"You know, Mom is going to kill you," Kaylee said.

I dropped my chin to my chest by way of acknowledgment then winced from the pain in my left wrist. I glanced down at it and marveled once again at the sight. My forearm was covered in a plaster-of-Paris cast reaching from just below my elbow to just below the knuckles of my hand. My thumb protruded from the thick white plaster but I knew it wouldn't mean much. I still had my fingers, and my thumb, but they were useless. I wouldn't be typing at the computer anytime soon, not with my left arm so crippled.

"I don't understand you sometimes, you know?" my sister said in frustration when I remained silent. "If anyone had told me you were the type of person to get in a fight yesterday, I'd have guessed they were high or something! What were you thinking?"

Having my older sister scold me like that stung. I'd done it for her, after all. I would have thought she would be thanking me. Instead she seemed angry. I shot her a look of pure, unadulterated teenage immaturity and said, "I just told you! He was making fun of you, spreading lies! Really mean lies! And he wouldn't stop!"

Kaylee rolled her big, beautiful green eyes and laughed. "So what, you hit him? Some freshman boy I don't even know talks shit about me and suddenly you're Bruce Lee? Come on, Cole! What really happened?"

That's when I realized she didn't believe me. But everything I had told her about my fight at school had been true. Zack Tanner had called my older sister, who attended the same high school as a junior, a slut. He had called my beloved sister a slut. In front of my friends. In front of everybody. He hadn't stopped at that, either. He'd gone on to say she was fucking half the Senior class, both male and female, and that she had once given eight different guys blow-jobs at a party on the same night. I couldn't let that pass.

Unfortunately for me he'd said all that during a confrontation in a stairwell. I ended up getting one good hit in before he opted to push me rather than hit me back. His push had sent me sprawling down a flight of stairs. That was why I was currently in the emergency room of the nearby hospital with a cast around my arm.

"It's what happened, I swear," I whispered. I felt cold in my paperish hospital gown, sitting in the small room. I felt naked. I would have cried except there was no way I wanted my sister to see me so emotional. I wasn't a little boy anymore. I was almost a man, almost fifteen. A freshman at Eleanor Roosevelt High. Boys my age didn't cry.

She read my expression and when she spoke again her tone had softened. "They're just words. High school is like that, Cole. There'll be rumors about you before long, just you wait. Do you expect me to sucker punch every girl who tells me tomorrow I have a psychopath for a little brother?"

Her grin was infectious. Even though I cracked a smile I refused to follow her line of logic. I said, "It's different for guys. I can't let assholes like Zack go around saying that kind of stuff about you. You wouldn't believe the things he said, Kaylee."

She rolled her eyes again. "Uhm, I've been in high school for three years now. Believe me, I know the things people say. You think I don't know what's written about me on the boys' room walls? I laugh about that stuff with my friends, Cole! I don't start fights because of them!"

This revelation stunned me. I had always assumed she had no idea what kind of messages were written about her in pencil, and sometimes marker, in the boys' rooms of the high school we both attended. I'd spent my first five months there erasing all the nasty messages about her from the walls at Eleanor Roosevelt High. Using a thick black magic marker I'd blocked out such messages as, "Kaylee Stevenson loves sucking cock!" or "Kaylee, a Junior, will do it with anyone!". Her cell phone number or AOL Instant Messenger screenname was often included with this graffiti. I'd gotten used to going to the bathroom and scanning the stalls for messages about her and then using my marker to block them out. I had thought all that was secret, stuff I could protect her from. Now she was saying she knew all along.

"Cole, listen," she said. She had an earnest expression on her pretty face. "It doesn't matter. None of that matters, okay? I don't care what people say about me. Neither should you."

She was right. In my heart, I knew she was right. But Zack had repeated those rumors and lies out loud, to my face. How could I not have retaliated? How could I not have slugged him? She was my sister, dammit!

I looked back down at my broken wrist. I didn't breathe and didn't say a word.

