Page 46 of When I'm Gone

I have to swallow a couple of times to get around the lump in my throat. “What do you mean?”

“Sage. It gets harder every time to leave her. She’s the worst part about being so far away.” Chase might not feel close to his family, but people don’t talk like this when they’re really on the outside. “You really made an impact on her,” he adds.

Maybe knowing my brother is waiting for me, hoping that us talking will clear the air so we can be hunky-dory again, but I’m especially pessimistic. “She’ll forget in a couple of days.”

I never will, though. Having a taste of the big family that was ripped away from me makes being alone seem impossible.

Chase isn’t bothered by me raining on his day. “Give her a chance to surprise you.”

With nothing else to do with my hands to keep them occupied, I start sifting through the contents of my backpack. My boarding pass crumpled carelessly in my wallet, the rest of the candy Chase bought me to snack on, his hoodie I borrowed that smells like him.

After a few minutes of sorting, I notice something for the first time that makes my skin crawl. “My middle name isn’t spelled right on this,” I announce, mainly to myself, but I’m not alone.

“Say again?” Chase asks.

I roll my eyes at my own stupidity. “My state identification. I thought it was weird that Aaron handled getting it for me, but he didn’t spell my name right. I’ve never even noticed. I’m so fucking dumb.”

Chase raises his dark eyebrows. “Well, okay. First of all,don’t call yourself dumb. Secondly, what the fuck? Lemme see.”

Diligently, I pass it over, watching as he cocks his head to the side at a red light. “I’m not sure what happened here, but I’m kind of amazed this scanned through security. I must not have used your middle name when I got the ticket or they would have noticed this. How did he even get it?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. The normal way, I guess. It’s always worked fine, so I never thought too much about it.” He hands it back and I toss it in my bag. Just add it to the ever-growing list of inexplicable moments of my own sheer stupidity. Chase lets the conversation drop, leaving me to stew in peace.

The closer we get to his house, the tighter my skin feels. One thing that made me feel awful about myself is when Aaron would take things out on me that wasn’t my fault, so I don’t make any further attempts at breaking the silence, not trusting myself to snap when it’s not warranted. Chase is so thoughtful and kind, and he’s not who I’m angry at. The streets blur as my breathing becomes more labored, each intake of oxygen harder than the last.

By the time he pulls up to the garage, I’m nice and pissed off. Handy, because my brother is sitting with his back against the front door having the nerve to look like a dejected puppy. “I’ll be inside if you need me,” Chase says as I unclick my seatbelt. I’m on the move before the car stops, charging forward, ready to expose him for the two-faced son of a bitch that he is. Rip him open so I can show the Adlers his sick, rotten insides.

“How,” I demand as I round the porch. He stays seated, but for some reason, that makes me more furious. “How did you get them to believe you? How did you get them to fall for the woe is me act? I bet Mom and Dad helped you hatch up the perfect plan, didn’t they? They were probably sittingright there with red eyes lying alongside you. I was your brother! I was a fucking child! How could you do this to me? How?!”

Something wet drips onto my collarbone and when I bring a trembling hand to my face, I find the source. There’s nothing cathartic about these tears, they’re angry and visceral. Ripped straight from my soul, resentment I didn’t even know I was holding on to rises to the surface and stains my skin.

It fucking hurts, his betrayal. My bones feel like more than I can hold up so I don’t. My legs collapse under me, only a hand that I don’t seem to have control over on the porch railing keeps me from face-planting. I’m shaking, whole body tremors rattling me to my core. There’s no stopping them, all I can do is clamp my jaw shut so hopefully he can’t see how exposed I am by my outburst.

I don’t look up, I can’t. For a long time, he’s silent. Preparing to defend himself, I guess. Maybe he’s texting our parents, telling them how terrible I am. Whatever. I’m not going to stop until he loses the love of Chase and his family. He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve the tiny but impactful hugs from Sage or Margeaux’s steady hand or to listen to the playful banter of Parker and Emerson.

“Eas,” he starts. “I failed you. It has haunted me every single day. I’m sorry doesn’t cover even ten percent of how deeply apologetic I am.”

