What I Tried to Forget (A "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Modernized Retelling)

Chapter Two

            The image of Edward haunted me as I changed from my funeral clothes into my casual clothes- khaki cargo shorts and a green polo shirt. I stood and looked at the small picture in a simple brown frame that I had shoved in the back of my closet. I pulled it out from behind a stack of shoe boxes and looked at it.

It was the fourth of July in two-thousand and twelve at the Gothor Fourth of July Festival. Edward and I were wearing matching shirts and shorts, and I was holding a half-empty bag of blue cotton candy and he was gripping a bouquet of churros. We were smiling on a bench, but I could see the pain in my eyes. Even at age ten- I hated Edward. I remembered shortly before the picture was taken, Edward had taken half of my cotton candy without asking.

                                                                                              ***

"Give it back, Eddie!" A young Henry Stevenson yelled to his brother, Edward. Henry took a small step forward to try to grab the bag of cotton candy back from his brother, but Edward took a step back and stretched his arm as far back behind him as he could.

"No! I want to cotton candy!" Edward yelled to his brother.

"If you wanted cotton candy, you should've asked mom to get you some instead of churros!" Henry told. "Oh! Look over there!" Henry yelled and pointed in the direction of the Ferris wheel. Edward foolishly looked away from his brother, and Henry took the opportunity to run as fast as his shorts leg could take him. He grabbed the bag from Edward's hand- but Edward quickly grabbed Henry's arm and pinned it to his back.

"Don't you ever try something like that again, you idiot!" Edward hissed in Henry's ear. Edward turned Henry around and shoved him to the ground, reclaiming the bag of cotton candy and taking half of hit and shoving it in his mouth. Edward tossed the half-empty bag to the grounded Henry, as he attempted to get up and out of the pool of mud Edward had shoved him into.

"Henry Robert Stevenson! What are you doing playing in the mud? That's a new shirt!" Henry and Edward's mother scolded Henry and he finally stood up. His back was wet and the mud smelled. He already knew it was pointless to try to explain that Edward had pushed him, as his parents would never believe him.

"I tripped and fell." Henry grumbled. His mother shook her head in annoyance and whispered something to herself that sounded suspiciously like "Why couldn't Edward have been an only child?"

"Let's take a picture!" Henry's father appeared with a bag of popcorn. "The fireworks are about to start!"

"Can I go home and change? I don't like being all wet and muddy!" Henry whined.

"No." His mother said sharply. "You messed up, now you have to pay for it. Now sit on the bench with your brother." He sat down on the metal bench next to Edward, who was smiling bright- contrary to his depressed frown.

"Smile, Henry!" My mother yelled. Henry smiled as happily as he could, but he knew he couldn't hide what was being said in his eyes. It was a cry for help, one that went unheard and ignored by everyone who saw the picture.

                                                                                           ***

I exited the memory and shoved the picture back in my closet. I would rather not venture down Memory Lane any more than I had to.

I stuffed my wallet and phone in my pants pockets and left my room, making sure to turn the light out as I left. I walked down the hallway and passed Edward's room. Inside was Officer Deaton, a family friend who had dropped out of college and abandoned his football scholarship to be a cop. We didn't know this until yesterday, when we found that he had been assigned to go through Edward's possessions to find motive for his murder. He was currently sitting in Edward's office chair, flipping through on of the magazines that I assumed came from one of the three stacks of magazines next to him.