Social Circle

13. Confessions of a Brother

            Landon pulled Kara into an abandoned room sitting her down. “Do you want me to talk first, or do you want to?” he asked her.

            “I need to gather up courage, shoot,” she muttered softly.

            “He was like my big brother almost……I looked up to him so much. He was football and soccer captain…..he was everything I wanted to be when I was a kid. Then one day, I remember I got a text from him it was really long. I remember it word for word…..it said, ‘Lanny, you’ve always been like my little brother, and I know you look up to me, and that is one of the greatest honors, I’ve ever had. I don’t want you to get involved in anything you aren’t happy in. My dad forced me into sports, so much that I hate it. Don’t let your dad do the same…..with anything. Follow your heart….. I want you to be happy and find friends who like you for you…… And you’re a catch alright, even if you don’t think so act like you know you make the girls crazy. They like it……. And when you find the right girl, treat her like a princess, I love you tons little brother! Sorry for my random advice giving, I was just in a giving mood…..’ I was thirteen at the time, I thought that it was just my cousin being the awesome guy he was. The next morning my mom woke me up crying saying that Logan had shot himself in the night…….and he hadn’t made it……” he whispered.

            He looked down, “I never told anyone about that text, I knew he wouldn’t want it to be shown, but I always thought that maybe if I would have figured out that it was a bit strange…..that I could have saved him…..but I didn’t…..I just shrugged it off….maybe that was his way of begging for help, and I didn’t give him the hand he needed,” Landon whispered.

            Kara’s eyes were watering again, “No one could have guessed from that…..” she told him gently grabbing his hand.

            He just looked down knowing it was the truth, but never truly believing it. “My twin brother and I were inseparable, you couldn’t tear us apart if you wanted to, we cried so much in Kindergarten that I had to switch classes to be with my twin brother Kristopher, we were like that throughout middle school until eighth grade…..something went wrong…..he started pushing me away. I was just his twin sister, not his best friend anymore. I used to cry myself to sleep wondering what’s wrong. We began to fight, which we had never done before, we always made up minutes later….but for us that was BIG deal. Then one day, I came in his room, and he was sobbing, and there was blood…..I raced in, and saw he was cutting. I started crying, and he panicked. He pushed me out of his room and cleaned himself up. He came to my room and begged with me for hours not to tell anyone. I made him promise he would never do it again…..EVER. That he would come to me…….it worked for a few months……he and I were closer than ever, back to how we were before. Then….one day, at school he came up and hugged me looking a bit pale, and I immediately panicked thinking he was sick. He assured me, that it was just a stomach bug and that everything was fine. He then pulled me into another hug and told me he loved me more than anything else in the world, and then he went to the nurse’s office and got sent home. The rest of the day, I had this feeling of gloom over me…..like I knew something bad was going to happen. I walked home from school faster than I ever had…..and I ran to his room to check on him……and when I found him……” Kara stopped there sobbing hysterically trying to get control again, but she couldn’t.

            “It’s okay…..shhh…..just let it out,” Landon said gently tears in his own eyes.

            “Blood everywhere……he had shot himself…….he missed slightly so when I found him he wasn’t quite dead. I was in hysterics…..I called the police and they were there within minutes. I remember him looking at me as they put him in the ambulance and mouthing, I’m sorry…..” she started sobbing again and Landon had to hug her to try and calm her down.