Baseball might be the worst sport ever invented. I mean any sport where the majority of the players spend the majority of their time just standing or worse sitting seems pretty stupid to me. Not to mention the second degree burns I'm getting sitting on these bleachers watching this dumb game. My dad on the other hand is totally into it.

"Come on Tigers! You can do it!" He cheers loudly and looks at me with this maniacal grin. I just roll my eyes at him. I came to this game, yes, but there is no force of pep on this earth strong enough to convince me to start cheering.

"Come on Lydia, get into it!" Kirsten nudges my arm. No, not even Kirsten. "Look! Graham's up!" She tugs my sleeve and points towards the field. I have no idea how she can even tell it's Graham, you know, with that whole uniform thing? But there's some guy who looks about Graham's height knocking dirt off his shoes with his bat and taking a few warm- up swings.

"Woo hoo?" I suggest.

Kirsten smile dims a little, "Are you not having fun sweetheart?" As far as step moms go, Kirsten totally doesn't suck. She's totally nice and not super strict or anything, maybe a little girly and little over- smiley, but overall not that bad. And she makes my dad happy. So that's cool, I guess. There's just one slight problem.

"No, this is great." I lie to her.

"Good, I really think Graham really appreciates having the whole family here to support him." I don't have the heart to tell her that Graham likely feels no such thing. In fact, he's probably slightly concerned that someone might realize that we're "together" and well that would just not be good.

But yeah, the whole :family's" here. Mom. Dad. Two kids. Perfect, right? Except Kirsten isn't my mom and Graham, who, if you didn't guess it from the glowey- woman with the motherly pride is her son. And now we all live together. If we each had two more siblings it'd be just like Brady Bunch. Except I'm pretty sure the two oldest didn't spend their days in school pretending not to know one another. Which is exactly how Graham and I do it, and prefer it.

Graham's up at bat, my father grabs Kirsten's hand and I watch them clench against one another. They've been married for almost two years but they're still worse than two teenagers in rutting season. Actually I don't think teenagers have a season, they're just always horny. Speaking of seasons, thank god this is the last baseball game of the season. Well, for me at least. Graham's going off to some "baseball" camp for three weeks this summer. At least I don't have to go to his games as I will have absconded with Dad and Kirsten to Dad's cabin in upstate NY. No cable. Cell phones barely work. I'm half- dreading it and half super psyched about it. I've been going up there every year since I was a kid and there's lots of other kids my age around who only get to see during the summer. And there's a place that makes home made ice cream. And a huge lake and-

I get interrupted by a loud cheer. I watch as two players in the outfield charge after a small white object making a bee line for the fence at the far side of the field. Graham is pumping his arms into the air the crowd is cheering loudly. Kirsten and my Dad are on their feet stomping and cheering- okay, now my dad is putting my fingers in his mouth and whistling. I realize I'm the only one still sitting on the bench.

*****************************************

"Wow Graham, that was some game today." I gush as he finally saunters out of the locker room and climbs in next to me in the back seat of my dad's BMW. At least he bothered to rinse so he doesn't reek of dirt and sweat. His blond hair is sticking up in wet spikes all over his head.

"Did you even watch it?" He asks sarcastically. Not that he cares if I did or not.

"Uh, you scored a goal or something."

"I scored a run- actually, two. One was an RBI-"

"Graham, do us both a favor? Help save the earth's ozone- don't waste any more oxygen."

He rolls his eyes at me but doesn't give me the lecture. It doesn't matter, my dad and him will go through a play-by-play of the entire game at dinner. I swear, my dad never watched sports before in his life, until Graham came around. Now I dread football and basketball season, because they always commandeer the big- screen course, we didn't even have one of those before Graham convinced my father that watching sports was pointless unless you had HD and 42" on which to watch them.

Okay, I'll admit. The big shiny screen is totally mesmerizing.

"Kids ready to go?" My dad turns around in the front seat.

"I'm starving," Graham grins his most charming- smile. Always the perfect golden child.

We head to our "favorite" Mexican place. Actually, Graham and I just insist its out favorite Mexican place because it's three towns over and we don't have to worry about running into anyone we know and how awkward that would be. We also have a "favorite" Italian place four towns over.

As the car pulls away from the curb my cell phone beeps with a text message from my best friend Allison.

Allison: Last party of the season tonight! U R GOING!

Graham cranes his neck to look over my shoulder to read my screen but I just hold it up for him to see. "Party tonight?"

"Oh yeah," Graham shrugs. "Are you going?"

"Apparently," I roll my eyes. "You're going right?"

He shrugs, "Yeah, probably." Like Graham would ever miss a party. Oddly enough, I know he likes them probably only slightly more than I do, but being a star- athlete at our school and all, he's attendance is pretty much mandatory. No one, except my best friend, Allison, would ever miss me if I wasn't there.

"There's a party?" Kirsten twists backwards to look at us.

"Yeah," Graham nods. Kirsten is totally cool about us going to parties, as long as we don't drink and drive or get in the car with someone who has been, she's fine with it. I know I'll be getting a ride with Allison (I'll be DD on the way home and she'll sleep over tonight.) Graham will probably sleep there. Not that he'll be drinking... More that he'll be occupying a bedroom with one of the popular girls from our school.

Wanna know how good Graham and I are at keeping our distance in public (and even at home)? Allison has no idea that Hillside's All-Star Super Athlete Golden Boy is my step- brother.

At this point, I don't want to even tell her, because I think she'll just be mad I didn't tell her sooner.