Surfers Paradise

Chapter 10: The Older Brother Returns

Johnny's POV

I woke up the morning after the party on top of my soft bed. I could hear birds chirping and it was bright through my eyelids so I must've left my window open. I tried to readjust my body, but it felt strange. My bed was much more comfortable than whatever I was sleeping on. My eyes opened and I realized where I actually was: laying on the bench that was outside the front door of my house.

I couldn't remember how I had gotten there, but last night I knocked back a few more drinks than I should have to keep myself from going over the edge with Shane around again. The last thing I remembered was saying "hi" to Hannah and stopping a girl from barfing in my mom's favorite flowers before the rest was a blur. I forced myself to try and remember anything, but my mind was coming up blank. Hopefully, nothing super bad happened.

I could tell by looking around that it must've been an awesome party because there was trash everywhere and someone had fallen asleep on one of our pool chairs. What was not awesome was that our house was now a gigantic mess.

I felt like passing out again and repositioned myself more comfortably on the bench. I was about to drift off into dreamland when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I wished it was someone telling me they were coming over to help clean up this mess.

Getting on the plane now. See you in a few hours. -Mom

Shit shit shit, I thought. I had just remembered that our parents were getting home from visiting their friends in Maui today. They thought it would be "okay" to leave us alone because Shane had gotten back from college a week ago but boy were they wrong. We were going to be in deep trouble if our parents found out we had thrown a party. Correction, our parents would have been pissed if they found out that Shane had thrown a party. However, knowing my parents they would also blame me because Shane was the "perfect son" and he could never do anything wrong entirely on his own.

I sprang up and went to assess the overall damage of the house. It was worse than I had imagined. Movies about teenage parties had not prepared me for this. There were cups, trash, bottles, cans, and unknown things everywhere. It was around our driveway, lawn, pool, and the beach. I didn't even want to know what the inside of our house looked like. I walked through the side gate that led to the pool and saw unknown substances had turned it a murky green color. I knew I would never swim in there again after what I saw. I didn't know how we would clean all of this up or where to start, but my brother was the master of getting away with parties. After all these years, he must've had some sort of system that worked.

Thinking of him made me even more pissed off and I stomped off to look for him. I wanted to kill him more than I had ever wanted to in the past. I told him not to throw a party the other day. Our parents were usually pretty chill about throwing parties as long as we asked and they didn't get out of hand, but what did Shane do anyway? Throw a huge party with everyone from school, who left our house a complete and total mess.

I felt so dramatic ranting on and on about Shane, but he kept giving me more reasons to hate him. He was my older brother, but the "perfect son" to my parents. The son who was popular, the star football player, had a girlfriend every week, brought home stellar grades, and — the one my parents never let me forget — a future doctor. No younger sibling could ever live up to that reputation and it didn't help that my parents were constantly using him as a measuring stick for success. I was not as popular, I never had many girls chasing after me, I didn't like football very much, I had above-average grades, and I had no idea what I wanted to be yet. It seemed like anything good I did was never good enough and everything I did was in Shane's shadow.

My parents saw the perfect Shane, but they didn't know the Shane that I knew. He partied every weekend and would be a hungover mess the next morning, which I had to deal with, he was a jerk to girls, and he was at least high or wasted more times than not with his friends and I had to cover for him in front of our parents. He was such an asshole to me that, frankly, I was relieved when he left for college. I no longer had to put up with him being in a bad mood all the time, see him break girls' hearts, or have to pick up the pieces and cover for him so he could fool our parents into thinking they had the perfect son. What I hadn't anticipated was that his shadow would still lurk in our house, haunting me with his perfect reputation, and I would remain a constant letdown of a son to my parents.