting there,” he said. “That day, your mom drove me. Route she’d taken a million times. Thirty minutes out, right on the freeway, easy. About ten minutes in, we got in this huge fight.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I think it was about something I said. Probably about women drivers. Your mom hates when I complain about women drivers.”

  “Mom hates when you make sexist comments, period.”

  “Whatever,” said my dad. “We’re on the way to the tryout, she’s crying—you know how women cry—when this eightee
n-wheeler comes out of nowhere. Smashes right in the back of us.”

  Oh my God.

  “The trunk was pushed right into the front. Couldn’t tell what was metal and what was us. Next thing I remember was the hospital. Your mom came out pretty okay, crying a lot, though, driver usually gets it much better. My knee’d gotten caught under the dash and didn’t untwist for a few days.”

  His unsteady breathing grew louder. The beginnings of an emotion.

  “I’m lucky to still have my leg.”

  “This is wild,” I said. “I had no idea.”

  This was why my mom had been so freaked out about my car accident.

  “Didn’t want to scare you,” my dad’s voice cracked. “It’s partly why I was never too concerned with you getting an overuse injury before maxing out your career.”

  “Shit, Dad.”

  “The point of my story,” he said, “is that even when we were in the hospital room, when a few hours before, your mom had hated me for whatever I’d said about women drivers, in the long run it hadn’t mattered. Nothing we could fight about was as big as that crash, which we made it through together. Made everything else a piece of cake. You and Carter have been through too much to not make it.”

  “Dad,” I said, “why are you still saying ‘women drivers’ like that’s a great joke?”

  “Well, you know. You get it.”

  “No. Not really. I know you treat mom well. But the way you talk about women, like calling our team girls when we aren’t performing the way you want . . . you can get in trouble for that now.”

  “No more trouble than a car accident,” he said.

  I groaned.

  That was the truth behind my dad. He blamed how his life turned out on the car accident, and he blamed the car accident on everyone else.

  The woods opened to the end of our street, and we reached our house to find my mom on the front porch with a book, watching the cars go by. She waved.

  “Nick,” said my mom, as I opened the front door. “Clarkebridge called.”

  I spun on a dime.

  She was smiling.

  “Full ride,” she said, reaching for a hug. “You did it.”

  I stumbled. “That’s . . . wow.”

  “Congrats, buddy.” My mom smelled like fruity shampoo and freshly washed clothes. She held me tightly, the first time she’d hugged me in maybe all of high school.

  I wasn’t really thinking about what she said.

  I was thinking about the one person I’d need to share this news with.

  I had to know if he got in too.

  RULE NUMBER 21

  A bro shalt not make his girl cry.

  The first place I went after my mom stopped fussing over me was good ol’ Straight Cheese ’n’ Pizza. The one thing Mr. Hoover ever managed to teach me was that when you don’t sleep enough, or are really stressed out, you start craving fatty and sugary foods—your brain is basically screaming for energy, and fatty and sugary foods are the quickest way to get there. If you get enough sleep and manage stress, it helps with those situations.

  I was aware of this, and to Mr. Hoover I say: I really needed the pizza with the mozzarella stick crust. He would know not to mess with me.

  The second place I went was the O’Connors’ house. I doubted Carter would be there, since when he was stressed, he went to some kind of ninja-training exercise class to get totally swole. Though I wasn’t there to see him. Not yet.

  I sent Eliza a text as I pulled into her driveway. She sat in their backyard against the oak tree. The perfect hiding place from the outside world, and the perfect place to be alone.

  The end of the afternoon loomed overhead, beginning to fade into orange as I came up behind her. Somehow, she seemed comfortable in the mid-November air with a baggy sweater and jeans. Or maybe she simply wanted to feel the cold.

  “Hey,” she said, focusing on something that was not me. She had her back against the tree, hunched over a spiral notebook.

  Her loose hair dangled over her writing, hiding it even as I crouched down. What was the protocol for what to say after you ruin a sibling relationship? Should I try to hold her hand? Is it even right for me to talk first? She wasn’t crying, but a sad energy sat on her soundless lips.

  I couldn’t decide which would have been better: For her to be happy to see me, or sad like she was. Either would make what I was about to do ten times harder. Maybe I would regret this, and I was having a kneejerk reaction, like the other instances when girls and I started to get serious.

  I stuffed my clammy hands into the pockets of my jacket.

