Chapter One

D'ya Love Me?

You have to love your family. You do, even if you don't, right? You don't have to agree with them or appreciate them or go to concerts with them or even understand them, but you have to love them. It's a rule, and it's the kind of rule you don't break unless you're some kind of animal.

I do love my brother, but I don't know that I would if I were not required to. We're not the same. It can happen in a family. Even though you get all the same genetic stuff, and you get raised in the same setup, you can wind up seeing and feeling things a whole different way from the guy just one bed over. It's kind of crazy, when you think about it, but it's nature's way. The payback, I guess, is that while you have to love your family, your family has to love you too, no matter what.

"Ya? Who says?"

Excerpted from THE BIG GAME OF EVERYTHING © Copyright 2011 by Chris Lynch. Reprinted with permission by HarperTeen