Three Years Ago…

  Eleven-year-old Emmaline gazed out of her bedroom window at the dismal weather, declaring the gloom and rain as the second strike against the day. It was her eleventh birthday, a day that was meant to be grand, wonderful, and utterly perfect. After all, being eleven was considered better than being ten; everyone knew eleven was a more mature number.

  At eleven years-old, she was now just over halfway through the preteens and a short jump to teenager. But even more than that, Mom and Dad said she could start going out on her own instead of having an adult every time she went anywhere like a little baby. So yeah, this should have been the best day of her life.

  Instead, the gloomy afternoon felt like it would swallow her whole. The despair slowly eating away at her insides, one tiny nibble at a time. If only it hadn’t been for strike number one against this day, maybe things wouldn’t feel so totally wrong.

  There was a knock on her door, and a voice called out from the other side. “Emmaline, can I come in?”

  Her ears perked up. That wasn’t the voice she had been expecting. She had thought it might be her mother or even Dad. They’d been trying to get her to open the door all morning, but she’d locked it tight so no one could. She wondered what had brought Michael home. He was supposed to be away at college. Em almost asked what he wanted. She missed Michael and didn’t like that he was away for months at a time since starting at MIT.

  Before the words could come out of her mouth, Em saw the reflection of herself in the window and the misery of the last day and a half came crashing back. Nope. There was no way she was opening that door, not even if the house was burning down around her.

  But Michael was persistent and kept knocking on the door. After the third round of knocking and asking to come in, Emmaline yelled, “GO AWAY!”

  There was a long silence, and she thought maybe he’d decided to do as she said, but then she heard his voice through the door once more. “Mom and Dad told me what happened, so I thought I’d come by and see if I could help. Please let me in, Emmaline.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be skiing is Aspen with your friends this weekend!” Emmaline shot at her brother.

  That was the other reason Michael hadn’t been around, because most of his weekends he spent doing fun stuff with his friends or hanging out with his girlfriend. It didn’t seem like he had any time left for her these days. She had tried to shrug it off, but it hurt. She missed having her big brother in her life.

  Her friends thought it weird that she had two brothers who were much older than her. Michael was eleven years her senior and Eric sixteen! In many ways, it made Emmaline feel like an only child, because Eric was nearly full grown by the time she came around and Michael just a little shy of that.

  Even with the age gap, she and Michael had become close, much closer than she and Eric. She wasn’t sure if that was because she and Michael were actually biologically related, if it was because Michael was around more than Eric had been, or if she and Michael just had more in common. Maybe it was a combination of all three, but Michael had become someone she could count on to be a friend and someone she could talk to more than Eric, Mom, or Dad.

  Sure, they were siblings, and all siblings fought and had their problems. Sometimes Michael got it in his head that he either was too old to hang out with her or simply didn’t have the time. In those moments, she didn’t like her brother very much, but as she became older, those times became less and less. Well, that was before Michael had left for college two years ago. Since then, he’d been more ghost than a real person in her life.

  When Mom told her that Michael wouldn’t be coming home for her birthday this weekend because he was going skiing with friends, Emmaline supposed that was the first real strike against her birthday. So she guessed that made it three strikes instead of two.

  “I decided not to go,” was his reply. “It’s your eleventh birthday after all. You only turn eleven once!” He tried to sound upbeat there at the end, as if he could put a happy spin on it, like that would make everything all right.

  It at least brought Emmaline out of her gloomy thoughts, though she didn’t feel remotely all right.

  “Well, I’m canceling my birthday,” she called out to him.

  She supposed it was nice he had come for her birthday after all, but it was a little too late. It had all been ruined. He couldn’t fix this. No one could!

  “You can’t cancel a birthday. You’re eleven even if you don’t want to be,” he said. There was more silence, and then he continued. “Em, I’m sorry if I haven’t been around lately. Things have just been crazy busy, but I’m going to change that and be here more often. I’d like to start with today if you will let me.”

  Even the disaster of the day couldn’t keep the smile from her face. She wasn’t sure if he meant it or if he was just saying it to make her feel better, but she didn’t care. It did make her feel better. Emmaline moved from the window to the door, unlocked it, and opened the door enough to stick her face around, but doing her best to hide the rest of her behind it.

  “Hey,” he said with his goofy, lopsided grin that she loved so much.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Only if you promise not to laugh or make fun of me,” she demanded.

  “Never,” her brother said as solemnly as he could.

  Emmaline stepped back and opened the door, allowing him to enter.

  Michael stepped into the room and took a look around even though he’d been in here loads of times. His eyes went to the corner where Em still had a child-sized round table and four chairs. That was where Emmaline used to host elaborate tea parties with her stuffed animals and doll babies, and more often than not, Michael had been the guest of honor. But that had been a long time ago when she was a baby, and the tea set had sat there unused for quite some time. Even still, she missed having those tea parties, especially with her big brother.

  “That brings back memories,” Michael said with a small smile.

  Em shrugged. “I guess so.”

  The door was closed again, and now Emmaline stood in the middle of her room, feeling self-conscious under Michael’s attention. He reached out and gently brushed back one of the curls of hair that had fallen over her left eye.

  “It doesn’t look so bad,” he said softly.

