Your Father Was a Glassmaker, G. Twenty things only Nadia saw.

you can kid the world. but not your sister.
charlotte gray

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1. At first, she thinks he hates his roommate.

2. Nadia doesn't think she's ever seen Jason more nervous than when Peter beckons him over in the library ("Hey, Jason — could you help me with this?"). He hardly looks like her brother with his shoulders tense and his eyes wide.

3. When she finds a quiet moment between classes, she asks him what's wrong and he looks at her funny. What was he expecting, for her not to notice? Maybe he can trick everyone else, but he can't trick his sister. He still tries to tell her that everything is fine; he's just stressed.

4. She doesn't miss his glance towards Peter. Or the moment when their eyes meet and they both turn away blushing. She begins to pick up puzzle pieces, little half-truths that make a fuzzy picture. Jason acts differently around Peter, with jerky movements and stuttering speech. If Peter were a girl, she'd make fun of Jason for being completely smitten.

It would just be awkward if she made fun of him, all things considered.

5. Jason has always been her best friend so she's never needed another one, and neither has he. They used to talk about everything together, and they never had any secrets. They've never been apart.

Nadia misses that, when Jason has Peter and she has no one. She's not the sort of girl to wish on stars, but if she were, she would wish for Jason to just be honest with her again. She misses his warm smile and easy laugh, and she knows that something is wrong with him. Often, she tries to ask him what's going on. But he always shuts her down, brushing it off.

She's good at hiding her feelings, too.

6. All of the girls hang off of him, trying to impress him. Jason never calls any of them, she knows from laments at lunch or before the bell rings for class. He's just never interested. It becomes a game to them; whoever can harass Jason the most is the winner and he's just playing hard to get. They ask Nadia often for any secret information — surely he'd tell her, she's his sister. When she has nothing she can share, they turn to Peter, who just blushes and says Jason hasn't ever mentioned anyone (with a hopeful smile on his face).

7. She senses a disturbance in the force the third week of September in freshman year. Nadia had become used to this new Jason, this tense Jason who fidgets and taps his foot incessantly.

Wednesday morning comes and she doesn't expect him to be so happy. It's not like he's been depressed, it's just been a long time since his smiles didn't seem forced. Peter is walking next to him, close to him, grin across his face. They sit down at the table, bump into each other, and giggle.

Nadia would ask him why he's so happy, but she's pretty sure she already knows.

8. "Gay" is a foreign word to her. It's something that other people are, far away from her and the halls of St. Cecilia's. Years of Catholic school and her parents should have made her fear the word.

9. But when she thinks of it in terms of Jason, she can't find anything wrong. Jason does everything right. This isn't any different. Knowing this doesn't make her any less afraid for him. She's not quite as big as the world, and there are always people who can't see anything without a label on it.

10. Jason calls Peter on summer vacation every single day. They're like teenage girls; talking for hours about (from what Nadia can hear) absolutely nothing. She catches snippets of their conversation when Jason paces through the hallway, phone pressed to his ear. ("Hey, so the other day we went to the beach and...what's so funny about that...perv...anyway, you should come sometime...") When he hangs up the phone reluctantly, his lips twitch with a smile.

11. Peter is one of her best friends. She entrusts him with secrets because no one is as good at keeping secrets as Peter is, and Peter tells her all of his fears and hopes and confessions. And those he doesn't tell he tries to tell, whether he knows it or not, words threatening to burst out of his mouth. She feels that way sometimes too.

12. The door to the classroom closes softly behind her and if she ever doubted her hypothesis, there's no reason to now. Sister Mary-Francis's classroom during lunch is where she spends time sometimes to write music. It's also where her brother spends time making out with Peter.

13. It hurts that her brother can get a boyfriend and she can't.

14. She knows before Jason does that's he's in love. The only experience she has with love is from books, but star-crossed lovers are star-crossed lovers whether they're in Verona or a Catholic boarding school. Maybe it's just because she knows Jason so well (used to know Jason so well), that she can see the difference between how he forces himself to look at Kyra, Tanya, and Dianne and how his eyes drift to Peter and a smile flits across his face.

15. Something squeezes its way between them, between Jason and Nadia and then Jason and Peter and then Jason and everyone. And, suddenly, she sees Ivy hanging off of Jason and Lucas just told her that Peter is rooming with him now. She knows loneliness, but she'll always have someone; Jason, Peter, Tanya, Lucas, Matt, Kyra.

The only someone Peter has is her asshole of a brother.

16. Two blushing pilgrims stand, palm to palm. Nadia's eyes go from Peter and Jason to the cast staring at them and then back again, like some absurd tennis match. Apart from Zack, they watch the scene with fascination. It's different with Peter as Juliet, and not because he's a boy, but because the air is suddenly on fire and the words sound real.

17. Jason and Peter look like they've been dropped into a foreign country. The expression on Matt's face quickly changes from triumphant to horrified. Peter and Jason spin in circles back to back, taking in the cast, their friends, their classmates.

Everyone else is too caught up in shock to notice that Jason's hands twitch back to Peter before he can think better of it, an action that he has to bite his lip and correct. Jason's eyes are wide again, and his shoulders are tense, and it's still because he's nervous. About what they think, about how this will change things, about how quickly word will spread.

He says "fuck you" to Peter, but it sounds hopeless and desperate and Nadia places her hand on his arm gently.

18. The night of the play, Jason looks lost. He's searching for Peter, she knows. She wants to run after him and hug him and wish him good luck, but Ivy feels like she's going to throw up and that's Nadia's niece or nephew growing inside of her. So she's not going anywhere.

19. Center stage, there aren't any secrets; just two boys crumpled together on the floor. A thousand things are said in that embrace. Nadia can hear some of them, but the rest are on a radio frequency only Peter and Jason can understand. Peter is mouthing "no" over and over again and squeezing Jason to his chest. She doesn't see Jason die, she feels it. They all do. A light goes out somewhere in the universe. A sob wrenches itself from Ivy's throat. Dianne gasps. The audience buzzes. Tears start to drip onto Nadia's cheeks. Peter kisses Jason's forehead, out there in the open.

20. In the end, Nadia thinks it's a stupid way to go.