Free All This Life by Joshua Mohr

of traders used futures to hedge their bets, reducing the overall risk of their clients’ portfolios. But what made Noah so good at it was that he never approached futures in this condescending way. They were the closest thing to an actual competition in the market. Futures contracts either paid out or busted. Win or lose. Period. Noah flourished on the risk.
    He cracked open a protein shake and peeked at the clock, 3:48. He could hear his sister, Tracey, ragging him about his early approach to his job: “You’re the oldest thirty-five-year-old in the world,” she’d say. “You’re still pretty young! Go out and have fun!”
    â€œI’m thirty-four, Trace.”
    â€œYou’re focusing on the wrong thing,” she’d say, ten years his junior. “Why not enjoy yourself?”
    â€œDid it ever occur to you that I might actually like working?”
    â€œIf you could see what I see,” she said, shaking her head. Here was his sister with that knowing smile of hers, exposing crooked bottom teeth. She had eyes the color of cucumber peel and she loved to rag her brother. He loved it, too. This was a shtick they’d been perfecting for years, his over-concern, her under-concern. They balanced each other out.
    Noah was always the greedy go-getter, a hardwired Type A pit bull. Tracey was flighty, wonderfully flighty—it was one of the things her older brother loved about her so much, all the whimsy she saw in the world, all the life, all the hope. How she could actually enjoy where she was without ruining it with superimpositions about the future.
    Noah’s therapist once told him that the difference between depression and anxiety was which way you were looking: to your pastor to your future. People who were depressed fixated on the past, while their anxious counterpoints couldn’t stop worrying about what was coming next week, next month, next year. A future that might not ever happen.
    Noah was staunchly restless, fearful, the future this supernova waiting to blow. He’d always lived that way. And he always won. Captain of the lacrosse team, valedictorian, at the top of his MBA class. Life wasn’t a game, per se, but if there were gods out there keeping score, Noah was winning.
    Tracey was neither depressed nor anxious. She was there, floating from moment to moment, a leaf on a river.
    â€œYou’re my Forrest Gump,” Noah joked.
    â€œYou laugh, but Forrest had a ton of Buddhist wisdom.”
    â€œI think he was retarded, Trace.”
    When he left her that morning, she was asleep on their couch. Noah halved a pink grapefruit and spread hummus on a piece of toast, leaving them on the coffee table in front of her with a note that said, Make sure my sister eats this, okay?
    He kissed her on the forehead and remembers so clearly thinking that she looked happy. She was flat on her back, drooling a little. The blanket was spilling onto the floor and so he fixed it, covering her up.
    The expression on her face was pure—that was the word he always thought of when he saw her sleep. Pure . He leaned down and kissed her forehead, smelled the lilac from her shampoo.
    The sun wasn’t even thinking about coming up yet, and in the darkness of the room he paused to watch her breathe. This was a tradition that dated back to her being born; Noah was astounded by her tiny body in her crib. It was hard for him to tell if she was breathing back then or not, and he’d get scared, tell his mom about it. The two of them would sneak back into Tracey’s room together, and their mother would put Noah’s hand lightly on the baby’s back, so he could feel her move with every swell from her lungs.
    Noah could see her clearly breathing on the couch. Her nose whistled with every breath.
    They’d moved to San Francisco together thirteen months ago. He was taking a new job, a huge promotion, and was excited to relocate to such a beautiful city, a nice