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August 1959
It is Thursday, and Emmett’s mother has made a cake with chocolate frosting and ten striped candles. His father hung crepe paper in red and blue across the living room ceiling, with a big banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMETT! drooping a little in the middle. He doesn’t mind the lopsided decorations or the imperfect cake, and doesn’t even mind that Julie from school said no to coming to his party today. What he minds is Dale.
Dale is five. He barely speaks except to repeat things he’s heard – snippets of radio jingles, sentences from the comic books Emmett reads to him, and the occasional word like ‘train’ or ‘blue.’ Sometimes he sits for hours, pressing his hands over his ears, humming tunelessly, or clapping at nothing. Other times he screams for no reason that Emmett can figure out. Loud, sudden screams that make the neighbors twitch their curtains.
Today, he’s wearing Emmett’s birthday hat. Emmett’s only one.
“Mom,” Emmett groans, watching as Dale spins circles in the living room, the polka dot hat askew on his head. “That’s mine.”
“He just wants to play,” Mom says gently. “Let him enjoy it for a minute.”
“But it’s my birthday.”
“Don’t start, please.”
Mom sounds tired today, like she didn’t get enough sleep, or slept badly. Emmett bites his tongue, not wanting to upset her, but every time Dale does something strange – like scream when the blender turns on, or knock over the salt shaker because it’s ‘too loud’ – his parents defend him. Emmett doesn’t understand. Dad calls it ‘being sensitive,’ or ‘having trouble with things,’ or sometimes, ‘just Dale being Dale.’
But no one explains what that means. Emmett sometimes looks after the neighbor kids, Bradley and Marie, and they don’t act like that. Other kids Dale’s age don’t behave that way.
At his party, a few kids from the neighborhood show up. They play marbles in the yard and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Emmett opens a new slingshot from Marcus, a set of Lincoln Logs from Mabel, and a used Hardy Boys book from his parents. He smiles, but it feels small.
And then, when he’s about to blow out his birthday candles, Dale encroaches on his space, eyes large and bright and reflecting the flickering flames. Emmett tries to sit him in his lap to get him to hold still, and instead, in his excitement, Dale knocks over the entire cake.
It was an accident. Too close, too excited by the fire, maybe. But his hands are fast, and before anyone can stop him, the cake wobbles, trips on the edge of the table, and lands frosting-first on the linoleum floor.
The surrounding kids all give a chorus of disappointed groans, and Emmett grabs Dale’s wrist before he can reach down for the cake on the floor.
“What did you do!” he shouts, and Dale starts yelling.
“Hot!” Dale cries. “No! Fire fire fire fire!” He wrenches his arm free and backs into a corner, slapping his ears.
Mom immediately goes to him, dropping to her knees on the kitchen floor and pulling Dale into her arms.
Emmett stares at the ruined cake, his heart pounding. Everyone else stares too. Someone says, Come on, man , and he hears one of the girls complain about the noise. Otherwise, the room is dead quiet, except for Dale’s sobs and the sound of frosting plopping to the floor from the edge of the table.
Emmett snaps.
“I hate him!” he yells. “Why does he have to ruin everything? He’s always doing weird things and taking stuff that isn’t his! It’s like he’s not even a real kid!”
His voice echoes, too loud. His mother turns from wiping Dale’s tears. Her face has gone pale and hard.
“Emmett Cooper,” she says sharply. “You stop that right now.”
“But–!”
“No. We will not speak that way in this house.” There is no room for argument in her voice, but there’s also no anger. Disappointment, maybe. Emmett thinks that’s worse. “Your brother is doing the best he can.”
Emmett looks at Dale, crumpled on the floor, hands still covering his ears, hiccupping now in exhaustion. A smear of frosting is on his elbow.
Something clenches in Emmett’s chest. Guilt, maybe.
“He always gets all the attention,” Emmett mumbles.
“That’s not true,” Dad says, kneeling beside him. “Today was supposed to be about you. We tried.”
Emmett nods, but his face is hot, shame burning in his chest.
Somehow, he gets through the rest of the day almost normally. Mom picks up ice cream from the grocery and Dad makes fudge brownies that are burnt slightly at the edges. Emmett plays tag outside with his friends, and hide-and-go-seek, and then just before dark, the guests all go home. The ruined cake has been scraped off the floor.
Emmett sits on the back porch. The stars are starting to come out, blinking dimly in the evening dusk. The sky goes from blue to a very dark orange.
The screen door creaks. Soft footsteps.
Dale sits beside Emmett without saying anything. After a minute, he holds out the birthday hat – now crumpled, the elastic snapped.
“Hat,” he says simply.
Emmett takes it, turns the wrinkled material over in his hands. He wants to keep being angry, but he finds he can’t anymore.
“Thanks.”
Dale rocks gently, back and forth.
Then, almost too quiet to hear, he whispers, “Happy birthday, Emmett.”
Emmett blinks. That’s new. Dale almost never uses complete sentences.
He looks at his little brother, really looks at him, for the first time in ages. This time, he can see past the noises, the strange behavior, the accidents. Dale is just a little kid, his hair cut by Mom’s kitchen scissors because the barber is too overwhelming, wearing a checkered shirt that matches Dad’s. His hair is coal-black like Mom’s (like Emmett’s). His eyes are hazel like Dad’s (like Emmett’s). He’s pretty sure that when they both grow up, they’ll have the same jawline, too.
“Thanks,” he says again, softer.