  “There’s a rumor going around that we slept together,” she said. “Carter believes it. He texted me about whether he should pick up protection. I cannot stand him right now.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’m really sorry. Anything I can do?”

  “It’d help if you spread that it isn’t true.”

  “On it.” Denying rumors wasn’t really my M.O. All press is good press, you know? For her, I would make an exception. For Carter too.

  “Probably won’t change Carter’s mind, though.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to try.”

  The notebook in her lap stuck out like a giraffe in New York City. I didn’t want to pry, but the scribbles at the top of her page screamed at me. “Dear Nick, What keeps sticking out is the first thing you said to me: Tell me I’m wrong.” Her arms covered the rest.

  “Wrong about what?” I asked.

  It was a cold evening, with autumn starting to turn into winter. My fall jacket was on the verge of not being enough to block the cruel temperature.

  “Only everything,” she said.

  “Are you writing me a love letter?” I asked.

  “You can’t handle a love letter.”

  “Ha.” I stroked the top of her head, dragging my fingers through her hair. It took more willpower than fighting through my dad’s sprinting drills to stop touching her and remember why I’d come.

  “Um,” I started.

  Eliza closed her notebook. “It’s okay. I know why you’re here.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded. “For Carter.”

  Her full brown eyes met mine, neither of us blinking. “I figured you might react like this, and I get it. But before you end things,” she whispered, “and you want to break up or whatever, can you read this?”

  I couldn’t look away. Not even when she crumpled up a scratchy piece of paper and placed it in my fist. “That’s what you’re scared of?” I asked. “That after all this, I’d choose Carter?”

  She didn’t reply.

  She didn’t need to.

  She was right.

  “Please read it, okay?” The tree bark cracked as she stood. “I’m going to get another jacket. I’ll be right back, and we can talk about it.”

  I nodded as she stalked off. I don’t know if I can do this . . . I started to think.

  “Get it together, Nick,” I whispered. Then I opened up her letter.

  Eliza took her sweet time inside, because I’d had long enough to read her letter eight or nine times. The sun had disappeared below the thinning canopy of her oak tree when she finally approached. Her letter shook in my hands, from both the cooling temperature and its contents.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.” I stood. Her eyes vacillated between mine, awaiting my verdict. Thinking she already knew what I was going to say.

  The note weighed in my palm. I folded it in half, like closing a book.

  “You wrote that you think you know what I’m going to do,” I said.

  Her loose hair floated in the breeze. She studied my sneakers.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know.” I stepped towards her. “You don’t know how much I think about you. Which has been basically nonstop since forever, and especia
lly since you came back from Australia. You don’t know you’re the only girl I think about.” I took another small step towards her. “You don’t know how nervous you make me. How that makes hanging out with you even more fun. You don’t know how much I look forward to seeing you, or how I feel like I can tell you anything.”

  Eliza frowned. “Before you read that, you were going to break up with me.”

  “Yeah. I was going to take the easy way out,” I admitted. “I thought if I were friends with Carter, I could still be friends with you. But I don’t wanna be friends. I want to do this thing for real.”

  She opened her mouth. I kept going. “That grin you mentioned . . . you’re the only one I ever want to give it to.”

  My voice cracked and so did Eliza. She threw her arms around my neck, stuffing her face into my shoulder. Her beautiful smell and warmth enveloped me.

  “I—” she started.

  “I know you said that wasn’t a love letter . . .” I choked.

  Her shoulders shook against my chest, and soon her tears dampened my jacket. I squeezed and held her closer.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I really thought this was it.”

  Wetness ran down her cheeks and I grinned. “I love you.” I said it. Excitement shot from my elbows to my knees. “I did it, I finally told you.” I fist-pumped into the air. “Hell yeah!”

  “I love you too, Nick.” Her laugh seeped under my skin. “Ugh, that feels so good to finally say.”

  Joy twisted our fingers together as she collected her thoughts. “What about Carter, though? I don’t want to lose him either.”

  “Maybe we apologize,” I said. “I tell the world I didn’t sleep with you. We make it clear that we love him too. And we wait.”

  “I just . . .” she trailed off. “I want both of you.”

  “Me too.” I pushed my hand through my hair. “I want this. And you. And I hope that’s good enough for him.”

  “I think he just needs time. He’ll do the right thing, I know it.” Eliza kissed my cheek. “So did I tell you that I love you yet?”

  Really stinking cute.