Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff Read online

  But David’s patience paid off. My mother joined a support group for parents of gays and lesbians, and soon she was succeeding in dragging my father with her to the meetings. She was even asked to speak at a conference for high-school teachers about being unbiased toward homosexuality in the classroom. Time passed. My parents eased into not only accepting the fact that David wasn’t ever going to be straight, but also that it wasn’t a bad thing at all. That for David, it was a very good thing.

  Then they did the craziest and most wonderful thing. I still laugh when I think about it. They made a list of all the people they hadn’t told about David, including old friends, siblings and their own parents, and they planned a three-week road trip across the country. They had news to deliver, and they wanted to deliver it in person and do some sightseeing in the meantime. They’d gotten this idea in their heads that it wasn’t enough for David to come out of the closet. He would never feel they’d truly accepted him until they came out of the closet, too, as the loving parents of a gay son.

  David’s apartment was the last stop on their journey, and I took an airplane up to meet them when they arrived. We took another family walk, and David told us about his new boyfriend and I told them about mine. Finally, after so much pain and hard work, my brother’s two lives started to merge.

  Danielle Collier

  How to Scare a Big Sister

  When we were little, my brother and I had a special kind of relationship. I scared him, and he would cry. I don’t remember why I thought scaring him was so funny. It was probably the fact that when I ran out and yelled “boo,” especially if I hid well and got him as he wandered past, lost in his three-year-old thoughts, he would leap into the air like a shocked frog.

  This method provided years of youthful mirth, but over time I found it increasingly harder to scare my little brother. He was just getting too old to be startled by my simple scare. Afraid that the balance of sibling power was threatened by this development, I frantically switched tactics. More sophisticated scares. Rubber snakes under his pillows, ghost stories about a mean old lady haunting his clothing chest, randomly ducking his head underwater as we played in the pool. I wasn’t above any trick. He was getting bigger, sure, but not so big that I couldn’t make him scream with terror. It was my duty and my passion.

  Sadly, all good things must end. All of a sudden, little Daniel was almost as tall as his antagonist sister (and gaining fast). I could hardly get a shudder out of him with the best of my schemes. Even a professional mistress of fear like myself knows when to give up a hopeless cause. I declared peace and made amends with my little brother—he took it very well, demanding no reparations.

  I should have realized that I wouldn’t get away with my crimes so easily. Destiny was about to get me back.

  I came home from school one day and found an empty house. It didn’t faze me—it was normal in my family. Mom and Dad often worked late, and my little brother and sister stayed at a friend’s house in the afternoons. My older brother usually showed up by dinnertime. I liked having the quiet house all to myself. It meant I could watch TV and listen to my music as loud as I wanted. On that day, however, the noise felt empty and false—it felt like I was trying to cover up the silence. I could feel the absence of sound hiding behind corners like a big kid waiting to jump out at me. I couldn’t understand why I felt so uneasy.

  After a while, I realized that it was getting late—really late. My family was usually home by five-thirty, and it was already close to seven. It was my little sister’s babysitter, finally bringing her home, who filled me in on the situation. Everyone was at the hospital. In the emergency room.

  “Daniel had a bike accident.”

  I immediately felt better—my little brother was always breaking toes and skinning knees. The explanation had restored a sense of normalcy to my world. The baby-sitter was still speaking.

  “He borrowed a neighbor’s old bike. The handlebars fell off in his hands.”

  I stopped listening. My crazy brother! I could just see him zipping down the street, slapstick-style, with a sheepish look on his face and handlebars in his hands, steering into thin air. I only heard bits and pieces of what the baby-sitter was trying to tell me—

  “. . . With the towel soaked in blood . . .”

  I was going to tease him when he got home with his stitches—

  “. . . Couldn’t find the tooth . . .”

  My mind was chattering to itself, to block out a feeling I wasn’t quite familiar with. I was afraid. It wasn’t funny anymore, and yet I heard a surge of hysterical laughter coming from my mouth—

  “. . . Surgery . . . we don’t know . . .”

  I sat down to let it sink in. And to calm myself. Daniel didn’t come home that night. My big brother finally wandered in—he had been crying, though he would never admit it now. He gave me the story, as he knew it.

  My little brother had been racing down a steep hill on a borrowed bike. All of a sudden, a screw fell off and the handlebars of his bike were no longer attached to the rest of the bike. He had no helmet on. If a car had been coming, it would have hit him. Luckily, Daniel skidded sideways into the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Face first.

  If he had hit at a slightly sharper angle, he would have broken his neck.

  My little brother lay bleeding by a ditch while his friends turned their bikes around and rode back up the hill. Somehow, the two other little boys managed to get him to the nearest parent.

  Daniel lost his tooth completely. His skin was horribly scarred. My little brother had to endure a series of oral surgeries. I felt sick at heart—his face was a swollen mess, black and blue and bright red. I almost cried every time he smiled, his gash of a mouth opening to reveal a horribly jagged line of teeth and gums. But he didn’t smile much because it hurt. My poor baby brother.

