Page 145 of More For Me

But she talks over me, her voice loud in the still forest. “It’s not your job to keep us from fighting or make me feel better or make Ammi happy. And it’s definitely not your job to try and get Baba to stay.”

“You’re my family,” I snap. “Of course those things are my job.”

She grabs my arm, making me stop. “No, Bodhi.” She stares up at me, her face filled with anger and a horrible sadness I recognize all too well. The urge to lighten the mood, to make that expression go away, is almost impossible to ignore. “It’s not your fault Ari died.”

I rear back, shock coursing through me. “I know that.”

“Do you? Because I think you’ve spent the last twenty years trying to make up for something that you had no control over. None of us did. He got sick. It was awful and I hate it but it happened.” She shakes her head. “You were just a kid, Bodhi. It wasn’t your job to make it better for us.”

“What the hell else was I supposed to do?” I shout, the tenuous control I had on my emotions slipping entirely. “Mom didn’t come out of her room forweeks. You cried every single night. And Dad—” I break off, turning away from her, breathing hard. I can’t do this. I can’t talk about this shit.

“Dad lost a child and then couldn’t find a way through the hurt to care for the ones he had left,” she says softly. The urge to defend him is as strong as ever, but I force myself to hold it in.

Because deep down, I think there’s a good chance she’s right.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she says, voice thick with emotion. “There was nothing either of us could do that would make him happy again. Or make him stay.”

“I just wanted…I wanted to give him back some of what he lost,” I manage to grit out.

“But you shouldn’t have had to do that,” she insists. “You were a little kid, Bodhi. A kid who neededhim. That should have been enough. You shouldn’t have had to pretend to like the same sports teams as him or sit through his boring ass military documentaries that I know you hate. You shouldn’t have had to play little league instead of soccer because he thought it was more American. You shouldn’t have had to do any of that shit.”

“But I didn’t know what else to do,” I say, frustration practically choking me. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to just be yourself, Bodhi. With Dad and with me and Mom, too. And if that wasn’t good enough, fuck him.”

My shock at that statement is enough to break through the frustration and anger coursing through me, and my mouth drops open to stare at her. I’ve never heard her say anything like that. Respecting your parents—all of your elder relatives, really—is something that was drilled into us and our cousins from the day we were born. Even Dad, as eager as he might have been for us to act like our American peers, was every bit as insistent on this one as Mom and our aunties and uncles.

“I don’t care,” she says defiantly, correctly identifying the shock on my face. “Fuck him, Bodhi. Fuck him for leaving all the time and making Ammi feel guilty for grieving too long. And double fuck him for making you think that you were supposed to earn his love.” She grabs my forearm, her grip tight. “Because that’s bullshit, Bhai. You’re the best person I’ve ever met in my life and if that wasn’t enough for him, he can go to hell.”

A memory flashes through my head, one I haven’t thought of in years—Dad the first day Ari had to stay in the hospital overnight, telling me that I needed to stop crying and be the man of the house while they were gone with him. And then I think about all the times I heard him fighting with my mom after we were in bed, telling her the constant moping was embarrassing and she needed to get it together. I remember him missing Nisha’s school play because he was away for work, even though she had the lead role. Forbidding us from going to stay with Kaira over a school break because he said she would indulge Mom’s “drama.”

And I remember a folder of superhero drawings thrown in the garbage a few days after my brother died.

My heart is pounding so fast it feels like it’s going to gallop away into the forest. I feel sick to my stomach—but my shoulders feel strangely light. The weight that so often settles into my chest is nowhere to be found. “He can go to hell,” I whisper, trying out the sound of the words on my tongue. They feel surprisingly…good. Right. “He can go to hell.”

Nisha is crying, tears starting to slide unchecked down her face, but she smiles at me. “My boys idolize you, you know. The kids at your school are crazy about you. Dev respects the hell out of you. And Ammi and I love you so much.” She wipes at her eyes. “And you never had to do a single thing to earn that. Okay?”

“Okay,” I tell her, the weight getting lighter every second.

She gestures around at the trees that surround us. “You’re allowed to have bad days. You’re allowed to be upset. You don’t have to go hide in the freaking woods because you’re afraid of people knowing you’re not happy all the time.”

I nod. My sister raises an eyebrow and I manage to smile—and it doesn’t feel at all forced. “I’ll try,” I amend. “It might take me a while.”

“I’ll remind you.”

“Of course you will.” I give a heavy sigh. “Since you haven’t stopped nagging me since the day I was born.”

She takes my arm and starts walking again. “You like my nagging.”

“Don’t know what I would do without it,” I agree.

We fall into step together, making our way through the woods. A hawk cries in the distance, the noises of the forest settling over us in our silence.

Ourbriefsilence. “So you know I need to nag you about Everly now.”

I laugh. “You managed to hold that in for nearly thirty seconds.”

“You wanna tell me why in the hell you broke up with your dream girl?”