The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhardt Read Free Book Online Page A

the floor. A couple of barbells, and papers everywhere. All the while the radio spits out static.
    Mom would have a coronary if he ever let her in here.
    I try my best to read all this as a good sign. Maybe he’s letting loose. Rebelling against the rigid life of a marine.
    And anyway, messiness is something I can understand.
    I make straight for the computer. I don’t want Boaz to think I’m inspecting or judging his room, even though that’s what I’m doing.
    His computer screen has gone pale gray, and in its center is a sad little face with
X
s for eyes and a tongue sticking out an upside-down U of a mouth.
    The message indisputable: Game Over.
    I drum my fingers on the desk. “I’m afraid it’s your motherboard.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You know, the central system that makes your computer work properly.”
    “That’s bad, right?”
    “It’s not good.”
    “Shit.” He sits down in his chair and puts his face in his hands.
    Maybe I should comfort him. Say something encouraging. But instead I use this moment, with Boaz’s eyes in a web of his fingers, to take a closer look around the room.
    The papers on the floor. They’re maps. All of them.
    Some are printed from the computer. Some look like the kind you’d buy at your local gas station if you ever left the house. Above his bed is an old Rand McNally map of the United States that once hung in my room. Abba bought it for me when I first started trying to understand places in relationship to each other, pestering him with my endless questions:
Where’s Boston? Where’s Israel? Where’s Gotham City?
    I wonder where Boaz found it. It’s been a lifetime since I saw it last.
    I squint at the pastel-colored states and baby-blue oceans and notice that the right side, the Atlantic, is covered in pencil scrawlings, but I’m too far away to make any sense out of them.
    Boaz lets out a deep, guttural groan. “Damn it,” he whispers. For a second, I think he might actually cry.
    Suddenly, I can see him at nine, running into the housewith a wrist bent the wrong way. He’d taken a fall off his skateboard and was screaming and cursing, running around in circles, but his eyes were dry as the desert.
    I’ve never seen my brother in tears. Watching him cry over a dead computer is something I just don’t think I can handle.
    “It’s all right,” I whisper. I almost place my hand on his shoulder. “It’s probably time you get a new one anyway.”
    “Shitshitshitshitshitshit.”
    I picture a trip to the Apple Store. A swarm of tattooed hipsters in matching black T-shirts and headsets asking Boaz how they could help him. I know I can’t watch him go through that.
    “Look, I can get it for you if you want. Or you could just use my laptop. I’ve got finals to study for and I don’t need it all that much. As long as I can have it for a few hours in the afternoon to check my e-mail and visit my favorite porn sites, I’m all set.”
    This doesn’t earn even the hint of a grin.
    I decide to give it one more go. “Right now I’m all about Gigantic Jiggling Jugs dot com.”
    Nothing.
    Boaz clears his throat. “Can I print?”
    “Of course. I’ll configure it. No problem.”
    He lifts his head. Cloudy eyes and an unreadable face.
    “Thanks, little brother,” he says.
    Even though it might seem like I had this in mind when I offered my computer to him, I really didn’t. I promise. I’d swear on my grandmother’s grave if she hadn’t bucked tradition and insisted on a burial at sea.
    I didn’t plan this.
    But sometimes you’re handed an opportunity.
    And every day, when I get home from school, Boaz meets me at the threshold to his room, and he puts that opportunity right into my hands.
    My days of hunting for some trace of Boaz, running my fingertips over his possessions may be long gone, but there are other ways to retrieve information.
    I know I shouldn’t.
    I can’t tell what my brother is thinking or what is happening to him inside his messy