by Vera Hollins
I gripped my pencil so hard I was sure it would break in two. I was almost ready to stab him with it, but then Steven’s voice penetrated through my fog of rage. “You’re like a ticking time bomb. Always so explosive. Hateful, judgmental, aggressive bitch.”
My hand released the pencil. I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest, blind to everything as my thoughts raced.
“Just like you, I’m owned by my self-destructive path,” Steven had said, the defeat in his eyes matching that in my heart.
Yes, I was owned by it. I was owned by hate and bitterness, and the worst part was that I was completely okay with it. I knew how destructive it was, yet I’d allowed it to grow and take control of my life.
Ever since the night that changed my life, I’d been in this loop of hate and aggression that helped me stay alive. It was either that or break apart, and I’d had no intention of letting that monster win. I wasn’t going to be his or anyone’s victim. So, I’d paid the price and toughened up, refusing to be prey a day longer.
So what if everyone saw me as crazy and bitter? So what if I didn’t have friends because I had a sharp tongue and always spoke my mind? So what if I had to hit an asshole or two if I couldn’t reason with them? Everything was better than being that little, cheerful girl who had given her trust too easily—who had given it to someone who betrayed it in the cruelest way possible.
But this wasn’t only about me anymore. I’d lost my brother because of this. And now? Now I didn’t know what the hell I should do.
I was so deep in my thoughts I hadn’t noticed Masen watching me quietly. I winced when I met his gaze, horrified at what he might’ve seen on my face. I put on my mask immediately, but it was too late, because I saw it in his eyes. He’d already seen too much.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and my eyes widened. I’d definitely entered a new reality because he’d never apologized before, and I was almost tempted to make him repeat his words just to make sure I’d heard right. “As I said, I don’t want to fight with you. You’re going through a lot at the moment, so let’s just . . . chill. Okay?”
Confusion sealed my mouth shut. Seeing that I wasn’t going to respond to him, he turned to face forward. The teacher entered the classroom, and all conversations ceased, but I hardly paid any attention to her, staring at the back of Masen’s head while pondering what kind of scheme he was trying to pull this time.
Mateo had been sending me funny animal pictures the whole morning, which was much appreciated, seeing as everyone else was treating me as if I could break apart at any moment. It was annoying. I didn’t need my friends to treat me any differently, but it seemed they had all reached a mutual agreement to do so, and no matter how many times I told them to stop pampering me, they wouldn’t have it. Even Mrs. Aguda had asked me if I wanted to take a break from Student Code, as if I were incapable of dealing with my tasks now that I was grieving.
Quite the contrary. I needed to do anything I could to get my mind off Steven. So, when Mateo texted me saying he had something for me and was waiting for me in front of the school, I almost got excited like a little kid. He was leaning against his car, his smile soft as I approached him.
“I didn’t know you missed me so much.” I winked at him. “You should’ve told me earlier you were dying of eternal love for me. Aww, your poor, poor heart.”
He smiled, but there was a hint of sadness to it. “This is maybe the worst time to give you a gift, but here.” He reached inside his car and pulled out a package wrapped in a gold decorative paper. “Belated happy birthday.”
I looked at the gift he handed me, tiny needles pricking my throat. I wasn’t used to receiving gifts, and especially not at a moment like this. Slowly, I unwrapped the paper to reveal The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I stared at it, speechless. I’d read all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, but I’d never gotten to read The Hobbit.
My face must’ve shown how I felt, because he was quick to say, “Look, it’s just a small gift, no biggie. You’ve been talking a lot about how you wanted to buy it, so I decided to get it for you.” He shrugged his shoulders.
I inhaled deeply through my nose as I met his gaze, calling a grin to my face. “Aww, so you do love me profoundly and eternally.” I slapped his shoulder with the book, winking at him. “I promise I won’t say a word about it to anyone.”
He didn’t push it, already recognizing my boundaries, but I knew he was aware of how much his gesture meant to me.
