There was this pause. Long enough for the cars sloshing by on Main Street to get loud. Then he said, “This isn’t Kellan.”
“Dad, it’s Barrett.”
“So he is alive.”
Tears filled my eyes. “I tried to see him. Kellan wouldn’t—”
He laughed. “Did you go to him like that? Where are you? I hope there’s not a terrorist around.”
I try for the brakes as my eyes blur again.
“I’m in Breckenridge,” I told him. I don’t know why.
He laughed. “I don’t care where you are. You stopped being in this family when your mother died and you forgot how she expected you to behave.”
“Fuck.”
“Are you really in the Rangers? These are their standards?”
“Goddamnit, Dad. I called about my brothers.” My throat is tight with tears. I can’t help it.
“One is dead now, Barrett. No one knows what will happen to the other. But you? You should forget about it. Take yourself back to wherever you came from and find yourself some family there. When this one needed you, you weren’t around.”
I curl over on my side now in the driver’s seat, pressing my foot against the pedal, holding onto my throat as I weep for my dead brother. Who I’ll never see again. Never again. I want to fucking break his casket open. I can’t believe he’s really in it. Lyon… I can feel his little hand in mine, can hear him say, “It’s all right, brother.” The way he laughed…
But I’m not their brother. No one’s brother… No one’s son. No one. I waited for an hour, I called Breck. I couldn’t even get a ride.
I cry harder, and I’m by my mother’s bed. I want to feel her hands, the way her fingers sift through my hair, but her thin fingers are cold and still. I talk to her. My father says she doesn’t hear it. He says I should go to school.
I’ve failed at everything.
My foot gets lost, loses the brakes. The car creeps forward, plodding slowly over heaps of snow.
I wish I wasn’t here. It’s cold and white and I can’t see. I’m drunk as fuck. Shoulda drank more…
Kellan said I’m not his brother. Not Dad’s son.
I’m nothing, I think, as I listen to my own sobbing. My father didn’t want me, so I left. The twins—I told myself that they were better off without me. Couldn’t keep our mom alive… They had each other. I wanted to disappear, so I did, but I’m here now. It’s so white. So bumpy. Fuck, I need to fucking breathe.
I rub my chest. I can’t stop. I feel kind of sick.
Even the car…the dash is really bumpy…blurry.
I should really…hit the brakes.
My brother’s dead.
A loud sob shakes the car, and my foot fumbles. Brakes…but. Oh, that was the gas. My hands grab the wheel. I can see them on it. White trails, snowflakes trailing by… Just like a snow globe.
Bump!
The car is stopped. It rocks gently back and forth, like there’s a log in the road. I hit the brakes. Confused, I hit the gas.
It just feels wrong. It feels familiar, like those little fucking kids under the convoy tires.
Bile leaps into my throat as I throw the door open.
* * *