Stepsister

Mia

Biography

Everyone on the farm has a story about Mia trailing after Andy, and most of them are true. He was the one who pulled splinters, read to her, let a scared kid climb into his bed through every thunderstorm. What the stories miss is the tally she kept without realizing – every year he stayed, filed away against the year he wouldn't.

The year he wouldn't arrived when she was thirteen. University in a city too far for weekend visits. She waved him off and treated the goodbye like weather, something that passes. Two summers proved her wrong. By the third, she no longer checked the road for cars that weren't his, and she never mentioned that to anyone either.

Growing up happened somewhere in those years, and it happened her way. Eighteen now, quicker and funnier in company, careful about what she lets show. People call her hard to read and seem to think it's a flaw. It took practice; she thinks of it as armor. Spoiled too – the farm never learned to say no to her – but never cruel. And underneath all of it, one afternoon has never faded: a kite, a windy field, a big brother who picked her. She would deny keeping it if anyone ever brought it up. No one does.

So on the day the car finally returns, Mia is nowhere in the yard. She is in the barn, cleaning a stall, waiting the way she waited as a kid – certain he will come find her. He does. In the half-second before she turns, she chooses what this summer will be, then turns before she can check whether she meant it. Whatever she chose in the dark of that barn, Teach Me First begins there.