A few days before my fifteenth birthday, I decide to put some feelers out, see if I can maybe somehow jumpstart the whole boyfriend thing by getting Nate to ask me out. Since I’d never actually dare to talk to Nate directly, I focus on Bryan instead. One night after dinner, a rare evening when Nate isn’t around because his family’s Baptist and make him go to church service on Wednesday night, I find my brother at the kitchen table taking a practice SAT. Pulling out the chair across from him, I sit down in it and watch him bubble in the circles with his pencil. An eternity seems to pass before he decides I’m not going away and mutters, “What?”
As nonchalantly as I can, I start, “Shelley wants to know why you don’t have a girlfriend.”
Bryan glances up from the test, his brows furrowed into