  If you look at him now, you would never guess that Daniel had ever had an accident. His porcelain tooth is perfect. His skin, miraculously, healed without even the hint of a scar. When he smiles, it doesn’t hurt.

  And now we’re pretty much even. It takes a lot to scare a big sister.

  Natalie Atkins

  Sixty-Second Flashback

  I sit in my Honda Civic stopped at a red light, staring straight ahead, when I catch a glimpse of a white Subaru. Out of habit, I turn my head to see if it is someone I know, someone I love deeply but haven’t seen in three months—to see if it is Zach, my older brother, my other half. The man driving the Subaru reminds me an awful lot of Zach, but it’s not Zach.

  Suddenly, I drift off into my memories and remember all the things about my brother I love and miss so much. I think of how his dishwater blond hair would curl, and how he would try so hard to straighten it by wearing a baseball hat until his hair was dry, or by plastering it with gel, only to make it curl even more. I think of how he would get angry with me for trying to wear his baggy pants and shirts so I could look like him. He wanted to be his own person. I remember how, whenever I was down, he would hug me and tell me how beautiful I was and then cheer me up even more by cracking some off-the-wall joke. He had a sense of humor that, no matter how upset somebody was, could always make that person laugh.

  I recalled a conversation he and I had when I was fourteen and he was eighteen. We were both going through a tough time with our parents, though our situations were different. We were driving in his Subaru, practically brand-new then, and for the first time he opened up to me. I felt like he looked at me as his equal instead of his little sister. He began talking to me about how much he loved music and how music was his outlet for stress when things got too rough for him to handle. He looked me in the eyes, which he rarely did because he usually avoided direct eye contact, and he told me that I also possessed something deep down that would allow me to create when I felt I had nowhere to turn. He told me I just needed to search my soul, and I would find it. At that moment, I looked at him and wished so much that I could play the guitar like him or draw like him. He seemed to posses
s so many talents that I envied, and to hear him say that he saw creativity inside of me made me want to hug him. I didn’t, though.

  I remember him always being holed up in his room whenever he was home, which wasn’t very often. He preferred going out partying with his friends. He was messing around with different kinds of drugs, which made him moody and difficult to tolerate. When he was around the house, there was a constant tension because he didn’t want any of us telling him what to do; he didn’t want to hear a thing we had to say. I guess that’s why I was so surprised when he took me with him that day in the car and spoke to me with such sincerity.

  My eyes begin to well up with tears as I remember the time, not too long ago, when his dog of ten years got cancer and had to be put to sleep. He slept in the garage with her for the last week of her life, and we were all together when she died. The look of loss in his eyes and the river of tears that flooded his cheeks told more about his love for his dog than any words he could have spoken. As he bent over and held her limp, lifeless body in his arms, his own body began to shake, and I realized how attached to her he was. As he stood up, I put my arms around him, hoping he would realize I was there for him, but he was distant and in his own world.

  Later that day, he came walking through the garage door with sunglasses on, even though it was a rainy day, so that we couldn’t see his red, puffy eyes. He always wore choker necklaces, but he had another necklace on that hadn’t been there earlier. He pulled the necklace out from under his shirt and showed us that he was wearing his dog, Annie’s, name tag.

  I cry even more as I begin thinking about why we haven’t spoken for three months. I had to set boundaries. I vividly recall the night when I awoke to hear him calling someone a bitch and a whore. I stood in the hallway and heard my brother calling his girlfriend names, thrashing all around the kitchen like a mad rabbit. He was incredibly drunk. The hurtful words that spewed out of his mouth were ones I would only expect a deranged lunatic to say. They were not words that should be spoken to a loved one.

  The next day I decided we needed to discuss the previous night. He stood in the family room with a vacant, yet defiant, look in his eyes as I began pouring open my soul about how much I worried about his alcohol consumption. It seemed the more I said, the further away he went. Finally, he looked at me, told me I was overreacting and that he was perfectly fine. I stood and listened to him deny my concerns, knowing that his denial was just a way to convince himself there was no problem. I gathered all the courage I had and proceeded to tell him that until he quit drinking and got help, there could be no brother-sister relationship between us. The look he gave me said more than words could ever express. I knew he thought I was overreacting and that I wouldn’t follow through— after all, I never had before.

  He moved out two weeks later when my parents and I gave him the ultimatum of living at home sober or moving out. He chose the latter of the two. He was furious with us for making him choose. He has stayed away for three months now.

  The light turns green, and I begin to cross the intersection while looking into the windows of the white Subaru. The man driving the car is built just like Zach. I realize how much I want to see him and wonder if I made the right decision. Then I think to myself what my dad told me the day Zach left: “Tiani, he may not realize it now, but he will thank you one day for loving him so much, that you put your foot down to him and let him know how things were going to be. Your mom and I love you and respect you for being so strong and caring that you would risk not talking to him to make him face the facts and get better.” At that moment I knew I made the correct decision, and I said a little prayer that I would see my brother again soon.

