Shards

I knew my brother better than that

When I sit down and lay the items out in front of me, it doesn't seem like he was such a bad person. The items, the papers, just seem like things any guy would have in their room, I think. He seems like a normal nineteen year old, because he is. He was a normal, average, nice, nineteen year old boy who passed away in a car accident. There's nothing abnormal about him. 

That's what I want to think, I want to think that he's not a bad person. I want to think of him as the hero he always was to me.

I know deep down that there's something sinister going on behind the scenes. I know that he wasn't all he cracked up to be.

"Watcha doing darling?" I look up to my mom standing in the doorway.

"Just looking at some of Angelo's old stuff," I say. I'm technically not lying."Kylie gave it to me."

That's the lie.

"Oh...Mind if I join you?" She asks. Mom and Angelo were close, but Dad and Angelo were closer.

When Mom and Dad split up, they stayed friends. Whenever Dad and his husband came over Angelo would spend half the time they were around in the garage doing who knows what. It was always their space, they have couches and a fridge in there and everything. I don't know why we we still have them in there, Angelo isn't here to use them. Dad hasn't come around since the funeral. 

Dad and I were close but Mom and I have always had things in common. When I was sad or afraid of anything, my mom was always there to protect me.  She taught me how to sew, how to cook, she taught me how to do my hair the way the rest of the women in my family do. We were always close.

We weren't your perfect nuclear family, but we were a family nonetheless. A family that loves and cares for each other, that always protects each other.

That's why I have to lie to my mom.

"Uhm...She asked me not to show anyone." I give a weak smile to my Mom as she nods and before leaving,

"Don't dig too deep, okay?"

Don't dig too deep.

I match the names on the drawings to the names on the envelope before carefully peeling open the white paper.

There are just slips of paper inside.

Blank, empty slips of paper.

That can't be it...That can't be all that there is...

I won't accept this. Who in their right mind would do something as time-consuming as writing out all those names and drawing the pictures and hiding it all...

For nothing.

I knew my brother better than that.

I set aside the envelope and pull my laptop on my bed, opening up to the Facebook page of Angelo.

Some of these people have to be on his friend's list.

He only has eleven people on his friend's list and only three out of the five drawings are on it.

Camille Rose, Evan Weaver, and Maurice Cullen.

Clicking on their profiles, only a few pictures show up of them due to the fact that I'm not friends with them

None of the pictures have Angelo in them. Maybe if I talk to them, I can ask how they knew Angelo. They have to have known him if they were friends on Facebook. Angelo didn't just add random people.

I shoot Maurice a friend request, she seems like the easiest to talk to. She looks a lot like Kylie, same blonde hair and blue eyes and pale skin. Her face is a different shape and her hair is shorter.

She's pretty, the type of girl Angelo could fall in love with.

I take out the slips of paper from the envelope and count them, there are twenty-five in total.

What does that mean? Why are they blank? What are they for? These have to be more important than what they let out to be.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. How I'm supposed to figure this out. I stare at the papers, trying to go through every possibility but failing. Nothing comes to mind. 

That is until Maurice accepts my friend request.

I look through more of her profile, now that I'm able to see the entire thing. There are a lot of pictures of her and her friends, one of them with Camille. I wonder if they're close. I wonder if there are any pictures of Angelo. Maybe they were jsut classmates, maybe they were just casual aqauuintences. I really hope so.

I wonder how she knew Angelo, but there's no more time to think about it. I'm a few years deep into her account when I get a message from her.

'Hi?' it says. She knows that I'm Angelo's sister, that's why she accepted the request. She just doesn't know why I'm friending her.

'Hi, sorry. I'm Angelo Washington's sister. Do you mind if I ask how you knew my brother?'

I think that's the most straight forward way of handling all of this. Straight and to the point. I'm proud of myself for not being awkward. 

While I'm waiting for her to respond, I continue to look through her profile. I'm about three years back when I stumble upon a group picture with a ton of people. It's hard to differentiate each individual person.

Except for Angelo.

He looks worried, scared almost. There's a taller guy standing almost behind him with his hand on Angelo's shoulder. Angelo is kneeling down, sort of to the left. Maurice is on his right, sitting directly next to him with her head on his shoulder. Lou is on his left.

I click and save the picture, creating a new folder to put it in. 

'I knew him from a club.'

'What club?'

'If he wanted you to know, he would have told you.'

She's right. If he wanted me to know he would have told me. 

That's all the more reason for me to put this stuff back where I found it and drop it completely. He didn't want me to know, he would have told me already. I know he would have, this isn't any of my buisness. It never was. 

That's all the more reason for everything to go back to normal.

I could do that. I could go back to normal. 

But I knew my brother better than that.