Free There Will Be Bears by Ryan Gebhart

I open it again and
slam
it.
    That’s so not true. I’d planned this for weeks — I was going to talk to Karen after I went hunting, because I wanted to have something interesting to say to her. Instead, I blathered on about beards.
    I walk. It ain’t bad — maybe two miles, all on lit roads with little traffic. We live in a pretty nice town and I don’t know of any creepers. No sketchy white vans. It just sucks how quickly the temperature drops when the sun goes down.
    My phone moos. A call from Bright. I hit IGNORE .
    That’s it. I’m asking Karen out, and I don’t care if she turns me down or laughs in my face. I have to do this.
    When I get home forty-five minutes later, I go into the living room and the TV’s on — a Country Music Channel presentation on Taylor Swift. Ashley’s asleep on the couch with her hands tucked beneath her head. She looks cute, like a little kid all tuckered out after some intense frolicking.
    It still smells like popcorn in here, but like always, Mom and Dad went to bed way before the movie ended.
    I sit in Gramps’s reclining chair and turn the volume up. They’re talking about the making of the video for “You Belong with Me.” I haven’t seen this one yet.
    Ashley looks up, her hair messy. “Hey.”
    “Yo.”
    “Dad said you were spending the night at Brighton’s.”
    “Change of plans.”
    She looks at the TV and then back at me, confused. “You can change the channel if you want.”
    “Are you kidding? I love Taylor Swift.”
    “Really?”
    Ashley and I don’t talk often. Come to think of it, we don’t talk to each other at all anymore.
    “Yeah,” I say. “She’s a musical genius.”
    “Now you’re messing with me.”
    Bright might be embarrassed by the things he likes, but I refuse to be ashamed of loving Taylor Swift. She writes all her own music, her first album came out when she was only sixteen, her songs are super catchy . . . and she’s hot.
    My phone beeps. A message from Bright, or, as he’s saved in my phone,
B-Right-On
. That was my nickname for him. I thought of it in the first grade. Now everyone uses it, so I don’t anymore.
    I put my phone back in my pocket. “I know everything about her,” I say. “Did you know she did magazine ads telling girls to drink low-fat milk?”
    “Of course I know that. Wow, but I can’t believe
you
know that.”
    “Yeah, well, I tend to surprise people.”
    She sits up a little. “Did you know she won a national poetry contest when she was a kid?”
    I roll my eyes. “It was called ‘Monster in My Closet,’ and she won the contest when she was in the fourth grade. She also wrote a three-hundred-and-fifty-page novel.”
    “Yeah, right. How come I never heard about it?”
    “Isn’t it obvious? You’re not the Taylor Swift fan that I am.”
    Her confusion turns into joy. “How come you never told me? Ooh, we could go to the concert in Denver!”
    “Tickets already sold out.” I don’t tell her I have a pair. I was originally supposed to go with Bright — he even asked me to get him a ticket. But I can’t go with Ashley. I mean, she’s my sister.
    She goes, “Well, if I can find tickets, do you want to go?”
    “Only if you can keep up with me, ’cause I was planning on going all out. I’m talking face paint, matching shirts, glow sticks . . .”
    “Okay, now you’re starting to freak me out.”
    I take the remote and crank the volume. I jump on the couch one cushion away from her and jam out to the bridge of “You Belong With Me” on my air microphone with a death-metal voice.
    “Tyson!” she cries out in a whisper. “Mom and Dad are upstairs!”
    I do one more hop and collapse, my legs stretched across her lap. I wiggle my feet in front of Ashley’s face, and she pushes them away.
    “You’re gross.” But she’s laughing so much. This feels like the time to ask her something that’s been bugging me since last Friday.
    I say, “How come you didn’t care when I told you they put