Things Money Can't Buy

Chapter 12

~*~

The rest of the party was a lot of fun. Megan started flirting with this cute guy from the accounting department, and they exchanged numbers. They had been talking for a good portion of the night and were clearly into each other.

I didn't see Jason for the rest of the night, which made it a lot easier to have fun.

When I got home, a text notification popped up from my little brother, Evan.

It read: don't be mad, but I did something stupid

My heart dropped in my chest. I knew he had a bad group of friends, and his text filled me with dread. He was only eighteen and was making poor life choices. Unfortunately, he seemed to inherit the impulsivity gene from our parents and it broke my heart. I had tried to protect him from that for years. He still made dumb choices, but he'd been pretty lucky so far.

Immediately, I called him. He sounded frazzled.

"Anna!" he cried out. He didn't call me Anna-banana, which was his nickname for me, so I knew it was serious.

Trying not to sound as worried as I felt, I asked him calmly, "What's wrong?"

"I'm not fine," he said. His voice was shaking. "You were right when we talked before. Remember when you said that? I'm not fine. I'm scared. I made a huge mistake."

"What the fuck did you do?"

"I made a huge mistake," he repeated. "I was hanging out with some of the guys a few days ago, and..." He was having trouble getting the words out.

"And?"

"We went to this house. They broke in and told me to come with them. I don't know why I agreed. We stole some stuff, but someone ended up coming home while we were there." He paused for a moment, sounding traumatized.

"What happened?" I demanded.

"Fuck! It got bad. Mike shot the guy because he was about to call the police. I didn't even know he had a gun! We ran. The guy didn't die, but I saw on the news that he's in the hospital right now. The guy remembered what Mike looked like, so he just got arrested."

It took a moment for all of this information to sink in. When it did, my entire body seemed to go cold and numb from the shock.

First of all, what the fuck? Second of all, I couldn't believe that he had waited a few days to tell me about this, until Mike had already been arrested. Third of all, did he really think he'd get away with it?

"Where are you now?" I finally asked. 

"Home. Auntie doesn't know. I'm just afraid. What if the police find me and know I was there?"

"I don't know."

"What if someone's listening to this call?" He was being paranoid, but that was the least of my concerns right now.

"I don't know, so stop talking about it," I snapped.

I didn't know what else to say to him. How could he do this to our family? It forced back the memories of our parents that I always tried to avoid. The thoughts flooded my conscious, and I couldn't stop it. 

My dad was in prison because he had robbed a bank with a gun for drug money. I was ten years old at the time. He was serving a twenty-year sentence. 

My mom died of a drug overdose when I was twelve, which was when my mom's sister brought Evan and I to live with her.

Even before then, our parents were rarely there and rarely attentive. They never physically abused us, but they were high or sleeping almost all of the time. In the rare instances where they were sober, they were loving, but those times were few and far between. We didn't have a good start in life, but our Aunt Laura was a blessing who tried to help us have the childhood we never had.