BACKSTAGE PASS

Elissa & The Potential Prince

I'm a neat person. I don't mean like, "Oh, wow! I love Elissa Holt! She's so neat!" (Although if I'm being honest, I'm pretty freaking neat in that context as well.) But in this instance, I'm talking about being tidy.

I like things a certain way. Everything has its place, and if it's not in that place, I get twitchy. And bitchy.

My brother calls me anal. That's fine, 'cause I call him an ass.

Ethan doesn't share my love for order and cleanliness. He's a boy, and historically his room looks like a dumping ground for video games, books, and a crapload of clothes in varying shades of black. He's not the messiest boy I've ever met, but he's certainly the messiest I've lived with.

Since we moved out and got our own apartment in Westchester so we can attend The Grove Institute of Creative Arts, I've realized just how much mom used to pick up after him. He dumps dirty plates in the sink instead of stacking them in the dishwasher, which is seriously only twelve inches to the left. He never wipes down the kitchen benches, even after spilling milk from his cereal every damn day. And I don't think he even knows where I keep the vacuum cleaner. He still has a pile of unopened boxes stacked in his room, for goodness sake.

His usual routine consists of reading, brooding, frowning, jogging, and annoying me. Not necessarily in that order.

Being neat just isn't on his radar.

The reason I say this is because I get the shock of my life when I arrive home after our first day of classes to find he's not only unpacked all of the remaining boxes, but he's also cleaned our entire apartment. And I don't mean he's just picked up after himself. He's cleaned. Like, everything. I think even the front door has been polished.

I close the door and find him in the living room, vacuuming the couch.

"Ethan?"

He looks up.

Whoa.

He seems pissed.

He goes back to vacuuming which is appropriate, because judging from his mood something in his life clearly sucks. Big time.

It's so bizarre to see him like this. Not the bad mood of course, because that's his default setting. But my six-foot-two brother, who looks like a sullen international supermodel, wrangling our bright red trundle-vac is a truly weird sight to behold.

"You okay?" I ask as I walk over to him.

"Fine."

Fine is one of those words people use to let others know they're absolutely not fine. Whenever dad was "working late," and I asked Mom if she was okay, she'd say that word in the same way Ethan just did. The inflection says, "I don't want to talk about it, so take the hint and let it go."

I never took the hint with Mom, and I don't now with Ethan.

"Okay, Cleany McFrownypants. What's up?"

He turns off the vacuum and grabs a cloth off the coffee table. "Nothing."

He heads into the kitchen and proceeds to polish the benches like they might produce a genie if he rubs hard enough.

I lean against the doorjamb as I watch with mild amusement. "Well, obviously something's wrong. I've never seen you clean before. I didn't think you knew how."

"Of course I know how. I got 1600 on my SATs for fuck's sake. I'm not an idiot."

"Yeah, but being book smart and being life smart are two different things, and the jury's still out on which you are. So why don't you save us both a lot of time and spill about whatever's brought on this bout of domestic fervor."