Warped

If there was one thing Valerie Lin was absolutely certain of in the summer of 2001, it was that her nine-year-old brother, Leo, was a biological annoyance, and her eleven-year-old sister, Chloe, was a direct threat to her sanity.

It was a blistering Tuesday morning in July. The kind of mid-summer day where the air in Ohio felt so thick you could almost chew it. Elm Street was performing its usual symphony of suburban noise. Outside, the century-old oak tree in the front yard—a massive, sprawling giant with branches perfect for climbing and a tire swing hanging from its lowest bough—rustled lazily in the hot breeze. From across the hedge, the rhythmic, distant whir-clack of Mr. Henderson’s lawnmower was competing with the incredibly loud, agonizingly slow screech of the home computer trying to connect to the internet.

In the den, the beige monitor flickered, casting a static glow over Leo’s face as the modem began its daily ritual.

Weeee-ooo-eeeee-clack-clack-clack-shhhhhh.

Valerie groaned, dropping her forehead onto the cool, yellowed linoleum of the kitchen table. She was fourteen, wearing oversized gray flannel pajama pants she’d stolen from Dad’s closet and a faded graphic t-shirt, and she was currently trying to draft a very dramatic AOL Instant Messenger away-message in her spiral notebook. It was hard to find the right poetic words to describe her teenage frustrations when her house sounded like a dial-up demon was being exorcised.

“Leo! Get off the computer!” Valerie yelled toward the hallway. “I need to use the landline! I’m supposed to call Sarah about going to the pool, and you’ve been trying to load a single webpage for literally an hour!”

“It’s not just a webpage, Val!” Leo’s voice cracked from the den, sounding muffled but fiercely defensive. At nine, Leo possessed the social charm of a wet cardboard box. He spent ninety percent of his time memorizing prime numbers or staring at low-resolution science forums, his face roughly two inches from the glowing glass screen.

“It’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in high-definition! It has seventy-eight percent of its skull intact! It is highly relevant to my academic future!”

Valerie lifted her head from the table, rolling her eyes at the ceiling.

“Your ‘academic future’ is in the fourth grade, Leo! And high-definition in 2001 means it looks like a pile of brown blocks! Just disconnect so I can make a five-minute call!”

“If I disconnect now, the download progress bar resets!” Leo yelled back, his tone escalating into that high-pitched whine that always made Valerie want to pop her own eardrums. “I’m at eighty-two percent! Do you want me to fail my life goals?”

“Yes! I absolutely do!”

Valerie stood up, her bare feet sticking slightly to the kitchen floor. She was technically left in charge of the house while Mom was next door, which Mom claimed was a ‘lesson in responsibility’ for a fourteen-year-old, but Valerie knew it was actually just a cheap way to get free babysitting.

Being responsible apparently meant spending her morning playing referee between a mini-paleontologist and a pre-teen drama queen.

Before she could march into the den to physically yank the telephone cord out of the wall, the back screen door let out a loud *creak-slam*.

Chloe slid into the kitchen, her canvas sneakers squeaking loudly. Despite the eighty-five-degree heat and the stifling humidity, she was wearing her oversized denim jacket. The right shoulder featured a bright green patch of a cartoon frog, held in place by a massive, crusty border of dried fabric glue that Valerie had spent an hour helping her smear on the night before. Chloe’s hair was a wild, dark cloud of static, and she looked entirely too pleased with herself.

“Can you two shut up?”

Chloe said, swinging herself up to sit on the kitchen counter, her dangling legs knocking against the cabinet doors.

“You’re completely ruining my tape’s vibe.”

“Get your sneakers off the counter before Mom gets back,” Valerie warned, leaning over to lightly shove Chloe’s knee. “Or I’m telling her you were the one who broke the ceramic soap dish in the bathroom last week.”

Chloe rolled her eyes but didn’t move her legs. “I didn’t break it. It fell.”

“It fell because you were trying to balance a stack of magazines on top of it,” Valerie pointed out, crossing her arms. “Now, off the counter. And what tape are you even listening to?”

“My mix tape.” Chloe popped off her foam-padded headphones and held them out proudly. A tiny, tinny scratching sound of a pop song vibrated into the warm kitchen air. “Sarah’s older brother burned a CD, and then I recorded it from the CD player onto this cassette. It took forever because I had to sit perfectly still so the microphone wouldn’t pick up Leo’s heavy breathing from the hallway.”

