Family is all we have in the end

After only sleeping for a couple of hours I get out of bed and bring Gabe to school. He isn’t in my room to wake me up, which is good I suppose because it means that I didn’t oversleep. After I am dressed I go downstairs to look for my brother. Anna is the only one who is down stairs. I smile at her and then ask her where Gabe is.
“Still in bed.” She says softly. “I would have woken him but he looked so peaceful.” A guilty smile plays at her lips.
“That’s fine.” I smile, he needs the sleep. I pause and yawn, I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I mean she probably got even less sleep than I did. Last night wasn’t the best. “Where’s Michael?”
“Work.” She sighs, she knows that we need the money but Michael going this early in the morning is unusual. He works as an accountant and is usually at work from seven o’clock in the morning until eight in the evening.
“Already?”
“He needed to go in earlier so that he can earn more money to help support us.”
I nod. “Where’s Lucian?”
She shrugs and sighs again. “Who knows?”
I hear footsteps coming down the stairs as Gabriel descends them. He is already completely dressed but he looks like he could still be asleep.
“Ready to go?” I ask. He nods and I wave goodbye to Anna as I walk him to school. The walk is long and silent again today; Gabe doesn’t say anything at all. He doesn’t munch on sweets or make jokes and he doesn’t even mention last night. It’s unnerving to see him so down and quiet. When we get to school he hardly even bothers to say goodbye to me.
The day passes quickly, Anna and I chat a little bit throughout the day, but we both try to avoid the topic of last night. She does a lot of cleaning, it seems to calm her, or so she says. I’m not sure it if calms her or just distracts her, but either way it makes her happier. I only leave the house once, and it’s for my shift at the shop, as a clerk and I am home after a few hours of work. When Anna leaves to go into town I write, using the nice ink pen I had received for a past birthday. It came with many different pen tips and extra ink. I’ve always enjoyed writing, it calms me. Anna arrives home and I put the journal I write in away.
It’s when Lucian returns home that things go very wrong. He speaks loudly in the mocking tone he always uses.
“Hello Anna! Cassie.” He almost sounds more mocking than usual, if that’s even possible and he reek of alcohol, just like he always does. Neither of us reply to him and so he speaks again. “Again with no one talking to me?” He laughs and smiles wide, but then again maybe it is more of grimace. “Where’s that big brother of yours? Working?”
“Why do you care?” Anna replies, after a long silence.
“Hey look at that, she can talk!” He says, gasping dramatically. His tone changes. “I was just wondering. Jesus, don’t have to be so rude.” He approaches as he speaks.
“I understand that Michael is being terrible but he has a good reason. You disappear and then you come back whenever you want. Thinking it’s completely okay.” I’m not sure what side Anna is on, I used to think maybe she was on Lucian’s side but she is more independent now, I like to think she’s on neither of the sides.
“Annie c’mone, don’t be like him now. You don’t want to be anything like Michael.”
“Michael was right about you,” she mutters under her breath. “You are just like father.”
“What’d you just say?” Lucian’s tone grows angrier. Anna remains quiet. “That’s what I thought. You just need to shut up you worthless little girl.” That’s when I decide to do something I have never done before. I decide to join the argument, I am always just the one who watches them and never says a word, but that’s going to change.
“You leave her alone, Lucia!” I stomp towards my brother. “I can deal with you leaving us all the time, I can deal with you and Michael arguing at three in the morning, I can deal with your stupid joking attitude, but I cannot deal with you hurting my sister. She has done nothing but try to help, everyone. She’s trying to help everyone! She’s not one anyone’s side, she’s not even on her own side; she just wants to help others. She’s the sweetest person who has ever cared about you Lucian. In fact I’m pretty sure she’s the only one who cares about you.” It feels amazing to finally be yelling at him, to be saying all the things that I need to say. I wait for his response but Michael walks in before he can respond.
