Page 80 of Let the Game Begin

“Your hands are already swelling up. I just want to help you.” He huffed and approached me. I didn’t move. At the same time, I couldn’t stop eyeing him warily, and I didn’t really know why. My body was acting independently of the rest of me.

“Calm down, okay? It’s me, your brother.” He said it with such intensity that it actually dissipated the dark clouds fogging up my mind.

It was Logan, my brother.

The same brother who played with me as a child; the only person who had never been afraid of me. The only person who actually knew me and accepted me as I was.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and let my hands rest on my bent knees. I was a big, imposing man, but in that moment, all I felt was vulnerable and tired. I was exhausted from fighting myself once again.

“How come my big, bad brother turns into a baby the moment he needs to get his owies looked at, huh?” he teased, pressing the ice pack down on the back of my right hand. I shuddered at the burning sensation and tightened my jaw, not saying a word. I always felt this way after one of my lost times: confused and unsteady. I never remembered anything I’d said or done. I probably could have committed murder and my mind would have repressed it, so powerful and uncontrolled were my outbursts.

Logan sat down next to me and let me hold the bag of ice in place with my other hand.

“Do you remember when we were little and we used to do pinky swears?” he murmured as I continued to study the backs of my hands, dotted with little red gashes.

Of course I remembered our pinky swears. My mind could easily travel back there, to those distant years that were still alive inside me…

“Logan.” I rested my hands on his little shoulders. We were hiding together under the kitchen table. “I’ll tell you what you need to do one more time, okay?” I said in a low voice as he watched me with terrified eyes.

“Okay,” he whispered, unsure.

“You’re going to leave the kitchen and run to the bedroom. You’re going to close your eyes while you cross the living room, and you’re not going to look.” I took a breath and then kept going. “Go in the room and lock the door. Turn on the TV and turn the volume way up.”

“Neil.” An adult woman’s voice echoed off the walls of the house. She had an odd kink: she liked to force me to hide and then come find me. My heart began pounding in my chest, and I looked back at my brother, waiting for him to repeat the instructions I’d just given him.

“Say it again, now.” He was only seven years old and already being tested in ways he couldn’t fully understand.

“I leave the kitchen, run to the bedroom, and then…” He rubbed the nape his neck and looked upward, trying to remember what came next.

“When you cross the…” I prompted him and he continued.

“Yeah, when I cross the living room, I close my eyes and I don’t look. Then Igo into the room, lock the door, turn on the TV, and turn the volume way up,” he concluded in his faint little voice.

“Good pup,” I whispered, kissing his forehead. I was his big brother, and I would protect him at all costs.

I started to leave our hiding place. I needed to be found before she could catch us both here and perhaps hurt Logan, too. He held me back, though, tugging on my shirt. “And then you come back to me, right?” he whispered, knowing that we needed to be quiet. He was little, but he was smart.

“Of course, I’ll come back. You do everything I told you, okay?” I held his face in my hands and he nodded, though he didn’t understand the reason behind my orders. To be honest, I was glad he couldn’t understand.

“Should we do our pinky swear?” He stuck his little finger out to me, waiting.

“Pinky swear,” I smiled and hooked my pinky with his.

Then he ran away, and I went to meet my fate.

“I could never forget that,” I murmured, pressing the ice against my swollen knuckles.

“We’ve been through everything together,” he said softly, thinking of exactly the same things I was.

“You’ve always been my favorite pup.” I reached out and tousled his chestnut hair, cracking a spontaneous grin.

“Come on! Knock it off! You know I hate it when you mess up my hair.” He tried to squirm away, muttering like a sulky child.

“I used to do it all the time when you were little,” I pointed out.

“When I was little, you tormented me.” He threw me a dirty look, and I tried to suppress a laugh.

“That is not true,” I argued, pretending not to remember the many disasters I had visited upon him as a child.