Hell And Back(49)

“Jackson, please.”

“Please what, Mom? Tell you it isn’t the truth? He threw Lilah in a closet, did you know? The whole time they beat and raped her mother, that beautiful little girl was huddling in the closet scared and confused. She listened to her mother cry and beg all night to stop. Your son did that.”

“Jackson, you don’t understand. I can’t. I thought he was dead.” Her tears silently fall down her cheeks.

“I don’t understand? Did you just say that to me? Let me tell you what I understand. I sat at a table with a three-year-old, and she told me she doesn’t like being locked in the closet in the dark. What you don’t understand is I will protect them with everything I have. You have to know that given the choice, I choose them over him. I’ll choose them each and every single time.”

“Jackson, he needs help. That isn’t him. You know him, he isn’t this person. We need to find him so we can get him help, so he can get better,” she says, pleading with me.

“I hope I find him. If I don’t kill him when I do, then it’ll be to arrest him so he can pay for what he did to them.”

“Jackson, please don’t do this.” She walks to me, but I hold my hand up to stop her.

“I’m not doing anything. I didn’t do anything, he did. He did this. He chose to do this. I’m taking care of what is mine, and they are mine. From the tips of my toes to the top of my head, they fucking own me. All of me.” And with that, I walk out of my childhood house, slamming the door behind me.

I walk away from the house that holds all my memories of my brother. I also walk away from the house that holds all the misery that came after my father’s death, after Adam ran away. After we searched high and low for him, coming up empty each and every time.

I remember the day he went missing. Instead of taking care of my young teenage brother who was crying out for help after losing his father, I was trying to get into Kendall’s pants.

The signs he was using drugs were all there. I just refused to believe my brother would stoop to that. To get mixed up with that.

Money started disappearing. Little things here and there went missing. Mom would turn a blind eye, trying not to see what was right in front of her face.

The first time I came face to face with a high Adam was a day before he went missing.

The bathroom door was supposed to be locked, so I just walked in. There, sitting on the toilet with a plastic rubber band tied around his arm and a needle in his vein, was my brother.

He didn’t even notice I was watching because his head was back, his eyes closed. I waited for him to open his eyes to yell at him, but when he did, I could see he wasn’t even there.

His body may have been there, but he was gone.

I waited for him to go out the next day before I searched his room. I found everything I was afraid to find. Used needles and syringes, little ziplock baggies.

When he came home, I waited for him in the kitchen with all his shit in front of me. His face went pale when he saw everything on the table.

“What is all this?” he asked while pointing to the table.

“Oh this,” I said, “all this is from your room. You can’t tell me you don’t recognize it.”

“What the fuck are you doing snooping in my room? Don’t you have something better to do?” He walked toward the table.

“What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck are you doing? Have you lost your mind?” I was talking to him, but his eyes were on the table, scanning the items.

“Where is the rest of it?” he whispered through clenched teeth.

“Oh, you mean the white powder in the baggies you had hidden in your room? Those would be in the toilet. You didn’t think I would keep them, did you?” My body was wrung tight. I was waiting for that fight. The more time passed, the angrier I got. “Why are you doing this, Adam? Why?” I pleaded with him, almost begging him to tell me.

“Why? Why the fuck do you care now? Ever since Dad died, you’ve checked out. Your dick is so fucking mesmerized with pussy!” He threw it in my face.

Yes, my father dying in the line of duty rocked our worlds. Yes, I’d been doing everything possible not to come home and cope with it, but never did I think I was neglecting him.

“How many fucking times did I ask you to stay home, ask you to hang out? Not today, Adam, maybe later, Adam. Well, guess what, big brother, I don’t need you anymore. I have my own friends now,” he told me while pushing around the paraphernalia I found in his room.

“I would never push you to this. You need to stop doing this. Think of Mom.” I tried begging him. “She would die if she knew you are doing this to yourself.”