"One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else."
- K.L Toth.

      I do not like sports. I do not find enjoyment in being pummeled into the ground by big sweaty boys in leggings only to get a mouth full of dirt. I do not like the idea of chasing around a ball while others screamed in agony from the sidelines. I'm the one running from my side stitches, not you. Pipe down. Running laps for something other than passing a class seems useless to me. With that said, my room is painted with dirty jerseys, tens, and twenties of trophies, and pictures of my teammates and I in dusty photo frames. My basketball laid beside my bed looking obnoxiously orange and obnoxiously unwanted.

      At 12 dad died. Then it was only Mom, Andrea, and me, Jason. Andrea is my younger sister. She was only 9 when Dad was murdered. Well, it wasn't exactly a murder. Not an intentional one anyway. A drug deal had gone wrong in front of our local grocery store, and dad just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't mean to sound so nonchalant about the whole death thing, but sometimes when you give a situation less remembrance, it hurts a little less. Sometimes. I think that's what mom does, remembers too much. She was completely heartsick when it happened. For weeks, she didn't speak, barely ate, I don't think I remember her blinking either. I watched my mother completely shut off at 12.

      At 13 mom tried to become mom again, but this time she was playing Mom and Dad. Her emotions came back, but they seemed to be wired wrong. She didn't have the same compassion or comfort in her and her whole being just seemed.. rushed. Like she had the same fate as my father but she didn't know when it was going to happen.

      At 15 mom made me join sports. "You're nearly six foot!" was her reasoning for basketball. Football was something like "Wide shoulders! You'll make a great defensive lineman." Soccer took her a few extra days of pleading than the rest. I am honestly a shit runner, and extremely insecure in those shorts. She made me pursue every other 'manly' sporting team my school had using the same closing line she used for the others, "It would make your father proud." No one expected me to say no to my grieving mother and my dead father, did they?

      Now 17 I am living out this fantasy for my mother and every coach, cheerleader, aspiring athlete, admiring nerd, and fellow teammate at WestFurr High school. Andrea is now 14 and prefers I address her as Andy. We became much closer than you would expect siblings with a 4 year age difference to be, I say four years because next month is my 18th birthday. I also do not like birthdays.

      "JASON!" I knew that yell. That was Andrea's yell. The "I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown, but I'm not leaving my bed, so walk up to the attic to come console me." yell. So reluctantly I dragged myself from my book and bed, past my parent's old room that I was not allowed in, and up the attic stairs to Andrea's disgustingly pink room. Mom made her paint over the dark brown it had previously been, but there were significantly big patches of missing paint where Andy began to pick, probably stopping out of guilt. We both held a lot of guilt.

      Andrea was lying flat on her back in the middle of her bed, arms spread open like an eagle. I took that as an invitation to sit on her beanbag chair instead. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the answer to the question I was about to ask. "What?" "It's starting." She whispered dramatically. Her body stayed still but her eyes moved to meet mine slowly. "Mom. She's making me join ch-" She gulped. "Cheer-"I decided to help. "Cheerleee--"I dragged out the word, waiting for her to cling onto a syllable. "CHEERLEADING!" She cried out. "Oh, Jay! It's awful. Awful! Look at what they make me wear," I watched her slug her body halfway off the bed, only enough to gather the outfit off of the floor where she decided it belonged while mom wasn't in the room.

      The outfit was truly terrible. It was a gawking pink and red, scattered with the word "WESTFURR" along the chest in ugly yellow.

"It's not that bad.." I tried.

"It barely covers my ass!" She retorted.

"Don't curse." I tried.

"I wanna die." She closed.

      I took a deep breath, beginning to pick at the cotton candy pink paint on the walls, hoping my advice would be on one of the paint chips. "Don't do that, makes mom sad." She sniffled, rubbing her teary eyes, I nodded ashamedly. Before I could talk, Andy did. She was better at making words than me sometimes. "I don't like this. This skirt. This pink. Those cheerleading girls. And they don't like me Jason." Andy didn't dislike skirts and pink the way I disliked sports. She hated pink, skirts, and those cheerleading girls. She liked baseball and the color navy blue. She loved my jerseys and she really liked, well, girls. In the same way I was living out mom's fantasy, I think I was living out Andy's too.

"Dad would have never made me do this." She whispered, folding and unfolding the costume on her bed. It was true, Andrea was Dad's angel. Anything she wanted she got and anything she didn't want she didn't have. "Mom is just trying to do what she thinks dad would want." I earned a puppy dog pout from my little sister. "Not that it is what he would want, but it's what she thinks he would. If.. that makes sense?" I earned a nod. "Can't I just pretend I joined?" "Not gonna work, mom goes to every one of my games." Mom supported me at all of my games. Whether it was basketball, track, football, or soccer, She was there. And I mean that's great and all, but what's the use of being cheered on for something you have no passion doing? It's like cheering on a vegan in a meat-eating contest.

      "Look at the bright side," I stood up, checking the clock beside her bed. 7:45am. "You'll be cheering on your devilishly handsome big brother at his football and basketball games. You can witness all of my wins first hand." I earned a small smile. One point for Jason. "Now come on, school in 15 minutes." Andrea signed, tucking her outfit under her pillow.

I gave her a look. "Andy..."

"What?" She whined.

I intensified the look.

"Fine." She gave in, snatching the costume from the teeth of her pillow and stuffing it into her bookbag.

2 points Jason.