No one ever talks about what your older sibling going away to college really means. I didn't even realize it was anywhere near the realm of possiblity until earlier this year. For my family, it had always been Gus + Ruth: I was the smart, bookish one who got good grades and planned for the future, and he was the impulsive, at times antagonistic, athletic kid with a soft side. Our family dynamic is an odd one - in many ways, it seems like I am the oldest (as I usually appear as such to the unfamiliar eye) and he the yooungest, despite the surprising reverse in birth order. And my obsession to appear more mature than he could stem from a lot of things: feeling responsible for Gus whenver he would get in trouble in grade school and junior high (many afternoons were spent crying in my room, half listening to the shouts and yells coming from my dad and mom, always directed at Gus for whatever stunt he pulled that day), or finding comfort in my future that I couldn't find anywhere else, or feeling a dire need to make my own name for myself, away from the restrains of my family. A selfish layer of me, buried deep beneath asking my brother if he's considered starting SAT prep this year thinks perhaps he could take a gap year, or go to a college in the city and live at home. Obviously, it's unfair for me to think of this as a solution to ease my family's wounds, but another part of me thinks that it's also unfair of him, to leave me, so abrupbtly. After all, you really have no idea of what your life will be like once half of you leaves. The defining factor has left the equation; it defines you no more. You can only imagine what your life will be like. A little less colorful, with a little more gray. Diluted, watered down. Less shouts of anger and less bouts of joy. For so long, I was a successor, he a predecessor. People referred to me as "Gus's younger sister" or half of the Gus + Ruth duo. And who will I be once part of me departs? The thing is, no will know my unique dynamic with my brother or my family. And no one will know how it changes. For once, it's something I must discover myself - alone. Without the convenient tracks in the snow Gus usually planted for me. It's wholly mine, it's my first lone road that I take in what I hope becomes a life full of them. And that's why it's so scary. It is the epitome of all the youngest sibling's fears.