Born Wrong

06. a girl who doesn't understand

Kala Roshan

When I came home, Rihaan was there.

I dropped my backpack at the foot of the door, sighing dramatically as if I came back from an eighteen-hour shift at the hospital (it felt like it) and found my brother in the kitchen attempting to multitask between two things: cooking and doing something with his computer.

He glances at the entrance of our apartment, the glow of the laptop reflecting off his face, "bad day?"

I jerk my chin in the direction of the stove, "your food is burning."

"Shit." He swears under his breath, running around the kitchen peninsula and adjusts the burner down to a moderate level.

While my brother is preoccupied with keeping our kitchen from becoming a fire hazard, I take the moment to kick my backpack into our apartment and close the door behind me. It was simple enough. Once the bag finds its place beside the couch, I bee-line to the peninsula, slipping into the seat of the foldable high chair.

Rihaan is no longer interested in the theatrical entrance of his little sister and has now drifted back towards his culinary.

In return, I peek into his laptop propped on the counter, a few inches away from me with a slant. It is an old MacBook presented to him on his sixteenth birthday, after he won the state championship for varsity baseball, and it's been working overtime over since. It isn't bad, it's just lagging, is within a quarter-inch of its storage, and has some broken keys that were replaced with a late-night YouTube tutorial.

The application opened on the screen was his emails. I know, ethically, I shouldn't look—but I'm the little sister and that gives me permission-enough to snoop on my brother's stuff.

It was nothing interesting within the first few emails, just discounts he signed up for, a couple of colleges seeking student enrollment, and a pyramid scheme promoting a life-altering diet pill, but reading down towards the bottom of the screen, where the emails were cut-off by the layout of the platform, was a signed email from—

The laptop slams close.

I flinched back, looking up to find my brother's palm on the back of the device and the other holding a spatula.

"Behen," he began, but I cut him off.

"You have a girlfriend?" I question, tilting my head to the side as I study my brother. I am awful at it. I can usually read other people, but my brother is on a different level. I think it's partially due to all the pressure he has to handle on his daily-to-daily life, navigating how to take care of us, and he doesn't want me to be burdened with the stress. In hindsight, it's a great trick in allowing me to gain some semblance of a normal childhood, but it also shuts me out.

"What?" He didn't expect that to come from me. I didn't either.

"Who is Liz Caplan?" That was the name of one of the emails. It is obviously a girl, probably shortened from Elizabeth, and is, without a doubt, white. "I never thought you were into white girls."

My brother freezes. Then, he tips his head backwards to laugh. "Are you drunk?"

He only says that because he knows I'm underaged and I work at a bar. I was legal enough to work part-time as a server, but not old enough to take a sip in the backroom with my coworkers. That's the inside joke.

I scoff, wanting to chuck something at him. I had nothing nearby. "Don't you have food to burn?"

It was a weak retort, but it snaps him back into focus as he twists around in place and walks back over to the stove where a fume of burnt oil and chicken wafts into the air.