If he were a nice brother, the kind who asked her questions about her life, he might know about Gabe Thrush and her stupid friends and how she was never, ever going to have sex with anyone in her entire life because of boys like him, but he didn’t know anything at all. If he were a nice brother, and less pathetic, she would have told him all about their parents and how the whole world was ending and no one seemed to care. A lightbulb went on over Sylvia’s head. “You do this all the time, don’t you?”

Bobby couldn’t resist smirking with pride.

Sylvia could no longer contain her rage, and began to pummel her brother in the stomach. The other girls on line for the bathroom shrank back against the wall, getting themselves as far out of arm-swinging range as possible. Those who were merely keeping their friends company but didn’t really have to go fled back onto the dance floor. No one stepped in to rescue Bobby, possibly because Sylvia’s punches were cartoonishly amateur and didn’t seem to be wounding him in the slightest. After a little while, she stopped. “My knuckles hurt, you asshole.”

“Let’s go,” Bobby said, and this time Sylvia slumped after him, furious and still having to pee so badly, but ready to not have so many people staring at her. They wound their way through the club—even more packed now—careful to avoid Isabel and her friends, who had yet to relinquish their corner of the dance floor. They’d made it all the way to the front door before someone stepped in front of them, purposefully halting their progress. Sylvia closed her eyes, sure that it was going to be the Spanish police, arresting her for assaulting her brother in a public place.

“Ciao, you found it!” Joan kissed her on both cheeks and clapped Bobby on the shoulder. “It’s a good place, yes?”

Sylvia smoothed out her shirt, which she had only recently realized was in fact so small and tight that you could see the indent of her belly button, which was almost as bad as being able to see her nipples. Could he see her nipples? Sylvia’s cheeks burned. He had kissed her. His face, his mouth, had been right next to hers. Her stomach lurched as it had when driving down from Pigpen, the small car flying around wet corners, dangerous and fast.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” Sylvia managed.

“Hey, we were just on our way out, man, but we’ll see you,” Bobby said. “Ready, Syl?”

Joan stood there expectantly. She couldn’t figure out a way to ask him for a ride home, or tell him how badly she had to pee, or to say that her brother was an asshole, and she’d only just realized it, so Sylvia leaned in close and whispered to him in Spanish, I wish I could stay. She tried to look wistful, the kind of face that a French actress would make before stepping onto a train, never to be seen again, and then walked out of the club as quickly, scissoring her legs together so hard that she was sure the denim would wear out.

Sylvia held it until they got to the car, a few blocks away, and then unzipped her pants and dropped into a squat in between cars. Her pee was warm and splashed against the cobblestones, running in a ragged stream down the sloped street. Sylvia would have cared, but it felt too good. She thought about Joan coming after her, like someone in a romantic comedy, and finding her with her jeans pulled taut against her thighs and her bare butt wedged between two bumpers. Bobby was already in the driver’s seat, waiting. He could wait.

Men were terrible, that was the truth. Men would do anything, say anything, just to get a girl to take her clothes off. They were liars and cheaters and awful people, all of them. She’d always thought of her brother as an older version of herself, a test batch of genetic material, but lately she wasn’t sure. Maybe there was something else that came with having a penis, a partial moral blindness located in a secret chamber of the heart. It made her feel like there were bugs crawling all over her, like someone was standing too close behind her and breathing heavily. Bobby’s behavior was disgusting, even as identified by someone currently urinating on a public street. Her sordid behavior was out of necessity, like when you’d see mothers letting their little boys pee against trees in Central Park. They didn’t think they were watering the plants, they were avoiding carrying around a piss-soaked child for the rest of the day! Sylvia had made a decision. Bobby had done no such thing. He had let himself slip and slip and slip. He didn’t even feel guilty! At least their father seemed to realize that he’d done something wrong. She shook off, relieved and empty, and stood up, careful to step out of the puddle.

A group of women rounded the corner, headed to Blu Nite or another place like it, and Sylvia watched as they teetered along together, speaking Spanish quickly and tossing their long, dark hair over their shoulders. European women had it so much easier. All they had to do was open their mouths, and they sounded smart and sophisticated, and they always had small hips and big boobs, like sex robots made in a laboratory. Sylvia looked down at the ground as they passed. Joan’s sort-of girlfriend probably looked like that, like someone who could unself-consciously meet strangers while wearing only a bikini. Sylvia hoped they couldn’t smell her pee.

After they’d passed, Sylvia hurried the long way around the car and folded herself into the passenger seat. Bobby was holding his head in his hands, pitched forward so that his moppish hair was dangling over the steering wheel.

“You’re not going to tell her, are you?” He spoke without moving.

Sylvia fastened her seat belt. “I don’t know yet.” She could hardly keep track of what secrets she was keeping for whom.

This made Bobby shoot up straight. “No, Syl, you can’t!” His breath was boozy, and his eyes were red. Sylvia had never seen her brother like this. He was always so composed, like their father, even-keeled and amiable. She didn’t know what to make of him in this new state, cracking like a discarded Easter egg. “Please,” he said.

“I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, and turned the key in the ignition. He wasn’t good at driving the stick shift, either, and they stalled four times on the way to the highway, each time making Bobby slouch lower and lower in his seat, as though the accumulated humiliations were physically hurting him. It took an hour to get home, and when they pulled into the driveway, Bobby put out his arm, preventing Sylvia from getting out. “Wait.”

“What?” Sylvia was glad to have gotten home alive, and was dreaming of her bed, maybe checking Facebook to see if she needed to hate anyone more than she already did. The Internet was excellent for confirming one’s worst fears about the human race.

“I’m really sorry you had to see that.” Bobby paused. “I mean, I’m really sorry you had to see that side of me. When I see you guys, I like to pretend that part of me doesn’t exist, you know, like it stays in Florida. Shit, I don’t know.”

There was a light in Sylvia’s bedroom window, which she’d left on by mistake. Otherwise the house seemed quiet; everyone had likely retreated to their own corners for the night. Sylvia felt sorry for Bobby, that he’d have to crawl into bed with Carmen, his guilt coming off him in stinky waves like a cartoon skunk. But not so sorry that she would sit in the car with him and wait it out. It wasn’t her job to make him feel better.

“Sucks for you,” Sylvia said, opening the door. “But it sucks even more for her. Or, actually, you know what? It sucks more for you. Because she could get a new boyfriend. But you can’t change the fact that you’re an asshole. I love you, Bobby, because you’re my brother, but I honestly don’t like you very much right now.” And with that, she slammed the door and huffed inside, not waiting for him to move or even respond. He wasn’t her problem.