Page 32 of The Spider & the Storm

Maybe even happy … if I even knew what happy was anymore.

So, I had done exactly what Luke had said. I didn't stop drawing, and two years later, I was sitting on my bed, filling the page of my sketchbook with a black-eyed portrait of my mother. Ghostly in figure, she stared out from the page with sadness written in her unshed tears.

I liked to believe she missed me as much as I missed her.

I liked to believe she'd cry for me if she still could.

“Hey.”

Luke's gruff voice startled me, and I looked up from my drawing to find him in my open doorway.

“Hey,” I parroted, holding his gaze for a second before looking back to finish the damp, limp strands of her hair.

“You ready?”

“Not going.”

He sighed and entered the room, dropping down onto the end of my bed with a huff. “Dude, come on.”

It was only three o’clock in the afternoon, and I noticed that his breath already smelled like booze. Luke wasn’t an alcoholic—I didn’t think so anyway—but I was starting to wonder when it was he’d begun drinking for the hell of it and not just when he was hanging out with his friends. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember when he’d last hung out with his friends at all.

“Mom never thought I needed therapy,” I countered, knowing that using the mom card was cheap and easy. But it was no less the truth.

Mom had looked at my anxiety and nerves as just being a part of who I was, and in what way was that a lie? If I was supposed to be an awkward loner, meant to deal with the occasional panic attack, then why should I push myself to be anything else? But Luke and Melanie didn't agree, and they thought they were the boss of me now.

“Melanie thinks—”

“Oh, isshemy mom now?” I fired back, stilling my marker and glaring up at my older brother.

Melanie seemed to be calling a lot of shots lately. Some of them weren't all that terrible—like insisting we clean the bathrooms once a week and making sure we had dinner every night, even if those dinners were simple and cheap. But some of the shit she thought was a good idea was really starting to piss me off, like suggesting I see someone to manage the demons that'd had ahold of me since I was a child.

“Oh, knock it the hell off, Charlie,” Luke grumbled, shaking his head. “Stop acting like she’s a fucking bad guy, okay? I thought you liked her.”

“I didn’t say I don’t like her,” I replied defensively. Which, for the record, was true. I didn’t dislike Melanie. But there had been a time when I liked her more than I did now.

Luke ignored me and continued, “She just thinks it would help you to talk to someone, all right? Like, I don’t know if you realize this, but Mom coddled the shit out of you—”

“Don’t talk about Mom,” I warned him, leveling him with a look that I wished would make him decide to leave me alone.

He released a sigh and glanced at the drawing in my lap. “I’m not saying she did anythingwrong, okay? I’m saying, we—Ijust think that maybe it’s time to try something different. And would it honestly kill you to give it a shot? Like, seriously? Because if you really think you're gonna croak the second you walk into her office, then let me know ‘cause I'll—”

“God, will you shut up?” I rolled my eyes and dropped the sketchbook on the bed and capped my marker. “I'll freakin' go, okay?”

Luke stood up, grabbed both sides of my face, and pulled me in to plant a sloppy kiss on my cheek. “Good boy.”

I shoved him away and climbed off the bed, ready to stuff my feet into my sneakers when he stopped me.

“Wait. You're wearing that?”

I looked down at my black sweatpants and black Type O Negative T-shirt. “Uh … yes?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Could you, like, I dunno, throw on a pair of jeans or something?”

“Oh, is that one of Melanie’s rules too?”

“No, wiseass. I’m just thinking the doctor might appreciate it if you don’t waltz into her office with whatever the fuck you have stuck to those pants you have on. Like, fuck, Charlie. When’s the last time you changed your clothes?”

I sighed and trudged my way through the piles of laundry on the floor until I spotted a patch of dark blue peeking out from between a heap of black T-shirts. I pulled off the sweatpants, leaving me in nothing but boxers, and then I snatched the dirty jeans from off the floor—at least I thought they were dirty—and stepped into them.

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