Sticker on the Seat of Your Pants

I don't know what it is about late-night reading while sipping some decaf and watching my brother play violent video games at the start of July. I just don't know. But it's oddly comforting and homey - part miring oneself in the inconsiquential tales of Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen for the tenth time, part the steamy decaf making me weirdly sleepy, part the sound of artificial machine guns firing away to off-beat background music.
It makes me nostalgic of Christmas, during the break. That's when he and I did that most. He'd sit there for hours before the television screen and battle off on NHL 07 or Medal of Honor, and I'd drift into literature on the couch behind him. Silently keeping each other company. It's a sibling thing.
Just another year to do the sibling thing. Just one. It's his last year at home. He'll be a senior this coming August. I'll be a freshman. Freshwoman. (Whatever.) It'll be sad. He's looking at CCM as his main choice. I hope hope hope pray pray pray he'll get there. I really really really do. After he's gone the house will be empty and quiet and there'll be no more electric guitar jamming, or random and jubilant shouting about hockey, or weird smelly friends of his coming to visit at ungodly hours of time. There'll be no more laughing about quotes from The Princess Bride or watching Wayne's World fifty times or pausing movies at frames when an actor's face looks weird and making crass comments. No more.
I'll have to treat this year very specially so I can correctly spend my last sibling-ish time at home. Of course, we're siblings where ever either of us goes, but it still feels final as... you know. Children. We're not really children, not exactly, but something close.

On a different note, I'm thinking about the way school is going to be next year. Different is the word that comes to mind.
When I was a lot younger differences didn't scare me half as much as they do now. I was flexible and I would work with whatever happened. But not now. To be honest, I get sort of anxious when I think about the way school will be.
Well, I already know I'm going to be somewhat of a freak of nature, because I always have been for my entire life, so that's okay and good. I've got that role down pat, no questions asked, thank you very much.
It's just that I have to be a freak of nature in a different place. At all the other schools and places I've been, it's been all right. I've adapted easily and made lots of friends.
But this is the big cheese, we're talking about, here. What you are in big-bad-public-school high school kind of sticks with you for the rest of your life, even if you do change after time, it'll stay with you like a sticker you sat on that clings to your pants pocket. There's no telling when it'll fall off.
I'll be okay.
But I don't know if I'll be great.