Free Then I Met My Sister by Christine Hurley Deriso Page B

Garcia. He’s been to lots of Stones concerts, too, and Bob Dylan. I told him he was living in the sixties and he laughed.
Then Dr. Deadhead asked me what kind of music I like, and I said, “I don’t know.”
He said, “How can you not know?”
Touché.
If he’d asked me a year earlier what kind of music I like, I would’ve told him the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. Because that’s what HE likes, and that’s how desperate I always was to please. I have no personality. I’m not a real person. I’m just a blank slate. Write on me however you see fit, and I’ll find a way to be that person. All I ask in return is that you like me.
How pathetic.
So I’ve stopped trying to be a blank slate. I just don’t know what to be instead. I spent so long guessing how other people want me to be, then playing that part, that I don’t know how to BE. I just know how to ACT.
So the simplest question in the world—“what kind of music do you like?”—made me cry.
Because the answer scares the hell out of me: I have no idea.
    “She was seeing a psychologist.”
    Gibs raises an eyebrow as he drinks from a straw.
    I dab a French fry into the catsup I’ve squirted onto my burger wrapper.
    “A shrink,” I clarify. Gibs has this habit of not responding right away, and it always makes me feel like I have more explaining to do.
    “I know what a psychologist is,” he says, setting his soft drink back on the table.
    Little kids with catsup-smeared T-shirts run past us squealing, headed for the adjoining play area and leaving a harried-looking mom in their wake.
    “She talks about the shrink in her journal?” Gibs asks, taking a bite of his burger.
    I nod, my eyes still fixed on the kids as they dive head-first into a vat of brightly colored balls. “She says Mom threatened to take her car away if she didn’t go.”
    She says . Present tense. I’m referring to Shannon in the present tense.
    “Does she say why your mom wanted her to see a shrink?” Gibs asks.
    My eyes finally pull away from the kids and settle back onto Gibs’ face. “She’s acting weird all of a sudden,” I tell him. “Shannon’s been a goody-goody all her life, and now she’s feeling phony and suffocated. She can’t even tell the shrink what kind of music she likes. She says that now that she’s stopped playing the goody-goody role, she doesn’t know who she is.”
    Gibs shrugs. “Everybody plays a role,” he says quietly. “My cousin’s in medical school because when she was in kindergarten, some relative asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said a doctor. You know, like some kids say they want to be a pirate. Anyway, from that point on, her parents bragged to anybody who would listen that she was going to medical school.”
    I crinkle my brow. “So you’re saying she doesn’t really want to be in medical school?”
    “Who knows? But that’s a lot of pressure, you know?”
    “So nobody does what they really want to do? They’re all just trying to please somebody?”
    “Or displease somebody. Like you. By being a screw-up in school.”
    My eyes narrow mischievously. “Has it ever occurred to you that I’m just not very bright?”
    He considers my question for a moment, then says, “Leah Rollins is a straight-A student. She takes notes when a teacher mentions he got his tires rotated over the weekend. Asks if it’s going to be on the test.” Gibs sips his drink. “But she’s learned how to play the game. She might even end up valedictorian. Not that I’m bitter. My point is that grades have a minimal correlation to intelligence.”
    “You’re a straight-A student, too,” I remind him.
    He nods. “Yet I have much more in common with you than I do with Leah Rollins.”
    He glances past me and his eyes widen slightly. “Speak of the devil …”
    I turn around and see Leah and Kendall Popwell coming through the door, their sleek, straight hair flowing. I roll my eyes and slink lower in my