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thought that only good could come out of their children. Only perfection.
    He was gifted. Of course he was. He could throw a tight spiral on a football by the time he was five, and by the time he was six could explain the physics behind it. Science was his thing, and, they figured, math was, too. Before he could even walk, he could count to ten and seemed to be stacking blocks in a particular order. Before he went to school, he would melt down if a puzzle piece went missing under theTV or if Mom picked up his toys from their permanent perch on the piano bench.
    They figured he was just precise. And when he began counting—sometimes to astronomically high numbers—they figured he was just quirky. So many geniuses are.
    But at some point it became obvious that Grayson’s eccentricity was going to be a problem. And a genius with a problem was a “waste.” A “shame.”
    Suffice it to say, I was never a genius. Not even close. And of course they noticed. I wasn’t even as smart as Zoe, something I had heard Mom say to Zoe’s mom on more than one occasion—not bitterly, but simply as a statement of fact.
    But my parents really didn’t seem to mind that I was just normal. Grayson needed more attention. Because he was Grayson. And I was self-sufficient. I was self-reliant. I had a good head on my shoulders, and I didn’t cause trouble. Those things were important. When there’s someone needy in the house, everyone else has to be need-less. It’s nothing personal. Even if it sometimes feels that way.
    Mom and Dad were good parents. They loved each other. They loved us both. They wanted good things for us. And they were heartbroken that Grayson wasn’t perfect after all.
    After a while, the fact that I was just a regular kid was a really good thing. Mom and Dad could rely on my steadiness. If I worked hard, I could do well in life, maybe even great. They had replaced their high hopes for Grayson witheven higher hopes for me. I brought in good grades. I was involved in things. I smiled and laughed and got dirty and played, lounging on my belly on the carpeted living room floor with my toys strewn everywhere around me. Orderless. Childlike.
    I don’t know exactly how being normal turned into a need to be perfect, but at some point it did. For every time my brother dashed my parents’ hopes, I ratcheted my performance up a notch. Maybe I wanted to distance myself from him. Maybe it was the only way for me to get some attention, too.
    Maybe I was trying to forge an identity other than “poor Grayson’s little sister.”
    Whatever the reason, that’s exactly what happened: I shifted from normal Kendra to Kendra the star. While Grayson’s grades and attendance fell, mine got better. While Grayson threatened suicide and went into screaming tantrums when his life didn’t feel right to him, I blossomed. And when Grayson quit school midway through his junior year and spent two holidays in various residential facilities, counting his brain into oblivion, I vaulted to the top of my class.
    I wanted Mom and Dad to have something to be proud of. And I wanted to prove that I could do it.
    So when, at the beginning of my senior year, I pulled Mr. Floodsay, otherwise known as the worst calc teacher in the whole school, I got scared. And when, halfway through the first semester, my grade had dipped into the C range,and then to a low D, I saw it all begin to slip away from me. Everything I’d worked so hard for. All the pride I’d stocked up in Mom and Dad. All the hard work, all the sports, all the projects, all the nights trying to study while Mom stood sobbing in the hallway to Grayson that if he didn’t calm down, she’d have to call the police. All of it, gone.
    I tried going to tutoring. It didn’t work. I tried staying after with Mr. Floodsay. It didn’t work.
    I was embarrassed. And frustrated. And hopeless. And I was petrified over what failing calc would do to my college plans.
    I needed that math credit to get into