Say Goodbye

EIGHTEEN

I SAW MY BROTHER TODAY.

He was at the movie theater, three rows ahead of me, arm around a pretty girl with straight blond hair that hung like a silk curtain down her back. I was eating popcorn, but the minute I spotted him, I started to cough, then had to duck down quickly when he looked back in annoyance at whoever was making such a racket.

I stayed for a while on my hands and knees on the sticky theater floor. I didn’t know what to do, couldn’t figure out how to react.

So after a bit, I decided to do what I did best-nothing at all.

I returned to my seat. I put my popcorn on my lap. And I watched the slasher film, one chainsaw after another. They didn’t get any of the details right. Hollywood doesn’t know jackshit about real blood.

The blond girl liked my brother. Every time the movie soundtrack grew ominous, she’d snuggle against him, her head tucked against his shoulder. Except soon she didn’t bother to lift her head anymore. Just kept it there, against his chest, while his hand curled tighter around her and they both giggled at something that had nothing to do with the bloodbath on the screen.

She had a nice giggle, bubbly fresh, like a summer’s day.

In my mind, I gave her that name. My older brother was dating a girl named Summer. I bet they walked under moonlit skies, went necking in the back of my parents’ borrowed car, attended the prom with her perky little breasts covered in a giant corsage.

It wasn’t fair, I thought sullenly. It wasn’t fair that I had died and he still got to live.

I ate more popcorn, drank thirty-two ounces of Coke, and brooded through the end of the film.

Lights came on. My brother and his girlfriend finally rose. He had a letterman’s jacket-of course he had a letterman’s jacket. He draped it over Summer’s shoulders and she giggled again, clutching the front with her hands, curling it around her.

My brother had inherited my father’s wiry build. Not tall, but solid. I was guessing he’d lettered in baseball, maybe the star pitcher with the clean-cut jaw, short-cropped dark hair. Then he smiled again, a dimple appearing in his left cheek, and in an instant, I remembered exactly what my mother looked like, and the pain of seeing her face after all these years drove me to my knees.

I gasped, but didn’t make a sound. I tried to breathe, but no air would reach my lungs.

So I folded over, quiet, limp, a puddle of dark trench coat on a stained floor.

I watched my brother’s feet head up the aisle. I heard his baritone ask Summer what time she needed to be home.

“I still have an hour,” she replied.

“Perfect,” my brother said. “I know where we can go.”

I followed my brother. It wasn’t so hard. He drove a truck now, a giant, extended cab four-wheel-drive vehicle that probably belonged to our father. A bumper sticker declared “Alpharetta Raiders.”

My family had moved. It made sense. I had moved at least two dozen times. Why shouldn’t they?

He turned down a dirt road. I recognized it as a lovers’ lane I’d heard other kids talk about. Not that I knew a whole lot, never being allowed to go to school and all that. No letterman’s jacket for me. No prom, no pretty blond girlfriend. Nope, I was just the crazy loner who turned up in his Army surplus gear at various rec centers, pale face, shaggy hair. The local freak show. Every town had one.

And for no good reason, I wondered about Christmas. Did my family still hang my stocking up on the mantel, the one with the patched-up toe and my name scrawled across the top in silver glitter? Did they set a place at the table, wrap a gift just in case?

If they had moved, that meant I didn’t have a room anymore. What had happened to my stuff? My books, my clothes, my toys? Boxed up, given to Goodwill? Maybe my brother had a two-room suite now. One room to sleep, another room to sprawl.

Probably had his own futon, TV, entertainment system. Had friends over, including giggly blond cheerleaders like Summer. I wondered if he was popular, if the kids at school admired him, the boy who had survived the Burgerman.

Or maybe he was the tragic hero. Lost his brother when he was young, but just look at him now.

And just when I was working up a good head of steam, ready to hate him, out necking with perky little Summer, I thought of my mother again and the pain returned like a knife thrust beneath my ribs.

I wondered if he made my parents proud. I wondered if looking at him helped my mother sleep at night.

I pulled over on the dirt road, jumped out of my little rust bucket and made it behind a tree just before my bladder burst. I pissed thirty-two ounces of Coke and then some. I pissed for goddamn near forever, and when I came back out, my brother’s truck had appeared on the dirt road.

There was no time for me to retreat. I could only hope he wouldn’t notice me.

No such luck. The truck slowed. The driver’s side window came down. My own brother glared at me.

“Hey, aren’t you the same creep from the movie theater? What the hell are you doing? Are you following us?”

I didn’t say a word.

His frown deepened, he looked on the verge of climbing out. Then I heard the girl’s voice from inside the cab. “Come on, babe. Don’t do this. He isn’t worth it. Besides, I have curfew.”

“Yeah,” my brother said reluctantly. “Yeah, guess you’re right.”

I saw his hand move on the steering column, putting the truck in gear. And suddenly I was sprinting toward the truck, my long black trench coat flapping, my steel-toed boots eating up the dirt. I had a tree limb in my hands. I don’t know how it got there.

“Hey,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “HEY!”

“What the fuck-”

“Don’t let the Burgerman get you!”

And then I was pounding on the truck door. Hit it hard enough the tree branch shattered. The girl screamed. My brother ducked, covering his head with his hands. I went to town, working on the headlights, the front grill, smashing, smashing, smashing with the short, splintered tree limb, and kicking out with my boots and yelling at the top of my lungs.

And there were tears on my cheeks and snot pouring from my nose and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Because I loved my brother so damn much that I hated him. I loved him for being alive. I hated him for not being me. I loved him for having such a pretty little girlfriend. I hated him for having my mother’s dimple. I loved him because he escaped. And I hated him because I wasn’t his brother anymore and that’s the thing in the world I most wanted to be.

So I beat up his truck. I smashed the living daylights out of glass and steel until I heard the engine gun and had only a second to leap away.

My brother tore down the dirt road, away from the crazy boy wielding a tree limb.

My brother drove away from me.