Timmy #02: Do You Understand?

Do You Understand?

Monday

Mom had the central air fixed. That’s something.

Summer vacation was almost over, not that my summer vacation was much of a vacation. I go to summer school because I want to stay ahead of the game, and I spend the middle of the afternoon working out with the wrestling team. We have twenty returning seniors on the team. Twenty seniors for fourteen positions, and while I’ve always been a first stringer, it’s never been easy.

I don’t know what I want to write about today. My older sister, Diana, keeps making me feel strange. I don’t know if she’s doing it by design or not, but she is doing it. This morning, before school, I was eating cereal in the breakfast nook built alongside the kitchen and to the right of our dining room when Diana came downstairs and sat across from me at the table.

It was early, and she hadn’t dressed for her summer classes yet. A gray and white onesie, of the shorts variety, with short sleeves, hugged her body. Buttons ran the length of the onesie from her neck to her waist. Her cotton outfit stretched over her body in a form-fitting hug. The cotton looked soft. It was the fuzzy kind, and the threads probably felt like air when you rub them between your fingers. It was tight enough on my sister’s body that I thought it was a size too small for her.

Anyway, Diana sitting down to eat was nothing new. People eat, and she’s a person, that’s what they do, but my sister had undone her onesie’s buttons down to the top of her stomach, and the stretchy halves of the top couldn’t come together over her breasts. A V-shape split the upper portion of her onesie to just below her breasts, and I could see the round, inside swells of her tits in a way that shouldn’t have been visible to my brotherly eyes.

“Are you going to stare at me all morning, or are you going to get me some cereal?” Diana asked.

I stopped eating with my spoon halfway to my mouth, the milk dripping back into my bowl from the bottom of my spoon. Diana’s blue eyes drilled into me, sticking me into place. The longer she looked at me, the more stuck I felt—as if I had to answer her question, and there was, I’m guessing, only one answer that my older triplet wanted to hear.

“Would you like some cereal?” I asked.

“Yes,” Diana said. “Go pour me a bowl of cereal.”

You know, getting her water was one thing, and that’s what I wanted to think, but instead, her firm voice forced me to rise from where I was and do as she said. And as I did her bidding, my heartbeat thickened, and goosebumps fluttered across my shoulders. I made her a bowl of her favorite cereal, and I was careful to pour the bowl full of milk to the amount that I’d seen her pour before. I spent more time than I should have in trying to get the milk-to-cereal ratio right for her. When I felt I had done a good job, I set her bowl in front of her and brought her a spoon that she made me clean again, and then I sat down to finish my breakfast.

For some reason, I didn’t take another bite of my cereal until after Diana swallowed her first spoonful and said, “Thank you,” without looking at me.

I didn’t say anything. As she ate, she played with the left half of her onesie. Her fingers dipped under the cotton. She didn’t look at me, but she managed to pull the left side of her onesie further across her breasts, almost to her areola, which exposed more of the sun-kissed roundness of her left tit.

When she got up to leave, she said, “I want scrambled eggs tomorrow.”

Tuesday

I made Diana her scrambled eggs for breakfast. She was wearing a pair of small, white boyshorts with red cherries checkering the front, a low-cut white tank top, and no bra when she came down to eat, and I could see the shades of her nipples beneath the cotton pressing against her thick nubs.

I watched my sister eat as I ate my cereal. I waited for her to say something, anything, that would let me know she liked her eggs—eggs that I made for her. Why hadn’t I made myself some eggs? Anyway, I waited and waited, but I didn’t even get a thank you from her before she left the nook.

I almost threw my damn bowl of cereal back into the kitchen. Instead, I finished it and carried my bowl and my sister’s plate to the sink, where they belonged.

Why was my sister fucking with me?

Wednesday

Not much happened today. Diana ignored me, so I went for a late-night run that left my lungs burning.

Thursday

I had a strange argument with my sister. Diana had come into my room and asked if I had eaten the Snickers bar that she had put in the freezer.

“No,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me,” she said.

This incident happened late in the night, and she had rushed into my room wearing a flannel shirt that she likes to sleep in and white ankle socks. The shirt was long enough to cover her to the middle of her thighs. I couldn’t tell if she was wearing anything underneath, and by that, I mean the hem never rose high enough for me to see beneath it. Not that I was looking. Not really. I wasn’t hoping it would. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t.

“I’m not lying,” I said to her after looking up from her legs. “I didn’t eat your fucking candy bar.”

“Don’t cuss at me,” Diana said.

I got up from my bed. I was about to throw her out of my room when she walked up to me and pushed her finger into the middle of my chest. Hard.

“Don’t,” Diana said, leaning forward as the word left her mouth, and she didn’t stop until her lips were next to my left ear. “Don’t you ever touch me until I give you permission? Do you understand?”

Heat flushed the underside of my cheeks. My sister’s breath against my ear made me roll my head to the right as a chill cut through my burning skin. Shut the fuck up and leave my room, I wanted to say, but all that came out of me was, “Yeah, I understand.”

“Good,” Diana whispered. “Next time, I won’t be nice about it.”

Then she left my room.

I hadn’t eaten her fucking candy bar.

Friday

Diana ignored me today, not that I noticed until I wrote those words down. My younger sister, Abbey, the eighteen-year-old high school junior, asked me if I’d teach her how to wrestle. I said, sure, tomorrow night. The last thing I needed to do was wrestle Abbey when I wanted to throw Diana through the air as far as I could.