“Oh Lucian, you’re actually home.” He murmurs, receiving an eye roll from Lucian. He looks around for a moment and then speaks again. His voice frantic. “Where’s Gabriel?” My heart nearly skips a beat when he says that. I look at the clock and realize that it is long after the time I usually pick him up from school. I forgot to get him. He can usually walk himself home, there are some times when I am unable to pick him up and he has to walk home on his own, but if he had walked home he would be home by now. He would have been home almost an hour ago. Why isn’t he home yet?
- - -
I’m kicking myself for forgetting something as simple as going to pick Gabe up from school. Lucian coming home had distracted me, I had completely forgotten. I try to come up with a good excuse but I can’t think of anything, I should have gone to get him. I look at Michael for a long time before speaking to him. My chest hurts as I think of all the possible things that could have happened to my brother. He’s fine, he’s fine, he has to be fine. “I-I” I am finding it difficult to even get any words out of my mouth. “I forgot to go get him.” I mutter quietly, so quiet Michael asks me to repeat myself. “I forgot to pick him up from school.” I speak clearer so that everyone can understand me. I watch everyone around me thinking, they piece it together soon.
“He should be home by now if he walked himself home.” Michael says, he wanted to be angry, I could tell. But he sounded sad.
“I’m sure he’s fine.” Anna reassured all of us, but she sounded worried. For once Anna didn’t sound soft and calm she was worried and her facial expression made it look like she might start crying.
“God dammit Cass.” Lucian walked to the front down and opened it looking out to see if Gabe was anywhere close to the house. He was not there, I could hear his laugh in my head, see him eating candy and making rude comments. We all followed Lucian to the door and looked out with him. Without saying anything to each other we communicated that we were going to go look for him. We all put on our shoes and didn’t even bother with our jackets.
We walked for a long time but it was not silent as we walked.
“You were supposed to pick him up from school you idiot.” Lucian scolded me, he almost sound like Michael and it shocked me. He seemed more worried than I expected. I guess he really did care about us, or Gabriel at least.
“I know I’m sorry”
“It’s not his fault at all, we were distracting him from going.” Anna didn’t sound calm, or believable at all. She was walking faster than all of us and I could hear her breathing heavily. She was more worried than I have ever seen her be. It was almost like she was letting all the emotions she had never shown before out now. She wasn’t crying yet but I could tell that she was going to start crying soon.
“Bullshit.” Lucian said not looking in Anna’s direction as he spoke. “That kid is good for nothing and now because of him Gabe’s who knows where”
“Kind of like you, huh Luci?” Michael said, I had never heard Michael call Lucian that before. This was effecting everyone drastically even though I knew Gabriel was probably fine and not in any trouble.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Lucian replied, he stopped walking forwards and waited for Michael to tell him to keep walking, but instead of that Michael just stopped himself as well and walked back towards Lucian.
“This is your fault, bastard.” Michael was standing close to Lucian, he was all up in his face. “If you would have just stayed away then this wouldn’t have happened, you wouldn’t have distracted Cassius from going to get Gabe.”
“Stay away? I thought you wanted me to stay home and support the family?”
“Yeah we want you to stay here, but if you’re going to disappear we’d all rather you not come back at all.” I say bitterly, I feel more confident about talking to Lucian now after what I said to him back at the house.
“I swear to god you need to shut the hell up.” Lucian walks towards me and then slaps me, hard and quick. “Shut up.” I wasn’t prepared for the hit and so it knocks me to the side, I almost fall to the ground. I am quiet for the rest of the walk and so are everyone else. We are walking on the route that Gabe would use to get home from school, looking everywhere for him. Anna calls out his name every once and a while. She is furthest ahead of the four of us, she is moving the quickest and I have actually started to worry a little more since we haven’t found Gabriel. We are much further than home now, right by the small gathering of trees in Hyde Park, next to the school building. We don’t see Gabriel anywhere but then Anna points to the woods. It would make sense if he was there. It was somewhere Gabe often used to escape the family when it was too much for him, I had started joining him and it became my happy place too. We enter the forest slowly, Anna was running now, worry radiating off her entire presence. Each step that Lucian and Michael make it look as though they are struggling to walk. I am still worrying, but my worry isn’t shown through frantic actions like Anna’s. I’m moving quite slow making sure that I look everywhere. I want to find my brother. My worry grows even worse when I hear Anna scream watch her run towards a large object on the forest floor. A body.
