Page 15 of Brazen Defiance (Brazen Boys #4)

Jansen

M y brain feels like it’s been electrocuted, both buzzing and limp, spinning with unformed thoughts but unable to settle.

I was up until the sun rose this morning, and while I slept until noon, it wasn’t like it was a full night. I don’t know the last full night of sleep I got. Clara gets dragged awake with nightmares. I can’t even fall asleep.

Running with Trips helped a bit, but it’s not enough. I can tell. I could run for hours and still not be able to rest. Climbing the outside of the witch’s hat ten times without a rope, that might be enough. Maybe.

I’m not sure anymore.

I’m not sure about anything.

Clara almost died. And we were picking out curtains.

Shouldn’t I have felt something, known that she was in danger? Isn’t that a thing that happens when you love someone? Or is that just twins? I don’t even know.

When my dad died, I was at the park kicking a ball against a fence, pretending I was some famous soccer player. Not that I knew of any. But it was the only ball I had, so it’s what I pretended.

I came home as the sun went down to an empty apartment. And a note on the fridge telling me to go across the hall to Mrs. Erickson. I hated that place—it smelled like rotting potatoes and cat piss. So I turned on the TV, watching shows until I got too hungry to stay put.

When I knocked on her door, that’s when I realized something was wrong.

Not before that. Not an inkling that while I pretended to be a soccer star and laughed at some damn kids’ show, my dad was breathing his last.

Car accident. A daytime drunk and a shitty old car with an ancient, malfunctioning airbag.

That’s all it took.

And everything changed.

I promised myself that the next time someone I loved was in danger, that I’d be there. And I wasn’t.

An impossible promise made by a child, but still. She almost died, and I was stealing decorative hooks for her to put up in her room to organize more of her stuff. She loves organized spaces, and colors and patterns, and I thought it would be a good gift.

Now, the hooks are on the top shelf of my closet next to the goddamn cowboy hat I stole a few months ago.

And the tiara is hidden in the biggest of my book safes, barely fitting, but wrapped in a pair of my boxers so it doesn’t get damaged.

Another something I shouldn’t have done.

Why do I keep doing shit I know I shouldn’t? Why can’t I just be normal? This buzzing under my skin makes it impossible to think, and the only times I feel any kind of clarity are when I’m doing exactly what I shouldn’t.

That and when I’m balls deep in Clara. But it’s not like I can stay like that, as much as I’d like to. It’d make for some pretty awkward moments if I could.

I chuckle at the mental image.

It feels good to laugh, and it builds in me until I’m laughing so hard I’m crying, alone in my room, the lights dark, with nothing but a dumb image to set me off.

Then I’m crying for real, so out of control of my emotions that it scares me.

This isn’t me. It can’t be.

I don’t know how to fix myself. I’ve only been this bad once before, but this feels different. This feels broken. Seriously broken. Not just a little cracked.

Cracked in the head. Like the damn kids teased in that small town we moved to.

Can’t sit still, can’t focus, can’t even show up half the time, and so far behind that I looked practically illiterate.

Evie tutored me, got me to where I should be, then called and checked in every few days when she went to college. Like she was my mom.

Things changed when we moved in with my now stepdad, but a lot didn’t. My mom was still sick. We still didn’t have much, even if we had more than before. At least my mom could take her meds again. At least I saw her out of bed more than once or twice a week. At least she smiled again.

But I still had to spend three and a half years of high school in a place where the other kids hated me, didn’t understand that I wasn’t broken, just had lived a different life than they had. How many of them had shoplifted meals for their families?

More than I knew, likely, but the shopkeepers out there probably just looked the other way, knowing the family, knowing they needed the food. Unlike me, where I had to learn to be good, great even, just to stay out of the hands of the police.

I slam my hands against the sides of my head, wishing I could knock the sad away. The feeling that I’m one mistake away from destruction. Mine or someone else’s.

Clara’s.

But haven’t I already done that? Haven’t I destroyed her life?

She said there were pictures of us boosting cars.

Us.

Because I talked her into joining me. Because I can’t be alone right now without the damn buzzing inside of me trying to find a way out. Like now, weeping on the floor, the urge to crawl under my bed to hide overwhelming.

But I’d be hiding from myself.

And no bed can do that.

My monster would crawl under there with me.

No escape. Not right now.

And I don’t know how to get better. I don’t even have words for what’s wrong.

My mom took me in after the teachers in that small town told her I was broken. I got a prescription for Adderall and was told to come back when I was grown, because there was more broken, but they couldn’t tell me until I was an adult.

Like that isn’t ominous.

I never went back.

And after I left home, I stopped filling my prescription. First on accident, then on purpose.

This person was me. The one the teachers called broken. That the kids made fun of.

And I found tools that helped—alarms, cold showers, moving my body, and meditation.

I could still be me, the me that makes dumb decisions and laughs about it. The me that loves breaking into a dark space and taking what strikes my fancy. The me that rides the high of life, who lives for adventures and shitty choices.

The me that’s an amazing thief.

But even that isn’t working right. I can’t follow directions, even good ones, smart ones.

Stealing is becoming boring. Routine even.

And if that’s true, what’s left?

Where do I put all this goddamn energy that boils under my skin, steals my thoughts, pushes me into dangerous situations?

Crying alone in the dark of my room isn’t the answer.

But I don’t know what is.

I don’t know what to do.