Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I very carefully place one foot in front of the other as if I’m carrying explosives in the pit of my stomach and take a seat.
Conrad does the same.
“Explain to me how you’re like him.”
I’ve never done this before.
Never imagined doing this.
I don’t know how to start. What to say. So I pick the most obvious one, to me at least. “I get angry.”
A few moments of silence before, “The whole world gets angry.”
“I’m a little different than the world.”
“In what way?”
“In the way that I want to burn it down.”
He moves his jaw back and forth. “Are you saying… that you’re like Ledger?”
Ledger, our youngest brother, has issues with anger. He’s always had issues with it. Growing up, he’d get into fights at school, at the playground. He’d be constantly suspended, threatened to be expelled. It was always either me or Conrad who had to go and clean up his mess.
Every time I was called in for the duty, I wanted to tell him. I wanted to share that I am like him. That maybe we could deal with it together; I could teach him like I’d taught myself. But something always held me back.
Something like the fact that we weren’t—aren’t—the same.
I’m worse than him.
So I did what I could. Without blurting my secret out. Even last season when he was suspended from the games, I tried to reach out to him, explain to him how important it is that he gets help. We even forced him into going to anger management classes, which drove a wedge between us, but still.
“No,” I tell Conrad. “I’m not like him.”
“I don’t—”
“I’m worse than him,” I state.
“You’re worse.”
“Yes, the guy he punched last season, for which he got benched,” I explain, my eyes locked with my brother’s. “I would’ve put him in a coma.”
I would have.
It was a guy from a rival team and Ledger had punched him during a live game because he was spewing bullshit about Ledger and the fact that he comes from soccer royalty, shocking everyone and earning him severe displeasure from the team and higher-ups on the board.
I was one of them, the people who were displeased.
Not because I am this good guy who doesn’t believe in violence—I absolutely believe in it; I just don’t give in to it—but because I knew how it must have felt and I wish I were there to help him through it.
So the displeasure was for myself.
Not for my younger brother.
“All this time… I…” He shakes his head. “You …”
Conrad is one of those men who measures his words and speaks only when there’s an absolute need to. In this way, yes, we are alike. Although I guess his inclination for keeping quiet is natural while mine is fabricated to keep me under leash, like everything else in my life.
In any case, he may be quiet, but I’ve never seen him speechless.
It doesn’t feel good that I’m responsible for it.
“I never saw it,” he says simply.
“No one did,” I begin. “Because I kept a lid on it. I kept a very tight fucking lid on my anger, my issues.” Then, “And I never told anyone about them because I didn’t want to burden anyone. You, specifically. We already had a father who was a monster, who’d beat his wife. Who’d beat his son.” Conrad goes still. “Yeah, I saw him hit you one time, when you were protecting Mom. It made me so angry. So fucking angry and I wanted to…” I grit my teeth. “I wanted to do something… bad. I wanted to hit him back even though I was just a kid. I wanted to hit and smack and fucking punch everything and everyone I could find. So I did the opposite. I always did the opposite. I pushed it down and focused elsewhere. I did chores. I did homework. I followed all the rules, every rule, all the time. I ran all the errands. I played soccer. I ran track. I was in the swim club. I was in the math club, science club, all the fucking clubs. I did everything I could to push my anger down because I did not want to be like him. I didn’t want to do the things he did.
“And then there was Ledger, his anger, his reckless behavior. So we already had two people in our family who were similar on top of every other thing that went wrong with us. Dad’s leaving, Mom’s sickness. You did everything you could for us. You left your career, your dreams, the girl you loved, to deal with us. I didn’t want to be one of the things you had to deal with as well.”
Yeah, there was a girl he loved.
Back when he was in high school. I never liked her, and she never made him happy; I could see that. But I wanted him to come to that conclusion by himself rather than fucking fate taking that choice away from him and causing them to break up because of Mom’s illness and his increased responsibilities.