We all jog over to where she is kneeling and I can hear not that she is sobbing uncontrollably. Her hand covers her mouth as she tries to muffle the sobs but she is still loud. She he muttering something to herself. I’m not sure what it is she’s looking at until I finally reach her.
“Oh my god.” I hear Lucian or Michael say, I can’t tell who at this point. My perception of everything around me changes, I can’t see straight and I can hear ringing in my ears. Before I know it there are tears staining my face too. Laying on the grass is my little brother, blood staining his clothes, pouring into the soil. The blood is already staining Anna’s shoes and pants as well but she isn’t paying attention.
“Anna? Cass?” Gabe’s voice is weak and it’s hard to even understand what he is saying. Anna’s sobs get even louder as we crowd around him. He smiles weakly at us, not a forced smile but a genuine smile. A sad sort of smile. His golden eyes don’t even show a hint of pain in them and that’s what hurts the most. Gabe looks at us sadly and then gestures to a small pocket knife he must have stolen, covered in blood. His blood. Oh god, he did this. He did this to himself. I don’t want to think about how long Gabe has been laying here alone. I don’t want to think of any of this. He couldn’t have been laying here for too long because he’s still alive.
“We’re going to get you help.” I insist, trying to pick Gabe up off the ground, I can hardly see through the hot tears that sting my eyes and pour down my cheeks. “You’ll be okay Gabe.” I promise even though I know it’s not true, I know it’s a lie. He does too. Everyone knows it’s a lie. “You’ll-you’re going to” I can’t even finish my sentence because I am sobbing too hard. I can’t handle this, I can’t. I’m looking down at my baby brother. He’s going to die. My baby brother is going to die.
“Cassius…” Michael puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me, he is crying too but not as hard as Anna or me. “We can’t help him.” He says it quietly almost as though he doesn’t want Gabe to hear him, but he does.
“He’s right for once, Cass. Imma goner.” Gabriel is somehow able to maintain calm about the whole thing, he’s voice is rough though and I know that he doesn’t have much time.
Anna hold me in a hug trying to comfort me, both of us sobbing hard for a moment. He bends down to Gabe and holds onto his hand tightly. We all watch him with sadness and horror on our faces and he just smiles. I don’t even want to think about it anymore. He looks like he’s going to say something but instead of speaking he makes noises that sound like maybe he’s trying to make words but it isn’t working, there is blood coming from his mouth now and his eyes are going dimmer and dimmer. His eyes are almost closed now.
“God no. This isn’t happening.” I mutter to myself over and over and over again, sobbing louder and louder with each second that passes. There is so much blood on the ground, it coats our shoes and stains our clothes, and no one seems to even care about that. I look down into his golden brown eyes, his eyes that have only seen a few years of life. I watch his eyes roll back into his head, I watch the life slowly fade from his body, and his body that was once so filled with life, now lay lifeless. Anna puts a hand over her mouth again, to silence her sobs and I’m not sure what Lucian and Michael are doing but I don’t care. I can’t see much of anything for tears fill my vision. Everything is blurry and I’m not even aware of what is happening. Everything is going so quickly, I hear Anna’s sobs and Michael yelling to Lucian. As I walk, each step becomes increasingly hard to take. I feel dizzy, how am I still standing? I walk and walk, everything is loud and everyone around me is frantic and rushing. I’m moving slowly, I can’t move any faster. I can’t…I can’t…I collapse on the floor with a thud.