The Slide

Matt could feel the sunburn spreading across his neck. He had hoped that the SPF 70 sunscreen he had purchased and applied (not just once but twice) would help shield his pale skin from the harmful rays, but the warmth his body was emitting told him it had been all for naught. The lack of shade was one of the many things he hated about water parks. He also despised their damp, musty smell, their soundtrack of screams, cries, and whines (coming from both children and adults), and their sprawling, seemingly never-ending lines. And it was in one those horrid lines that Matt currently found himself at the moment, as his younger sister, Samantha, bounced up and down in front of him, pure, blissful excitement painted on her face.

Sam was the reason Matt was here in the first place. Jackie, his stepmom, had asked him if he could get Sam out of the house for the day while Dad packed up the last of his things. Matt initially suggested that he and Sam see a movie or spend the day in the Tyler State Park, but when she told him that she wanted to go on “the big, rubber-ducky slide,” he sighed but accepted that the two of them would be visiting Sesame Place that day instead.

The Sesame Street-inspired theme and water park was a major tourist trap only ten minutes away from their house, a must-see destination for any family with young kids who were tired of sightseeing historical landmarks in Philadelphia. Dad and Jackie had taken Sam there once when she was a toddler to meet and get photos with Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster, and the rest of the gang—it was a much cheaper and closer alternative to Disney World. Recently, though, Sam had become enamored by the water slides and wave pools that she had seen in the Sesame Place commercials on TV. Today was her lucky day.

While Matt couldn’t stand the smells and sounds of Sesame Place, there was something oddly comforting about seeing the Muppets he had watched for years as a kid on television in person. He was reminded of the innocence of those years, of how his biggest concerns were if he and his friends could finish their pick-up baseball games before it got too dark at night, or whether he could find the missing toy lightsaber or blaster for one of his Star Wars action figures. Matt had actually gifted a few of those figures to Sam a couple years ago, and she had given the characters their own names and storylines, as Luke Skywalker became Phillip and Princess Leia was now known as Daisy Moon.

As the line for the rubber-ducky water slide continued to slowly move forward, Sam kept skipping around like a hyperactive wedding guest on the dance floor. She accidentally bumped her head into a tall, blonde woman in a blue one-piece bathing suit, who was right in front of them. The woman stood behind two sandy-haired boys, who couldn’t be older than seven or eight, just a year or two younger than Sam.

“Sam, can we stand still for a little, please?” Matt said, gently grabbing Sam’s shoulder until her feet stopped racing around like pinballs. Then Matt looked at the woman in front of them. “I’m sorry. She’s just really excited for the slide. Been waiting for it all day.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” the woman said. Matt had expected her to be annoyed, but she had a kind face, even though he couldn’t see her eyes underneath her round-framed sunglasses. “My boys having been looking forward to it, too. They’ve been wanting to come to Sesame Place all summer.”

“Same with Sam here,” Matt said, smiling, as he looked down at Sam, who had stopped moving her feet but was now waving her hands around as if she was practicing some kind of martial arts.

“And how old is she?” the woman asked, motioning to Sam. “Your daughter, I mean.”

“Oh, she’s not—I’m not—we’re actually siblings,” Matt said. “I’m her older brother.”

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said. Her sunglasses couldn’t hide the embarrassment on her face, even if her voice made it seem like she wasn’t entirely convinced that Matt was telling the truth. “My mistake. I didn’t mean to offend or anything.”

“It’s fine. Really.” Matt smiled at the woman, who quickly nodded before turning around to face her twin boys.

This wasn’t the first time Matt had been mistaken for Sam’s dad. There was a 12-year age gap between the two of them, and his early onset gray hair and the beard he had grown while in college hadn’t helped matters. Back in high school, Matt was considered short, scrawny, and boyish, with his flabby stomach and chest, long, thin neck, and pipe-cleaner legs; he had always been compared to his much taller, hairier, and more muscular friends, who had looked more like actors playing teenagers than actual teenagers. Now, though, he often found himself doing his best to politely correct well-meaning strangers that he was only 21 and, therefore, not the father of the nine-year-old girl standing in front of them.

Matt had to make that same correction numerous times: in grocery stores, at softball practices, and now at water parks. Sometimes, he struggled not to get lost in the details. He had to stop himself from explaining how Sam and he had the same father but different mothers, who had a seven-year age gap between the two of them (Jackie was the younger of the duo). He bit his tongue instead of discussing how he and Sam rarely lived under the same roof, since Matt mainly spent the nights at his mom’s place before he left for college, and even when he did stay over at their dad’s house, Sam was usually too distracted with her toys or a Disney Channel show she was watching to say hello to him. And he attempted to always clear his throat first before mentioning how, for the first few years of Sam’s life, she hadn’t really realized the two of them were brother and sister because of their age gap, so instead she had called him “Uncle Matty.”

Now that Dad had screwed things up with Jackie just like he had ruined his marriage to Matt’s mom over a decade ago, Matt couldn’t help but wonder. He wondered if the cycle would continue, if history would repeat itself, if in a few years, their father would meet another woman and have another kid, and if Sam would one day have to try to convince all the random people they met that she was not her mom but actually her older sister and that their dad wasn’t a philandering disappointment but just unlucky in love. This thought spiraled throughout Matt’s mind, like one of the water park’s never-ending lines.

The wait for the water slide was quicker than Matt anticipated, and soon enough, he and Sam were the next ones up for the ride. Sam grinned widely and did another little dance as the two of them sat in their rubber-ducky float, and when the Sesame Place worker in charge of the slide called out to her to “Have fun with Dad!” Matt didn’t even bother trying to correct him.