“Very high-tech,” Valerie muttered.

“It is,” Chloe insisted. She reached into her denim jacket pocket and pulled out a bright pink tube. She unscrewed the cap, revealing a glossy, neon-pink gel. With extreme precision, she applied a ridiculously thick, shiny layer of balm to her lips, then smacked them together with an obnoxious, wet pop.

“What is that smell?” Valerie pinched her nose. “It smells like a plastic factory exploded in a strawberry patch.”

“Vintage strawberry lip gloss, have some class, big sis,” Chloe declared, her voice dripping with attitude as she tilted her chin up proudly. “Sarah got it at the mall. It’s highly reflective. If I get lost in the woods, search helicopters can use my face as a mirror.”

Valerie scoffed. “If you get lost in the woods behind Elm Street, the furthest you can get is Mrs. Gable’s yard, and she’d just feed you zucchini bread until you came home. And you need to go help Leo clean up his stupid Lego bricks in the living room. Mom is checking out Mrs. Gable’s prize-winning squash, but she’ll be back soon. If the living room looks like a bomb went off, she’s going to ground all of us.”

“Cleaning is a social construct,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes dramatically as she slid down from the counter. She popped her padded headphones back over her ears, completely tuning Valerie out, and began to sway to her music as she wandered slowly toward the living room. She didn’t look like she had any intention of picking up a single Lego.

“I am literally the boss of you until Mom gets home!” Valerie called after her, though she knew it was useless.

With a sigh, Valerie walked into the den. The computer was still making a low, rhythmic whirring sound. Leo was sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring up at the screen with intense focus. On the monitor, a pixelated, extremely blurry image of a dinosaur skull was slowly loading, revealing itself line by painstaking line from top to bottom.

“Leo,” Valerie said, her voice softening just a fraction. “Seriously. Five minutes. I just need to coordinate with Sarah so her mom can pick us up for the pool. Then you can download all the fossil pictures you want.”

Leo looked up at her, his brow furrowed in deep, serious nine-year-old concentration. “If I disconnect, the data packets get lost in the telephone wire, Val. Do you know how hard it is to find a clean server link?”

“I don’t care about data packets, Leo. I care about my afternoon,” Valerie said, leaning against the doorframe. “If you let me use the phone, I’ll let you have my leftover cherry popsicle from yesterday.”

Leo hesitated. His eyes darted from the loading screen to Valerie, weighing the scientific value of a T-Rex skull against the immediate, tangible glory of artificial cherry flavoring.

“The whole popsicle?” Leo asked suspiciously. “You didn’t take a bite out of it?”

“Whole popsicle. Untouched. It’s in the back of the freezer behind the frozen peas,” Valerie promised, holding up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“Fine,” Leo grumbled. He reached out and clicked the mouse. The computer let out a sad, descending beep as the connection severed. “But if Chloe eats it, I’m telling Mom you let her wear your lip gloss.”

“Deal,” Valerie said, already reaching for the wall-mounted kitchen phone.

She lifted the plastic receiver, listened for the steady dial tone, and began to dial Sarah’s number. Outside, the giant oak tree’s leaves rustled in the heavy summer heat, casting long, shifting shadows across the lawn.

“Hey, Sarah?” Valerie said into the receiver, twisting the coiled black telephone cord around her index finger. “Yeah, I finally got him off... No, I had to bribe him with the last cherry popsicle. I know, I’m a martyr. What time is your mom picking us up?”

She leaned against the kitchen wall, listening to Sarah complain about having to watch her toddler cousin all morning. As they talked, Valerie watched Chloe out of the corner of her eye.

Predictably, Chloe hadn’t touched a single Lego brick. Instead, she had collapsed onto the living room rug, her canvas-clad feet propped up on the arm of the floral-print sofa, singing a slightly off-key version of a pop song under her breath. In the kitchen, the freezer door let out a soft shuck as Leo successfully claimed his frozen prize. He marched past Valerie, his tongue already stained a violent, artificial red, holding his dinosaur encyclopedia under one arm like a sacred text.

By two o’clock, the heat outside had reached its peak, turning the asphalt on Elm Street into a shimmering mirage. Sarah’s mom’s Honda Odyssey pulled into the driveway, honking twice. The horn sounded muffled through the thick, humid air.

