Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert

Author:Brandy Colbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Mental Illness *, Young Adult Fiction / Lgbt *, Young Adult Fiction / Family / Alternative Family *, Young Adult Fiction / Family / Siblings *, Young Adult Fiction / Girls & Women *, Young Adult Fiction / School & Education / Boarding School & Prep School *, Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Prejudice & Racism *
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2017-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

then.

Each year, our family goes to a Dodgers game to kick off the summer. None of us is a huge baseball fan, but it’s fun to go as a family, and even I start to get into it once we’re there, with the Dodger Dogs and the songs and all the fans dressed in bright blue and white.

Lionel seems particularly excited this year. He keeps talking about it to our friends, though none of them care because I’m pretty sure most people in that group have never attended a professional sporting event in their lives. He even bought us matching Dodgers shirts, the jersey kind that button up the front.

“Little. Little! Oh, good, you’re wearing it,” he said—or practically shouted—as he entered my room without knocking, something he’s been doing more and more often. I’m trying not to let it bother me, because it means he’s out of bed and talking to people and not looking at me with lifeless eyes. It means he’s finally over Grayson, and we can get the old Lionel back.

The shirt is a nice gesture, but I can’t see myself wearing it again after today. When I ask Lionel how much it cost, worried that he’s spent too much on something I don’t even want, he waves me off, insisting, “We can’t just show up looking like casual fans!”

We always have before, and I don’t know what’s different this year, but before I can ask, he’s running through the Dodgers’ entire season of stats with fervor, occasionally interrupting himself with a non sequitur or to exclaim about a completely average fact that doesn’t deserve the excitement. I try to stop him a couple of times, to ask if he’s okay, but he’s too far down the Dodgers rabbit hole. He’s pacing my room as he talks, picking things up and walking around with them and putting them back in the wrong spot.

I’m relieved when Mom calls up to us from the middle floor. It feels claustrophobic in my room, like I’m being pushed out by Lion and his increasingly intense thoughts. He goes ahead of me down the stairs and I wonder, for a moment, if he’s taken something—a pill, maybe, or even coke, though he once told me he has no intention of putting anything up his nose. But when I look at his hands, at the skin torn ragged around his thumbs—so badly in some places that I can tell they’ve been bleeding—I wonder if it means something.

“Guys, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Saul had a work emergency that’s going to take up most of the afternoon,” Mom says. Apparently Lionel has convinced her to dress for the occasion, too: A vibrant blue baseball cap with the Dodgers logo sits on top of her close-cropped hair.

“What?”

It’s only then, when Lion is standing stock-still, staring at my mother, that I realize it’s more than him bursting into my room and the rapid talking and the chewed skin around his thumbs.

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