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"Wake up, buttmunch. It's time to take Mom and Dad to the airport." I dropped down on the corner of my kid brother's mattress, hoping to make his splayed limbs flop for my amusement. I think it's terribly unfair that Jason got all the height in our gene pool, so I try to make it look ridiculous where I can. His face remained stuffed in his pillow, and he bellowed something indecipherable from its center. "Come onnnnnnnn," I stabbed the tips of my fingers into the exposed skin between the hem of his t-shirt and the waistband of his boxers, "we're going to be late if you keep laying there like a slug. I've been knocking on your door for a half an hour."

His right arm swatted at my poking fingers, King Kong trying to get some alone time at the top of the Empire State Building. "Dammit, Kate! Knock it off! I'm getting up already. Jesus." He heaved one shoulder back, tangling his lower half in the sheets and glaring at my from under his shaggy black bangs.

"You sleep in this much every day? Do none of your classes start before noon?" He yawned, stretching both arms out, then tried to sort out the bedclothes and sit up next to me on the side of the bed.

"Not if I can help it, no." Another prodigious yawn and leonine stretch, "but most engineering classes start early. Guess if I wanted to sleep in, I should have majored in English, right?" He elbowed me in the ribs just hard enough to let me know it was payback for poking him before.

"Yeah, because none of my classes ever actually met, per se," I played along with his light mocking of my major. It deserved to be mocked, at the moment. Not being able to get a job with my liberal arts degree was why I was here getting my brother out of bed, why he and I were spending the next three months together house sitting for our parents. "I got all my credit hours from sitting in coffee shops and reading Foucault."

"Why do we have to leave so early, anyway?" He heaved himself off the bed and searched the floor for a pair of shorts, back hunched, arms hanging slack from his shoulders. "The airport's only, like twenty minutes away and their flight doesn't leave for three more hours."

"International flight, doofus. They have to ask them if they're terrorists for a half hour before they can fly to London." Jason pulled on a pair of khaki shorts, squinted in the mirror a moment and opted not to change into a fresh t-shirt. His long, shuffling feet slid into a pair of athletic sandals.

"I wouldn't," I warned.

"What? You criticizing my fashion choices now? Think maybe I should have a pair of cowboy boots? Or bowling shoes?" It was another gentle dig at me. In college, I realized that a rockabilly style suited my taste in music and tattoos and flattered my pear-shaped figure, so I wore a lot of flared skirts, cigarette pants, and yes, cowboy boots. Jason's style, on the other hand, had always been Abercrombie