Something Wiki Read Online Free PDF Page B

looking totally bored. I’d heard him singing as I walked past the music hall earlier that afternoon — I was heading back to my cabin to look for my lucky pen and strategically avoid having to write an acrostic poem for the millionth time. He was sitting near the open back door, away from the group, where I’m sure he thought no one else could hear him. His voice was beautiful and soft, and I walked up closer so I could see him. His left hand slid effortlessly up and down the fretboard of his guitar, forming chords that made his fingers look like spider legs that I could just barely see from where I stood. He was amazing. And, fortunately, too wrapped up in the music to notice me staring at him.
    Seeing him in the craft hut, it was hard to believe he was real. I kept trying to work up the nerve to tell him how good he was while I sat there gluing pompoms onto popsicle sticks because I hadn’t been paying attention to what the day’s craft was actually supposed to be. The crafts counsellor gave both Declan and me disappointed looks at the end of the hour when it was clear that neither of us had made any effort to build a birdhouse, the assigned project. I thought maybe Declan would see what a(n accidental) rebel I was and start to notice me, but he got up and left without even looking my way.
    I used to watch Declan from across the dining hall during meals, too. He was always really quiet, unlike the rest of his cabin, who pretty much never stopped yelling and singing and flinging their fish sticks around. I liked that about him; that he wasn’t like everybody else. He seemed so mysterious, plus he was incredibly talented. He mostly wore band shirts, bands that had broken up before we were born. The Beatles and Pink Floyd and the Ramones. You could tell his shirts weren’t really old, though. He must’ve bought them at a store in the mall. Hot Topic, probably. I guess not everyone’s lucky enough to have hand-me-downs from a cool older brother.
    Mom tried to take me shopping at Hot Topic once, right after it opened in the Eaton Centre last year. It was pretty weird, like someone had raided a thousand cool older brothers’ closets and put all their stuff up for sale at the mall. Mom couldn’t get over how much everything cost, and I couldn’t get over how much older and cooler and not-with-their-mothers every other kid in the store looked, so we left without actually buying anything.
    Later, when we stopped for lunch in the food court — Mom had a salad, while I had poutine — I just sat there shovelling fries into my mouth barely looking at Mom and wishing I was there with Z instead.
    My cool older brother.
    A cool older brother who’s going to be a dad and whose life is about to change completely.
    Can you still be cool if you’re a dad?
    As it turned out, Stacey’s makeover was a pretty good distraction from all these awful daddy-brother thoughts. She put my hair up in Mom’s old curlers, and used what makeup she could find — mostly cheap stuff that Uncle Tim had given me in our family’s Secret Santa gift exchange two Christmases ago. I was ten then, did he really think I’d use that stuff? I’m pretty sure he picked it up at a dollar store and that he didn’t remember which of his nieces I was because my dad’s family is pretty big.
    It took Stacey ten minutes just to wash my face (she says you have to be extra gentle with zits, as if she’s ever had one) and put cover-up on before she even started on the rest of my face. I have to admit it, though, I looked pretty good when she finished. Normal, almost. But there is no way I could spend half an hour washing my face and doing my makeup every day. Maybe just for special occasions.
    Stacey’s mom came to pick her up a little while after dinner, and she and my mom talked while Stacey put her coat and boots on. Mom wrapped her arms around me from behind as she talked,