His Journal

      So I'm on the bus and my mouth tastes like chocolate and toothpaste, chocolate because of the pop-tart I ate this morning, toothpaste because I'm pretty paticular about brushing my teeth, but it's next to impossible to brush the pop-tart taste away. Being paticular about brushing my teeth is also why my toothbrush is shoved in my jeans pocket with three mini tubes of toothpaste, which is really uncomfortable, but that way they won't get lost. I've got a twenty dollar bill and six nickels in my other pocket, the nickels are mine, my mom gave me the twenty this morning after I told her I was leaving, she kissed my head, handed me the twenty, and waved at me all the way down the street. She was crying, though, I could tell. I've got two pens in my windbreaker pocket, for when this one runs out of ink, well it's not my windbreaker, it's my brother's, actually it was my brother's, but now I wear it because...

      Somebody gave me this book, so many blank pages, and said it would help me if I wrote down my feelings. I can't remember who it was, but I'm completely numb, I can't feel anything, so I'll write what I'm doing. I'm riding the bus. I just got on this bus, I had enough for the fare in my pocket, so I payed and got on. I don't know where it's going, I'll ride till the last stop later tonight, but for now I'm on the bus. It's raining, and it has been raining ever since that day, that day when my brother stopped needing his windbreaker. It's a purple windbreaker, because that's my brother's favorite color. "Oh, he's so eccentric." everyone would say, and laugh, because they all loved him, every single person who said that. This bus is pretty empty. I don't have anything in my other windbreaker pocket, that's because there's a hole in it, my brother burned it there last year when we went camping. I've never seen my brother so happy as when we went camping.

     There's a hole in the chest pocket, too, so I can't use it, it's a big sized hole. Someone sat next to me so I'm going to stop writing, I don't want any questions, I have enough of my own already...

     So that guy got off the bus. "Where are you going?" he asked, trying to be friendly, I guess, which made me feel even more unfriendly. "Don't know." I said, and looked out the window, hoping he'd just take a hint and leave me alone but he doesn't, and says, "you look sort of small to be traveling alone." "Yeah?" I said and closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep till he got off he bus and it worked, he stopped talking to me until his "good-bye" when he got off the bus, which I said nothing to, only nodded and pulled my book out of my pocket. I'm average height for my age, 16, I'm just really thin because for the last six-and-a-half months I've been eating nothing but pop-tarts, because everything else tastes like ashes except pop-tarts, so mom buys them for me because she's happy I'm eating something, anything. My brother stopped eating at all, not even pop-tarts, which were his favorite, and he scared me because when he took his shirt off I could count his ribs. My brother, he scared me a lot, well it's more like worry, he worried me, even though I'm three years younger and way smaller, he worried me. He worried me coming home at three AM from wandering the streets all night, he worried me with his scary drawings and depressing poems, he worried me with all the pills I found in his closet when I was looking for the Batman comics that worried me when he stopped caring about them. I couldn't sleep for days, finally I told Mom, and she said she knew, she knew, she knew, if she knew why didn't she do something? She did but in the end it made everything worse, talking to Dr. Foya, it made my brother worse, I had to talk to Dr. Foya, and he had endless questions that had no point, are you happy, were you happy, no thoughts of suicide, what does his mean to you?

Of course I wasn't happy, I'll never be happy and nothing means anything, because I love my brother, oh, great, I'm crying now.

Mom understands that I need to be alone for awhile and sort everything out, but Dad's called me twenty three times since he got home from work thirty five minutes ago. He's not my brother's dad, he's mine, but he loved my brother too, he was the one who...

I must have fallen asleep because the bus driver suddenly told me end of the line, like in a movie, and I got off and now I'm in the bus station, which is open 24 hours, and I'll ccatch the next bus at four AM. I've got two and a half hours to sit here and think, then, which is no good, because thinking leads to feeling, and you might rip apart if you try to think when you're numb. I haven't felt anything for six and a half months, not since the day after my sixteenth birthday, December 15 was my birthday, so December 16 I lost my feelings, 16 is my unlucky number.

I got on the bus and I'm going to sleep now.

 

I had a horrible dream. I was looking in the mirror in my bathroom, the one me and my brother share, and I took his purple razor and dragged it across my mouth, and all around my lips got all pink and scarred, but it only hurt a little bit, and I went outside and there was my brother, smiling at my messed up mouth, smiling and smiling as if nothing was wrong, and nothing could go wrong, and he opened his mouth like he would say my name, but it was too late and he was gone, it's always too late, and he's gone.

