Tyler’s sister is singing in the hallway again. She’d gotten on the honor roll for the fourth straight semester and their parents rewarded her with a record player and three of her favorite albums on vinyl. Like everything else, she always has to rub it in everyone’s faces, has to make it other people’s problem. When you’re sixteen, and someone tells you they love you…
He hates her for this, but he hates his sister for a lot of reasons. He hates her bad taste in music. He hates what she wears, tight little leggings stuffed into Uggs, Lycra Lululemon top. He hates how normie she is, boba tea, hair in a scrunchie, Instagram Reels. He especially hates her smug boyfriend Charlie, whom he provocatively likes to call Chuck. Who the fuck still names their kid Charlie? They seemed more like friends than boyfriend and girlfriend, which probably meant they got nasty in private, in the bathroom stall at school, her eyes curled up toward her forehead as he pressed her hard against the latchkey door.
Tyler always wishes he could teach his sister a lesson, break those songs off at the teeth. He imagines sneaking up on her and grabbing her from behind, hands up in her tits, dick wedged in the crevice of her ass cheeks. She’s shouting, what the hell are you doing? too good to say “fuck” but because she’s a slut she probably likes it, maybe even more than she likes it with Charlie.
And yet, when he thinks about his sister like this, about shoving her down on his bed, hands pinning hers to the small of her back, something immutable stops him. The crying, the fucking crying, he thinks, not just the please, no but how she used to cry about everything when she was little. Accidentally walking through the web of an orb spider. Not getting what she wanted in her easter basket. Bad yearbook photos in the sixth grade. The day One Direction broke up. Often, he feels the need somewhere deep in his bowels to go take a shower in the basement and cool himself off, out of sight and far from the music, only to return to the same room again, alone.
And whenever he’s angry at himself for thinking these things, he makes sure to redirect his anger at her and everyone like her for making him feel this way. As though he’s a bad person, even though it’s not like he can be blamed for it. After all, it happens all the time, PIP in the corner of his monitor as he scrolls into the wee hours. The same leggings, a mouth full of braces, a willing stare, a wagging tongue.