The Smell Of Spray Paint

Twenty Eight.

Alfred and I sat beside each other in silence for a few seconds... Perhaps he was waiting for me to talk, but I didn't know where to start.

If that is what he wanted, then he gave up. "Do you have any idea how hard this whole thing was for me?" He asked, pointing fingers again. "I had to watch them cry and beg the police to find the guy who took you, knowing that you had just walked out on us."

"I didn't just walk out!" Alfred seemed to think I had just been flippant all this time. It was sorta hurtful. "It was more complicated than that."

Alfred wasn't always like this. At school he was the sweetheart, nice to the girls and good to his pals. He was fresh faced and ready to face the world with a positive flair and can-do attitude. Meanwhile I lingered in the background- the weird adopted older brother that no one talked to and was always looked over. I felt sick of it all, tired and cynical. That's where most of our fighting came from.

"Matt, get a hold of yourself! Just say something!" Alfred sounded frustrated with my hesitation to spill my heart out and tell him the whole story, which in turn riled me up too. "Why are you acting like this?!"

I was never gonna tell him anything if he kept that up. "I don't appreciate the hostility."

Alfred snorted. "Jesus. You ran away from home for months and now you're caught but you're still acting selfish?"

"I'm not being selfish!" I cried out louder than intended. "I'm just... You never got me, no one in this family understood what they were doing to me at all... I..." I put my head in my hands, I just sounded so stupid now.

There was a long tense pause.

"Hey..." He began, his voice softer now.

But I sat up straight and told him firmly. "I did it because I wanted the attention."

We faced each other and I could see him waiting for the punch line.

"Attention?" He repeated.

I regretted telling him, "Yah."

"Attention?" He repeated.

I started to feel my embarrassment turn to anger... Alfred was just being so self-righteous!

"Well," I snapped, "Maybe if I got an ounce of it back home, I wouldn't have done it! Maybe if you stopped stealing my limelight then I would have been fine! But you know what, Alfred? I didn't get that after you showed up! So why am I justifying myself to you?! I needed someone to just look at me! When I was out there I found someone who did... Why was it that I felt more loved in these past few months by a guy who didn't even know me than my own parents?!"

I didn't even notice that I had stood up until I stopped talking. I didn't sit down but even looking up at me Alfred tried to make me feel more guilt. "You saw how they were with you back in the hospital room! You can say you're not getting any affection from them now."

I shook my head. He had been cocooned his whole life, he had no idea what I felt the day I decided to run away. "I had to disappear for months for that to happen. And even then they started talking about you and your freaking cola... It's messed up, Alfred, we're a messed up family." I needed this to hit home... I had to tell something I kept from even Gilbert. "I considered just killing myself before deciding to run away."

Bam.

That got him going. The harsh expression dropped, and he froze.

"What...?"

I sat down again. My thunder gone now that Alfred wasn't shooting daggers at me. "Yeah... They missed my birthday again."

He bit his lip thoughtfully. "Why didn't you tell anyone? You could have told me?"