My brother used to draw tiny scars all over his arm with marker, and I got so used to it then I woke up one day and like magic they were real. My brother, my brother, I loved him, I loved him.

He's ---------

He's----------

My brother is dead. I'll never see him again, only in my dreams, and he's just a ghost there, he never speaks, he just smiles and smiles and smiles and I want to hit him, scream quit smiling, you're dead and you left me and you don't even care, you don't care that Dad can't sleep at night and mom still fixes four plates, and Dandy sits at the door every day at 4:35, whining because you never come through the door, and you invade my dreams until there's only your pale, marble, cold skin and glassy eyes, and you're smiling, you jerk, you're SMILING

I hate you.

 

Once, there was this extremely pretty girl at a bowling alley. My brother said go talk to her, I know she'll like you, go introduce  yourself, but I couldn't, I was too nervous, I couldn't talk to any girl except Mom, not even my cousins, so my brother got up, and he told the girl to introduce herself to me, and she did, and it was the best night of my life, like my brother had cast a spell on her, and this time the girl wasn't completely focused on my brother, but me. It was exactly one month before he died, before he...

 

I stopped trying to talk to girls, I stopped talking to everyone, I held barking conversations with the Dandy and whistled at birds, I nodded yes and no, I hung thirty-three do not disturb signs on my bedroom door, and then it was to Dr. Foya, it was a ridiculous idea, but carried through, all the same. He asked questions, I nodded or shook my head, then he stopped asking yes or no questions and I closed my eyes and went to sleep, I woke up in my bed so I walked two miles to the theater, bought a ticket, and went to sleep with my legs tucked against my chest in the maroon colored folding chair. That way I couldn't see my brother's empty bed, made up all nice and neat, the way he never liked it, he only spent nights here as soon as he was old enough to go places by himself and stay out late.

 

When I was younger I used to think my brother was something uhhuman and magical, that my mother had gotten him by mistake, and he knew he didn't belong, but he loved us all anyway, despite not belonging in this world, he forced himself to belong because he loved us, and in the end it was too much, even for love of us, and he just couldn't stay here, he had to go, no he didn't, he didn't,he didn't, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't, but he did.

 

So now I am on the bus bound for anywhere and I don't ever want to come back because my brother will still be gone.

 

I need to think...

 

It's light outside, now. It's not raining, but then again, we left the county hours ago, so why should it be, my brother only left the county twice, once to California, Once to Maryland, but other than that, he was always here. Always.

 

My brother hated all organized sports, he'd make up his own chaotic rules, and make me play with him, and he'd never reveal all of the rules to me. That's how I felt when he died, like someone hadn't told me all the rules, so I never saw it coming, and it never made any sense.

 

I don't smell all that great, so I'll buy deodorant and one more box of pop-tarts and a bottle of water. No one else has sat next to me on this bus, maybe it's because I look bedraggled, I always look kind of brooding, my brother was always happy-go-lucky. We were completely different except our eyes, we have the same gray eyes, well, I still have mine, and he closed his, but they were the same, we got them from Grandpa, it's what he left behind, he died before my brother was born. But now my brother is dead, and I'm wondering who will get his eyes? He will never have kids, he's dead, so who gets his eyes? No one, and that's selfish of him, it's selfish that he didn't even remember my birthday and that Dad had to go out looking for him when he didn't come home and it's selfish that Dad had to find him, Dad of all people who already blamed himself so much, because my brother, my brother...

 

Once my brother took me shopping. He put things in the cart we'd never ever need, nail polish, congratulations on your marriage cards, a toddler's shirt with trains all over it, bright yellow pajamas, the kind with the feet, we got two berets and wore them the rest of the day, we got hair bows and plastic cups with fish swimming in their sides, we bought a book on how to speak Korean. Everything my brother did had no point, and I always went along with it, never asking any questions, there was actually only one question I could ask, really, and that was why, but it was a stupid question so I never asked, I wish I did, and then I'd know, then I wouldn't be wearing the yellow pajamas constantly, I'm wearing them under my brother's windbreaker, maybe that's why no one is sitting next to me, I'm wearing them under my jeans, and you can see the yellow at my ankles. You'd think that would be too warm, but I'm freezing, so cold, so very cold, and the sun is shining, and I feel like it's laughing, laughing nefariously, my brother loved that word, he loved purple and pop-tarts and sitcoms and blondes and poodles, that's why we got Dandy, my brother loved poodles. He would compose strange poems about them, and recite them to make me laugh: The sound of one poodle is not to be missed, but the sound of many poodles is mellifluos, and I didn't even know what it meant but I'd laugh and laugh at his haughty accent as he praised the sound of poodles, and Dandy would sit with us, under the table at our poetry readings, and she'd smile at us, at you, like isn't this great, you here with us?