“Chloe! Leo! Get your shoes on right now, we’re going to the pool!” Valerie yelled, slamming her notebook shut and grabbing three faded, scratchy beach towels from the linen closet.

“I’m not swimming,” Chloe announced, sliding off the couch but keeping her heavy denim jacket firmly on. “Chlorine ruins the structural integrity of my hair.”

“You’re coming anyway because Mom said I can’t leave you here to burn the house down,” Valerie said, throwing a yellow towel directly at Chloe’s head. “And take the jacket off. You’re going to pass out.”

“It’s called fashion, Val. Look it up,” Chloe shot back, though she did compromise by unbuttoning the front as she dragged her feet toward the front door.

The neighborhood pool was a chaotic, loud haven of chlorine, shouting kids, and the smell of cheap sunscreen. Valerie and Sarah managed to snag two plastic lounge chairs near the deep end, immediately laying out their towels to claim their territory.

“Your sister is literally insane,” Sarah whispered, nodding toward the concrete steps of the shallow end.

Valerie looked over and sighed. Chloe was sitting on the very bottom step, the water coming up to her waist. She had stubbornly kept her denim jacket on over her blue one-piece swimsuit, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows so she could keep her yellow Walkman safe from the splashes. She looked like a tiny, disgruntled rockstar who had taken a wrong turn on the way to a concert.

“Just let her be,” Valerie muttered, adjusting her sunglasses. “If I try to force her to take it off, she’ll scream and make a scene, and I don’t have the energy.”

Meanwhile, Leo was in his own world. He spent the entire afternoon wearing a pair of giant, leaky swim goggles, holding his breath to sink straight to the bottom of the middle lane. He was trying to time how long he could stay down using the cheap digital watch Mom had bought him at CVS, entirely ignoring the older kids splashing around him.

At five, Mom’s beige station wagon pulled into the gravel parking lot. Valerie rounded up her sticky, damp siblings, practically dragging Chloe away from a concession stand where she was trying to convince a teenage lifeguard to trade a box of Nerds for her frog patch.

When they piled into the car, the air inside was suffocatingly hot. The vinyl seats burned the backs of Valerie’s thighs through her shorts.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re all alive,” Mom said, turning around in the driver’s seat to look at us. The passenger footwell was packed with plastic pots of fresh petunias from Mrs. Gable’s garden, filling the hot car with a heavy, earthy floral scent. “Valerie, thank you for keeping an eye on them. Chloe, for the love of pete, why are you wearing a jacket in a swimming pool?”

“It’s denim, Mom. It breathes,” Chloe grumbled, leaning her damp forehead against the window glass.

“It looks ridiculous and it’s wet,” Mom said, shaking her head as she shifted the car into drive. “We’re having tuna sandwiches for dinner. I am not turning on the stove in this weather.”

Back home, the evening settled in slowly. The kitchen table was quiet save for the scrape of butter knives against toast. Leo sat with a half-eaten sandwich in one hand, completely ignoring his food to intensely study a stack of shiny Pokémon cards spread across the table.

“If I trade my holographic Machamp to Bobby, he said he’d give me his ancient Mew card,” Leo muttered, squinting at the card’s hit points. “But I think he bent the corner on purpose. Which is basically a crime.”

Chloe was barely listening, instead busy trying to see if she could stick a refrigerator magnet to her lip gloss tube while kicking Valerie’s shin under the table.

“Stop kicking me,” Valerie snapped, shoving Chloe’s foot away with her sneaker.

“I didn’t touch you,” Chloe lied smoothly, smacking her sticky, strawberry-scented lips together. “You’re hallucinating from the heat.”

“Mom, tell her to stop,” Valerie complained.

“Both of you, quiet,” Mom sighed from the sink, rubbing her temples. “If you have energy to fight, you have energy to do the dishes.”

That successfully shut us both up.

By nine o’clock, the crickets outside had set up their usual loud, comforting hum. Valerie lay in her bed, her window propped open with an old paperback book to let in whatever weak breeze Ohio had to offer. She stared up at her ceiling fan spinning in slow, lazy circles, listening to the quiet, familiar rustle of the giant oak tree’s leaves outside. It had been a long, hot, typical Tuesday. Tomorrow would probably be exactly the same.