672Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpstihNrqVk
I don’t know what I was expecting to find in the book, but it sure as hell wasnt this. Between the pages of this book are piles upon piles of entries, each one meticulously documenting my brother’s life. It takes me until the fifth entry to realise that if I am to find anything amazing it will be a long time before I do. The pages feel sturdy under my fingers, and I know that it’s made of some special material such as parchment. It has a fresh fragrance, sweet almost.
”Em? Em, do you want dinner?” I hear my brother call from downstairs. I jump a little, before exhaling heavily.
”Yeah, coming!” I shout back at him, hurrying to hide the book under my bed. It’s the most cliche of hiding places, but I’m also 150% sure that Damien is not going to go hunting for his book under my bed. Trying to not arouse any suspicion, I walk at a regular pace down the stairs, to meet him in our blandly coloured kitchen.
“Here,” he says, handing me a turkey ham sandwich. He even warmed it for me. “So I applied for a new job,” he informs me.
I wasn’t expecting that. I actually choke on my sandwich, and Damien reaches over to pat my back with much force, until the food is dislodged from my oesophagus. My unambitious, broke brother is trying to get a job? I shouldn’t assume that it’s a better paying job than what he currently does, though. Still, I feel the need to take a seat on the wooden stool in the corner of the kitchen.
“It’s that out of character, huh,” he asks. I don’t want to seem mean, so I simply shrug. He looks at me for a few moments, before speaking again. “I applied to be the secretary to a lawyer. You know about Ronald Price?”
Ronald Price is probably the best criminal defense lawyer in the island, with a success rate of 100%. I don’t want to say it, but I highly doubt that Damien will get the position. “I also applied to handle PR at a small business in Kingston. And yes, I know that you think that my chances of getting the secretary position are slim.” I keep quiet, not willing to confirm or deny his accusation. Instead, I ask him a question that plagues my mind:
”Why?”
”Because, who is going to pay your university tuition, other than myself?”
I didn’t know that my brother cared that much about me. Tears well up in my eyes, my stupid, freakish eyes, and I close them, causing some of them to cascade down my cheeks.
”Hey,” I hear him say, “why are you crying?”
”I don’t know.” I sniffle a bit, and open my eyes. He engulfs me in his arms, rubbing my back soothingly. “I know that I’ve neglected you, Em, but I promise that I will do better.”
”What happened to you?” I ask. “What happened to the Damien who used to give me origami swans after school each day?”
He stops rubbing my back, but doesn’t let me go. Instead, he holds me as I cry on the stool, until my tears subside.
***
Damien may not be willing to tell me the truth, but I am determined to get to the bottom of this, find out what happened to my brother. I scrub my skin in the shower as I think about the book under my bed. I’ve decided to just skip through it until I find something more than just his recording of every mundane day of his life, until I find something that will, to some extent, answer my question. I stand there, trying to think of what could have triggered this.
Maybe it’s just depression. I know that our mother used to go in and out of depressive states. And if that’s true, then maybe... maybe I should have pushed him to do something about it. Maybe I shouldn’t have stood idly by as my brother swirled into mental torment. I know, deep down, that it is beyond ridiculous to blame myself for it, but just thinking that I could have done more causes me to be overcome with guilt, my heart sinking in my chest.
I exit the shower after turning the water off, and put on a robe that once belonged to my mother. Hastily, I head into my room, and immediately close the door and go for my brother’s book. The desire to get answers overrides the guilt I feel for invading his privacy.
I immediately start flipping through the book, stopping at the point where our parents died. He writes that he is “overcome with grief”, “losing the will to live”, and essentially says that he only draws breath because of me.
”Emma is the only reason why I’m alive. She gives me a reason to stay alive.”
Even though we were both depressed beyond belief at the time of our parents’ deaths, it brought us together. And then, Damien started pulling away.
I continue to flip through the book, until I find it.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe, someone broke his heart. Maybe, he didn’t get the grade he wanted in university. But the words that I see written in the book break my heart, causing fat tears to leak from my eyes and drop onto the page of the book.
”Yesterday, I was raped my some men in my class, and they promised to do it again.”
He goes on to describe in great detail what happened, how they did it, how they pinned him to the ground of one of the rooms in the dorm and how he felt emasculated. He describes how, despite the pain, he did his best to keep quiet, because he didn’t want anyone else to know what was happening to him. According to his other entries, it happened over and over again. He describes how he struggled to walk normally, so as not to arouse suspicion, especially from me.
He went out of his way to hide this from me. And can I blame him?
He also describes how he would cut himself on his thighs, so that no one would see the marks. I feel sick to my stomach, but I can’t stop reading and crying. I must be crying my heart louder than I thought, because Damien opens the door just then.
”Emma? Why are you crying?” He asks, before going silent when he sees the book lying across my lap. His face goes from concerned, to blank the second he spots it, but As I look into his eyes, I can tell that he’s pissed off, that he’s embarrassed, and that he’s angry. As for me? I feel nothing but pain, and sadness, and grief. I don’t even have it in me to be angry at his attackers, because I’m filled to capacity for grief for what my brother went through.
I figure that he’s probably never spoken to anybody about it before, but he’s going to talk to me. I will get him to open up to me. I will do almost anything to help him heal.
672Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH8RCNRG4kS
