Super Rich Kids (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 7 (pt 1): Good Brother

It was only a year ago, but it felt like just yesterday that I had received the phone call that evidently led to a day that I would never forget. Alexander's school had called me while I was at work.

The call wasn't anything unusual. Being his brother I was listed as his main emergency contact in case of any problems. I didn't trust our parents to actually pick up the phone when the school called so I took it upon myself to keep updated on Al's school issues. Of course the school abused this power all the time to ring me about, "Alexander's behavior in class" and of all his, "missing assignments". So it wasn't shocking that I was getting a call now.

I had answered with all the enthusiasm of a corpse and proceeded to listen to the man drawl on the other line. The difference between this call and the previous calls was that it wasn't about Al's slipping grades or his bad behavior. They called to say he hadn't shown up to school. Which wouldn't have been odd if I distinctly didn't say goodbye to him when he left for school and watched him drive away.

This was slightly unsettling, but I figured he had decided, halfway to the high school, that ditching sounded better than going to pre calculus. But yet I couldn't shake the feeling that something was sincerely wrong. I tried calling him multiple times, and when there was no answer the feeling worsened ten fold.

More than once I debated going back to the house to check on him, but my mind was made up when I received a text from Foz. Eerily it consisted of a short text that had my chest tightening. "I'm worried about Alexander." I immediately pulled my coat on not wasting any time in getting home.

I called both Emily and Jake hoping that they had, if not heard from him, at least seen him but they didn't know any more than I did. I couldn't really explain the feelings and emotions that had taken over my head. So when I saw his car parked safely in the driveway relief washed over me like the unexpected chill of a cold shower. Maybe he just wasn't feeling well.

The house was just as silent as always. Seemingly; cold, empty, and uninhabited. Without the maids around this might as well have been an abandoned house. I paced around, starting at the right wing that held the music room and moving to the left. It took longer than it should have, but I checked nearly all bathrooms, Alexander's bedroom, the game room, the living room, the kitchen, the music room and so on. Yet the house was still utterly silent and completely free of any signs of human life.

I wandered around Alexander's room noticing the empty bottle of wine sat on the ledge of his window. The window that was left open, black curtains dancing as the cold fall wind breezed through the room with an edge that made me shiver. I reached for the window, just about to pull it closed when I noticed the snapped tree branch to my left. I thought back to the times when Alexander and I were younger and we would play hide and seek.

We had played so many times that I knew all of his hiding places like the back of my hand, but this particular time I couldn't find him. And as stubborn as he was, he refused to come out of hiding. Our parents had run around in a panic trying to find him, and I distinctly remember crying because I thought I lost my little brother forever. It took half an hour for our father to finally notice Al's open window, and on a whim he climbed out, using the tall tree to pull himself to the roof.

He had found Al up there fast asleep. He had been on the roof for an hour and a half and got scolded for another half an hour by our parents. The scolding's didn't help the matter in the slightest. Alexander made a habit of crawling up to roof every time he got in trouble, but stopped after he tried to pull Emily up and she almost fell out of the tree. After that incident our parents nearly nailed his window shut.

But then, looking out his window and remembering the many times I had heard the soft tunes of his violin drifting into the house from above, I couldn't help but feel the urge to go up and see if he was there.