Peter studied the endless mottled rush of elms and picket fences beyond the bus window.  He didn’t have many opportunities to see the enormous outside world zoom along, as his specialized seat in his mother’s car ensured he couldn’t see much more than leather walls and protective straps unless he craned his neck to see this sky.  This was a rare treat, and something he knew he’d be looking forward to more and more on the rides between school and his home.

Perched on his sister’s shoulder as she leaned against the window, the freshman held his breath and tried to meld the details of the houses into his mind, wondering what it might be like to try sketching them out later, but there was simply too much to take in.  He gripped a tuft of his sibling’s dishwater-blonde hair tighter in his fist for support, absentmindedly winding it around his wrist.

“Don’t pull on my hair or you’re coming right off of there and back down here again,” Erica warned as she texted feverishly with her phone in her lap, her eyes not even moving away from the screen.

“Right,” Peter responded from beneath the soft canopy, loosening his grip but continuing to play with the silky strands all the same.

                “So are you gonna ask her out?” Erica droned after a strange pause of several minutes where Peter almost managed to lose himself in the scenery again.

                “What?”

                “Quit pretending you’re deaf.  That only works once a day,” Erica said dryly, but Peter could tell from her tone that an amused smirk was threatening to creep onto her lips.  “That girl that was holding you in bio.  Lisa.  You gonna go for it?”

                “Hardy-har-har.  Didn’t you get all your laughs about that at lunch today?  You don’t even have your audience here for back-up,” Peter fired back with a dismissively sarcastic snicker.

                “Back-up.  Right,” Erica snorted with derision.  “You could tell everybody at that freaking table wants to find you a girlfriend before we’re even a month into school, right?”

                “Maybe a little.  I think they’re just having fun.”

                “Maybe,” she said.  “How do you know I’m not being serious, though?”

                “Lisa’s just my friend,” Peter said.  “I’ve only known her a week, anyway.”

                “I’m not saying go get married and pop out a bunch of kids, I’m just saying see if she wants to hang out.  It can’t hurt you,” Erica said.  “And anyway, your face doesn’t get like that much.  How it looked when I picked you up from class, I mean.  You looked like a freaking kid seeing the circus for the first time.”

                Peter swallowed.  She really did notice things in him, with just as much skill, it seemed, as he had in noticing the nuances the race of giants he lived amongst.  He held his breath.

“It doesn’t matter.  I’m… still me,” the freshman grunted quietly with self-deprecation, looking disdainfully down at his doll-sized frame.  “What would she want with this?”

                “Ugh.”

                Hearing his sister make bemused throat noises wasn’t something at all new to the freshman, but for once he couldn’t quite comprehend the timing of it.  After how her friends had been acting at lunch, he assumed she’d leap to agree with his practical take on things.

                Instead, he suddenly felt her shoulder shifting below him, tilting forward.  He sensed gravity taking hold of him, despite his safety grip on Erica’s hair.  Turning to look over his shoulder, he felt great relief to realize his sister’s hand was cupped just below him, allowing him to tumble back about an inch and into her palm.  Once she had him, the seventeen-year-old brought her brother just under her chin so her face blocked his window view.

                “Cool trick.  Try it from a little higher next time,” Peter said quietly, hoping to provoke a real smile this time.

                “Okay, listen up, twerp, because I’m going to try to clue you into something here,” Erica answered stonily.  “You can’t just keep on going like this.  Thinking like… this.”

                “Thinking like what?”

                “Like you’re not worth anything to anybody,” Erica said bitterly, practically spitting the words under her breath.  “Because that’s bullshit.”

                Peter paused, letting the cuttingly heartfelt whisper linger for a moment.  He was surprised by Erica’s words and even touched by her willingness to put them out there, but certainly not swayed: not after the brick wall of denial he’d been constructing over the past week and, really, ever since he was capable of considering his nonexistent potential for romance.

                “I… know I’m worth things to people.  I do.  I’m just trying to be realistic about this one thing.  You said it yourself.  There’s no room for me to try and take everything on myself,” Peter said, matching his sister’s tone.

                “That’s different, and you should know it,” she snapped.

                “Why is it?  There’s nothing I can do for myself at school.  I can’t walk to class, turn in homework, buy a lunch, go to the bathroom-”

                “But you can talk to people and make them feel special,” Erica butted in with enough force that Peter flinched.  “That’s something you can do better than any of the six-foot guys I know.  God knows I never really figured it out with Sean.”

                Peter bit his lip, knowing every word was genuine, especially after this final admission.  Erica had split rather messily with Sean, her boyfriend of two years, just a month ago during the summer and refused to even allude to it in any capacity to a single member of the household.  He didn’t know the details, but he did know from personal experience that his sister had issues with closeness and general human warmth that might well have contributed to the break-up.  This conversation right now was by far the most emotionally open one he’d ever had with Erica, and he almost felt the need to chuckle at that fact, if it wasn’t all so startling.

                 “Why are you saying all this?” Peter asked quietly.

                Erica sighed.  “Look, you convinced Mom to put you in high school to start living a more normal life, right?  People with normal lives sometimes have to scare themselves and just give things a shot.  And maybe you haven’t figured that out yet, so I’m just giving you a hint,” she said.  The bus lurched to a stop at the end of their street.  “And besides, if you pity-party any harder, it’s gonna start to rub off on me, and neither of us is even the drinking age yet, so you need to drop that soon.”

                Peter blurted in surprised laughter and bowed his head, embarrassed and thankful for his often tactless but nonetheless good-hearted older sibling.

                “I know,” he managed as Erica rose up and sidled out of the bus seat, her hand closing slightly around him to shield him from the eyes of the other passengers.  “Thanks.”

                “Don’t mention it, twerp,” she said, stomping down the steps of the yellow transport and onto the sidewalk.  Her phone, which she’d pocketed earlier to caringly browbeat her brother back into his senses, was already back in her free hand and her fingers were tapping away.

                “So along the lines of that more-normal-life thing…” Peter began, hugging his legs to his torso.  “Any suggestions for what to say to Mom about being in Grimm-a-Palooza?”

                “Don’t… freaking say the name of the show.  It’s gonna give me an ulcer,” Erica gagged as she walked down the street toward their house.

                “Really, though.  Please?  I’d… really like to give it a try.”

                “I know.  I’m thinking,” his sister reassured as her gaze remained on her cell phone screen.  “If you want any kind of chance though, you can start by not telling her first-thing that they want you to play freaking Tom Thumb.”

                He muffled another snicker.   “It doesn’t bother me.  I don’t understand why it has to with her.”

                “Get used to it, twerp.  She’s always gonna flip out over anything that might be taking advantage of you.  That’s probably never going to change.”

                “I know,” he sighed.  “So what else can I even say?”

                “I don’t know.  Tell her you’ll need things for college apps in three years,” Erica said with a shrug.  “Show you’re a team player or something.”

              No further suggestions came as the pair arrived on the stoop of the Clark house.  Erica shouldered her way inside, flinging her backpack into the carpeted sitting room with bombastic aplomb just like always.

It wasn’t like he blamed his mother.  Getting Suzanne to give an inch on anything that involved even infinitesimal potential risk to her tiny son’s wellbeing was a skyscraper-sized order.  As dearly as she loved her children, she had apparent difficulty being straight with Peter about why she wouldn’t let him participate in any given activity, and would often resort to just about any excuse she could grab onto.  Peter expected this conversation to go no differently.

“Welcome home!” Suzanne sang from the kitchen.

Despite his love and revere for his mother, the freshman felt something like an omen mixed with indigestion swelling inside himself.