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Rafael

Mattie was wonderful. He was my best friend—my everything. Most kids don’t appreciate their siblings, but I knew from when Mattie was born that I was the luckiest kid on the planet to have him as a brother. He had this hilarious laugh that sounded like a bird squawking. Once Mattie got on some laughing kick, everyone around him started laughing, mainly because his laugh was so fucking bizarre. He could be a little shit too. Practical jokes were his specialty, but they were never malicious. They were genuinely clever. You couldn’t help but keel over and cackle once you realized he duped you into falling for one of his pranks. That mischievous quality glistened in his eyes, and I couldn’t get enough of his little face when he was planning something—such a character. We shared a room until I was ten and he was six, not because we didn’t have a bedroom for him, but because we didn’t want to be in separate rooms. Each evening, we’d set up a tent made of bedding, and I’d tell him some gruesome ghost story that I’d made up on the spot. He loved being scared.

He was so scared that day…

I failed him. I was his big brother. Big brothers are supposed to protect their little brothers. I couldn’t do it. Sometimes, I wanted to go back to our summer house on Cape Cod, set sail in a tiny boat just like we had on that day, and wait for a storm to free me from the relentless guilt. I should have died that day. Not him. Not Mattie.

I failed him.

I’ve had that dream countless times over the years. Each time, I awoke with a pounding heart and a pain in my lungs, like I’d deprived them of air for too long. They burned, and my throat ached. Nobody ever came to wake me up in all the years I had that dream. I didn’t think my parents knew I had them. I didn’t realize my sounds were audible in real life. Cody coming into my room made me realize that my nightmares were loud enough that he heard me with two walls and a hallway between us.

He came to help me.

When I woke up, I thought I was still underwater. The touch of his hand tricked my mind into believing that I hadn’t let go of Mattie. The relief that washed over me was unlike any joy I’d ever experienced. I thought I’d held on. I thought I saved him—that the years of missing him were the actual nightmare and that, in reality, I was still in the water, fighting to save my best friend. My little guy. My heart.

But that wasn’t the case. Mattie was dead, and Cody was holding my hand.

My heart broke. It broke harder than it had when Mattie died because, this time, I thought…

If I believed in God, I would have renounced it right then and there. What a cruel fucking trick.

If Cody heard me through the walls, why hadn’t my parents? Or had they, and they just ignored it? The hurt that washed over me boiled into a potion of rage that flowed throughout my body. I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed Cody’s throat until his terrified eyes shook me out of my rage-induced blackout.

I hadn’t intended to say something like that to him. It just came out. Cody shouldn’t have been the one reaching for my hand. It burned. It burned so much that I feared it would overtake me. When he left my room, I hated myself even more for saying it. Why did I care? The hurt in his eyes did something to me.

I was never one to reflect. There was no need to ponder over the hurt I caused because pain consumed my every waking moment. Why shouldn’t everyone else be in pain? But, for some reason, seeing Cody like that made me think about how terrible I was for saying that. It scared me. That wasn’t part of the plan. I wasn’t supposed to feel remorse for fucking with him.

I decided to lock my bedroom door from then on. He’d never see that again. I didn’t care if I was drowning in that room; it would be better than giving Cody any semblance of the upper hand in our little game. He was mine to devour, and that wasn’t going to change.