When I was eight, Mom went through her Siouxsie Sioux phase with the heavily done black eyeliner under and around the eyes together with the purple eye shadow and bright red lipstick. In a tight black leather mini skirt, her dyed black hair sticking up everywhere in punk rock fashion, I remembered her singing "Cities in Dust" on the top of her lungs, making brownies with me in the kitchen. We'd make brownies whenever I had a good day at school, which didn't happen too often.

Even though she was in her mid-forties, she dressed as if she were still in her twenties, wearing knee-high black boots and fishnet stockings that were torn along the back of her thigh.

Tim hated the way she sung, but I always thought she was the greatest singer ever. This one time Tim brought a girl home and he knew better than to do that. Mom never liked people she didn't know in the house, especially Tim's girlfriends.

"How many times have I told you she can't be here?" Mom scolded Tim and the girl.

"Mom, this is Sabrina," he said. "My girlfriend, remember? We've been going out for months." Mom's memory was never great.

"You're a liar and she's a slut," she said. Tears instantly came to the pretty girl's eyes. "Get her out of here."

"Mom!" Tim exclaimed as the girl ran out of the room and the house.

"Now where were we, sweetie pie?" Mom said to me, returning to the brownies. I was just about to turn on the mixer, but was afraid to, afraid to mess up and deal with her flipping out.

Tim returned shortly after. "Thanks a lot, Mom. You're psycho, you know that? Dad's right. You belong locked up."

"Wanna help make brownies, sweetheart?" she asked Tim as if she hadn't heard what he just said.

"I'm 18. No, I don't want to make brownies," he said. "I want you to be normal. I want a normal mother for once."

Normal. That's all Tim ever wanted, something neither of us ever really knew.

A few days after that incident, Mom landed in the hospital for about the third time that year. I didn't like this memory as much as I liked the song and remembering my mom in the Siouxsie Sioux outfit and make-up. Art was away on an assignment so it was up to Tim to make sure both me and Mom were taken care of.

Mom definitely had her good moments, though. She wasn't always so-called "psycho" and mean. I would never forget the time she stayed with me in the hospital when I was six and sick with pneumonia. She slept in that uncomfortable pull-out bed every night for three nights, never leaving my side. And then there was the time the school tried to prevent Tim from going on the eighth grade trip to Washington DC because he had a broken ankle. Mom ended up going with him, dressed like a normal woman, a normal mother for a change. Our mother wasn't all bad and psycho

For the most part, though, Tim never had a normal life. He was the one who took care of both of us. I didn't blame him for harboring some form of resentment for the both of us.

In mid-song, I turned off Cities in Dust and ventured out of my room. At ten in the morning, I knew Tim was at work and I assumed Jamie was somewhere in the house. After I made myself a cup of coffee, I headed to the back porch where I found Jamie sitting on one of the chairs, a sketchbook or something in his lap. I almost forgot he was an art teacher so I concluded he was probably an artist, too. I sat down across from him.

"An apology would be nice," he said.

An apology for what?

"You have no idea, do you?" I shrugged. "For pushing me in that gross water. I didn't deserve it." To me he deserved it. "And it was freezing."

"Don't touch me and don't touch my stuff," I said.

"I'll try to remember that," he said. We sat in silence for a few minutes, staring into the vast empty landscape of the Cameron property. The only thing in the yard was the above ground pool. Every now and again, I felt his eyes on me.

"Are you gay?" I asked, a question that just popped in my head.

"Excuse me?" he said.

"Tim says you can't make up your mind," I said. "Do you prefer men or women?"

"Well, I don't think that's any of your business, Tim's baby brother," he said. Very quickly, Jamie discovered how to get under my skin. "You shouldn't have pushed me in the pool." Leaving my coffee on the table, I decided to go for a walk, but something stopped me from going alone.

"Come with me if you want," I said, walking down the porch steps. I wasn't sure why I asked him to come with me since I was so used to walking alone and he just called me "Tim's baby brother" in an attempt to annoy me. "You coming?" A few seconds later Jamie got up and followed me. I took him a different way this time.