"You're going to be suspended," she said, her voice soft and breathy. "Five days, no classes, no make-up on homework or tests. You'd be lucky to get C's this marking period, now. What's that going to do to your grade point average, huh? Do you really think you can still get into Harvard or Yale on scholarship with substandard grades? Do you?"

I groaned audibly. "I wasn't thinking about that! You're my sister, Kay! If someone says something like that about you I can't just let it slide!"

She had been sitting in a wire-frame chair next to the door of the hospital room. Now she stood up. She had a sad look on her face as she approached me. When she reached out one of her long, slender arms to push my hair out of my eyes I didn't think of stopping her. Our eyes locked.

"Cole," she said, "you can't risk your future on account of me. Never again. Okay? You need the scholarships and you can get them. You'll ruin all that if you keep trying to be my knight in shining armor. I can take care of myself. I don't care what people say about me, okay?"

There was nothing I could do but nod my head. She always had that effect on me, an ability to remind me that she was the older sister and I was the younger brother.

The door to the room opened. A very tall man in a very long white coat was studying a chart. My sister and I were both looking at him when he said, "It's a minor fracture, nothing to be concerned about. Keep the cast on and bring him back for another evaluation in two weeks. After that..."

His voice trailed off. He'd been so entranced by the chart that he hadn't realized there were only teenagers in this room. After a soft cough he glanced back at the chart, then back at us, and he said, "I need to speak with your parents. Or parent."

Kaylee and I both grinned.

Our father died when I was 2-years-old and Kaylee was 4-years-old. Neither of us had any memories of him outside of the photographs our mom kept around the house. She had never remarried and her absence at times like these wasn't unusual for us. They always were for outsiders, though.

Kaylee said, "Our mother is in Florida, sir. I'll be bringing Cole home. He's my brother and he's in my care."

The doctor eyed us for a moment. Finally he checked his watch and glanced at me. "I'm prescribing two aspirin, twice a day, for the pain. I don't think anything stronger is warranted. And you need to be back for a check-up two weeks from now, April 26th."

"How long will I have the cast?" I blurted.

He looked at my sister, who looked stunning in her short-sleeved blouse and flowing skirt. He said, "We'll know more after the follow-up. Make sure he's here, though, okay?"

She said, "We'll be here."

The old, overweight doctor who was too tall to be normal, nodded at her, smiled at me, then left the room. I stared at her. She seemed happy when she said, "Okay, good! Only a few weeks. You should be happy!"

She left the room to let me dress. It was weird and difficult to do so, not having the use of my left hand. After I was clothed I exited the room and followed her to her 2005 Volvo. She'd received it as a present for her 16th birthday the previous July and even though it was almost a year old now it was in perfect condition. Like everything else in her life my sister took great care of her car.

"So," I said, "when's Mom going to be home?"

Kaylee peeled her car out onto the street before saying, "Tomorrow morning. She's cutting her trip short."

"She's going to kill me, isn't she?" I said, using her own words.

"Tell you what," she said, "I can help you with that. But you have to promise me you won't do something this stupid ever again. Deal?"

I thought about this most of the ride home. I had no doubt she would be a great asset in placating our mom. At the same time I couldn't imagine not confronting someone who would say nasty things about my sister. She was, and had always been, my favorite person in the world. The idea of standing idly by while someone spread lies and rumors about her made me so angry I could hardly breathe.

"Cole? Come on... ," she said, urging me to promise.

"I don't think so," I said in a whisper. "You can't understand. I'm not going to let people say stuff like that about you. I can't."

Neither of us spoke for a while. Just before she turned the car into our driveway she mumbled, "You should have been my older brother."

"Older or younger it would be the same," I snapped. "Assholes like Zack shouldn't be allowed to say such bullshit about you! I'm sorry, Kay, but that's it. That's just it."

She smiled sadly as she put the car in park.

What you need to understand about the nature of my relationship with Kaylee is that she was more like a friend than a sister. I'd always looked up to her, ever since I was old enough to crawl, and she'd never given me a reason not to. She was the sweetest, most loyal, and kindest person I ever knew. Even when she hit puberty and started acting bitchy to my mother from time to time, she never did that with me. And now, at the age of 16, I had more reason than ever to love her and want to protect her.

