The officer nodded and scrawled notes in his note pad while his partner walked around with a camera snapping pictures. He asked about a million questions, but it was about the same ten, just asked in different ways. I gave the same answers every single time.
I was asleep. I heard noises. After a few minutes I came downstairs. We were in our apartment all night, me and my brother, who is visiting. He didn’t come downstairs when the noises started because I wouldn’t let him. He knew nothing. He saw nothing. I wished I could do more.
No one seemed to doubt me. After the officers were satisfied, they gave me a card and told me to call if I thought of anything else. I wouldn’t call. I pretended I would. Then Mr. Cartney laid his hand on my shoulder and thanked me for calling him and the police. He thanked me for “scaring off the intruders with my presence.”
“I wish I could have done more,” I said, looking over the damage with regret. “You don’t deserve something like this.”
“It’s okay, son,” Mr. Cartney said. No one had called me that in a long time. It made me feel guilty about my lies because he was a nice man that didn’t deserve to be lied to.
But it was him or my brother.
It wasn’t a hard choice.
“I have insurance. Once I get this place cleaned up and new inventory to sell I’ll be back in business.”
“If there is anything I can do, please let me know.”
“Thank you, but you’ve done enough. Most people would have ignored it and not even called the police. I can’t thank you enough.”
I didn’t say anything else as I let myself out of the store and into the morning sun. He was right. I had done enough. He just didn’t realize that none of it was good.
* * *
Just before I let myself back into the apartment, Heven’s voice floated through my mind.
Everything okay where you are?
Yes, everything is fine, I said, lying again.
Sorry.
Don’t be sorry, I get it. And I did, I mind dialed her all the time just to make sure she was okay. It was exactly why I lied to her about what was going on. She didn’t need any more to deal with right now. Besides, she was already uneasy around Logan and this would just make it worse. It was hard to juggle things—responsibilities—and I was tired. I let myself back into the apartment and Logan looked at me with stricken eyes.
“Everything is fine. They don’t suspect you.”
He let out the breath he had been holding. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are.” I sat down next to him on the couch. “How long has this been going on, Logan?”
“Since before I ran away from home.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I thought that it had stopped. I thought that being here with you would make it better. It did for a while…”
He thought I had the answers to everything because I was a hellhound. I didn’t want to tell him that I had been figuring it out as I went, and that the things he was doing didn’t seem normal to me.
“There have been times that you remember, uh, getting mad?” Maybe he was just sleepwalking, maybe he thought that he was responsible and he really wasn’t.
“Yeah. I trashed the bathroom at home before I left. I got into a fight at school and I trashed the place you first lived when you moved out of our house.”
I swallowed, trying to show no reaction to the things he was saying. I wanted him to feel comfortable talking to me.
“The kids at school deserved it,” he muttered.
“What kids?”
He looked away, ashamed.
“Logan,” I pressed, grabbing his shoulder.
He shrugged me off. “Brent and his crew.”
“The jocks? They were giving you problems? They never had before.”
He looked at me and then it hit me. The reason he never got picked on was because of me.
When I was there, I must have been protecting him. No one ever messed with me. Well, one kid did once… but he never did again. I never realized that it was me that kept the bullies away from Logan too.
And then I left.
And he was fresh meat.
I didn’t think I could feel any worse than I had earlier when I found him crying in the mess. I was wrong. I failed my brother. My parents might have stopped loving me. They might have abandoned me, but Logan never did. He was a victim in all this, just like me.
My emotions must have been clear on my face because Logan said, “Don’t worry about it. I taught them a lesson.”
“Oh yeah?”
He smiled. It was a smile that reminded me he was only fourteen.
“I flushed Brent’s head in the urinal.” He laughed.
I grinned. “Awesome.” I held up my fist and he bumped his against mine.
But then Logan’s face fell and he looked away.
“Is there something else?” I pressed.
He glanced up at the television which was playing the news. The woman on the screen was talking about the weather. “Think what happened downstairs will be on the news?”
“I don’t know,” I said, watching him watch the news.
“Sometimes, I hear voices,” Logan said, not looking at me.
“Voices?” How many more surprises was this kid going to lay on me today?
“Well, really only one. I used to pretend it was you.”
“Used to?”
“It started saying things that didn’t sound like things you would say…”
“What kind of things?”
“Forget it.”
“No, Logan. What kind of things?”
“Bad things,” he whispered.
I stood up from the couch, not wanting him to see the horror on my face and not sure enough that I could hide it. Anger, rage, voices…
What the hell was wrong with my little brother?
“Listen to me,” I said, pushing his empty cereal bowl out of the way to sit on the coffee table in front of him. “You aren’t alone anymore, okay? We are going to figure this out. I’m going to help you.”
He nodded, relief on his face.
“I know I work a lot, and I have responsibilities and a girlfriend, but I want you to know that you are important to me, okay? Don’t doubt that.”
He nodded again. “I know. Thanks, Sam.”
I stood and went across the room to grab some clean clothes and set them in the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower. I have somewhere to be in a bit. You can come with me.”
“Cool.” All the intensity and fear from our conversation seemed to vanish and he looked like a normal kid on the couch, channel surfing.