Noah just turned fourteen, which means he’s in ninth grade this year. Now that he goes to a different school and takes a different bus than me, and has a girlfriend (even though he always says, “She’s a girl who’s my friend—not my girlfriend”), it’s like he’s decided to start acting like he’s too cool to hang out with me. Or even be nice to me anymore. Which basically means he’s turned into a total butthead.

“But what about breakfast?” I say, crossing my arms. “I already started getting everything set up.”

“So?” he says with a shrug, pretending he doesn’t know full well that Sunday-morning breakfast is a family tradition. “Just have cereal.”

“Cereal?” I groan. “Cereal is for school days!”

“This is me caring.” He rolls his eyes and closes his door in my face.

As if everything else wasn’t already sucky enough, I’m really beginning to despise being the younger sibling. I used to love being the youngest. It made me feel special. But now that we’re older it just feels like an excuse for everyone in my family to not take me seriously. I generally don’t believe people should go around having archenemies and things like that, but if I had one, it would definitely be Noah.

So I knock as loud and hard as I can, pounding both of my fists against the door, and I don’t stop until he opens it again.

“Leave me alone,” he grumbles.

This time I walk away from him, saying loud enough to catch his attention, “I’m calling Moms!”

“Don’t call them, Sadie,” he says as he follows me down the stairs. “I’m serious; they’re busy, and they don’t need you annoying them right now!” I reach for the phone in the kitchen and start dialing, when Noah takes it away from me.

“Hey, butthead!” I yell at him. “Give that back to me. I’m telling Moms you’re being mean.”

“Don’t be such a toddler!” That’s his favorite thing to call me lately. “Moms didn’t want me to tell you this because you’re such a baby, but Grandpa Ed is—” He stops in the middle of his sentence.

“Gramps is what?” I ask.

“Gramps is . . . old, okay? Get a clue, buttmunch, they’re not going for fun. They’re going because he can’t live alone anymore.”

“Why not?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

Noah sighs and looks down. “The people at his apartment building called Mom because something happened in the middle of the night with Gramps being confused. He was wandering around the halls, or something weird like that.” Noah pauses, and now even he looks a little worried, and he never seems worried about anything. “So Moms went there today to bring him back here.”

“Maybe he was just sleepwalking?” I offer.