Suburbia

I don’t think I slept, I only drifted in and out of consciousness, her words echoing around my mind as everything I have been trying to block from my mind seems to be pressing against me, clammy constrictions against my skin.

Your son is sick and he passed it on to mine.

I tried to get her desperate, awful, truthful words out of my head. I threw a pillow over my face and screamed into it until I gasped for breath. I even downed a few of those “rehabilitation” pills Dad throws to me in the dozens, but they only made my lips feel numb.

He was the one who could have stopped him.

The cut on my hand aches against the constriction of the bandage encasing it as I cover my eyes, trying to dig out the needling pain behind them. Tiny phosphenes dance before me in mocking swirls when I pull my palms from my eyes, the sun scalding my retinas, a flaming finger pointed at me unsteadily, stumbling from left to right, left to right…

Should have stopped him.

I have to move, I have to get out of this room, this house, this pressing blame. I immediately reject the idea of walking through the hall to the door where her rosy despair may still reside.

Instead I turn to the window and slip onto the sunbaking tiles of the sloping roof. I swing over the side and hang from the gutter for a few moments, thinking about the space between my feet and the ground. But then my mind forces forward an image of swinging legs, twitching slightly and my fingers uncurl as I drop and run from the image, feet pounding to escape whatever is in my head.

I can barely breath as I run towards the school, my lungs searing as the wavering heat seems to crawl down my throat. I concentrate on nothing but the pain in my chest and the ragged heaving of my breath, desperate to think of nothing.

I spend the lessons concentrating on not concentrating, trying to find anything to distract myself: counting the number of tiles on the floor again and again, franticly scribbling an entire notebook of sketches and patterns, deciphering the graffiti upon graffiti etched into my desk – anything at all that keeps my mind full and empty.

I am so preoccupied with distracting myself from anything related to home, perfume or twitching best friends that I don’t even think about Rory’s absence the night before until I see him at lunch sporting a magnificent purple eye that blossoms all the way down one side of his face, his arm cradled close to his chest, a white sterile bandage encasing his wrist. We
must look a sorry pair together: bandaged hands and shadowed eyes.

As it turns out, the perfect distraction was closer to home than I thought: the sight of my little brother with a bruised cheek and a broken posture immediately throws any other thought from my mind as I rush over to him, my fists already clenched, ready to find whoever is responsible.

“Rory!” I call to him. He turns from his friends and visibly recoils. I run over to him, “Rory! What happened to you?” I exclaim as I look around for anyone who seemed responsible, simultaneously looking his friends up and down.

Rory looks absolutely mortified as he mutters a goodbye to his friends and quickly drags me far away from them, revealing a slight limp in the process which I add to my list of offences to hold to whoever did this to him. He drags me round the corner of the corridor, suitably out of the earshot of his peers.

“Rory, who did this to you? Where were you last night, what happened?” I reach my hand out to examine the bruise but Rory flinches back.

“Nowhere, it doesn’t matter okay?” He glances around us to see if anyone has noticed us.

“Of course it matters, who did it to you?” I continue, unfazed by his skittishness.

“It doesn’t concern you, why do you care?”

I look at him disbelievingly. “Do you honestly think that I won’t care that someone’s beat up my little brother? Where were you last night? You didn’t come home.”

“I was just hanging out at Ed’s house.” Rory was never good at lying and I don’t believe it for a moment.

“And you got that” I point at his eye which has swirls of yellow squinting through the various tones of purple “just hanging out at Ed’s house?”

“Look it doesn’t concern you Leland, just leave it, okay?” The bell rings and Rory turns to go back to his friends but I grab the cuff of his shirt before he goes more than a few feet.

“Rory,” People start drifting through the corridor and Rory’s friends come into view as I speak, “Look, you’re my little brother and I look out for you, whether you like it or not.”

Rory’s friends are beginning to laugh, I’m not sure at what, maybe I’m looking a little crazed as I grab onto Rory’s good arm my words urgent. Rory sees their laughs and his gaze hardens, “Just give me something, Rory, we’re brothers, right?” I throw one last line out, hoping he’ll grab onto it and we can work through whatever’s been going on between us lately. But instead something in his eyes darkens and he throws my hand off him as he suddenly yells at me, his friends laughs no doubt echoing in his ears.

“Just leave me alone! Don’t you know how hard it is for me to have a fucking freak as my brother!”

Then Rory turns on his heel, back to his friends who are suddenly silent and they all walk quickly away in the opposite direction as my arm falls limply to my side, my throat thick and hot.