#super reluctant sibling bonding over having been less than stellar to their parents?

[illtalktoyoureyes-blog]

 Siren and Jake have exhausted all of their options.

They've taken parenting classes, encouraged their children to use 'I' statements to express themselves, and attended four different therapy sessions with four different child psychiatrists of varying degrees of competency, (their last session ends abruptly after Piper flips the sand tray over and demands to see Dr. Melan's medical degree) before it becomes glaringly apparent that all of the family meetings and incentive-based 'positive behavior' charts in the world aren't capable of changing the reality of the situation.

♣

A few years after the late Tuesday afternoon wherein she sits in the living room watching her son punch an adult man in the face on CNN and realizes she may have underestimated the comfort level upon which her children operate re: sharing important things about their lives, Siren writes a book.

Part memoir, part examination of the complexities of modern parenting, the six hundred page collection of essays ranging anywhere from practical advice about delegitimizing the validity of gender roles to deeply humiliating anecdotes about leaving three-year-old Henry on a public bus that traverses the length of downtown Swellview before it's stopped by the transit authority. (Turns out, contacting the transit authority is a long, drawn out process that requires then Vice Mayor Clancy to pause Cat Surgeons mid-operation, drag himself out of the basement of the Mayor's mansion he's finally gotten security clearance to house-sit for while Mayor Willis is saying farewell to her appendix at Swellview General, drive three point four miles to City Hall, and fill out the paper work necessary to request the paper work necessary to contact the transit authority.)  What Don't You Know is at turns; poignant, funny, horrifying, absurd and profound. It becomes a touchstone amongst the 'stay at home' set. A metric of morality in the hands of the kale-pureeing, baby yoga enthusiast, Mommy and Me seminar leaders. A dollop of bizarre escapism for exhausted single parents thankful that their most pressing trials are trying to decide which triple chocolate carrot cake looks the most "homemade" and explaining to strangers that 'Herbert's' tendency to latch onto people's forearms with his teeth is a sign of affection.

It even makes the New York Times best-seller list. Hovers at forty-nine for the three weeks Siren travels the talk show circuit.

♣

Piper's Face Tube channel gains four hundred and twenty-six followers after her mother's first appearance on Say What? With Pepper Jones.

 By the end of the tour  her follower count is up to a personal high of 15k. Despite the fact that they officially broker peace between their empires on stage at the Southern California Face Tube Awards her freshman year and that they've even collaborated on videos since, the knowledge that this count is roughly two thousand higher than Marla Kadowsky's  fills Piper with the type of savage glee specific to triumphing over people stupid enough to underestimate her.

She doesn't pick up the book until she's so bored she isn't even really thinking about what she's doing. Doesn't actually open the thing until the Saturday morning the Wi-Fi goes out. After throwing herself in bed and screaming until she can't anymore, she rolls over and nearly impales herself on the sharp corner of the gross, stupid hardcover.

It's too...she can't really-

She gets to the fifth page.

♣

She doesn't like miss him or anything (gross). Piper can barely stand to look at his ugly ass profile pic  on the rare occasions his stupid phone butt dials her. But for some reason, during Henry's weekly check-in from USC, after her parents are done asking all kinds of dumb questions and saying nauseating Hallmark Movie stuff while failing to hold back their 'I can't believe you came out of me' tears, Piper picks up her father's laptop and announces\yells that she'll be in her room.

Thanks to the angle of Henry's webcam, she has a great view of his 'practically falling apart bookshelf, his weird little action figures, the upper right hand corner of the Galaxy Wars XII poster that's curling off the wall, flapping in the breeze from the fan. The book is next to the keyboard. It takes five minutes of Henry not shutting up about his creepy roommate before she loses her patience and tells him she starts it.

Henry goes quiet. He's silent for so long Piper has time to remember a passive aggressive tweet about "ungrateful redheads" Marla Kadowsky sends out three days before . Well no. The morning that tragic sea witch chooses is the six year anniversary of the day Piper uploads her first Face Tube video, because of course it is. Henry interrupts her (rude) to ask all sorts of stupid questions like "wait, why are we in your room?" and "what are you even talking about?" and then they're just sort of yelling at each other and Piper can't exactly remember why but it feels good to crawl back up into her upper register.

Then Henry says, in his dumb normal voice: "I finished it."

And, well...neither of them really say anything after that.