to sweep his gaze across the room. His eyes searched until they pinned themselves on me, standing in the doorway of his daycare classroom. His grin spread across his smudged, stubbled cheeks, and I made a mental note to give him a shave when we got back to our parents’ place.
"Blake!" There weren't any volume controls on my brother and he always spoke too loudly. A few of his classmates turned to face me with irritation and curiosity.
"Hey, buddy," I said, making sure to speak quietly in the hope he'd eventually learn the difference between outdoor and indoor voices. "Time to go home. Go get your stuff."
At six foot two, Jake was as tall as he was clumsy. He scrambled to get up from his chair with the grace of an ice-skating elephant, with his feet kicking the legs of the table to jostle the pencils and crayons. I tried not to chuckle as every pair of eyes turned to glare at him with how dare you exasperation.
"That's Blake, my brother," Jake told Miss Thomas. He kept his eyes on her as he walked backward, in the direction of his cubby. "Blake looks just like me but we're not the same. He can drive and he has a job. We're not the same."
Miss Thomas nodded with delightful intrigue, pretending as though she hadn't already seen me a thousand times. "I bet you can do things that Blake can't, though," she offered, shooting me a small smile.
I stuffed my hands inside my pockets while slowly moving to stand beside his daycare teacher. Jake prattled on about his own personal talents. He might not be able to drive, but the guy could put a puzzle together quicker than anybody I know. And if you put a Lego set in front of him, there was no stopping him from showcasing his architectural skills.
"How was he today?" I asked quietly.
This was all part of the routine. Every day, I picked him up, and every day, I asked Miss Thomas how he was. Every day, she gave me the same response.
"Good!" Miss Thomas answered with too much enthusiasm. I read right through that bullshit and my eyes said so. Her exuberant expression wilted and she shrugged. "You know Jake. He has his moments."
Moments. Jake's life was a patchworked tapestry of moments. Good moments, bad moments. Moments in which he brought me to the brink of insanity and made me question every decision I'd ever made. And moments that made me hate myself more than I could ever hate him—take that, Travetti.
"He gave you a hard time?"
Miss Thomas faltered, eyes wide as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have, before she shook her head. "No, not really. But he did get into a fight with Mr. Scott."
"A fight?"
I turned my glare on Jake. He was shrugging his Red Sox windbreaker on and telling Mr. Scott for the billionth time that he couldn’t do zippers. Mr. Scott—the other teacher in the room—didn’t seem to have any issues with my brother presently, so whatever issues they might’ve had earlier, clearly weren’t lingering.
"Well, it wasn't a fight, per se," Miss Thomas corrected. "Jake had a bit of an accident earlier—"
"What kind of an accident?" I asked, and Miss Thomas grimaced apologetically. I immediately recognized that look and understood just what kind of accident she was referring to. "Ah," I muttered with a nod.
"He wasn't too happy about being cleaned up."
"Yeah," I replied. "He never is."
"We put his dirty clothes in a plastic bag. They're in his backpack."
"Thanks," I tried to say without muttering and without the niggling embarrassment I often felt for Jake. The embarrassment he never felt for himself.
Jake bounded over, zipped up and ready to go. His Mickey Mouse backpack was looped securely over both shoulders and his hands gripped the straps. His chocolate-covered grin was that of a five-year-old boy, an attribute frozen in time, while his body continued to age along with mine. We would be thirty-four this year, in just a month, and I was the only one of us to feel it.
"We going home, Blake?"
I smiled patiently at my brother and nodded. "Yeah, buddy. We are. Just ..." I grabbed a wet wipe from a container near the door and gripped his chin in my palm as I swiped gently at his face. The chocolate faded, leaving behind the adoring expression of my big brother, born two minutes before me. I laid a hand on the top of his head and ruffled his