I’m sitting in what my family calls “the basement,” but in reality, it’s just a large room on the second floor of the house we just moved into following their wedding. I’m only nine years old, but my Internet access is unlimited, so a pink Dell laptop sits in my lap as I peruse YouTube to find the next Shane Dawson video that piques my interest. You probably shouldn’t be watching him, my sister advises next to me. I shrug as I continue my scroll. Our kitchen playset from IKEA stares at us across the room.
I met her and her mom in a humid airport a few years ago. I used my dad’s body as a shield as we approached them, not yet ready to step out of my shyness. She held out a Beanie Baby as a peace offering, and after about an hour in the car together, we started talking. Our parents joke that we never really stopped after that.
Our first picture together is in Disney World, standing in front of the castle on Main Street. It’s pouring rain, and neither of us are really smiling. In twelve years, we’ll make mixed drinks in Mickey Mouse cups while we’re home alone and turn a YouTube video titled Disney Jeopardy into a drinking game.
Instead of Shane Dawson, I pick out a One Direction music video, to which she shifts her attention to watch with me. We scream and jump and giggle and go on to pick a new picture of Niall Horan to make my laptop background. I post about it on a social media account I’m too young to have. She’s the only person to like it. She’ll be the first person I text when Liam Payne passes away eleven years later. It’ll be the first text I’ve sent to her in a few weeks.
As we grow older, we’ll keep going through fandom phases like this, together, under the same roof. We’ll put the same music videos we’re used to watching on the TV and scream over them as a break from whatever work we were previously doing. When I move away, she’ll send me new songs to listen to. Usually I don’t right away, but they always have a way of getting into my playlists one way or another.
We’re called to dinner downstairs by our parents. The dining room table we sit at will follow us to the next two houses we move into, still standing in the house she’ll live in alone when we’re in our twenties. It’s served for birthdays, Superbowl parties, New Years Day card games, late night art projects, and Christmas Eve dinners, and it still has yet to let us down. There’s a chair in the corner that our dog, Gibby, occupies, until he goes blind and can’t quite tell where he is when he’s put up there.
Our after-dinner ritual begins to play out. After chatting with our parents, I gather up the dishes and table decorations while she diligently scrubs the plates before putting them into the dishwasher. When I decide I’m done cleaning, I slip away to our shared bathroom to take a shower, my bit of solace. When we grow older, our parents will move out and the ritual will dissipate. I’ll stand in front of the kitchen window and scrub through piles of dishes in silence. When I have an apartment in my college town, I’ll assume the same position but with a YouTube video about an interest we don’t share anymore. She’ll let the dishes back home stack up for a while, but she’s the only one who knows that.
We change into our pajamas and cuddle up in our shared bedroom– two twin beds line the wall, mine with a green striped comforter, her’s blue. These are the colors our parents decided to use to distinguish us in the way parents distinguish twins, despite our three-year age gap and lack of shared blood. But we might as well be; when I talk about her to others, I drop the “step” in stepsister. I’ll still do this when I’m older, ignoring the miles between us.
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