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Eleventh Grade

How My Life Fell Apart and My Brother Got Arrested

By Misunderstood NinjaPublished 6 years ago 9 min read
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I live in what is quite possibly the whitest neighborhood ever. I'm not kidding. A local publication did this analysis of every neighborhood in my city, ranking them on affordability, diversity, those sorts of things—and mine ranked in the bottom 10 percent for just having so many white people. An elderly piano teacher (white, of course) used to live across the street and gave my mom lessons when she had her midlife crisis and bought a keyboard. She was the neighborhood gossip, and always had some tidbit of information to give my mom when she crossed the street to practice her scales. Being the un-diverse suburb that it is, where most of the residents are either eighty or eight, most of it was pretty boring stuff. Whose sister is in town, whose daughter going to what college—that kind of thing. But that didn't stop her from outfitting her entire front wall with glass just so she could see what the neighbors were up to. I've always wondered what she thought about the events of last fall when my family started to devolve in an extremely dramatic and public way. She moved away before I could ask her.

It started in October, a few days after my 16th birthday. I'd been away all week with my grade on a team-building retreat, and returned to find my brother back early from college for no apparent reason. It was his first year, and he was going to a school six or so hours away from home to study philosophy. He'd had some trouble in his last years of high school (stuff that maybe I'll get into at a later date), but somehow he'd managed to scrape together enough credits to graduate and the allure of his private school diploma was enough to gain acceptance to a semi-distinguished Canadian university, despite the problems he'd had getting it. But inexplicably, he was back, in the middle of the term, eating dinner in his customary seat and arguing with my parents like always, even though absolutely no one would tell me why.

Instantly, I could tell that there was something wrong with him. I'd find out later that he was conked out on prescription pills, but at the time, I just remember being scared of him. He lashed out at my parents, then would apologize and beg for money, and lash out again when they refused. I remember one specific encounter when my grandparents were over for dinner, and he checked his phone and leapt from the table. I could hear his muffled screams from halfway through the house in the living room and I ran to them. My parents and my grandparents kept eating their salmon.

"He's going to kill himself," my brother told me, pacing back and forth. He had an embroidered pillow in his hand, and every few steps he'd stuff it to his face and let out another scream.

"Who?" I demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"Alex," he said, a name I didn't recognize. "We hung out yesterday, we went to the movies, and when we got in line for popcorn he told me he fucking hated me and ran out the door." He waved his phone in my face. "He's going to kill himself."

"I don't understand-" I tried to say, because I didn't. I didn't know who Alex was and the story my brother had just blurted out, punctuated by sobs, didn't make any sense to me at all.

"I need to find him," he said. "I need bus fare." I agreed, and I ran to my room to get him some quarters. When I came back down, though, he was already gone. The rest of my family had finished their meal, and my grandparents were getting ready to leave. My dad was on the phone in the kitchen. I kissed my grandparents goodbye, and my mom told me that maybe it was time for me to take the dog for a walk. I thought at first that they didn't know what had just happened, or maybe that they didn't care. I guess we'd all just become so desensitized to everything he did that we wouldn't have been surprised even if my brother sprouted wings and flew out the window.

There are two bus stops within walking distance of my house. The quarters jangled in my pocket with every step. I checked the first. There was no one there. I waited for my dog to pee before heading for the end of the block where the second bus stop was. And there my brother was, sitting on a bench next to the signpost. But I wasn't really looking at him. I was staring beside him, at the police car and the officers that had come out of it. They were talking to him, but I couldn't hear about what.

I felt the salmon I'd eaten rush back up to greet me. I dropped the quarters I'd picked up, one by one back into my pocket. I wiped the palms of my hands on my jeans because they'd suddenly become unbearably sweaty. And then I did the only thing I could think of, which was to turn around and keep walking. I walked for half an hour around the perimeter of my neighborhood. I didn't pass my house, but I went by the bus stops twice more. My brother was gone. So were the officers.

Eventually, I started to feel bad for my dog, who needed rest and water, so I returned to my house. I didn't know how I was going to explain what I had seen to my parents, or how I was going to justify how I just turned around and walked away from the scene. But as I turned down my street, I realized that perhaps that wouldn't be that big of a problem—the cop car was now parked with two wheels on my front lawn.

I'd find out later that my dad had been on the phone in the kitchen with the police. He'd called them because they'd all overheard my brother's outburst and didn't know what to do. And the cops had just gone to speak to my brother, to offer help, and had brought him back home to bring my parents into the discussion about his friend.

But in the moment I knew none of that. I sat on the front stoop and I pet my dog and I wondered if the piano teacher across the street was looking at me. "Al!" she'd shout at her husband, unable to contain the excitement that something interesting was finally happening in our sleepy neighborhood. "Look at what's going on over there!"

It took another 15 minutes for the door to open and the policemen to come out. They were nice. They stopped to pat my dog and they told me everything was going to be alright. They explained that they were going to take my brother to see Alex, to see if they could help him. My brother followed them to the police car and got in the back.

I didn't know then that my brother was on drugs. I didn't know that he was stealing money from me and my parents to pay for them. I thought that Alex was the messed-up one, and I thought that my brother was just there for a visit and would be going back to school. I was wrong on all counts.

It was a little better the next day. My brother didn't have any outbursts. But he didn't go back to school, either. He didn't even seem to want to. And then, as they say, all hell broke loose.

Police presence became common at my house. My parents were forced to call them almost every night, because my brother was high and screaming at them, or throwing things, or screaming and throwing things. They found money missing. They found out he'd sold the computer they'd bought him for college. They found out he hadn't even been going to classes, not one all term.

I was still going to high school during this. I was in 11th grade, and unlike for my brother, school was the most important thing in my life. The only thing I knew was that I had to get out of there and to do that I needed nothing less than perfect grades. I'd gotten soundproof headphones for my birthday and they never left my head. I'd be studying at the kitchen table while a screaming match would occur behind me.

On one particularly bad night, my parents decided they'd had enough. They needed professional help, they said, to deal with him. He was out of control. They had tried to convince him to go to the local mental health center at the hospital, but to no avail. When my mom brought it up, my brother had literally jumped out of the car and ran away.

The police came that night again, but it was different. There was a knock at the front door, and when my parents went to answer it, I heard another knock at the back door next to me in the kitchen. I opened it, my headphones still balanced on my head, to find a policeman standing there. They had surrounded the house and were ready to drag my brother to the hospital kicking and screaming if they had to. And if you knew my brother at all, you'd know that was exactly what happened.

When they took him, my parents would find dozens of prescription pill bottles hidden in his room. Mostly Xanax.

I kept doing my homework.

The worst part of the situation was keeping it a secret. My family has a certain image. My brother and I both attend(ed) ritzy private schools. I admit my family is well-off. The number-one-rule, the only thing my parents ever really said to me about the ordeal was to never ever talk about it. No one at school, no one in the extended family, no one period. Full stop.

They offered to get me a counselor, but that never panned out. I talked to the one at school, but I had a hard time saying my brother's name without crying. And sometimes at a party when I've had a little too much to drink, I'll tell whoever's next to me a detail, something that I've been holding in for too long. But I've never, not once, told anyone the whole story. The whole truth—what happened, and how I felt about it and how it still hurts me now—no one knows that. That's what this is for. It's anonymous, and none of you will ever know who I really am, but here, it doesn't matter if I cry. It doesn't matter what I say at all.

So this is just the beginning of my story. Thank you for reading.

siblings
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About the Creator

Misunderstood Ninja

hello! i'm MN and i'm 17 years old. i love my dog, books, sports, and jalapeños.

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