We hung up, and I finished curling my hair. My hair was usually pulled back into a messy bun or ponytail, so it took me awhile to analyze if it actually looked good because it seemed so foreign at first. I wore the dress I wore to the museum like my mom had suggested. The dress wasn’t very comfortable. I had only bought it because Amelia insisted, so why was I wearing it again? Because my mom wanted me to. I went to my closet and pulled out a different dress that I changed into. I knew this was my passive-aggressive way of rebelling against tonight. I needed to find the courage now to do something a little less subtle. To actually say out loud to my parents that I was only doing this tonight for them and I wished Mom would support me more in my events.

I could say that. I would say that.

I shook my head and tried to concentrate on the speaker now up at the podium at the charity dinner. I felt guilty for letting my mind wander. My mom eyed my plate, which was still more than half full of food: chicken, rice, and vegetables. I wasn’t hungry. Which was rare because of how much I swam. But now that the season was over, I hadn’t swum all week. Maybe that was why I felt off. I thought the break would help my shoulders but they were stiffer than ever.

When the speaker finished to a round of applause, the lights dimmed and a video came up on the big screen. It was a different video every year. My mom always helped put it together. It usually followed the story of a local family and their struggles with the illness, then it finished with a slideshow of the faces in the community of those we’d lost over the years. Eric’s face was up there every year, a different picture each time. I watched the faces flash on and off the screen. Some were getting as familiar to me as my own brother’s.

“There he is,” my dad said in a soft voice when Eric’s picture came up. My dad smiled; my mom’s eyes glistened with tears. Me, nothing. No, actually, there was irritation. Instead of the pleasant feeling of fondness I’d had every other year, this year my dad had put a personality to my brother. Jackson’s personality. So seeing his smile up there made me imagine all the childish pranks he’d probably played on his friends and unsuspecting people. How much he needed people to like him. It made me think of how much my parents seemed to love that personality and not the hardworking one that I had.

My mom gave me a soft smile. “So glad you came tonight.”