This is (part of) the earliest flashback in Sofie Waits. I have a daughter close to the age Sofie is here, and I read her this part when I was writing it. She interrupted me at one point to ask why I named the brother Awesome. It made me laugh so much he almost got a nickname inserted into the story. I decided to work on my enunciation instead.
From the book:
The bus stop was a corner and Amber gestured to the right. Sofie fell into step next to her and was vaguely aware that other kids had gotten off and that most of them seemed to be going straight instead. Sofie had almost convinced her head to look at those kids when a boy with longer legs and a quicker pace passed Amber on her other side. Amber acted as though she didn’t even notice him.
Sofie tried to act as though she, too, was unconcerned by his presence. “So… uh… what did your parents say about me coming over?”
“They’re fine with it,” Amber said. “Although they won’t actually be there. At least not at first. My mom will get home before your mom comes to pick you up. This is the first year they let us come home before they get off work. Last year we had to go to our grandparents’ house.” Amber smiled shyly. She looked proud.
But there was something bugging Sofie about what she’d just said. Who was us and who was we?
“Don’t get me wrong,” Amber quickly added. “I like my grandparents. It’d just be embarrassing to still have a babysitter. My brother will be home though.”
Amber threw out that last sentence like an unimportant afterthought. Sofie was afraid it might be very, very important. She was looking ahead to the tall boy with messed up hair and jeans as he turned and suddenly sprinted up the sidewalk to a yellow house on his left. What were the odds that Amber’s brother was already in a different house or… behind them?
Sofie’s head worked just fine as she checked the sidewalk trailing them. There was one more kid from the bus. A girl. Amber’s brother must be in a different house. He couldn’t be…
But he was. Amber turned up the same sidewalk. She led Sofie up to the same door. She tried to turn the handle and sighed. Then she rolled her eyes while she took off her backpack and said, “Austin thinks it’s funny to lock me out when I’m right behind him. Fortunately, we both have keys.” She pulled a rabbit’s foot with a key dangling from it out of a zippered pocket on her backpack.
Amber pushed the door open and Sofie followed her inside while her mind buzzed with questions about what might happen. His name was Austin, and he was somewhere in this house.
Amber led the way to the kitchen without saying anything. She tossed her backpack onto the table and began to unzip it. Sofie stood stiffly nearby waiting, though she didn’t know for what.
“I have the purple poster,” Amber said, “and we can use my notes.” She didn’t whisper in her own home.
Sofie nodded, exhaled slowly, and took a seat next to Amber. Their project was their focus for a while. Sofie forgot to be tense as she colored the letter pictures Amber drew. They worked too well together as they quickly moved on to doodling letters they didn’t need for the project. The poster sat only half-finished while they flipped to a third page in Amber’s notebook.
A loud thump startled Sofie and interrupted their laughter. Someone had just jumped to the floor from about halfway up the stairs. He came into the kitchen, looked right at Sofie and said, “Who are you?”
He had deep blue eyes in the middle of an otherwise pale face. They poured heat into her body and drilled a hole in her brain through which all intelligent thought leaked out. Instead of her name she said, “Hi.”
“You can just ignore him,” Amber said at the same time.
Austin shrugged and walked past them. Sofie heard a refrigerator open behind her. She heard a cupboard bang shut and was even aware of the vibrations of heavy footsteps around the room. Ignoring the presence of Amber’s brother did not feel like a viable option. Sofie trained her eyes on the growling G Amber was drawing, though it was less amusing than it had been a moment ago.
Austin returned to the table. He set a glass of what looked like grape juice on the corner and asked, “What are you working on?”
Amber shrieked and picked up the purple cardstock. “Don’t put that there,” she said. “If you spill it, our homework will be ruined.”
“Relax. I’m not a toddler.” Austin rolled his eyes at his sister and repeated, “What are you working on?”
Amber said nothing. She glared at her brother while she set the project back on the table on the corner farthest from his glass.
“You gonna tell me?”
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
“It’s called curiosity.”
“It’s called none of your business.”
Sofie wanted to answer Austin’s question, but she worried about getting between them. She had no siblings. Would Amber be mad if she spoke up or was she only enjoying giving her brother a hard time? “It’s for English,” Sofie said, hoping a half-answer would be helpful enough for the sibling she wanted to impress and not too helpful for the sibling she wanted to call her friend.
Amber didn’t seem to care that she had said anything. Austin had been looking at the table during the sparring and didn’t need help. “Oh,” he said, “you guys have Mrs. Dobbins, don’t you?”
“You already know that,” Amber said.
“I remember this letter thing.” Austin picked up his glass, took a long drink, then set it on a nearby counter. “She had them hanging around the room the rest of the year so I hope you like looking at them.”
“It’s better than looking at you. Right, Sofie?”
They both looked at her and Sofie wished right down to her toes, right down to the littlest toenail on her littlest toe, that they hadn’t stopped ignoring her. She felt it couldn’t be any more obvious that she’d been gawking at Austin than if she shouted the fact. But even now that he noticed her again, there was no spark of recognition, no hint at all that he remembered helping her.
He was the one who had stopped. That first time she passed him in the hall, the time she’d been there by mistake, she called out a general plea for information and Austin explained her wrong turn while other kids laughed at the poor lost 6th grader. Even knowing the incident was thoroughly elevated and romanticized in her own memory, it still rankled Sofie to see that it had left no impression whatsoever on Austin. Yet at the same time, she began to hope her current befuddlement would prove equally forgettable.
“Uh… what?” Sofie turned to Amber as though she didn’t understand the question.
“Sorry.” Amber smiled and lifted one shoulder. “Putting up with him all the time is exhausting. Sometimes I run out of good insults.”
Austin picked up his drink and left the room. They could hear him laughing as he went back upstairs.
“Maybe we should go to my room to finish this. Just in case he comes back,” Amber said.
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