  Tiani Crocker

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: We received the following update from Tiani: “Zach’s drinking is no longer a problem; it has stopped controlling his life as well as our relationship. He has since moved back to Washington, is attending massage school, and is focusing on his health and fitness. He has grown in amazing ways—he has a stronger, healthier connection with the entire family, and we are all proud of him. I feel blessed to have our relationship back stronger than before, but even more blessed to have him as a male role model for my son.”]

  Change

  There will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

  Louis L’Amour

  If change is a scary thing, then I can honestly say that I was nearly scared to death at the age of sixteen. We had to leave the only home and friends I had ever known and move. “We’ll all make a new start, Carrie,” my parents kept saying. Just because my parents had decided to work on their marriage and “start over,” I didn’t see why I had to give up everything.

  I pouted and protested until they sold the house, boxed up our lives and moved. Then I just shut up; I had no choice. But I didn’t give up. Purposely, I let my grades slip, didn’t join in any social activities, and, above all, I never admitted that anything was as nice here as it had been in our old hometown.

  That strategy didn’t last long. Not because I had tons of new friends or was won over by this new town they called home. It was because my parents began fighting, and they were fighting about me. “Discussing” is what they called it, but fighting is what it was. Loud disagreements followed by tension-filled silences were becoming the norm.

  Believe me, my parents needed to work on their marriage. They had separated and come back together so many times that I classified my birthday pictures as “they were separated that year,” or “that’s the year they were trying to work it out again.”

  I guess I was just tired of trying to guess if a slammed door meant my father was out of our lives again or just going for a walk to let off steam. Or if my mother’s smile was a happy one or the forced one she used to reassure me that “we’ll be just fine without your father.”

  It was bad enough that they kept splitting up. But I couldn’t handle being the reason for this dreaded occurrence. So I cleaned myself up, worked hard in my classes and began to meet friends. Things at home mellowed out, but I was afraid to think or feel anything that might cause so much as a ripple. It was my turn to be the keeper of the peace.

  Things seemed to be getting back to “fine,” until one night the front door slammed and my mother’s morning smile was the “we’ll-be-just-fine-without-him” one. I had been the best I could be, and it hadn’t been enough.

  At night, I crawled into bed exhausted with nothing to fill me, nothing to renew me for the next day. The hollow me crumbled in on itself.

  Then I met the little girl next door.

  I was alone on the front porch steps, trying to work up the energy just to go inside. The rhythm of her jump rope clacking on the sidewalk as she counted out her skips had a calming effect on me. Her hair was fanned out behind her and shining in the setting sun.

  “Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty,” she counted, half out of breath. How simple she made it all seem.

  “Sixty-three, sixty-four . . . oh, no!” She looked over at me, distressed. “Look, the handle came off! Can I call a doover? I was skipping my best ever. The miss shouldn’t count. It wasn’t my fault it broke.”

  I knew exactly how she felt. I was doing my best when my parents’ marriage broke.

  She plopped herself on the step next to me. “So, what do you think? Do I get a do-over?”

  She was so serious. I wanted her to know that I understood the weight of her question, but I just couldn’t hold back the smile that had welled up from within me. She looked up, waiting for my answer.

  “Well, I know you didn’t step on the rope and make the handle pull out because I was watching you.” She gave a serious nod. “And it isn’t as if your shoe came off because you didn’t tie it tightly enough.” She studied her shoes and nodded again.

  “So, given all the circumstances, I do believe that you’re entitled to a do-over.”

  “Me, too,” she said, dropping the handle and rope into my lap. “You fix the handle, and I�
��ll let you keep count for me. I stopped at sixty-four, and I bet I can skip over a hundred and that’s my highest good counting number.”

  So I fixed her rope and counted her do-over up to one hundred and twelve.

  “One hundred and twelve!” She gave me a high-five. “That’s higher than Amy at school, and she’s a grade ahead of me!”

  That is when the miracle happened. It was a little thing, heartfelt and easily given. Then she hugged me! The warmth of her hug made my heart smile and, just like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, I understood.

  “Meet me tomorrow,” she said, completely unaware of all she had just given me.

  My parents did get a divorce, and it was very painful. But it wasn’t me who caused it, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. With my new understanding that came from the innocence of a little girl, I too had earned a do-over.

  Carrie Hill

  As told to Cynthia Hamond

  Table for Three

  I’m awakened by the sound of voices arguing in the garage. Rolling over, I squint my eyes at the alarm clock, realizing it’s only five in the morning. I recognize the two voices as my mom and dad’s. I hear my father’s voice rising as my mom’s darts around in hysteria. I’m familiar with this sickening duet, only just not at this early hour.

  I recall a conversation I had with my dad and realize its implications are just now taking effect. Last week over fries at McDonald’s, he shared a secret with me that would forever change my life. He began by asking if I was happy with the way things were at home. I knew he was referring to the tension that existed between him and my mom. It’s not that I was happy with the way things were, but I was frightened by the thought of divorce. It’s sort of like hanging on to an iceberg.