“Could you breathe any louder?”
“I’m sorry, Jacob. Is this better?” I snort air out of my nose as noisily as I can muster.
“Mariah! Stop it!”
“Make me!”

This is now my mornings usually begin. Jacob wakes up to read earlier than I, and he always finds something to bother me with. It’s gotten so bad that it has actually come to breathing. I close my eyes under the brightness of his reading lamp.

“Jakie, turn that off. I’m sleeping.”

“No, you’re not. You’re talking to me.”

“Seriously, Jacob.”

He clicks the knob, making the bulb burn a fraction brighter. I try to look annoyed, but accidentally let a giggle escape. Before I know it, we’re both rolling around on the ground like a couple of puppies, shrieking and slapping each other. Just like we did when we were five. Just like we will forever.

“Marah, when you laugh, you sound like a pig,” Jacob teases, propping himself up against the side of his bed. “It sounds ridiculous.”

“And you sound like a dying goose, Jakie,” I say, pinching his nose. We sit back for a moment.

“We should make a band!” Jakie yells. “We’ll call it ‘Dying Goose and the Monster Pig!” That sets us off again, and we’re waking up the entire household with the quaking laughs at our own absurdity.

My little brother and I are not as young as we seem. I’m actually graduating from high school next month as Valedictorian, and Jacob has the highest IQ in the freshman class. I suppose that we compensate for our school pressure by evolving back into immature children when we come home. We are masters of the art of being a sibling. Irrational, silly, clumsy. And we are proud of it.

Jacob and I stand up and stumble over each other into the kitchen. It’s not like we were going to go back to sleep, anyway. Jacob’s mousy brown hair, so much like mine, is in a cloud above his clumsy head. We make toaster waffles and collapse into chairs at the table.

I hear a loud crunch.

“What was that?” I mumble through a mouthful of saturated fats and artificial coloring. My brother looks down at his seat, and his face drains of color. He pulls out what used to be a three dimensional map of Germany, complete with mini replicas of every castle. It wreaks of hours of lost time. My semester project.

“Jacob.” My voice quivers in fury. I wait for an apology. He raises his chocolate brown eyes to the level of mine and senses the livid aura that engulfs me.

“You shouldn’t have left it on the chair, anyway, Mar,” is his reply.

I lunge at him in a livid explosion, grasping for his arms, his face, whatever I can get a hold on before he runs away. I am so angry at his carelessness and his nerve, and I try to snag him like a little girl would a child who broke her doll. He is quick. But I am quicker.

“Say sorry, Jacob!” I yell, my eyes stinging with oncoming tears. “That was my entire grade you’ve just ruined! Apologize!”

“It was your fault, I didn’t do anything!”

“Say sorry!”

“Fine, you psycho! Sorry!”

I push him back into his chair and try to hide the salty madness that streams from my eyes. I storm off into the bedroom and lock the door behind me, just in case he tries to come in.
The burning anger that swallows me daily is sizzling over my existence. That irresponsible, immature, aggravating child! How could he? I’m not even sure why I’m so furious at him. Perhaps it’s because I really cant escape him.
Ten minutes later, I’m back at the table, no thanks to my aching hunger. Jacob’s cheeks are still flushed. He reaches for the syrup and, promptly, spills it over my maimed project.

I look up into his face, ready to jump at him again. We both catch a glimpse of my sticky mess of a history final.

We can’t help it. We burst into laughter. What did you expect?
We are absurd. We are obnoxious and idiotic and cruel. But we are siblings. And we are masters of the art.