She was simply the most accomplished, self-driven, and generous person in the entire school. Smart as a whip, Kay maintained a 4.0 GPA and had already taken her SATs and scored in the top tenth percentile. In the Fall she had been co-captain of the cheer-leading squad and now that it was Spring she was a leading player on the girl's volleyball team. And as though all that weren't enough she often spent time with the local chapter of PETA (People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals; and yes, she was a vegetarian), attending meetings in the city and rallies in the valley. Another extra-curricular activity was the drama club and she'd had leading roles in every production since her Sophomore year, my favorite of which being her role as Abigail in The Crucible.

It seemed to me that no other girl in high school came close to her level of character. All the girls I knew (and I didn't know many) were obsessed with dating boys, gossiping, and spending money at the mall. The most popular girl in my grade made it a point not to associate with anyone too far down from her on the social ladder, but my sister wasn't like that at all.

Everyone liked Kaylee, and she liked almost everyone back. She had dozens of close friends but she wasn't a snob. She was just as likely to befriend one of the burn-outs who only ever passed classes that involved hammers and nails as befriend one of the stuck up members of the cheer-leading squad. I didn't know anyone more well liked or well respected at our school. I guess that's why all the nasty rumors bothered me so much. Maybe no one deserved to have such ugly lies spread around about them but if anyone did, it certainly wasn't Kaylee. She'd never harmed a soul or said a mean thing about anyone as far as I knew.

Another thing about my sister was that she was simply beautiful. As her brother it was weird to acknowledge this fact but it was unavoidable. She was so beautiful she could have been a model, I thought, and I'd even told her that once. She'd replied in a typical manner: a soft laugh, a thank you, and then a self-depreciating joke (in this case she joked she would have to hit another growth spurt since she was too short).

Describing her is difficult because she was not quite a woman yet, but not quite a girl anymore, either. She was coming up on her 17th birthday but her teenage freshness was still far from its expiration date, I guess you could say. At 5'8" tall she might have been too short to be a model but she was definitely tall enough to be an amazing volleyball player. She had long, toned legs, impressive c-cup breasts, and gorgeous copper-colored hair that fell down to her shoulders. Again, unlike most teenage girls, she wasn't obsessed with makeup and thankfully for her she didn't need it. She had a wonderful, unpretentious smile and the most amazing green eyes with naturally long lashes. When she laughed it was a genuine and happy sound that made anyone who heard it smile. When she cried I think anyone would do just about anything to make her stop. When she was nervous she tended to suck in her lower lip and gnaw on it, and when she was angry, which was rare, she furrowed her brow and her eyes turned into ice.

Before you start to think I'm in anyway embellishing her raw, natural beauty, allow me to point something out. From the time she first went to Middle School she had been courted by dozens of guys. The number of friends she had on her MySpace page was always around the 500 mark, most of whom were guys who constantly posted comments like, "You are so hot!" or "What's going on, cutie?". I remember when I was still in Elementary School and was having problems with a group of neighborhood bullies, five 7th graders who wanted to impress Kaylee showed up to scare off the 5th graders who had planned on jumping me. Unfortunately for them, while she never turned away an offer of friendship, she'd never had a boyfriend, either.

"Life's too short for that," she explained to me once, referring to boyfriends.

That always confused me. From the time I hit puberty I'd been dying for a girlfriend. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't a natural in social-situations the way my sister was. Also, I wasn't exactly the best looking guy. I had an awkwardly shaped nose I'd inherited from my father, a scrawny body, and eyes my sister once said looked like they belonged to a 50-year-old homicide detective rather than an awkward, 14-year-old boy.

I had managed to go on one date right at the start of Freshman year a few months earlier. It had happened mostly by accident when I asked a cute red-head in my class if she knew of any good movies playing. She assumed I was asking her on a date, but I wasn't. Thankfully for me she smiled and said she'd loved to go.

