GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS!!! My university’s literary journal was finally printed and my story was published. Now that it’s published I’m free to post it where I like. So here it is!
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Seven Little Words
It was almost midnight when I got the text from my little brother. Hey, you awake?
I frowned at the screen. Texts like that rarely preceded something good. Hoping that I was just seeing through jade-colored glasses, I texted back, Of course. Whatâs up?
His response back was almost immediate. Can I come over?
The warning bells jangled in my head. It wasnât the first time Aaron had been to my apartment, but never so late. Aaron was two and a half years younger than I was and still lived with our mother and step-father. He had just finished his first year of college and had only been home for a few days. We had lunch plans on Saturday, so whatever this was couldnât wait until then. Sure, I replied. You remember how to get here?
Yes, be there in ten, came the answer.
Eight minutes later there was a soft knock at my door. I opened it, revealing Aaron. Right away I could tell that something was wrong. Aaron looked wrung out: thin, wan, tired. He was slumped forward, as if an invisible weight kept him from standing upright. There were black shadows under his eyes and his mouth was set in a grim line. He was dressed in ratty basketball shorts and a tank top that read, âSunâs Out, Guns Out.â Despite my growing worry, I couldnât help but laugh on seeing it.
âYouâre a dork,â I told him, pointing at his shirt.
âGood to see you, too, Sis,â he shot back. âLetâs go for a walk.â I shrugged and grabbed my keys and a hoodie to throw over my pajama top. We headed out of my apartment complex and down the street toward the neighborhood park. It was the beginning of summer. The air was warm and the sky was clear. I looped my arm through Aaronâs and walked while looking up at the night sky, letting him keep me from stumbling.
âHow were finals?â I asked.
âFine,â he answered.
âHowâs living with Mom again?â I wanted to know.
âFine,â he replied. âMomâs Mom, yâknow? I havenât really seen Terry, yet, since he works all day.â Terry was our step-father. He and our mother had married when Aaron and I were young. To me, Terry was simply âDadâ because my biological father hadnât been in the picture before the marriage. Aaronâs father, Frank, had broken up with our mother shortly after Aaron was born. The breakup had been very messy. Despite that, Frank had wanted to be part of Aaronâs life, so Aaron had gone from one house to the other twice a month. He never quite took to calling Terry âDad.â
âYou okay?â I asked a few minutes later. Aaron shrugged and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He didnât provide any other answer, but I wasnât too worried. Years of living with him had taught me that pushing him to talk, the way our mother did with us as teenagers, would not end well. Pushing me led to tears and me shutting down as hard as I could. Pushing Aaron led to screaming fights and slammed doors. Aaron would talk about whatever was bothering him when he was ready and not a moment before. All I had to do was wait.
So I watched as his thumb flicked lazily over the touchscreen. He was playing a game. At the top of the screen was a list of hints. Below that were boxes with letters in them in combinations of two, three, and four.
âWhat are you playing?â I asked, leaning over to get a better look.
âSeven Little Words,â he answered. âItâs a word game. You gotta make a word with the letter combinations there. Thereâs prompts. LikeâŚâ he read the list of prompts. ââHaptophobicâs fear.ââ He made a face. âWhat the hell is haptophobia?â
âThe fear of touch,â I informed him.
Aaron looked at the boxes. Sure enough, there was a box with âTOUâ and one with âCHâ. He poked the screen, typing in the answer. The game dinged. âDamn, it worked,â he muttered. He turned so he could give me an incredulous look. âHow do you know this shit?â
âIâm an English major,â I scoffed. âI read, I write, and because I write, I research. Do you know how weird my Google search history looks? The NSA probably thinks Iâm a serial killer.â Aaron snorted and looked back at the screen. He went quiet again. I watched him play two levels of his game. Most of the hints were easy things like âroller skating waitress,â the answer being âcarhop.â Aaron picked them out quickly, getting stuck only occasionally. I, too, looked at the hints and the available combinations.
ââMakes a choice,â I stated, nuding him with my elbow. âTry âdecides.ââ Ding! I did a wiggle dance of victory.
âMy dadâs getting divorced,â Aaron blurted.
I stopped my victory wiggle in surprise. Aaron didnât talk about that side of his family often. Residual feelings of resentment from the breakup meant Mom didnât want to hear about Frank or Aaronâs step-mother Colette. Sometimes, Aaron would talk to me about them, though, so I knew a little bit. They had been married for something like twenty years. They had two elementary school-aged children named Evelyn and Marcus. Their family had always sounded like something out of Leave It To Beaver: idyllic, stable, and normal.
âIâm sorry to hear thatâŚâ I said carefully. âDid they say why?â
âColetteâs had enough,â Aaron explained. âOf him. Of him⌠not trying. Or of not getting âwhat she needs.â I guess sheâs sick of pushing him to, like, be more or something. Sheâs been cheating on him for years.â He poked his phone, attention back on the game. A couple more dings and a longer chime marked him finishing another level. He frowned when the next list of hints came up. ââTippy boat.â Five letters.â
âA kayak?â I guessed. Aaron squinted at the screen and shook his head.
âLetters donât match,â he said. His thumb worked over the screen and I heard another ding. âCanoe.â
âDamn,â I muttered. âAnyway⌠That sucks. Howâs Frank taking it?â
âNot great,â Aaron sighed. âHe just⌠stopped everything. Heâs not working or keeping up the house or cooking, even. He orders take-out and drinks all the time.â He jabbed a finger at his phone, again, pulling up another hint. ââCovered in spider silk.â Whatâs spider silk?â
âCobwebs,â I replied.
