pencil shavings

twenty-five: Peter

"As much as I enjoy one-on-one therapy in the middle of a deserted highway at noon in the summer - I don't. Let's go, before I get sunburnt, die of heatstroke, or, God forbid, have to take my sweater off."

I pry myself out of Sam's bearhug and start back toward the center of town, glancing back at her in the most nonchalant way possible.

"Sure," she smiles, but worry tarnishes the gold in her eyes.

We walk along the road in a vacant silence only achievable on awkward, windless days like this. At least the dead-fly heat numbs the writhing fear in my gut, but that whole in my chest drums  in the background of every step. God, what I wouldn't give for some water. Some water and my jackass brother.

But deserts are places with none of that.

"So, where were you walking, exactly?" Sam asks, glancing at me hesitantly. Every piece of me loathes the caution dancing in her eyes. Like I was one word away from fracturing.

"Just walking," I mutter, and feel every inch the idiot I sound. I didn't actually expect that I could find him. Him. Dan.

No.

It was an aimless, primal hope that drove me out the window.

She nods, though, and I suppose it's nice to have someone at least pretend to understand.

We keep trudging through molasses air, willing the stagnant world to sooth the storm shaking my bones. 

That is, until sirens speckle the silence around us. 

Cops. I barely look at Sam before we're both running.

I'm not an athlete. My long legs make me fast enough, but I curse every stickly-prep-boy bone in my body as Sam huffs beside me, and we trip toward the screaming horns in the world's most pathetic run.

"Crap," I pant, glowering at anything in my line of vision as the sirens send panic in a flood through my veins. Little pictures crumble into my consciousness - My dad baring his teeth at the officer; Mom pulling Kelsie toward her hip; Sitting with Dan on the roof in the city at night, while a hundred lights flash below and there are no more stairs to climb above. When I couldn't get far enough away. We couldn't. Dan couldn't. My dad couldn't. The sirens. The sirens. The sirens. Then the listening, and the pausing, and the running.

"Peter!"

Fingers close around my wrist, and I whirl with my fist pulled back.

"Peter-"

When Sam's wide-eyed face swims into view, I freeze so completely that my breath hangs in my mouth. Oh God. Oh God oh shit oh crap-

"You gotta calm down, Peter. It's okay. We'll find him."

I know I look crazy, dripping with sweat in my East Coast outfit and running like a drunk deer. I know that my face is a contorted mess of anguish. And I know there are tears threatening to burst the dams of my self-control, but all I can do is hang onto the wistful little hopes Sam sprinkles for us all to catch.

I drop my first and step a little closer to her on the sidewalk, focusing on her eyes to keep the sirens at bay. I want to tell her why I can't lose Dan. I want to explain that I have no one, no one but Dan, and that losing him would be losing any purpose for living. I want to let her know that Dan isn't okay, and I need to take care of him, and the only thing my mother could say to us when I left was that Dan and I had to look out for each other. We just had to be there. And I might be a sad excuse of a person, but keeping my promise to my mom is the only self-definition I have. I need Sam to know that without Dan, without my runaway-boat of a brother, I would be just a buoy bobbing alone in the ocean of a world around me. And I would sink.