he spoke a language i'd never heard (he called it love)

chapter i

My brother's name is Chip. He's blonde haired and blue eyed and six feet tall, with straight teeth and a grin that takes up half his face. He plays on the hockey team, the basketball team, and the volleyball team, and he's the fastest runner in track. He has a GPA of 3.8 and three of his classes are APs. He's nice and he goes out of his way to help people. When it comes to Chip, he never says "my brother". He would never think to. Who's Mark Heldenbrand, after all? The only Mark that crosses his mind is Mark Turner, the sophomore that's always two steps behind him on the track team.

Chip always remembers people's names, even if they've only met once and it was a year earlier. Chip is the guy that talks to the scared freshmen in the hall and shows them where to go. He's the guy that teachers send to the office when they need something copied. Everyone knows him by name.

Of course, that last bit may be because our parents went and named him "Chip" but even if it were something terribly boring, like John or Jack or Mark, everyone would still smile and nod when you mentioned him.

I wonder what Chip would say if someone asked him about me. "My brother's name is Mark. He's boring and he's shy and he hardly leaves his room aside from school, much less the house. The only reason he scrapes by in school is because he's so lonely he resorts to studying."

And it would all be true. I'm eighteen years old but I'm barely five two and I weigh less than the kid in my homeroom that hasn't eaten a real meal since last year. I can't get through a conversation without stuttering or turning red, and I can't walk thirty feet without tripping at least once, and my braces have been on since eighth grade. I suppose I'm awfully lucky that I'm simply forgotten, because I'd make a prime target for bullies.

What I'm not awfully lucky about, though, is the part of my schedule that placed me and Chip in the same French class. We've both been taking it since ninth grade, meaning I've been taking it a year longer. Judging by those statistics, I should be more adept than him, but to say such would be a grave misjudgment. Chip is practically fluent. I tried to hold a casual conversation in the language last week and the teacher told me to shut my mouth before I'd even finished a sentence. Clearly, a degree in linguistics is not in my future.

What's even worse about French class, beyond the embarrassment that is myself, is the fact that Mr. Delacroix seats us alphabetically, meaning I get to experience the joy of sitting next to my brother. On my left side is Liesel something-or-another, who doodles all over her notebook in a blue pen that stains the desk and generates this weird scritching sound heard nowhere else in the known world. On my right side, Chip spends the class texting under his desk and never getting caught because Mr. Delacroix loves him and thus couldn't care less. Meanwhile, I'm suspended in the middle of the best and worst students in class, existing in the same disappointing manner I always have, scribbling down notes I don't understand and that will end up shoved haphazardly in my backpack at the end of class, never to be seen again.

"How was your day, Mark?" My mom asks me at dinner. I shrug.

"Uh, fine."

"I had a French test," Chip adds, dumping half a bowl of parmesan onto his spaghetti. He frowns at it, apparently not satisfied, and then looks back up at our mom. "I got an A."

"He's cheating is why," I muttered. Chip dumped more parmesan on his pasta, so that it was more cheese than anything else. I wrinkled my nose and put my fork down, the sight making me lose my appetite.

"What was that, honey?" My mom asks in the exasperated tone that lets me know she heard and wishes she hadn't.

"Nothing."

She fixes me with a glare. "Mark."

"Mom," I respond. Chip pauses in his consumption of the parmesan monstrosity he tends to create out of pasta. He gives me an irritated look.