Since I needed to get to Eli’s house, I couldn’t stay longer with Mateo, but I thanked him and promised to take him out sometime soon. I needed any distraction I could get.
The visit to Eli was supposed to provide me with a few hours of that much-needed distraction, but as I stopped in the doorway of his room with my grin already fixed on my face, the thoughts of Steven returned in full force when Eli said, “I’m sorry about your brother.”
I swallowed hard. I wanted to tell him it was all right, but the words didn’t want to come out. My eyes went to the photos on Eli’s shelf—specifically the ones with him and Masen together—and my throat tightened, preventing me from taking in the air I needed.
My legs carried me to those photos before I was even aware of what I was doing, my chest hurting so badly at the smiles and expressions of mutual love on their faces. I imagined me and Steven in them at the age when we’d been inseparable, and my chest split open.
In one of the photos, Masen smiled as he pushed Eli on a swing, but I wasn’t seeing him. Instead, I saw Steven stepping away from the swing each time he was supposed to push me and laughing at me when I started calling him names for ruining my fun.
I closed my eyes to stop the images from pouring into my mind, but they were relentless, folding out behind my closed lids in an endless wave. These had been happy memories, but now shards of grief cut each memory to ribbons, leaving behind only regret. So much regret.
“Mel, are you okay?” Eli’s question came from behind me like the lash of a whip.
I struggled to breathe, trembling. My lips quivered with a forced grin as I turned around. “Yep. I’m just really thirsty. Like a cactus without water for a year!” I chuckled, but damn, it sounded so fake. “I’ll just go and get some water . . .”
I didn’t wait for his answer. I dropped my backpack on the chair and rushed to the kitchen, but I didn’t stop there; I headed for the back door. I darted out to the back porch, gulping for air.
I was losing it. I was seriously losing it.
I raced off the porch to the backyard, pushing my fist into my mouth to stifle a scream. I bent over and screamed, biting into my fist too damn hard.
Everything hurt. Every breath without him hurt. It was unbearable living in a world where he didn’t exist. I didn’t want to go home and not see his annoying face. I didn’t want to go to sleep knowing he wouldn’t be there to play some EDM shit turned all the way up directly into my ear to wake me up. I didn’t want to turn around with no chance of ever spotting him again.
I wasn’t okay. I couldn’t be okay even in a million years. And I was tired of staying strong and keeping a smile on my face. My world was falling apart. I didn’t have answers anymore. I was lost. So lost.
Steven, you fucking idiot.
A tear escaped my eye, and I shuddered, brushing it away immediately.
Cigarette smoke tickled my nose, and I inhaled a sharp breath. I spun around and spotted Masen sitting in a chair on the porch with his half-smoked cigarette in his hand. He was silently watching me. My heart jumped in my chest. He took a long drag of the cigarette and blew the smoke high in the air, never taking his gaze off of me.
“All this time, I thought you didn’t have any tear ducts,” he said, no inflection in his voice. “You’ve always seemed incapable of feeling any emotion other than anger, but you’re proving me wrong.”
This asshole was asking for it. He didn’t want to fight with me anymore, my ass.
I marched toward the porch with m
y fists clenched. “And you’re incapable of being anything but an asshole.”
He smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “There it is again. The same old anger.”
“Shut up.”
He took another drag of his cigarette and let the smoke out through his nose. “Anger is good. It’s better than pain, which you’ve been suppressing all this time, but you can only suppress it for so long. There will always come the day when it will burst out and consume you.”
My nostrils flared. “And how would you know that? You’re just a spoiled kid.”
His smirk turned into a crooked grin, but even then, his eyes reflected sadness I couldn’t understand. “That’s right. I’m a spoiled kid because living with a single father and quadriplegic brother in a shit-ass low-income house is a recipe for being spoiled.” He clapped. “You have an extraordinary talent for perceiving people so well.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Steven’s words returned once more. “Wow, sis. I bow to you. You’re the queen of deductions.”