They sit together for a little while longer, listening to the crickets.
October 1963
The leaves turned late this year – reds like rust, yellows like brittle paper. It’s the kind of fall where everything smells faintly like smoke and damp earth. Emmett sits at the dining room table, tapping a pencil against a spiral notebook.
Across from him, Dale is hunched over a sheet of math problems, his pencil gripped tightly (and incorrectly, but Mom told him not to worry about that), his face still and unreadable.
“Okay,” Emmett says, pushing his own homework aside. “Number four. It’s division with remainders. You want me to walk you through it?”
Dale doesn’t look up. “No. I can do it.”
“You’ve been staring at it for ten minutes.”
“I was thinking,” Dale says simply. He does look up now, and meets Emmett’s eyes like he expects Emmett to keep talking. The eye contact lasts an uncomfortable amount of time, and so Emmett is the one to look away. He leans back in his chair and watches his brother work.
Dale is nine now, and things have shifted over the past four years. He doesn’t scream anymore really, or cry nearly as much. He still speaks strangely – too formal, like he’s swallowed a dictionary – and doesn’t always answer when someone calls his name, but he can hold a conversation, if he’s in the right mood. And he can read. He can read fast .
Emmett once caught him flipping through an old encyclopedia set in the attic, mumbling the entries out loud to no one in a robotic monotone. He thought Dale was just playing. Then Dale started referencing things no one had ever taught him – words like “isotope” and “fjord” and “tectonic plate.”
At school, Emmett hears whispers.
Is he dumb, or just weird?
Your brother talks like a Martian.
He eats lunch by himself, right?
Emmett usually walks away before he can get angry. Before he can give into the temptation to throw a punch that will only make Mom disappointed in him, even if he knows Dad would secretly approve. Mom says they don’t believe in violence. Hell, his parents never even spanked either of them. Emmett thinks some people deserve a strong right hook if they wanna learn how to act right.
Now, Dale finishes the problem, sets his pencil down, and slides the paper across the table.
Emmett picks it up and scans the answers. “These are all right.”
“I know.”
“You don’t need my help.”
“No,” Dale agrees.
“Then why did Mom ask me to tutor you?”
Dale shrugs. “She thinks you want to help me.”
Emmett doesn’t respond right away. Outside, a breeze rattles the windowpane. The smell of burning leaves drifts in through the screen.
“I don’t get you, Dale,” Emmett says quietly.
Dale blinks. His eyes are big, and he always looks at him with an intensity that’s uncomfortable, like he’s looking for answers to an unspoken question. “Because I’m not normal.”
Emmett flinches. “I didn’t say that.”
“You think it.” There’s no bitterness in Dale’s voice. No accusation. Just fact. “It’s all right. Lots of people think it.”
This isn’t how he wanted this to go. He’s supposed to be the big brother, step in and help where needed, and Dale is supposed to look up to him, want to be like him. Instead, he finds himself stumbling in his brother’s shadow despite the gap between them.
“You’re like… like a robot sometimes,” Emmett mutters. “But then sometimes you say stuff like that and I don’t know what to do with it.”
Dale looks down at his hands, fidgeting with the edge of the tablecloth. “I don’t always understand other people. I want to. And people think I’m strange; I hear them say so, when they think I’m not listening. But I always try to understand you most of all.”
Emmett doesn’t know how to answer that. A few years ago, the very idea of Dale trying to understand him would have seemed ridiculous.
Dale continues, “I remember your tenth birthday. When I dropped the cake. You were cross with me.”
“Yeah.” Emmett’s voice is low. “You remember that?”
“Yes. I remember the noise. Your face. And afterward, you were quiet with me for a long time.”
Emmett’s stomach twists. “I was just a kid.”
“You still are.”
That makes Emmett laugh despite himself. “Thanks.”
Dale smiles, a crooked thing that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it’s genuine all the same.
“I want to be your brother,” Dale says after a moment.
“You are my brother, you dummy.”
“But I want to be one that you… like .”
That knocks the air out of him. It isn’t just the words; it’s how hard it must have been for Dale to string them together, to say them aloud like that. He’s always struggled with having bigger feelings than most people, and up until just a few years ago, not having the words to name those feelings, to share them at all.
Emmett looks at him.
Same dark hair, though now swept back, more carefully trimmed. Same eyes. Same stubborn jawline.
“I don’t always understand you either,” Emmett admits. “But I don’t hate you. And I don’t think you’re broken or anything.”
It seems to unlock something, though Emmett couldn’t name it if he tried. The tension in Dale’s shoulders slowly comes undone.
“I had a dream last night,” Dale whispers. “You were an adult, walking away from me, further and further, until you stopped being able to hear me when I shouted your name. And then you disappeared into the snow, into the trees. I knew I would never see you again.”
His voice wavers, and those big, intense eyes sparkle with tears. Emmett doesn’t know if any response is necessary, but he hates to see his brother cry, despite their differences.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers back. A cold comfort.
Dale doesn’t reply. He looks at him for a long time, something in his face that Emmett knows he’ll never understand fully. He isn’t even sure if he wants to. Then he just nods and goes back to his math sheet.
They sit in silence for a while, but it isn’t stiff or sharp. It’s fragile, soft. Real. As the sky outside turns gray with incoming rain, Emmett reaches across the table and takes Dale’s paper, flipping to the next page.
“Let’s do the next one together,” he says.
Dale glances up, and nods.
“Okay.”