Castles

Chapter 6

No matter what I did, I couldn't escape it. I couldn't escape my past, like a shadow it would never go away. Sometimes you thought it was gone but soon enough it was back again.

I listened to Max go on and on about his latest mess and how he was sure he was about to lose his job.

"You are not going to lose your job. Just keep your mouth shut and do what you have to do," I told him. "This is life. We all have to do these things as adults."

"He's an asshole." He was talking about his boss. The man that provided everything he needed to be a productive member of society. What we both had always wanted. Without it we were two fucked up people with too much time on our hands. We needed to normalcy. We both knew that.

"Max, you have it easy. You make more money than most guys your age and you barely work for it."

"I'm sick of smiling. I'm sick of sitting in front of cameras and pretending to enjoy wearing overpriced clothes."

"What else is there to do?" He didn't even finish high school. He was too stubborn to return when he was kicked out. I did my best to talk him into going back but he refused. And I was only his sister, I couldn't make him do anything.

"I'd rather work fast food." He lied. We both knew he couldn't shovel French fries all day.

"You have a gift. God or whoever made you extremely photogenic for a reason. He wanted your face plastered all over magazines."

"Okay, fine. You are right and I am wrong. Anyways, mom told me her sink is leaking again. And I have a shoot so I can't go." He tossed the ball in my court. And I wasn't ready for it.

"Why can't she do it?" I snapped, I got up from the couch and dropped my bowl of ice cream in the sink. I wasn't hungry anymore. "Or better yet sell the shit hole already."

"We both know the answer to that." We both grew silent.

I checked that the doors were locked and went into my bedroom. It was late, and I had work tomorrow. "I got to go."

"Goodnight, Jos."

"Goodnight, Max." I set my phone on the nightstand and went into my bathroom to brush my teeth. I squeezed toothpaste on the brush and plunged it in my mouth working meticulously on every single tooth.

I couldn't look in the mirror long. I didn't want to see the person staring back at me. I couldn't forgive the person looking back at me. And it only got worse when my mother wanted something from me.

I wiped my mouth and snapped off the bathroom light, walking across the bedroom floor. I climbed into bed pulling the covers to my chin and stared at the ceiling. The thoughts already started. I sat up in bed and grabbed my phone—my savior. I opened a reading app, starting on the latest self-help book.

The book that promised to teach me how to fight through my fears.

I hadn't found a book about two little kids raised by evil. Or one about siblings who never recovered from the abuse, there were no chapters like that, none about kids that grew into adults and struggled every day to understand what it meant to be decent and human.

There were no books on that.