Fresh pain hit my gut.
“You’re this hateful, judgmental, aggressive bitch who keeps barking and never stops to think how badly she can hurt someone. Always so explosive.”
Judgmental, judgmental, judgmental. Once, Steven had told me how I never stopped—not even for a second—to think that maybe I wasn’t 100% right, and my only response to him had been that I was always right. He’d just snorted and dropped the subject, and I’d never thought about it again, but now, a seed of doubt spread through my mind, reminding me of all my mistakes and misconceptions. Maybe I wasn’t always right. Maybe I couldn’t read people as well as I’d thought I could.
The scars on his back. The sadness in his eyes. The way he fought to protect his brother. The short glimpse of humanity on his face after I’d cried my heart out as he’d held me. The strong arms that had wrapped around me to provide support.
I clamped my mouth shut and rushed into the house, battling with so many conflicting feelings and thoughts.
Masen was a bad person. There was no mistaking it. He may have the capacity to care—like caring for his family—and he may be doing whatever he could to provide for them, but that didn’t change the fact that he had a rotten personality. He was a man whore and a bully. He was an arrogant and conceited asshole, and I couldn’t stand the sight of him. Even if he had a few redeeming qualities, they didn’t take away from the fact that society would be better off without him.
Or is it? a voice deep inside me asked. Who are you to judge when you can be as rotten as he is? What makes you different from him?
My trauma. That was an easy answer. I was made this way. He . . . he was born that way.
And how the hell do you know that? Does it even matter when nothing justifies abusive behavior?
Judgmental, judgmental, judgmental.
I stopped in front of Eli’s room and pressed my fingers against my temples, willing that voice away. This was stupid. Was I seriously arguing with myself over whether Masen was good or not? It didn’t matter. He had nothing to do with me, so I shouldn’t waste a second more of my time on him.
Pushing away all these thoughts and doubts, I copped a huge smile and entered Eli’s room. “So, General Fabulous, what fabulous thing are we going to do today?”
He didn’t smile, his brows furrowed together. “You don’t have to hide your real emotions in front of me,” he muttered, looking anywhere but at me.
I stretched my smile even wider. “I’m not!”
He met my gaze. He blushed, but he didn’t look away. “You are. And it’s okay. You can be sad. You have the right to be sad.” He looked at his hands on his lap, sadness giving his eyes a dark shade of blue. “I know I would be if Mace died.” He swallowed hard. “I would cry like a baby.”
I bit into my trembling lip, pursing my lips together. My heart beat too fast, everything in me crumbling piece by piece, but I still fought against it. I still couldn’t let it show.
I jumped down into the beanbag chair and flashed another smile at him. “And how do you know I’m sad? Do you have some super powers I haven’t heard of, General Fabulous? Don’t you know that awesome people like me are never sad?”
He didn’t buy this at all. “I can recognize you’re sad because Mace does it, too. He always shows the happiest version of himself in front of me, like I don’t know he’s stressed out, especially when our bills are due. I see it when he thinks nobody is watching him. I see his pain every time, and it hurts because he won’t bother asking anyone for help. He wants to shield me from pain, but I don’t want him to treat me like a baby. I want him to treat me as his equal.”
I stared at him with my mouth open wide. It was as if he was talking about me. I thought about every time I’d shut Steven out. Had he felt the same way? Had he felt I wasn’t seeing him as my equal?
“Where is that sister who actually listened to me? Who tried to understand me instead of always treating me like her punching bag?” he’d said.
I’d never stopped to think whether I was hurting Steven by shutting him out. Or if I’d been hurting anyone close to me, for that matter. All that had mattered was survival at all costs, so I’d never bothered to see the other side.
I didn’t know what to say to Eli. On one hand, I was surprised he’d told me all of that about Masen, but on the other hand, it was an enlightening moment that struck a chord with me, making me rethink everything, especially the difficult relationship I’d had with Steven. But I wasn’t ready for this. Not yet.
