Three Weeks With My Brother by Nicholas Sparks, Micah Sparks Page B

that my brother and I began to cling to whenever misfortune befell us.
    But as much as Dana loved church and praying, it was her fault that we never arrived at Mass on time. Usually we rolled in about ten minutes late, and always after the rest of the congregation was seated. I didn’t mind coming late (as I said, I was frequently bored), but I didn’t like the way everyone would turn to watch us as we tried to find a seat. And in moments like those, I wished my sister would be a little more like my brother and me, at least in one respect.

    Dana, despite her other wonderful qualities, was not a fast mover. When she woke up in the morning, she never got out of bed right away. Instead, she would sit cross-legged on the mattress and simply stare into space, looking dreamy and disoriented. She would stay in that position for twenty minutes—“Waking up” as she described it—and would only then begin getting ready to go. And even then, everything was slow. She ate slowly, she dressed slowly, she brushed her hair slowly. Where our mom could tell Micah and me to get ready and we’d be dressed within minutes, my sister took her time. My brother and I had to walk to school, but more often than not, my mom would have to drive my sister in, so that she wouldn’t be late. It made us crazy at times, but she never let our complaints bother her.
    “People are just different,” Dana used to observe serenely, whenever we’d tease her about it. And my mom never let my sister’s lateness bother her. As she explained it to us, “She just needs a little more time to get ready.”
    “Why?” Micah or I would ask.
    “Because she’s a girl.”
    Oh.
    Still, Dana had the occasional wild impulse. On our one and only cross-country vacation in the summer of 1976, the family loaded into our Volkswagen van—the only car we had from 1974 to 1982—and spent a few weeks traveling around the west. We visited the Painted Desert and Taos, New Mexico, before finally arriving at the Grand Canyon. It was, of course, one of the greatest sights in the world, but as children we didn’t much appreciate it. Instead, on my sister’s suggestion, we decided it would be much more fun to slip behind the viewing ropes and approach the unstable, cordoned-off edge of the canyon while our parents were buying us lunch. There, we discovered a small ledge, maybe three feet down.
    “Let’s go down there,” my sister suggested.
    Micah and I looked at each other, glanced at the ledge, and shrugged. “Okay,” we replied. I mean, why not? How dangerous could it be? It didn’t look too unstable.
    Anyway, we climbed down and sat on the ledge for a few minutes, three little kids with their legs dangling free. Far beneath us, we could see the Colorado River snaking through the canyon and hawks circling below. The differing strata of rock resembled a soft-hued, vertical rainbow. After a while, however, we got bored.
    “Hey,” my sister said, “I have an idea. Let’s pretend we slipped off the edge of the canyon and scare people.”
    Micah and I looked at each other again, impressed. This would normally have been one of our ideas. “Okay,” we answered in unison.
    Now, squatting on the ledge, we raised ourselves slowly and poked our heads and arms over the top of the canyon. No one noticed us at first. Beyond the ropes about thirty feet away, we could see a group of people taking pictures and staring off in different directions, marveling at the natural beauty. When my sister nodded, we suddenly began screaming for help at the top of our lungs.
    Heads immediately whipped in our direction, and people saw what seemed to be three little children clawing for their lives in an attempt to hold on. An older woman swooned, another grabbed at her heart, another clutched at her husband’s arms. No one seemed to know what to do. They continued staring at us with wide, fearful eyes, frozen by shock and horror.
    Finally, one man broke free from the spell he was under, and