My Super Special Secret is My Sister

                My sister is five years old and eats her boogers so when my friends come over I lock her in my bedroom closet. It’s a walk in closet. It's got a light. She won’t suffocate or hit her head or anything. She cried the first few times I put her in there but she just sits and plays with stickers now. When my friends ask about my family, I don’t mention having a sister at all.

                At school on the first day, I sat at lunch with a home-made sandwich and an abundance of napkins and myself. From across the room I saw Grace Sylvester and Alex Malone share pale hand sanitizer. At once I knew I should be their friend. I approached them as they sat on the grass in the corner of the fenced school yard and said, “Hi, I’m Nettie,” and Grace said, “Hey, I’m Grace,” and Alex said, “I’m Alex,” and I sat down across from them and I asked about their siblings.

                “Eh,” Grace said. “I’ve got two older brothers. They’re super annoying.”

                “Oh,” I said, “What kind of stuff do they do?”

“I mean, my oldest brother is in high school now, but Nick is in seventh grade and suddenly all he cares about is video games. He just sits there after school and shoots bad guys and eats Doritos.”

                Gross, I thought.

                Alex plucked some grass from underneath her. I searched for the bottle of sanitizer attached to Grace’s lunch box.

                “My little sister’s in fourth grade,” Alex said. “She just steals my clothes all the time.”

                I reached over and poured some on my hands.

                “Hey, Nettie,” Grace said, “What about you?”

                “Oh.” I stopped rubbing my fingers together. “It’s just me and my mom, usually.”

                “That’s lame,” Alex said. “Must be boring.”

                I rubbed my fingers together some more.

                When two weeks went by and I invited Grace and Alex over to my house. My sister was using finger paints on the table. I made her wash her hands in the bathroom and then I locked her in my closet.

                “Dee, I’ll give you all these stickers if you just sit in here for a little while.”

                “I want…”—she counted on her hands—“five! Like me!”

                “Alright, five it is. Just be quiet, and… don’t touch your nose, alright?”

                When Grace and Alex arrived my mother greeted them distractedly from her office and we went into our family room with the chest of costumes and played dress-up.

                “Alex,” Grace said, “you’re a movie star. I’ll be your director, and Nettie can be the camera man.”

                “Oh, that sounds fun! Let me find a scarf.” She rummaged somewhere around the fairy princess Halloween costumes.

                “Hey, can I be a movie star, too?” I asked.

                “No,” Grace said, “I just said you’re the camera man.”

                From upstairs, I heard a faint rendition of the Daniel Dinosaur theme song, and suddenly, a loud and uncomfortably wet sneeze. Impulsively, I picked some hairs off the scarf Alex held.

                “Um. I think I have some more stuff in my room. I’ll be right back.”

                I rushed to the closet and threw open the door and she was sitting there with both snot and stickers plastered across her face. She looked up and grinned. I blanched. In five seconds I had a handful of tissues and was wiping and peeling as painstakingly as I could.

                Grace and Alex appeared behind me in the doorway. I froze.

                “What the heck!” Grace said. “I didn’t know you had a sister!”

                I held the tissue as far away from me as possible. “Um. Yeah, I do.”

                “That’s so exciting! She can be my assistant. Alex, let her have the scarf!”

                “Wait, you don’t think she’s gross?”

                “No, she’s adorable. C’mere!”

Dee held my leg and giggled. She was soon swept up by bigger arms. I looked at my fingers; I threw out the soiled tissue and I washed my hands.

Alex looked at me sidelong as Grace carried my sister down the stairs.

                “Nettie?”

                “Yeah?”

                “You’re a little bit of a clean freak, aren’t you?”