Empathy No. 012

07/17/02, Diary entry 407

I'm being as nice as I can under these circumstances, but I'm going to pull a niceness muscle if I have to keep this up. Should I complain? No. I mean, I was ready to have some little brat around the house that I'd have to pick up after and babysit for free, or some little pervert sneaking around my room in the evening, but you know what? Most of the time it's like new stepbro isn't here. Honest, he hides in that little room of his all day except when Ellie makes him come out. Sometimes I forget he's here!

Didn't I say before he's like an alien? Wrong. He's a ROBOT. Nothing alive could be like this. For starters, he's too PERFECT. I swear to God he's good at everything, and every day I know him I learn he's good at something else. Wait, no - you know what he's bad at? People. I'm seeing why high school is so rough for him, because he gets so scared if there's two people around him.

Like this morning. We got down and him and his Mom were fixing breakfast (so that's another thing he can do I guess), and when I first saw them it was like he was actually...maybe not happy but relaxed. Then he notices that we're there, and he just FADES. It's like he suddenly realized he was on stage in front of everyone and just couldn't deal with it. And then he just sat there all through breakfast, couldn't have said more than like four words.

Dad said I should be patient, that's he not doing this on purpose. I know that, and he's not really bugging me or anything...Can't he just be less weird? I feel awful saying that, but I'm going to have to hang around him in a few weeks at school, and I'm not looking forward to that.