Free The Sixteenth of June by Maya Lang Page A

Ritalin so that they could stay up late studying, twitching with ambition. He wasn’t like the usual misfits—the theater nerds and tech geeks. Stephen was a scholar, the teachers agreed. Michael and June fretted over their delicate bird—asthmatic, astute—while Leo played with his LEGOs and joined lacrosse.
    Leo didn’t mind. He didn’t care, even back then, that the attention was on his brother. He admired him, the way Stephen got those awards: best essay, best science project. Then puberty hit, and frail Stephen began to grow. Girls turned their heads. Guys looked at him grudgingly. Leo was relieved for his brother, suddenly tall and handsome, no longer a target in the halls.
    Stephen never seemed to notice him back. Not when Leo made the basketball team (“Aren’t you too short for that?” Stephen had asked). Not when he got elected class representative. And certainly not after they moved to Philly, with Stephen halfway out the door to college.
    If Leo was the puppy of the family, Stephen was the cat, regal and haughty.
    Then the three of them had that summer in Philly, and everything changed.
    The funny part was that Leo had by then given up on the idea of being friends with his brother. His freshman year, he’d pledged Pi Kappa Alpha. “You’re such a Pike, dude,” they told him. Brotherhood, he realized, could be found in other ways.
    These guys appreciated him. They noticed him. They loved him. His unwavering normalcy was no longer a weakness, and Leo felt more sure-footed. He might never be a bigwig like his dad, and he wasn’t book smart like his brother. He didn’t have his mom’s looks or care about her frilly world of privilege. But, for the first time, he felt like those things didn’t matter.
    Going into that summer, Leo was focused on Nora. He was thrilled that she was staying at Delancey, that they’d get to spend more time together. He accepted her close friendship with Stephen. There was no point in objecting to it or acting jealous. That would be, as the Pikes liked to say, a dick move.
    So Leo played it cool, tuning them out when they went on about Yale, mentioning shared profs and friends, dorms and events whose names Leo didn’t recognize. He smiled and sipped his beer, pretending not to mind.
    What he didn’t expect was for the three of them to find a dynamic all their own. Philly seemed to open up for them that summer. They ventured to neighborhoods he hadn’t known about in high school: the narrow strip of bars on Sansom, the little pockets of Old City. They would meet for happy hour at the Nodding Head or a picnic at Rittenhouse Square, crowding together on a blanket. Leo realized that he and his brother were finally doing that elusive, brotherly thing of hanging out without its being a big deal. Trivia night at the corner bar, karaoke at the place on Chestnut, Nora bringing down the house with a roar. Even a baseball game once, a season opener, Phillies vs. Braves, the three of them sharing a bag of caramel corn.
    Leo felt some part of him stir that summer, some missing piece click into place. That summer felt golden and whole. He worked for a software company during the day and came home to Nora at night. They hung out with friends and went to bars. The difference was that Stephen was with them, too. Leo saw a glimmer on the horizon. This was how life could be.
    When their exclusionary bubble reared its head, Stephen and Nora laughing at some inside joke, Leo reminded himself that they’d been friends before he entered the scene. They talked like he wasn’t there because it was their habit. He shrugged it off and issued a smile.
    Just as he did today.
    Stephen and Nora liked to play Mr. & Ms. Etiquette, policing his uncouth ways, but they never thought about how they could be inconsiderate, at times rude. Not to a bunch of strangers they would never see again, but to the person closest to them.
    Memo . He