 

Dandy sleeps on my brother's bed, waiting for him, waiting for his poodle poems and loud laugh and booming singing voice and glinting eyes. My brother was perfect, but the world made no sense to him, my parents were watching the news and my brother started watching and he started to sob and sob, he walked out the door, sobbing, and sat on the porch in the rain. My parents stopped watching the news, then. My brother would go to the hospital and wander from floor to floor, from room to room, he'd bring everyone stuffed animals, old or young, girl or boy, they'd all get a stuffed animal, I don't know where he got them, they appeared like magic, maybe they were. I need...I don't know what I need...to think...

 

This journal, this book, I don't even want to write in it anymore but for some reason it pulls me, it pulls me like my brother's drawings, I never wanted to look at them, they were so gruesome, but I couldn't look away. I just keep writing, and writing, it's something to do, I guess, I don't like it, but it helps me, like medication.

 

My brother started taking shiny orange capsules when he was 12 years old. We all knew he was different, but good different, until the day he cut of the pinkie finger of his left hand, he said it would grow back, he bled so much it made me sick, blood still makes me sick, and my brother grinned at his bleeding hand, they sewed it back on and he was dissapointed, because he said he knew it would grow back, so orange capsules for him, every morning and every evening, I thought they'd make him better, he'd stop picking at his skin till it bled and biting through his tongue, but when I found the pile of orange capsules in his old tennis shoes I knew he was just pretending. My brother and I had a good time, and he was fine until he got to highschool and turn 15, he scared me, I'd have nightmares about him, nightmares where he'd gnaw off his arm to the bone, smiling, eyes flashing as he licked up the blood, I was only 12, I couldn't sleep, I'd fall asleep at school and wake up screaming, my mom started giving me sleeping pills, I couldn't fall asleep without them for two years. I loved my brother, though, I looked up to him, I thought he was perfect, I still do, if you leave out the dead part. I never told anyone about my brother, I had no close friends, all I needed was my brother, I still have no close friends, but everyone told me sorry for your loss, sorry for your loss, sorry for your loss, all day, people I didn't even know, teachers I didnt' have.

 

Gosh, I miss him. The wicked grin he'd get when he was planning something, him singing at the top of his lungs, describing to me how to grow up until I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. He was going to teach me how to draw, he promised, but I guess that doesn't mean anything now, he used to leave in the middle of the night, I sleep lightly, so I'd hear him and wake up and say don't go, don'tgodon'tgodon'tgo, ande he'd say I'll come back, I promise, I always will, you promised you promised you promised you promised promised YOU PROMISED. You lied. I'm just too angry to write....

 

So I'm not wearing my jeans anymore, I put my toothbrush and toothpaste and pens in the windbreaker pocket, I kept feeling the hole in the chest pocket and thinking how--? How--? I remember where I got this book now, my brother's friend found it and saw it was for me, for my birthday, from my brother, his friend told me I should write my feelings in it, this was after Dad had put on his jacket and got in the car and gone looking, and his search stopped on the Sixth Street Bridge, my brother and I used to play there, he said the middle of bridges were a magic place where nothing existed and anything could happen, he'd stand in the middle of the bridge and close his eyes and smile, I'd never seen him so happy, I haven't ever seen him so happy, and so Dad found my brother in the middle of the Sixth Street Bridge, a bridge no one uses anymore because they built a bigger one years ago, which is why it was safe for my brother and I to play on it, which is also why no one found my brother until Dad did, who knew all my brother's favorite places. Dad found my brother and he was dead, he was dead because he...

 

 

 

Author's Note

Please tell me your opinions of the voice of the character, and the style of his writing--are his senteces to run-on? Is he too dramatic? Thank you.

Reviews

[V. Smith]

Neat story. I like the narration and how you used the fact that the POV character is writing in a journal, to tell the story.

I want to know what happened to the character's brother and where he is going that his mom is crying. Has he left for good? And, does he have OCD?

The last line: "...I don't want any questions, my whole life has been full of questions....," a bit maudlin -- I think you could just leave it at, "I'm going to stop writing," fits the character better, in my opinion.