Maybe one day I would be able to open up without feeling like control was slipping out of my hands.
But at this point . . . it felt like I didn’t have it in me to even try.
I dragged myself into my house, bracing myself for the reverberating, heavy silence that served as a reminder that our family wasn’t the same anymore. My mom had been in her own world these last few days, never leaving home and wasting her time staring off into nothing, so I was on a mission to bring her back from the land of zombies. Maybe I couldn’t help myself, but I could help her. One wreck in this family was more than enough. We didn’t need her to get swallowed by sadness, too.
My plan was to make popcorn before I barged into her room and convinced her to watch movies with me, but the voices I heard coming from the kitchen stopped me in my tracks.
“Have you been eating well lately?” my dad asked in a concerned voice I hadn’t heard in ages.
“Yes,” my mom responded curtly. Liar. She’d barely been eating anything, and she’d lost several pounds.
“You don’t look so good. Are you sure you’re taking care of yourself?”
I peeped around the wall and found them sitting together at the kitchen counter. I had to look twice, finding it hard to believe they were having a civilized conversation for the first time in several eons.
“Yes, Robert. There’s no need for you to worry about me.”
“But I do worry, because this has taken a toll on all of us, and we need to move forward however we can.”
Mom smiled sourly, her eyes glassy as she stared at the counter. “Move forward. You make it sound like a failed business deal.” And there it was again. Snarky remarks at their finest. She met his gaze. “This is our son we’re talking about. We can’t just stand up, brush the dust off our shoulders, and keep going like nothing has happened. How can you be so heartless?”
I sighed. This was my cue to step in before they turned the kitchen into a battlefield. “Hey, Dad.” I planted a quick kiss on his cheek and went over to the fridge. “So that’s why I saw pigs flying today—you’ve finally decided to grace us with your remarkable presence.” I took the juice out of the fridge and drank it straight from the bottle.
“I’ve already told you not to drink straight from the bottle. Use a glass,” Mom said tiredly.
I supposed I ought to be annoyed by her constant reminders of what I should or shouldn’t do, but I wasn’t, because this was progress, really. At least she was
paying attention to the rest of the world and interacting.
“Sure, boss. Anything you say, boss.” I winked at her and took a glass from the cabinet.
“How was your day at school?” Dad asked.
“Marvelous! You know, on a scale of one to ten, it’s one million!”
As usual, Dad remained neutral to my jokes. “You could take a few more days off from school. You don’t need to push yourself.”
“That’s exactly what I told her,” Mom said as she reached for a cigarette.
“And stay here watching you have the time of your lives all day, all night?” I asked, watching her light her cigarette and take a deep inhalation of smoke. “No thanks. I prefer falling asleep of boredom in class.”
Dad gave me a serious look. “You better not be falling asleep in class.”
I rolled my eyes and took a gulp of juice. “Don’t worry, Dad. Such an atrocious idea has never, ever crossed my mind!” It was better not to tell him about those few instances when I had fallen asleep in class.
“Good,” Dad replied. “There’s something I wanted to tell you. Since Steven passed away”—I winced—“his trust fund was automatically transferred to you. It will be merged with yours, and the same rule applies—you’ll be able to access it when you’re twenty-one.”
I gripped my glass. “Can we not talk about money right now? He’s just died, and you’re already talking about his trust fund.”
The same trust fund Steven had wanted to use to feed his addiction. I shuddered. I didn’t want that money.
“I know we’re going through difficult times, but we have to discuss those matters, too. You know the way your trust funds have been set up. If one of you . . ..” He heaved a sigh. “If one of you passes away, the other child gets his or her share.”
“Yes, I know, Dad. No need to remind me. It doesn’t even matter. It’s not like I wanted that money in the first place.”
“Still. It’s yours now, so you can do with it whatever you want. I’ll also sell his car and transfer that money to the fund. I hope you will spend reasonably, of course.”