My Brother best friend hates me

They think I don’t hear them. I always hear them.

“Damn, she’s bigger than the linebackers.”

I keep my head down and keep walking, the way I’ve trained myself to do since middle school. Pretend the words bounce off. Pretend they don’t land somewhere just under my ribs and stay there, collecting with all the others.

At my locker, I hear him before I see him. That low, easy laugh that used to make my ten-year-old heart do something stupid, and now just makes my stomach drop like a missed stair.

“Morning, sunshine.” Marion doesn’t say it like a greeting. He says it like he’s testing whether the words still work on me, like I’m a lock he’s checking hasn’t been changed.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What? Thought you’d like a nickname.” He isn’t even looking at me when he says it  he’s watching me sideways, the way you’d watch something you don’t entirely trust not to move. There’s a stillness to him that’s worse than the insults. Like he’s got more in reserve and hasn’t decided yet if today’s the day he uses it.

I slam my locker shut and walk away before he can see how well it’s working.

Here’s the thing nobody at Crestwood High understands: Marion Carter has spent ten years finding the exact place it hurts and pressing on it, again and again, like it’s a game only he knows the rules to. And the worst part isn’t even the insults.

It’s that I still can’t predict him. Ten years, and I still flinch not knowing which version of him is about to show up.

It wasn’t always like this.

Ten years earlier.

“Alexandra, I wanna go home,” I whined, dragging my feet as he tossed a football from hand to hand, the late sun turning the grass gold at the edges.

“Sasha, chill. I told the new kid I’d meet him here to throw the ball around,” my twin brother said, his brown eyes locked on the field like he was already in the NFL.

He sighed, dug in his pocket, and tossed me a granola bar. “Here. Peanut butter. Your favorite.”

Instant mood boost. “Yes! Thanks, Alexandra.”

While I was tearing open the wrapper, he straightened, glancing toward the entrance to the field. “That’s him.”

A boy about our age walked toward us, cleats scuffing the dirt, a football tucked under one arm like he’d been born holding it. Dark, messy brown hair. The greenest eyes I’d ever seen the kind you notice right away and then can’t stop noticing.

“Hey,” he said to Alexandra, voice careful, like he wasn’t sure yet if he was allowed to be here.

“Hey. This is my twin, Sasha.”

I scrambled up, brushing grass off my jeans, and my mouth moved faster than my brain ever bothered to catch up to. “Wow… you’ve got really long eyelashes. For a boy.”

Marion’s cheeks went pink so fast it looked like it hurt. “Uh, thanks?”

Alexandra groaned. “Sorry, she doesn’t have a filter sometimes.”

“Mar-EE-on?” I tilted my head, testing the syllables out loud. “Isn’t that a girl’s name?”

Something shifted behind his eyes  quick, sharp, gone before I could name it. Not embarrassment. Something closer to a door slamming somewhere inside him. “It’s pronounced Mare-ee-un. Not mar-EE-on.”

“Whatever.” I shrugged, already bored of the correction, already onto the next thing. I didn’t know yet that I’d just found the one thread that, pulled hard enough, could unravel him  or that ten years later, I’d still remember exactly where to find it.

We spent the whole afternoon the way kids do  trading names, testing each other out, figuring out where the edges were. I found out he didn’t have a best friend. I told him he should get one, that Alexandra and I did everything together, that my brother was the best best friend anyone could have.

Alexandra just shrugged, already looking at Marion the way you look at something you’ve decided to keep.

Marion nodded slightly. Like he’d gotten the message. Like he’d filed it away somewhere I couldn’t see.

At the time, I thought I’d just made a friend.

I didn’t know I’d just handed someone the exact shape of the thing that would break me, ten years early, gift-wrapped.

Senior Year (Present Day)

I tiptoe down the hallway at home most mornings, holding my breath, hoping Alexandra’s still asleep. He usually isn’t.

“Nice… tent,” he says, eyes flicking over my shirt, and I don’t even answer anymore. I just shoulder past him, cheeks heating, and head for the kitchen, where the real gauntlet is waiting, the one with the jersey and the smirk and ten years of practice finding new ways to make me feel like a joke I’m still the punchline of.

“Aw, come on, don’t be so sensitive,” he calls after me.

Sensitive. That’s what he calls me when his words cut deep, like it’s my fault for feeling anything. I’d gotten used to it since we turned ten and my body changed, my curves became pronounced before any other girl my age, and I hated it. Years had passed since then, and nothing had changed.

Mom’s already gone by the time I make it to the kitchen. Alexandra grabs a protein shake and downs it like he’s in some athlete commercial. I butter a piece of toast, trying to look invisible.

And then, of course, the devil himself arrives.

Marion Carter, strolling in like he owns the place  helmet under his arm, hair still damp, jersey stretched over shoulders that seem built specifically to be unfair.

“Morning, sunshine.” He smirks at me.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Thought you’d like a nickname.” He glances at my toast. “Extra butter again?”

I slam the knife down. “Do you ever get tired of commenting on what I eat?”

“Don’t mind him, Sasha,” Alexandra says, already halfway out the door, Marion trailing behind  leaving me with cold toast and the same ache I’ve had since I was ten. The ache of realizing my twin chose someone else, and that someone else has never once let me forget it.