Free The Big Sister - Part One by Lexie Ray

Jennet said, yawning widely as she stretched her long arms out. Her long blue hair was standing up on end, hopelessly tangled, and I had to smile. The contrast of the bright, sky blue color contrasted wildly with her milk and coffee skin. She looked like a crazy cloud of slumber. “What’s funny?”
     
    “Your hair’s pretty rad,” I joked, reaching over to try to pat down an errant lock.
     
    “Not as rad as yours, Ms. Bed Head,” Jennet said, playfully swatting my hand away while yawning again. It made me yawn, myself. “What’ve you been doing all night? Rolling around in the sack somewhere?”
     
    It would’ve usually been a comment that earned a snort or a laugh out of me. I almost always came home from dancing in various states of dishevelment. It was like working out at the gym all evening — for hours and hours. No hairstyle, no matter how carefully applied and how many pins I used, would withstand that.
     
    But tonight all I did was gulp. I shared everything with Jennet. I wouldn’t dream of keeping secrets from her. But what I did with Marcus … I just needed some time to process it. It didn’t have to be a secret for long. I wanted to worry about how I was going to react to the whole thing before I had to wonder how Jennet was going to feel.
     
    “Are you okay?” she asked, placing her hand over mine, her elfish face pinched with concern.
     
    “Fine,” I said, only half lying. “It’s just been a really long night, I guess. How was Luke? Any trouble?”
     
    I expected some terrible revelation or something, with what I’d found in the sketchbook, but Jennet only smiled and shook her head.
     
    “No problems whatsoever,” she said. “That kid’s as good as gold. He could practically watch himself. I don’t know what you pay me for.”
     
    I took on a bigger share of the rent and the bills in exchange for Jennet helping me out with Luke whenever she could. In reality, I paid her for my peace of mind. Sure, I could probably get away with leaving my brother alone when I worked. But I didn’t trust that he’d be completely all right. The demons he carried could be very heavy.
     
    “He loves you, you know,” I said, thinking back fondly on the scene I’d stumbled onto when I got home to the apartment — Luke curled up with Jennet. He didn’t trust easily, but my roommate had patiently — and relentlessly — wormed her way into his heart. She did that to loads of people. I was a testament to that.
     
    Luke and I had run — literally — into Jennet when we’d first moved to Miami. We’d both been on the verge of tears at the time, I remembered, frustrated with the heat and the humidity and the sense of being constantly lost, physically, and adrift, spiritually. We were hardly better than drifters those early days, staying in a cheap, nasty motel while I searched fruitlessly for a waitressing position that would enable me to keep an eye on my brother.
     
    There were so many obstacles to overcome back then. I didn’t have the advantage of my foster child rent rate working in my favor, nor the kindness and charity of my own foster parents, slipping meals — and dollar bills — into my life to bolster whatever I was pulling in at the restaurant. And now I had two mouths to feed completely by myself. Nothing in this city was good enough. All of the daytime waitressing jobs were eaten up by other struggling girls. I couldn’t leave Luke alone at night. Not with what had happened to him in those dark hours.
     
    So we stumbled down the sidewalk, Luke pouting because some perverts in the room next to ours in the motel had been at it all night — and I mean all night — meaning that I had to blare the television to drown them out and try to protect what was left of my brother’s innocence. Neither of us had gotten enough sleep, compounded by the fact that I was burning through the reserves of my money thanks to the hefty price of having a roof over our heads.
     
    “The Corn