I’m expecting him to continue but he doesn’t. We’re bathed in the golden glow of late afternoon, just before the evening sets in and starts to cool the air down. My focus is on letting the warmth ground me. His regrets are meaningless to me. Like a child that gets lost in the busy mall, apologies don’t heal that wounded place in your heart, because this never would have happened if the person you trusted most didn’t let go of your hand in the first place.

“You can tell Mom and Dad that you tried, their perfect child did his due diligence. Tell them that I’m not interested in being saved from my sinful ways so you can move on. Truly forget about me.”

I hear a thunk, like he let his head fall against the heavy oak door. “Oh, Koda.” He hasn’t called me that in probably ten years, the nostalgia is a stab to the gut. All it does is remind me of the movie we watched on repeat when we were kids. I thought we were the main characters, brothers that could survive through it all together. Being wrong about my own brother ruined me. How am I ever supposed to trust myself when the person I kept closest to my heart could turn around and stab me in the back?

His voice wavers, but he pushes through. “The last time I spoke to Mom and Dad was the day they kicked you out. I couldn’t—” He coughs to cover the catch in his throat. “I couldn’t even look at them. When I was listening to them spew their fucking vitriol at you, I was stunned. It was like I was stuck in some alternate universe and couldn’t snap out of it. There was never any moving on with them after that, but it was so surreal to hear. But it all seemed so fast. I kept thinking, ‘okay, any second now they’ll change their mind and tell him they love him,’ and it never came. One minute, they were yelling, and the next, they shoved you out the door.”

I look at him without meaning to. Silent tears fall down his cheeks from closed eyes. I can’t even remember the last time I saw him cry. Brady was always the unmovable force of pure sunlight, sharing rays of light with anyone that needed them. Not that he didn’t cry because he thought it was something to be embarrassed about, he just was never sad enough. Could find the positives in anything and cling to them to steady himself. Seeing him cry now pulls on that one lastheart string that connects him to me that I have never been able to sever.

“Then what?” I croak.

From his shallow breaths, it’s all he can do to keep talking, but he does. “Then when I was too scared to face them for who they really were, Chase helped me stand. When I said I was never coming back to this house, he told me to get our important documents and anything that was sentimental enough to warrant saving. I packed your clothes while he did mine, we got what we needed, and we left. Dad tried to threaten me about the truck, but it was grandpa’s and he put it in my name. They confiscated my phone, not that I cared. By the time we had everything loaded up, there was no trace of you. Not anywhere. It was like you vanished into thin air. We searched day and night, slept in the fucking truck in shifts so that one of us was always looking. You were gone.”

Words are out of reach. Is he lying or is he not? It’s quite an act if it’s not true, but I’ve been fooled before. Hating Brady is a reflex ingrained into my body. Like if someone asks my favorite candy bar, there’s no thinking. A Payday. When things sucked, especially when Aaron was on a tirade, I hated Brady. If only for a fleeting moment, the thought was there. Just a knee-jerk reaction. I’m well and truly unraveling on my own. This hatred is fuel, something that keeps me going. Letting it go would be letting go of a cornerstone of my survival. Standing without it to lean on seems like scaling a mountain in flip-flops. I don’t have the right tools to even take the first step.

It lends me the strength to stand on spongy legs. He hears me and looks up. Brady is wrecked. Demolished. Obliterated. “I’m sorry, Easton.”

So fucking useless, that word is. “Sorry doesn’t do much about the cigarette burns on the inside of my arm, given to me from someone who has the nerve to tell me it’s becausehe loves me. Doesn’t un-break my left wrist for asking him if I could try reaching out to you again, see if maybe you were ready to accept me. But it was better than the streets, and those were my only two options because I had no one else. No money of my own, no education, no family, no way out. So you’ll have to forgive me if I tell you where you can shove your apology.”

Wounding him is like a branding iron straight to my chest, but the vindictive sixteen-year-old that still lives in the back of my mind feels a little better. Brady’s breath punches out of his lungs painfully, the sound more akin to getting hit with a crowbar than sitting on your best friend’s front porch. The blow I wanted to land hits its mark as realization dawns across his face. Confusion first, then slowly, it sinks in. Next, denial, as he looks me up and down like can see the healed fractures beneath my skin. When I don’t deliver the punchline he’s hoping for, all the blood drains from his face leaving him sickly pale.

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