The next day, Kai was waiting for me by the staircase. On our way down, we passed my brother going up.  

“Hey,” Kai said, stopping. “Thanks for helping me get my door open.”

“No problem,” my brother said. He stared at the wall. I glowered at the floor. “Well, you better get to school. See you.”

“What’s the matter?” Kai asked me when my brother had gone. “You guys get in a fight?”

“No. When did he help you open your door?” I pretended to study the carpeted floor very carefully as we walked along.

“I came back this morning, and he was out collecting the mail. What did you guys fight about?”

I didn’t say anything until we were outside. Because then, surrounded by the sounds of the street and the slap-slap of feet as children ran by, it was harder to hear my voice.  

“Nothing. When did you come back?” I sounded small, even to myself. In a way, this made my predicament seem laughably insignificant. But it was just as hard to convince myself of that fact as it was to persuade Kai. And even Kai wasn’t buying it.

Kai was the one person who understood the meaning behind breaking promises and keeping secrets and listening to silence just as well as I did. We did not know the importance of those things as well as my brother did, but we knew them well enough.

So it did not make sense to me when he stopped walking and said, “If it was nothing, then why are you crying?”

He shouldn’t have said that. He should have made a joke, laughed a little. Agreed with me when I said it didn’t bother me.

 I put my hands to my face for the longest time before I realized that they came away wet. I did not feel like I was crying. I felt so tired that I didn’t know what I was going to do. About my brother. About anything. I felt so numb that I didn’t even protest when Kai put his jacket around my shoulders without looking at me. I felt his rough palms through the softness of the fabric more acutely than I could feel the tears running down my cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pressing my lips together. “I don’t know what to say.”

He didn’t know what to say either.

 So he just grabbed my hand and we ran.

We ran until we were so out of breath that we couldn’t think anymore.

Until we both started laughing because nothing can fill up the cracks the way laughter can.

Until I started yelling louder than the sound of the street and the slap-slap of the children around us.

Until he heard me.

Until I heard myself.