The date had great at first. When I put my arm around her at the theater (the hardest thing I ever did in my life) she didn't recoil. When I tried to kiss her the way a friend had suggested, she hadn't pulled away. We kissed like that in the dark movie theater for nearly fifteen minutes until I blew everything by trying to cop a feel. A friend of mine had assured me that if a girl kisses you for more than ten minutes it means she'll let you touch her breasts. He'd been wrong.

While I lacked anything close to a girlfriend I did have a small group of loyal friends. Mostly they were all Math geeks like me. For fun we would hook up together on X-Box Live and battle together on a variety of games. Whenever we hung out it real life it was usually to play card games like Magic: The Gathering or to snack on chips and watch movies.

Unlike Kaylee I didn't do much in the way of extra-curricular activities. I was a member of the chess club and the math club but that was about it. My plan was to apply to MIT when I became a senior, but even with my great grades it was a long shot. Like Kaylee had mentioned the day I broke my arm, I would need a scholarship to get into any top-tier school. My mom made good money but she wasn't rich. I liked to joke that we were "lower-upper-middle-class". We lived in a very nice area and attended well funded public schools but my mother couldn't afford to send us to private schools. My fall back college, if MIT didn't happen, was Harvard because I was a legacy (my dad and grandfather had both attended) and I'd be more likely to land posh scholarships there. That is, if I kept my grades up.

But all of that was in the future. In the present I had a fractured arm, a disappointed sister, and a suspension to deal with. Not to mention the certain wrath of my mom when she got back home from her business trip.

I had a hard time sleeping that night. Thankfully I didn't have to worry about getting up early the next morning. I wasn't going to school, after all.

As it turned out my mom didn't do much other than to deny me my X-Box during the length of my suspension, and that wasn't much of a punishment seeing as I couldn't play it anyway with my casted arm. It seems my sister had decided to help me out despite the fact I hadn't promised her I would never behave so stupidly again. She'd made my case for me while driving our mom home from the airport and by the time she got to my bedroom to confront me she wasn't the terror I had feared. Instead, she was just a concerned mother.

My mom was a hard-as-nails, no-nonsense type of woman in her forties. She worked for one of the top movie studios in LA as a casting agent and her name was listed in the credits of several academy award winning movies. The money paid well enough that she had been able to hire a nanny for me and Kaylee when we were much younger. It had been necessary since her job entailed frequent business trips and long hours in the city. When Kay turned 14 and I was 12 nannies were no longer needed, but her hours never changed.

I think that's part of the reason Kaylee and I were so close. From our earliest years it was often just me, her, and one strange nanny after another. Especially during our single-digit years we leaned on each other for support and comfort during our mother's absences. It kept us, I think, from turning into bickering siblings the way so many other brothers and sisters do.

Our mom was an attractive woman from whom Kaylee had definitely inherited many of her looks. Even so, she rarely dated. Once in a while she would have a boyfriend but Kaylee and I rarely met them. There had been two or three we had met, though, all of whom I'd been certain my mom would marry. After that third one (who I really liked) I even asked her why she didn't make him my step-dad.

"I'm not in the marrying-business, not anymore," she just said. And that was that.

Her reaction to my fight and subsequent suspension and broken arm went along the same lines. "Well," she said in her dry voice, "at least you've managed to teach your sister a valuable lesson about men. Let me take a look..." After inspecting my cast she went back downstairs to prepare dinner. I was more relieved than you can know.

My five day suspension crawled by slowly. The day after the fight was a Thursday so I wouldn't be returning to school until the following Friday. I spent most of my time indoors, which was normal for me, reading Star Wars novels and browsing computer and math web-sites on the Internet. Also, like any healthy 14-year-old boy, I browsed for porn.

My feelings about porn were complicated at the time. On the one hand I had no problem hacking into pay sites and downloading a variety of hard-core movies, but on the other hand I often felt guilty about doing so after masturbating. The guilt didn't stem from the fact I was stealing the movies, of course. The guilt was a sort of teenage embarrassment about having to masturbate at all. One of my friends was already having sex on a regular basis and that made me feel insecure. I kept telling myself that he was older than me, and that by the time I was his age I'd be getting lucky, too, but I didn't really believe it. After all, I couldn't even get a girl to let me feel her up.

