Mr. Hawkin

Chapter 7

Home is somehow making me feel more uneasy than whatever happened at Mr.Hawkin's house. When I entered the situation, I was expecting the feeling to be far more explosive. More angry, or upset, or hysterical. None of that. My mom was so lost in her pills that she was half asleep on the couch, paying attention to nothing but the t.v. wine somehow still in hand.

My dad, who had notoriously sworn to "make sure he got his" was just sitting at the kitchen table. Across from him was my brother, talking to my Dad in the calmest manor imaginable. The only thing that felt off was, my brother didn't sound like himself, or look like himself. He was talking low, and kind of scratchily. He looked rough. Somehow he was able to take off the last clothes we'd seen him in. He was sporting a ripped up windbreaker, in a faded green color, with a yellowed and holey wife beater underneath it. He was wearing shorts that can only be described as the key to Adam Sandler's signature look.

When I entered the kitchen table, their conversation stopped. I was greeted with nothing but the eyes of both of them.

"Holy Shit" my brother mutters.

He got up, and excitedly grasped me in his arms, hugging me tightly. Not like how Mr.Hawkins had hugged me, but how a hug was supposed to feel. I could smell his b.o. and felt the unfamiliar prickling of what had to have been facial hair haphazardly growing in.

"Where were you?" I ask, desperately pleading for him to answer.

"I don't wanna talk about it Sam, not with you." On his delivery of this line, he lets go of me, and gives me nothing but a disappointed look. It broke my heart into a million little pieces. I deserved an answer, we all deserved an answer.

"Where were you?"

"Seriously Sam, I don't wanna talk about it with you."

"You don't get to do that, you can't leave for MONTHS and expect us all to just be chill with your sudden reappearance, where were-" before I can finish my rant that was long overdue, my dad chimes in, interrupting my emotional moment.

"Samuel. Enough. He said he didn't want to discuss it with you."

I became filled with rage, it didn't feel right that this was the ultimate conclusion to the months long epic of where my brother had been. It's so unfair that I'm not allowed to know about what happened. I couldn't even think straight. I was so upset. I was so angry. I was feeling self destructive. I had to make it right, at least by me.

"So, how'd you even end up with the coke?"

My comment makes the room fall completely silent. Nothing but the reverberated tinny sound of the T.V. fills the air. My dad looks blankly off into a corner, strategically avoiding eye contact with me or my brother. My brother is sitting there with a sunken look on his face. I feel nothing, if anything I feel, in control.

"You told him about the coke?"

My brother asks my father this question without even giving him a look.

"Well, I, ... Not directly, no. Your mother and I, we got into several fights while you were gone. Some stuff came out that we hadn't wanted him to hear." My dad's answer is cowardly. He didn't admit to hardly anything that had taken place within the months my brother was gone.

"Well, when you come home looking like that, It's no surprise you became a fucking junkie."

I feel bad for saying that as soon as it leaves my lips.

My brother calmly stands up from the kitchen table, and walks past me and my dad. Past the position my mom had taken in the living room, and out the front door.

Holy Shit.