Aaron shook his head. âNeeds nine letters.â
âUh, try past tense? Cobwebbed?â Ding!
âThey were always a normal couple, yâknow?â Aaron went on. âLike, super boring normal parents you see on sitcoms or some shit. Nobody lost their shit at the drop of a hat, and nobody got blindsided by someone losing their shit. Everythingâs done all calm and rational, and feelings are actually okay. Like, youâre expected to feel and youâre allowed to express it.â He paused, chewing on his lower lip. âYou know how Mom makes you feel like youâre the one going crazy? And how youâre just⌠awful? The worst person in the world?â
I did know what he meant. Growing up, being at home had been like navigating a minefield. One wrong move or word and everything blew up in spectacular fashion. There had been days when I moved as quietly as possible and didnât speak so as not to draw attention to myself. Any emotional reaction from us was treated like it was irrational or wrong. If you tried to fight back you were attacked, spun in endless circles until you didnât know which way was up. Somewhere along that line, you had been convinced that your response was indeed wrong and that you were scum for feeling it. How dare you be upset when you had no reason to be?
The confrontations had never been physical, but more than once I had curled up in the fetal position in my room, trying to cry quietly so I wouldnât be heard.
âYeah,â I agreed.
âMy dad and Colette donât do that,â Aaron said.
Aaronâs fatherâs house had been a sanctuary for him; a place to hide and recuperate. He grew up being able to fight, if only a little, because he had someone in his corner backing him up. I hadnât ever had a place like that and instead developed a kind of hypervigilance and heavy emotional armor. Looking over my shoulder all the time was exhausting and the armor was so thick it kept me cut off from everything, good and bad.
âAnd it was like, the bad was not the norm,â Aaron continued. âMomâs⌠off, yeah, and itâs bad sometimes, but itâs not normal shit. It canât be normal, right?â
âThat shit is the normal,â I told him quietly. âIn this day and age, the functional families are the weird ones.â
ââPiratical disease,ââ Aaron murmured.
âScurvy.â Ding!
âBut everything seemed just fine,â Aaron insisted. âIt came out of nowhere! They havenât been fighting or anything. It was business as usual. And she just left us.â Left me, I heard. I remembered, when we were younger, Aaron would wax poetic about Colette. She was a good woman, and provided a kind of stability that Aaron needed in his life. When most kids said that they wanted to help people, their elders patted them on the head and said, âOkay, you do that, then.â When Aaron said he wanted to go into Psychology to maybe be a therapist and help people, Colette hadnât balked or given him a dismissive answer. She had offered him any assistance or support he needed without hesitation or expectation of repayment.
That, to me, was the strangest part, that the assistance was offered with no strings attached and no catch. There were always strings attached and there was always a catch. Even random âgiftsâ had a catch. I learned early not to ask for help unless I had no other choice because there would be a price to pay. Sometimes no price was stated, but that didnât mean it wasnât there. With those, the price would be collected later and it would hang over my head like the Sword of Damocles. Sometimes, the price was one I wouldnât have agreed to had I known beforehand.
That wasnât a thing in Frank and Coletteâs household, apparently. That place, for Aaron, was tangible, visible proof that maybe, just maybe, we werenât wrong to think that something wasnât quite right at home. It was a stable foundation for him to build on, but the foundation was crumbling and so Aaron crumbled with it.
I stepped in close and shoved myself under his arm, wrapping myself around his too-skinny body. I didnât have words to offer him to make anything better, but a hug could be a momentary comfort. Aaron enveloped me with an exhausted noise. Even his hug felt tired.
âWhat happens to Evelyn and Marcus?â I wanted to know.
âShared custody, I think,â Aaron replied. âJust like with me. Theyâre still working out the details, there. Coletteâs moved out and taken them with her. Schoolâs ended, so no reason to stick around, I guess.â He paused and I heard him clicking about on his phone. ââCausing harm.â Eight letters.â
I looked at the screen and the letter combinations available. My mind went through the synonyms I knew for harm: abuse, ruin, hurt, damageâ
âDamaging,â I said. Ding!
We stood still for another moment. I had one more question that I didnât want to ask. I already knew the answer. I could feel it in Aaronâs bony fingers. I could see it in his down-turned mouth and dulled eyes. Aaronâs eyes had never been dull before. In the end, I needed to hear it and I could tell that Aaron needed to say it. âAnd you?â
The pause that followed was painful. I could hear Aaronâs heartbeat in my ear. It was normal, steady, lacking anything out of the ordinary. Both of us already knew the answer. âI donât… think I know how to help anyone, anymore,â he eventually admitted. âIâm just⌠sad. And I kind of want the world to be sad with me.â
I shut my eyes and sighed. My arms tightened around Aaronâs waist as if I could somehow protect him by keeping him close. Aaronâs bright optimism had been like color in a world gone gray. In that instant I knew that he would settle into tired acceptance and the grim continuation that infected the young and disillusioned. I knew that he would grow to be strong and stubborn, but the hope he had once radiated would be gone.
âI love you,â I murmured. âAnd Iâm here.â
âI know,â he said.. âThanks.â He let out a weak chuckle. ââTo split in two.â Six letters.â
âDivide,â I answered.
Ding!