Nate Part 2
"The girl you called weird yesterday is going to hang out with me. I don’t want you messing with her. Her name is Isabela! And she already has enough problems; she doesn’t deserve to be treated badly. Besides, she’s a cool girl," I explain, watching as my sister tenses up, completely rigid and turning red with anger as she glares at me, fists clenched at her sides. I can almost hear her head steaming like a pressure cooker. I know how she’s going to react, but I need to make it clear that she can’t keep treating Little Sun poorly. “I like her.”
“What? Why? Why do you like this Isabela? She’s weird... I don’t want that girl hanging out with us!” she yells, her eyes—puffed up with rage and inherited from our dad—bulging, and her black bangs almost covering her eyebrows.
“You don’t have to want anything! You were born a minute after me, so I’m the oldest, and you’re going to obey me, or I won’t talk to you for a long time. And you know I can stay mad longer than I can stand being away from me.”
“Argh!” she growls, then throws her hands up to the sky, and I know she’s cursing in her head. That’s why I call her Witch; I always say she’s casting mental spells on people when she does that. “There are plenty of girls for you to mess around with at this school. Why this one?”
“Bianca, I don’t owe you an explanation for why I like a girl!” I retort, starting to get pissed off and itching to pull out a cigarette and blow the smoke right in her face.
Shit! I’m a jerk to the whole world, but this spoiled brat always manages to soften me. She has the power to make me more patient than I should be.
“So you really want to sleep with the girl? She looks like a virgin…” she says, biting into the lollipop and making an absurd noise as her small, nervous teeth crush the candy. “This is going to end badly, huh! Underage, a virgin, comes and goes with the chauffeur. She seems to have strict parents,” she predicts dramatically, trying to scare me. “And make sure to use a condom because I don’t want to be an aunt.”
“Stop talking crap!” I shout, losing my patience and shaking with nervous energy to try to ease my anger. “I’m not going to screw her; I just said I like Isabela. And I want you to leave her alone! You don’t have to be her friend! Just don’t get in Isa’s way or make fun of her. Anyway… Hold your jealousy and don’t bother me.”
“Jealousy? Of you? Spare me, Nate!” she sneers with a growl, shoving my arm and stomping into the classroom.
As soon as we reach the threshold of the door, Witch freezes, and I know she’s scanning the room for Isabela. My sister looks like a Molotov cocktail ready to ignite the whole place, and I wonder if it was the best choice to have that conversation before class, instead of at home, where her catastrophic potential would have been more controlled.
Bianca raises her hands to the heavens beside her head, cursing when she spots Isabela at the back of the room, in the last seat on the left, huddled against the wall. I smile at the way her eyes widen when she notices us.
She’s so beautiful…
My sister sits in the front row because she loves to act like Hermione and chime in throughout the whole class. The teachers huff when she raises her hand to interrupt them, and Bianca does this routinely. I know she shifts to the side so I can sit next to her, as I usually do every day. But my feet are stubborn; they have a mind of their own, guiding me to the seat next to my “little sun.”
I’ve been thinking about her all night. Every conversation we had haunted my mind. I replayed the details as if the memories were solid and could be touched. I thought about how Isabela believed I was playing with her, that it was absurd for me to notice her or find her hot. Isa didn’t understand anything; she assumed I was embarrassed to be with her at recess when my sister arrived, but I only moved away from Bianca because I knew she would continue to insult me out of jealousy. And the best way to distance myself from her was to walk away.
“Good morning!” I greet, throwing my dirty black backpack down next to me on the floor. I rest my arm on the back of her chair, but I see how she tenses up and remember the damn trauma. Damn it! I’ve already started off badly. I slowly back away, trying to minimize the damage. I’m almost moving in slow motion. When I finally return to my chair, I release a tense breath. “How’s it going, Little Sun?”
“Out of jail already?” she asks, clearing her throat and blinking back tears. It’s obvious she’s scared I’ll touch her, and that gives me a pang of pain in my chest.
When I realize her question, I finally catch her sarcasm. I give a little smile, staring at Isabela’s perfect face. There’s absolutely nothing out of place about her; she’s entirely perfect. Her small nose, her pretty and slightly plump lips, the round shape of her face, her long, thick eyelashes… I get excited when I see her sketch a small, timid smile, just a slight tilt of her lips to the left, almost imperceptible.
“So you saw my defeat, huh?”
“I was in the car watching from the front row! You took a huge hit from the cop.” I laugh loudly, shaking my shoulders and holding the water bottle I gave her affectionately. And when she looks at the object, it’s exactly what she seems to feel about it.
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