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Zoe Murphy was no stranger to eating lunch on the floor in the hall outside the cafeteria. The school’s student population had grown too fast for the school to keep up with, and there was no possible way for everyone in her lunch period to cram into the old wobbly plastic lunch tables. Zoe didn’t mind the quieter option of sitting outside the room, despite the internal cringe she felt at eating from a lunch tray either on her lap or directly on the linoleum floor. She’d found a nice spot, even, in the corner where the hallway turned to lead towards the backstage of the auditorium. The area was usually empty during the day except for the few other people who would sit there during lunches, until school ended and the theater kids would pile in for another long day of terrorizing iHop workers with impromptu 11pm showtunes renditions. Some days Zoe wished she was one of them.
Her corner was empty aside from the occasional spider, tucked between a presumably empty filing cabinet and the wall. Generally, nobody would bother her. Sometimes she’d leave her science textbook there until her class because carrying it around until last period was cumbersome. Nobody had ever touched it, as far as she could tell. It was a corner you wouldn’t find unless you ate alone at lunch, generally.
Today, Zoe was not eating alone. The three underclassmen approaching her quiet area of the school were clearly not frequent fliers in the back hallway by the cafeteria. With their highlighted blonde hair and blue eyes and near-identical outfits, these girls could definitely find a spot with nearly anyone in the cafeteria. They probably had their own table they’d claimed via some social rule she didn’t understand, and if anyone got there before them and sat down they’d be the weird one for not being born knowing which table was only for blonde softball players.
It was like they were walking towards her, specifically, which was weird because she didn’t know them, and they didn’t know her, and she’d never even seen them around this hallway before, and Zoe wanted to sit alone with her thoughts and ignore everyone for the 25 minutes she got to tune out the world and eat a stale PBJ sandwich between Algebra 2 and AP English.
No, they were definitely walking towards her specifically. One girl gave an awkward half-wave and Zoe took out one of her wireless earbuds, double-tapping it to pause her music. It was barely 10:45 in the morning on a Tuesday. What could they possibly want from her?
“Hey, um,” said the girl who waved, and the nervousness was audible in her voice, and somehow that helped Zoe relax: It didn’t seem like she wanted to be here, either. “Are you Connor’s sister?”
Ohhh.
“Yeah, I am,” she said, sighing heavily. “Is he being weird?”
The other two girls were hanging a half-step behind their friend, and Zoe figured they were really only here for moral support, which she was grateful for— it was much less scary than a three-person ambush.
“Yeah,” the girl said apologetically. “Um, he was— I’m in a group project with him in our history class, right, and we’re supposed to be doing this project on, like, ancient Rome, and stuff? He was being weird and not really helping, and I asked if he could help with organizing the notes and stuff, and he flipped out. Started yelling at me and saying I thought he was stupid, and stormed out. He knocked over my iced coffee, too,” she added, and she dug around in her Jansport backpack to pull out a pink coffee-stained Composition notebook.
“I’ll talk to my parents about it,” Zoe said. “And I’ll try telling him to cut it out, too, but it’ll mean more coming from our parents, I think.”
“Thank you,” the girl sighed as she put her notebook back in her bag. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Nah, it’s fine. Sorry about my brother, he’s kind of insane.”
“That’s not your fault, don’t worry. Have a good day,” the girl said, and with that, she and her friends turned and left back towards the cafeteria.
Zoe pressed play on her music and went back to her sad school lunch. Her sandwich was stale, and her carton of orange juice was dented, and the fruit cup alone wasn’t going to be enough to get her through to 2pm. She wished she hadn’t forgotten to pack a lunch for herself. She’d been busy trying to do her eyeliner in the bathroom she shared with Connor that permanently smelled like weed, and then Connor decided to take ages getting ready, and she’d only barely pulled into the school parking lot in time. Maybe she’d make time to stop by the vending machine later.
“Mom,” she called into the house, throwing her bag into the couch and collapsing onto it.
“I’m upstairs,” her mom called back, and Zoe groaned, pulling herself out of the couch and grabbing a can of raspberry seltzer water before heading upstairs.
“How was school?” Cynthia asked from her desk, only looking up from her computer when Zoe didn’t reply.
“I met someone new today,” Zoe said.
“Oh?”
“She’s in Connor’s history class. They’re in a group project together. She came up to me during lunch today, and guess what she said?”
“What did she say,” Cynthia asked flatly, not receptive to the direction the conversation was going.
“She said that Connor freaked out today. She asked him to help out with something and he shouted at her and spilled her drink on her notebook and stormed out of the room.”
Cynthia let out a long sigh. “Zoe…”
“Mom…” she echoed in the same exasperated tone.
“Your brother’s going through a hard time right now,” she began. Zoe had heard it a million times.
“So is everyone around him.”
“Zoe.”
“Mom. Do you know how embarrassing it is when people come up to me to tell me my brother’s freaking them out? That’s just how people know me. I’m Connor’s sister. People go to me with complaints about him like my job is to clean up his messes.”
Cynthia sighed heavily, again. “We all have to make sacrifices, you know,” she began.
Zoe cut her off. “It’s like they say in that bible story. I’m not my brother’s keeper, or whatever. I don’t want to have to deal with his bullshit all the time. I’m not his PR agent.”
“You don’t have to be his PR agent. You just have to be his sister,” Cynthia said.
“I am so sick of being his sister! I’m sick of everyone just knowing me as his sister! Why can’t I just be Zoe?” Her voice was louder than she meant it to be, shakier, as well. The can of seltzer she’d grabbed was painfully cold in her hand, and the biting chill of early winter was not quite kept out by the insulation and fancy carpets.
“You are Zoe. And part of being Zoe is being his sister.” Cynthia’s exhaustion and regret at entertaining the conversation was clear in her voice even as Zoe looked away, scowling at the Buddha statues and diet books on her mother’s bookshelf.
“Whatever,” she said, and she stomped back downstairs to find her dad. She cracked open her seltzer water and peered into the living room— empty— and the kitchen— also empty. She slipped on her shoes and opened the door to the garage— bingo.
“Your son is driving me insane,” she said in lieu of a greeting. Her dad was at his work bench sanding down a small piece of wood by hand, sitting in a pine wood chair he’d made himself, one leg bouncing.
“He tends to do that,” her dad responded. He didn’t look up from his project, but he usually didn’t. She figured he found it easier to talk about things if he wasn’t looking at anyone, and she didn’t mind.
“Apparently he freaked out at someone today, screamed at her and spilled her drink, over some class project or something.” She took a sip of her drink. “Some girl came up to me at lunch to tell me.”
Larry sighed. “I’ll deal with him later today. Is he home right now?”
“Thanks. Uh, he dropped his stuff off when we got back and then went off to do whatever it is that he does,” she said. She was pretty sure he would be at the park again, sulking on the swings and scaring little kids, but she couldn’t say for sure. He could be anywhere, and she wasn’t particularly interested in tracking him down.
He nodded. “Is the girl going to the school about it?”
“Just me,” she said. “Connor’s prosecutor, I guess.”
Larry sighed again, heavier this time. “Third time this year, huh. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks,” she said again. Her dad nodded. She closed the garage door, kicked off her shoes, and made her way up to her room, collapsing facedown on the bed. She glanced at the clock: 3:16pm. With nothing else to do and hours until dinnertime, she put her earbuds in and curled up under her blankets, hoping to find a few peaceful hours in her late-afternoon nap.