My younger brother was 2 years behind me. That was just enough that we were sometimes in the same school, sometimes not, and never had the same interests. His friends didn’t know mine. He was basketball, I was swimming and tennis. He played well in teams; I was a loner, competing only against myself. I got much better grades, he consistently had more luck with girls. He was the stud, even at 18, a tall high school senior dating all the hottest girls. I was a virgin until 20, a drunken community college frat party hook-up.
Because we were so different, we loved each other “like a brother”. We didn’t, couldn’t compete with each other. He was always going to get Cs while I got As. He would always be the better athlete, and the big man with the girls.
High school gets pretty mellow the second half of senior year. All the grades and test scores that will matter are on the record. Senior Spring is basically for fun, and Kendrick had fun. He had female classmates in his bedroom all the time when he and I were the only ones home. Yeah, I was a commuter student at community college, still living with my parents, and he was headed towards a sports scholarship at Ohio State. I’d be home, studying, mid-afternoon when he came home from school. He almost always had a girl.