I Promise

35

As soon as I'm out of the office, I call Matt, but he doesn't pick up.

"I thought you'd call," a voice behind me says.

I turn around and see him, so I run over to Matt and hug him. I don't know why he's here, why he's seeing Brent, but I hope it's nothing serious.

"Hey," I say.

"Hey," he says. He has a bit of a sad look on his face, and I want to ask him so many questions. So he ushers me onto the edge of the curb and we sit down. He looks at the little street before us, and then he looks to me.

He offers me a sheepish smile. "Time for you to finally find out the mystery of Matt Redford."

He speaks for about an hour. He has so much to say, and every time I think he's done there's more. And his story makes me incredibly confused.

He started off my saying that he lived in New York. That part I know, so wasn't surprised when he told me again. Then he proceeded to tell his mystery. The story of his life, really.

He grew up In New York City with his brother. They were pretty crazy, and they always pulled pranks and acted out of line. He got in trouble in middle school a lot for fooling around, so his parents enrolled him in a private school because even though he acted out of line, he was smart. He went to private school all the way until he moved here. In High School, he never seemed to give a shit. His brother had just graduated and was applying to universities, and his parents seemed to dub him as the "foolish" child and they never really paid attention to him. He was reckless, so he understood why they didn't have much hope for him in the future. He had pretty bad anxiety, which led him to skip class and barely pass. And then it all turned worse when his brother was going home one night from a university interview for overseas education, and he got in the middle of a shooting. He was shot, and died in the hospital the same day.

He was brain dead before they had time to say goodbye.

That same day, his brother and him got into an argument about him shaping up to be better. His brother accused him of not caring about anyone but himself and Matt had no reason but to admit that he was messed up and couldn't shape up. He started smoking and drinking in High School, and his brother went livid because he was throwing his life away. And before they had time to

make up after their huge fight, he died. And Matt was left alone, with just his mom, dad, and Zeus. The night his brother died, Matt blamed himself for his brother's death because when his brother left, he told him that he wouldn't come to pick him up in the car after his interview. And so he went on a shit ton of antidepressants and tried to cope in any way he could.

While Matt went off of antidepressants a few months later and began to pick himself up, his parents did the opposite. Being well off, they didn't worry about supporting the family, and his mother went into severe depression to the point where someone was hired to take care of her. His father turned to alcohol, and he had manic states when he got drunk where he thought Matt was his older brother, Dean. So Matt was left alone, and he had no one to turn to. He convinced his parents to move to California after he started excelling in school. He had nothing else to focus on, so he became the top student in the state. But then his father got too drunk and his mother didn't know what to do when he started yelling obscenities and calling for Dean, so the cops were called. Matt's father was put into a rehab centre at the hospital, and the move to California was delayed and even forgotten. Matt went in and out of school, either doing really well or barely passing his tests. Some days it was hard for him to wake up knowing that his brother was gone because of him, and other days he just pretended his brother was in Germany, studying like he was supposed to.