Life Is A Nightmare

Chapter Twelve: He's Real

(Gavin)

I walk back to Jenna slowly as I lose myself in the uncertainty something is wrong with me. Really wrong to pull me away from reality once again. I'm scared of what's happening. I'm scared of who I'm becoming as I care little about the people I thought once mattered to me.

Day by day I'm starting to lose it. Drift into this world that Kalien keeps trying to remind me is where my dad is. My dad is lost, has been for years and it's what I could never understand. I didn't want to see anything his way when I've always been told he's stuck in the past. He's damaged beyond repair having slipped back into the life he once had with the person who hurt him.

He's wants Jayden to be innocent. He wants his happy family before I existed and I never liked the idea. I would be left out, forgotten even more than I am now but suddenly I'm believing what he is. I'm losing myself in the what if's. I'm becoming someone else scared and confused more than I have ever been in my life.

What my grandma used to tell comes to mind of how much she loved me and often she said I was perfect. I wasn't considered 'messed up in the head' like Jayden. I wasn't a problem to her. I wasn't as sick as he was she would say because of his father Jared. Jared had problems that Jayden had just like him but not me.

No, I was free of those problems. She didn't have to worry something was wrong with me because there was nothing wrong. Jayden got everything from Jared and the chances of me being like my older brother weren't even questioned. But why would it be?

We're half siblings. We share the same dad but not the same father. We're nothing alike she would say but for some reason, I didn't like the answer. I didn't want to be completely different when our dad cared about him. Our dad loved him more while I remained in the background wishing there was something that could change how different I was.

Though looking at it now in hindsight I take it back. I rather have stayed being my dad's son he hardly acknowledged but at least talked to. I don't want to have him avoid me altogether while I question everything about life. Walking around I guess like Kalien said, a walking zombie getting by life. Gasping for air as I continue to take another step back onto a path of discovering what it's like to lose all my sanity.

"Sorry." I says as I get to the steps where Jenna is, her eyes glued to her phone.

She glances up surprised to see me. "Did you know him?" she asks and I'm left wondering if I just heard her right.

"Know who?" Did she see him?

"The guy you went after obviously." she replies.

"You saw him?"

"Yeah." she says as she gives me a skeptical look, "I thought that's why you left following after him."

-------

"What was Jayden like?" Gavin asks sitting at his grandparent's house.

He arrived almost an hour ago and the letter he had found in his dad's belongings last week has been perplexing him. Questions pondering in his head about the mystery person he has heard about from his dad over the years and the pictures he has seen displayed around on the walls. Everywhere Gavin has looked there is always a picture of Jayden and Vivian. Two siblings, he doesn't know. Two people, he has been in doubt even existed, despite the pictures on the wall, until he came across the letter.

Jayden's words were written down on paper. His feelings and thoughts poured into the letter sent to their dad. Words trying to understand what's going on and pleading at the same time he's innocent.