A Broken Kind of Life Read Online Free Page B

to have finally reach his breaking point. Two years of their parents’ misery, two years of night terrors, and two years of wanting more than anything to have his brother back had finally taken its toll on Allen. Shaking, he turned to his date and held out his hand wordlessly.
    “Maybe we should do this another time,” the girl said, with one hand on the doorknob. She looked like a frightened fawn ready to bolt.
    “No, Carrie, just give me a minute, please…,” he pleaded with her, and she nodded as she continued to wait with her hand on the door. Allen turned on his brother, his eyes ablaze, fueled by his date’s fear.
    “I am not you! I am not stupid! You got lured into a van and screwed up everything!” Allen yelled, and all the blood left Aaron’s face as the flashback began to recede, and he realized what he had done. Everything Allen had to deal with just living in the same house with him, and he had just terrified the poor girl before they could even get out the door. He felt like Quasimodo in the bell tower, the freak that should be hidden away for everyone’s peace of mind, maybe even for his own good.
    “My brother is a lunatic,” Allen told his date, almost drowning out his mother’s shocked gasp. Before anyone could call him back, he grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her out the front door, leaving his trembling brother kneeling helplessly on the living room carpet. It was the first time anyone had said it aloud, but Aaron felt with perfect clarity that it was true. He would never be normal. He would never be anything but a burden, a source of shame and discomfort for his parents and his brothers. Not for the first time, Aaron wished he had died with Juliette and not been left to linger in this damaged shell.
    Hours later, after Aaron had been properly medicated and put to bed, Allen came in to check on him. Aaron was propped up on pillows, staring blankly at the wall near the foot of his bed. It was always like this when he was drugged, like he was in some kind of suspended animation. Unable to move because his limbs were just too heavy, unable to think because his mind was full of fog, he simply existed. If they stood him in the corner, he could have been a potted plant, except he was no longer nice to look at. Aaron had heard Allen enter the room, but it took him a moment in his medicated state to respond. The guilt that consumed his brother was plain on Allen’s pale face.
    “Aaron,” he said tentatively, like a boy drowning in waves of his own self-hatred. He still smelled faintly of the aftershave he’d worn to impress his date. Before the attack, when he was still able to smile, Aaron might have teased him about it. It all seemed so frivolous. Allen pulled Aaron’s desk chair up next to the bed and sat down. With almost painful slowness, Aaron’s blank stare moved from the bare wall to his younger brother. Tears welled in Allen’s eyes as he looked at his big brother, nearly incapacitated by the drugs. Allen waited until Aaron’s eyes finally focused on him before he spoke.
    “I am so sorry, Aaron,” Allen said, the tears beginning to fall. “What I said to you was unforgivable. I didn’t mean it, I was just….”
    “Embarrassed,” his brother finished for him, his eyes glazed over.
    “Yes,” Allen replied shamefully, looking down at the navy-blue comforter that covered his brother’s bed.
    “Now, let me tell you something,” Aaron said, as he fought the hold of the drugs and depression. Allen looked up to meet his brother’s level, glassy stare. “I never climbed into that goddamned van. I was dragged into it, screaming and fighting.” The anger in his face, in his voice, was unmistakable, and Allen just nodded, wide-eyed and pale.
    “I didn’t…. They never really told us what…,” Allen stammered.
    Aaron could see that Allen’s own behavior, his words, sickened him, and he didn’t need to do anything else to drive the point home. None of this was Allen’s