After the suspension I was excited to return to school. I know that may sound unusual but frankly, I liked high school. I was in a bunch of accelerated Math and Science classes and I was anxious to catch up.

My first day back I made the usual rounds of the bathroom stalls and was happy to find that the graffiti about my sister had stopped. That confirmed to me that it had been Zack who had been doing it. Since he'd been suspended, too, he hadn't been able to spread his stupid lies. Either that or I'd scared everyone tempted to bad-mouth Kaylee. I liked that idea but doubted anyone was scared of me.

Another good thing that first day back was the sight of Zack himself. He was in one of my English classes so our meeting was unavoidable. When I first spotted him I smiled from ear-to-ear at the sight of his left eye. A week had gone by but he still had a big, ugly black eye from where I'd struck him. It made me proud.

My friends, meanwhile, sort of treated me like a hero. Me, one of the geeks, had gotten into a fight. Not only that, but I hadn't lost the fight. I found out that almost everyone thought Zack's pushing me down the stairs was a cheap move, so even though I sustained the greater injury he was considered the loser.

The days went by more or less normally after that. Since I couldn't join my friends on X-Box Live we spent more time than ever just hanging out. Meanwhile my sister maintained her typically hectic lifestyle, our mom worked and went on business trips, and life just seemed normal. Except for the cast.

That came off, finally, a full week early on May 3rd. It was just over a week until my birthday, my grades hadn't suffered as badly as I'd feared, and I had my left hand back. I was so happy that for the next few days I threw myself into everything I did whether it involved cards with my friends, tinkering with my computer, or practicing on the X-Box so I wouldn't embarrass myself the next time I played with my friends.

That happy-streak, such as it was, ended a week later. And it ended in a horribly embarrassing way.

Normally on Wednesdays I stayed after school to meet with my Math club. But because we wouldn't be going to any more tournaments for the rest of the year (yes, we competed in "Math-a-thons" against other schools) we had decided the week before not to bother with anymore meetings. Instead I walked home right after school, promising one of my friends that I'd be on X-Box Live when we had to part ways near our houses.

When I got to the house I threw open the door, dropped my book bag, and ran up the stairs. I didn't expect anyone to be home so I didn't bother announcing myself. I bolted down the hall to the upstairs bathroom because I really had to pee. When I got to the door it was closed, but only sunlight filtered out beneath it. I pushed the door open, stepped inside, and saw my sister, dripping wet, completely naked, drying her hair with a towel.

I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. What was she doing there? She was supposed to be at volleyball practice! It hadn't occurred to me that with the school year winding down perhaps her extra-curricular activity had ended just as mine had.

I was also stunned, of course, because she was naked. My sister. In the nude. Without any conscious effort my eyes gazed over her body, soaking in its delights. Her breasts were more magnificent than any I had ever seen on any Internet porno-site. They were full, round, and capped with little pink nipples the size of rose petals. Her waist curved in from her torso and flared out subtly at her hips. And between her legs, oh my fucking God, there it was. Her vagina. Her pussy. I could see the top of her pink slit, the carefully trimmed patch of coppery-colored pubic hair above it.

She was staring straight at me, having probably been looking at herself in the mirror that hung on the back of the door when I burst in.

Remember when I mentioned before that I'm not good in social situations? It's how I'm wired, I guess. Because sure, she was gorgeous and sure, she was naked and sure, I was a hormone-addled 14-year-old boy. Still, this was my sister. The correct reaction in this kind of situation was to close my eyes, stammer an apology, and then run like hell. But I didn't. I couldn't move, couldn't think. All I could do was stare at my naked sister, her hands bunched in a towel above her head, drying her hair.

Or, rather, a towel that had been drying her hair. She wasn't doing anything now. She seemed as frozen as I was.

