Page 4 of Cruel Winter with You

“What’s her name?” I asked Mrs. Compton.

“His,” Dad corrected me. “He’s a boy, honey.”

Suddenly, everything made sense. “That’swhy he’s so ugly.”

The adults burst into laughter—very mean spirited, I thought, given that the poor baby was already dealing with the adverse condition of not being a girl. I tuned them out until Mr. Compton asked me, “Jamie, do you know what we named him?”

I shook my head.

“Marc. Marc Evan Compton.”

And maybe the baby already recognized his own name, because in that precise moment, he opened his gray eyes and, after a couple of clumsy attempts, gripped my index finger.Hi,his unwavering stare seemed to say.

And:Stay.

And maybe even:I like you.

He was small, but strong. And at once, an overwhelming sense of love and protectiveness swept over me.It’s okay,I swore silently to Marc.I’ll be your friend. I’ll get Tabitha to be your friend, too. And I will love you. Even if you’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

It was a heartfelt, sincere promise. One that I broke a million times over in the next few years. Because, in a tragic turn of events, Marc Evan Compton turned out to be the absolute worst.

For several highly gullible years, I was a Marc apologist.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to do that,” I’d tell a seething Tabitha every morning as we walked to school. “Switch out your vitamin gummies with laxatives, that is.”

Or use your favorite shirt to line the hamster’s cage.

Stab you in the eye with a plastic fork.

Lock you in the linen closet.

Convince all the neighborhood kids to call you Dumbitha.

Train the dog to behead your favorite Barbie.

Puke up three servings of mac and cheese right in your lap.

Sneak insects inside your bed.

I made up excuses because withme, Marc was never a terror. Whatever instinctive love I’d felt toward him on the day he was born, it was reciprocated. Dad and Mr. Compton had been best friends since high school, and our families were constantly in each other’s proximity. Mom had left us right after I was born, and Dad, with his very demanding job, appreciated all the childcare the Comptons could offer. Tabitha and I were, of course, inseparable. But I had a special bond with Marc, too.

“I wish you lived with us,” he would tell me sweetly when I’d leave Tabitha’s room after a weekend sleepover.

And: “You’re my favorite person in the whole world.”

And: “When we grow up, I want us to get married.”

No such thing would happen. I already had a husband picked out: Alan Crawford, an older guy from down the street (or, should that fail, Lance Bass from NSYNC). In my eyes,Marc was a little boy. Nevertheless, I found him adorable. I taught him the alphabet and how to tie his shoelaces. In return, he yelled at a kid who shoved me at the playground, and made me valentines every year.

“You’re supposed to bemybest friend,” Tabitha reminded me about once a week. “I knew that noobnugget would steal half of everything. I just didn’t think you’d be included.”

But I loved them both. And for years, even as the relationship between Tabitha and Marc began involving allergenic substances slipped into each other’s lunches, sharp pushpins, and constant threats of mutual destruction, I tried not to take sides. “You don’t have to choose between them, honey,” Dad would say. “This is just typical sibling rivalry. A phase they’ll grow out of. Just sit it out.” And I did—until we were twelve, Marc was nine, and the egg incident happened.

To this day, Marc maintains it wasn’t on purpose. That he didn’t know our “unhinged school would engage in as deranged an activity as pretending that an egg is ababyand having students carry it around for a week without cracking it.” But not only did our unhinged school engage in as deranged an activity, it alsoscoredus on it. A whole 30 percent of our final Family Sciences grade depended on that damn egg.

Which is why, when I entered the Comptons’ kitchen and found Marc eating it—fried, on toast, tomatoes on the side—I didn’t stop Tabitha from retaliating. I observed in silence as she ran after him. Said nothing as she tackled her brother, even though he was already taller than both of us. Leaned back against the door and crossed my arms as she pulled his hair. And after their screeches drew Mr. Compton away from his yard work and inside the house, after he separatedhis children, after he turned to me and asked, “Jamie, what happened?” I spilled my truth.

“Marc started it,” I said.

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