A Study in Charlotte

He looked like someone who played video games with their kids. Who did the dishes without being asked.

People who didn’t even know me suddenly had opinions about me.

He is incapable of eating Indian food without getting red sauce on his clothing; I’ve taken to carrying a bleach pen.

We weren’t Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I was okay with that, I thought. We had things they didn’t, too. Like electricity, and refrigerators. And Mario Kart.

It was as if August Moriarty had simply stopped existing. Frozen in time as a wonder boy, working on the intricate mathematical patterns in the Arctic Circle, his thick blond Disney hair blowing in the frigid wind.

I said a silent prayer to the saint of deranged best friends’ deranged older brothers.

I’d been thrilled. Birthday, snow day, Christmas Day thrilled.

“Jamie. Number fifteen: if you wait for full disclosure from a Holmes, it might be years before you learn a damn thing.”

The lights winked at me; they liked the secrets I told them.

When I caught her taking twenty minutes to eat a single almond, I began wondering if there was some kind of Watsonian guide for the care and keeping of Holmeses.