Get Hooked Anthology

@Slybatspidow - The Truths We See

They say that blood is thicker than water. They also say to not believe everything you see.

But I know what I saw.

No one believed me at the time. Most of them didn't believe me years later. They believe me now.

That didn't really bring me any comfort as I stared at the gravestone. The man my father had killed. It was entirely on accident - a poor decision after he'd had a couple too many - but that didn't make the heavy marble slab disappear. And it didn't mean my father was at home, on the couch, watching the evening news. It didn't mean our family car was miraculously parked in our driveway instead of the junkyard, next to the mangled heap that used to be this man's car.

He was still in the jail cell, where he belonged.

I pulled my collar tighter around my throat, hoping to lessen the feeling of the icy wind cutting through me. The light was beginning to grow dim, so I knew I had to get home or my brother would start to worry.

On the walk home, I could still remember telling my friend in kindergarten that my dad had a lot of glass bottles in pretty colors. I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to see them, let alone what they were. All I knew was that my mother was dead and that my dad collected bottles in various colors. As I got older, I learned what those bottles littering his office and the kitchen were, and I didn't tell my friends about them.

The next time I said something was when an officer pulled us over and when he asked about the beer cans in the back, my dad said they were his friends'. I suggested the officer test my dad for alcohol, but he didn't when my dad told him that I was just mad at him for taking away my phone after skipping school. As if I hadn't just seen him down all three in the last half an hour, on the way home from taking me to see my grandparents.

They believed me now. I guess that's supposed to make me happy or something, but it doesn't. It doesn't rewind time and prevent things from happening. It doesn't bring my mother back, it doesn't bring that man back - Louis, his name was Louis - and it didn't make my father a freed man. All It did was make everything more real.

Make me want to blame every single person in this town for not believing me.

Make everything my fault.

Ben keeps saying it's not my fault, but I don't listen. We both know I could have told him, told someone else. Told the right people.

I never thought it would come to this, but I was also a kid. I didn't know any better, but I should have.

I should have.

The walk home wasn't very long, but between the wind and my all-consuming thoughts, it was almost an unbearable trek. We were due snow soon. This was the time of year we'd get it here in Colorado. I could feel it on the wind.

I walked into my house and found Ben's new wife in the kitchen. The whole house smelled like a burnt meatloaf. I love her, but she doesn't know how to cook. Unfortunately, she's been cooking at least once a day ever since Dad was arrested.

Something else caught my attention, more so than the smell. Something unusual.

Silence. Stillness. No creak of floorboards. No video games. "Lil, where's Ben?"

She didn't look up from what she was stirring. "He's working late tonight. His boss had to leave and since he's assistant manager he's the the only one who can lock up tonight."

"Okay," I said, letting out a small breath of relief. I stared down the darkened hallway. "I'm going to my room. How much longer until dinner?"

"About fifteen."

I nodded and went to my bedroom. Inside, nothing about it was me. Ben told me I could paint the walls if I wanted, but I hadn't and I wasn't going to. He told me to hang up anything - posters, pictures, magazine cut-outs - but I hadn't and I wasn't going to. What was the point? I wasn't going to stay here. I had to get out of this place, I had to leave. Why would I make a home in this borrowed room when I was just going to leave in a year when I finally had money?

I opened my closet, barely catching my skateboard before it hit me in the face. I sighed. There just wasn't any room in this stupid closet for my stuff. I leaned my board against the wall before going after what I was looking for.

In the back of my closet, under a few books, was a shoe box. I pulled it out and sat on the floor. I opened it, sucking in my breath when I did. Newspaper clippings fluttered slightly in the air the lid had stirred up. I picked up the first one. Louis looked back at me, smiling. He was only 27. He had a family. He had parents. He had a brother. He was going to the store to buy milk. He never got there.

I sniffled as I set it aside. The next article was slightly blurry. My father in handcuffs. Being put in the back of a police car. We may not live that far from Denver, but we were still a small town and this was huge. It was the closest thing to murder the town had seen since I was a child.

I chewed on my lip as I set that one down. The next one had my brother's face on it. He was the guy you saw in the coffee shop who wore glasses and read the classics while sipping tea and typing away on his laptop then ends up being on the New York Times best-selling list with a book telling the tale of two people falling in love during the 1850s. He was proudly signing someone's book in the picture the paper put on the front page.

"Dinner!" Lilly called from the kitchen.

I hastily piled the pictures back into the box. "Coming!" I called back before rushing to hide the box back in my closet.

Dinner that night was really thin instant mashed potatoes and a very well-done meatloaf that had a strange flavor to it. Because I loved her, I choked down several bites before settling on just conversing with her about her job at the bank and all the odd people she met there.

When the phone rang both of us nearly jumped out of our chairs. It was like this every time Ben worked late - we were jumpy, worried that every call might be The Call to tell us something bad happened. I wasn't sure what had made her this way, but I knew that I couldn't stand losing just one more important person in my life.

She stood and went to answer their house phone. I glanced at the TV after shoving my plate to the side. A breaking news story was flashing on the local news. I knew the building behind her. I rushed into the living room to turn up the sound.

"Residents in the town of Red Pine are shaken after the reported theft of a hundred thousand dollars thirty minutes ago from the town's local PR firm, Invested. The robbery suspect was just arrested moments ago. Police are not releasing his information at this time." They showed a clip of someone being shoved into a police car about the time I heard Lilly sobbing somewhere behind me.

I swallowed hard, not allowing the tears that sprang to my eyes to leak even as the cold fist of fear squeezed my heart and the emptiness of losing someone else filled me.

I couldn't believe Ben did something like this. But he was on TV, being arrested by the police. I couldn't deny it. It was true. I was looking at it.

My brother, the last person on this earth that meant something to me, was sitting in the back of a police car.

What was I going to do now?