My sister's reaction wasn't the "correct" one, either, I guess. Most sisters would have screamed, called me a pervert, and demanded I leave. On the other hand, if this was one of those erotica stories I often read on the Internet, she would have smiled and asked me if I liked what I saw (I tried not to read incest stories, thinking them gross, but sometimes I accidentally started them ... and no, I never finished them).

But all she did was stare back at me. She was as frozen as I was. When my eyes finally returned to her face the expression there wasn't one of outrage, nor could it be confused with any kind of "come hither" look. Instead she just seemed curious. Her left eyebrow was slightly raised, her lips were slightly parted, and her head was tilted slightly to one side. Her eyes themselves revealed nothing. Not anger, not surprise, nothing.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, she said, "What, we don't knock anymore?"

That's when my face finally flushed red and I snapped out of my catatonic state. Spinning around in place I stammered, "Light's not on, thought you were at volleyball, Jesus I'm sorry, oh my God, Jesus!"

Then I ran faster than anyone on my school's track team to my bedroom.

When I got there I slammed the door shut and started to pace around the room, trying to think. I froze, though, when I realized something. I had grown the biggest erection of my life and it was sticking straight out from my boxers, making a fine little denim-covered tent of my jeans.

If it was possible to do so I must have blushed an even deeper shade of red. I'd gotten a hard-on looking at my sister! I suddenly felt more guilty and disgusted with myself than I ever had before. About anything. Ever. I felt like the lowest, most vile life form in existence. I honestly thought I might throw up.

What the fuck was wrong with me? I began to storm around my bedroom more than pace while squeezing my hands together in front of me. I felt horribly ashamed. Had my sister seen the erection? Maybe it had formed after I'd run off or she hadn't noticed it. But that was impossible, she must have seen it! Jesus Christ, my beloved sister, my sweet older sister, probably thought I was the most perverted, fucked up person she'd ever met, now. Suddenly I was re-imagining the expression that had been on her face and instead of curiosity I remembered revulsion in her eyes. I began to tremble as the memory became more and more real.

Thankfully my fear and self-loathing made the hard-on go away, because after a couple more minutes of pacing around my bedroom my bedroom door opened. I spun in place and saw her there, dressed this time, her towel wrapped in her hair the way women do. I began to stammer something, afraid she was going to yell at me, but she surprised me when she spoke first.

"I figured I didn't have to knock, seeing as you don't," she said. But it wasn't her words that surprised me, it was the way she said them, as though making a joke. And this was confirmed when her face broke out into one of those infectious grins of hers.

I couldn't smile, though. I was too stunned, too ashamed, too ... everything. I said, "Kaylee, I swear, the light wasn't on or I would have knocked..."

"I know," she said as she walked into my room. Her eyes darted around a moment and settled on my bed. As always it was made, a chore my mom had instilled in both of us since we were six. She took a seat, then patted on the spot next to her. She said, "Let's chat."

I looked at her blankly for a moment. She was so relaxed, so casual, that it was actually calming me down. This wasn't the first time we'd had conversations together in my bedroom and the way she was acting made everything feel normal, like she was there to offer advice about a hair cut or to ask me for help with her computer.

It took me a moment or two but finally I sat on the bed, too, though purposefully far away from her. When I was sitting I said, "What are we ... uhm, chatting about?"

She laughed lightly. "What do you think?"

I closed my eyes. "Look, I'm so sorry, Kay. I really, really am. It was a total accident, I swear."

"Freud says there are no accidents," she teased.

My face grew red again, this time with anger. "Freud is fucking outdated, and you know it! Jesus Christ, I was..."

"Sorry, sorry," she said, laughing. "Look, I shouldn't be teasing you. I know you must be, like ... I don't even know how you feel! That look on your face before you ran off, that was so ... that was so ... classic!"

She started to laugh again, this time uncontrollably. For a moment I was stunned but finally I couldn't resist anymore. I began to laugh, too. After a minute I was laying back on my bed with tears streaming down my face. A moment before I wouldn't have been able to imagine how this situation could possibly be funny, but now I couldn't stop laughing.