  Tears welled up, and she could no longer hold back the agony that was inside. “It’s terrible! I’ll never be able to leave my room again!”

  “Never is a long time, baby girl.”

  Em brought her arms up and crossed her chest, glaring at her brother. She hated it when he called her that. She wasn’t a baby!!! “It can’t be fixed! Not without cutting it all off! I don’t want to be bald.”

  “Lot’s of people dye their hair green, Em. Some even the color you have.”

  “Yeah, on purpose! I was going for black, not green!”

  Michael scrunched up his nose. “Why black?”

  “Because it’s not red, and I’m tired of red.”

  “Well, your hair isn’t red anymore,” and even though he tried to keep a straight face, Emmaline saw the smile creeping across.

  “This isn’t funny, Michael! This is deadly serious!”

  “Deadly?” he replied in a much more serious tone, but Emmaline knew her brother and she could tell he was still trying not to laugh, but at least he was doing a better job at it.

  “Yes, deadly. I can’t go to my birthday party because I look like a freak. This will be the death of me! Everyone will laugh! I’ll never be able to show myself in public again!”

  “Well, we can’t have that.” Michael tilted his head as if he were hearing something only he could hear. “So how did this disaster happen? I thought Mom said you were too young to dye your hair?”

  Emmaline threw up her arms and walked back to the window. Of course he wanted to know how she’d done this to herself. Michael was always full of questions, even the uncomfortable ones.

  “I got Helen’s older sister to buy it for me and then snuck it upstairs. I knew all about how to do it. I’d watch many YouTube videos. They all made it look so easy. I don’t know how it turned out like this.”

  Emmaline ran her hand through her once luscious red hair, but now it was a sickly green. Well, not all of it. Obviously, she’d missed some parts when she was putting the dye on. So it was mostly a sick green with some of her bright red bunches shining throughout. She looked like a total clown.

  It wasn’t supposed to go this way. The plan was to surprise everyone on her birthday. The black was supposed to make her look more grown up and sophisticated. All her friends would ooh and ahh over the beautiful change in her hair. And Mom would be so pleasantly stunned, she wouldn’t care that Em had dyed her hair when she wasn’t supposed to. Instead, it had all turned into a complete disaster!

  “Well, I could tell you the science behind it, but I know you aren’t interested,” Michael said.

  That was true enough. There was only room enough for one nerd in the family, and Michael was it! Her brother held something up in his hand for Em to see. It was the first time she’d registered the shopping bag. “Lucky for you, I do know the science, and I know how to fix your problem.”

  Emmaline looked at the plastic shopping bag with concern. It looked suspiciously like a box of dye in there. “I’m not dyeing my hair again. It could be worse next time!”

  “Em, do you trust me?”

  She looked deep into his earnest, bright blue eyes. “Yes.”

  It was true, even if he could be an insensitive jerk sometimes. At the end of the day, she did trust him.

  “Then come on. Your party guests will arrive soon. We don’t have much time.” He started for the bathroom connected to her room.

  Emmaline hesitated a moment. She really didn’t want her hair getting worse, but then at this point how much worse could it get? She rushed to the bathroom to join her brother.

  An hour and a half later, Emmaline looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was stunned by the change. Her hair was black, just the way she imagined it. She looked up to her big brother with a grin.

  “What did you do that was different?” she asked.

  Michael shrugged. “Mom told me what you tried to do and the dye you used. This time I just made sure to get a dye with red undertones instead of green or blue. I also let it stay on a little longer. This is only temporary. I would suggest you go to a hairstylist in the near future, but this will get you through the party at least.”

  She turned and looked at the bold black locks of hair that now framed her face and cascaded down to her shoulders. It was a dramatic change from her usual fiery red, and a world better than the ugly green it was just a few hours ago. Now she looked like a glamorous movie star!

  Emmaline rushed over and threw her arms around her brother. “It’s perfect! Absolutely perfect! Thank you, Michael!”

  She felt his warm arms encircle her. “You’re welcome, baby girl. Just promise me that the next time you do something so drastic, you ask for help, and not from YouTube. I know Mom has her rules and all, but I’m not above helping you break them if it will keep you from looking like Krusty the Clown.” He laughed as he said the last part.

  “Hey!” Emmaline stood back and jabbed a finger at her brother. “Not cool.”

  “Come on. It was a little funny,” he said with his lopsided grin.

  And then suddenly, Emmaline couldn’t help but laugh. In fact, for some reason, she couldn’t stop laughing. She laughed with relief. She laughed because it felt good to let go of her terrible despair. She laughed because, yeah, now that the travesty was over, it was just a little bit funny.

  Michael joined her, and they both laughed for a good long time. When the laughs were all done and she wiped away the tears that had streamed down her face in her laughter, she saw Michael’s beautiful smile beaming down at her. He touched the side of her own smiling face.

  “That’s much better. There should be only smiles on your eleventh birthday.” He then held out a hand as an invitation. “My lady, I believe your guests are waiting for you downstairs. Shall we?”

  Emmaline put her arm in his and moved toward him with a bounce in her step. “We shall.” Then they exited her bedroom side by side, and Emmaline felt absolutely glorious and just like a movie star!