"Do you live in your underwear?" he asked. I happened to be in my boxers again. There was no sense in changing since I didn't go anywhere. "I guess you're not going to answer that."

Jamie followed me as I led him through a trail of raspberry bushes. The raspberries had just ripened and I wished I had brought a container to put them in. Standing in the middle of the bushes, I picked a handful or raspberries. "Don't eat that," Jamie said as I popped a couple of berries in my mouth.

"What? Why?" I asked with my mouth full. "I've been eating these forever. Here, have one."

"They're not poisonous?" he said, taking a couple of raspberries from me.

"No, they're not poisonous," I said. Jamie ate the raspberries after some hesitation.

"They're good," he said and took a few more out of my palm. My stomach fluttered as his fingers clipped my palm.

With Jamie at my heels and another handful of raspberries, I led him into a clearing, a meadow of sorts, mainly full of dandelions and buttercups. I had spent many summer afternoons out here. I lay down in the middle, wondering if Jamie would do the same. He did, lying beside me. "It's getting hot, huh?" he said. It was turning out to me a hot humid summer day in Massachusetts. The mosquitoes would surely be out soon. As Jamie lay beside me, his fingers brushed against mine. I didn't like to be touched, especially from him. He made the insides of my stomach squirm. Staring up and into the clear blue sky, I brought my hands behind the back of my head.

"I prefer men," he said after a minute or two of silence even though I hadn't asked him anything. "But it's not like I don't like women. I do. It's just...I don't know...it's complicated, I guess. It's easier to be straight. My dad has enough on his plate, you know. My mother was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago. They don't know if it's Alzheimer's or what, but it's just gotten worse. She's only 65, but they think her memory problems started in her fifties. She recognizes my dad and me and my sister, but she's not the mother I once knew. My dad can barely cope. She's like a toddler who needs to be watched all the time. I mean, you can't let her out of your sight for a second. Do you think it's wrong for me to leave and go to London for a year?" He looked at me as if he was truly seeking my opinion or advice. "You think it's wrong for me to leave, don't you?" I wasn't sure what I thought. "I've waited for this opportunity for years. My dad tells me to go. I should go, right? My mom has my aunts and my sister and...I don't know. I just don't know." I wasn't so oblivious to not recognize how emotional Jamie became talking about his mother. Tim never mentioned anything about Jamie's mother, so I wondered if he even knew. Maybe she was the reason he chose to live with Tim instead of his parents for the summer.

"My mother hasn't spoken since I was ten," I said. "I miss her. Do you miss yours?"

"Yes, I do," he said. "Very much." Our heads turned toward each other so our eyes met. Making eye contact with others was always difficult for me, but my eyes stayed on Jamie's for a few seconds.

"Would your mother want you to go?" I said with my eyes still on Jamie's.

"Yes, I think she would," he said.

"Then I think you should go. It's just a year, right?" Jamie smiled and the flutters in my stomach returned.

"I like it when you talk," he said. "I wish you would talk more often."  My eyes shifted back to the sky.

A few more minutes of silence passed. Jamie had a hard time dealing with silence, even if it were comfortable silence, feeling the need to talk all the time.

"What do you want to do today?" he asked as if we had suddenly become best friends. Digging my toes into the grass, I didn't know what to say. "Okay. You want to do nothing." We were silent again for a few more minutes, the sound of crickets and summer nature the only things heard in the immediate area. "Do you go to school?" School. Yeah, I guess, I thought to myself. Online. But I didn't think I'd ever be able to do anything. "You're not in high school, right?" He leaned over me when I didn't respond. "Are you in high school?" he asked irritably. "Yes or no."

"No," I said, equally irritably.

"So you go to college."

"Yes," I said.

"Where?"

"Southern New Hampshire," I said. "Online."

"So you spend all your time in that house alone?"

"I'm not in the house right now."

"You know what I mean. I don't get it." What's not to get? "What are you? 18, 19? You should be out with friends, living it up while you can." Jamie really didn't know anything. Done with all this talking, I got up and ran into the woods.

Jamie was relentless, running after me. "Why do you always run away? I'm just talking to you. You can't live in isolation forever." Who said I couldn't?