Not a Bestseller

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but Words Will Always Hurt Me

He pulled me up to my feet. One step at a time, I trailed his shadow until I was face to face with my brother. Kyle was beet-red, hair like a sweaty porcupine. I hadn't seen him like this since he was sixteen. 

He paused, "Ben...I, um...I wanted to talk to you."

"Looks like it."

A trickle of sweat slipped down his brow. "I know about what's been going on, okay?"

With Julia? How the huckleberry...

"There's this really great boarding school just across from campus. You and I, we've always stuck out for each other, right? I know I let you down when I left, but, we can do that again. I've-"

"I'm seventeen years old, Kyle! I'm not... I don't need you to protect me."

He staggered. I'd wounded him, but nothing critical. Regret fled through me as I watched the ray of emotions. He glanced at our parents, shock transformed into hatred. A brick in his jaw, he charged towards me until I saw nothing but dysfunctional eyes clouded with poison.

His words shot an arrow through my head. "You can take care of yourself, huh?"

My head was on a string of hot iron.

"Don't screw around with me, Ben. You know what this is about." Kyle dug a newspaper out of his bag and stuck his finger at the front page. "Don't play dumb with me here!"

I jumped when Dad snatched the paper out of Kyle's hands. He paced like some sort of mad scientist, and I'm surprised he didn't wear a hole through the floor. The perfect kingdom behind his face dissolved into nothing.

"Look, this is what brought me here in the first place," Kyle said. "I didn't realize how bad it was until now."

"What are you talking about?" I hardly heard myself.

Dad bit his lip, but Kyle shoved it on me. The word "misdemeanor" was in bold. On the cover was a boy. Dark brown hair mopped his forehead, black in the lights, and his brown eyes were gold in the morning sun. I cringed at the pocket survival knife in his left hand. In the background? An old and broken fountain, hiding in what resembled an alley.

I glanced at the headline.

Benjamin Wood, Juvenile Delinquent, Suicidal?

I'm running out of ways to say my head hurt. 

"A reporter showed up at my door asking me if I knew anything about it," Kyle said. "Threw this at me and said it would be on the front of every site on the web soon. I wanted to get him out of here before it was too late."

"Ben," Dad said. "Can...you explain this?"

Dad trusted me to tell him the truth. He actually trusted me to do the right thing.

With a laugh I knew couldn't be humorous, Kyle raised his brow towards the rim of his forehead. He didn't think I could do it. Why would he? How would he know that the last three months of my life have consisted of constant communication about anything you can find in the English dictionary?

A few months ago, he would've been right. I would've run, left him to battle this out with the bullet wound. 

I begged for an emotional breakdown to bring everybody together. I'd been that key that divided my family for seventeen years; maybe I could unite it. But I couldn't. I was the nobody who freezes before dying in a horror film.

"It's not true!" Mom stole the paper. "Ben, tell your brother how much you've improved."

Improved. 

Breaths grabbed my lungs and pulled it into a knot, but I shook my head at a snail's pace. Did Julia...No. It was that reporter, that Nancy Clemmings person from way back when, the one who was supposed to be a minor character. It couldn't be Julia. She wouldn't do that to me.

She couldn't have.

"Ben?"

I looked at my brother. He nodded, confirming everything he thought about me, proving every family label, every misdemeanor, every doctor prescription. I needed to change this. No amount of whining or complaining was going to achieve that. I had to talk to my family to make them understand. I had to be honest.

Here goes nothing.

"I was upset after you'd caught me hiding from therapy." Three sets of eyes found me; I drilled mine through the floor. "So, while I was...locked in my room I...dug through Micah's old survival kit...and I snuck out the window...found a spot by the alley."

"No, no, no, no." Mom's eyeliner touched the bottom of her cheeks. "You...Doctor White told me that he'd invited you to his house that day! You...you..."

My face fell into a half-hearted smile. "He was just covering for me."

Mom ragged her scalp with her fingernails. I'd never seen one hair on her head out of place in my life. She stared into my eyes, dug the truth out. Then she grabbed the wall post and lost it as her body racked over itself.

"But I didn't do it, Mom!"

Dad froze. "You were going to kill yourself."

My pulse was widely out of proportion. "I—I almost—you don't..."

How could I explain my revelation without getting Julia in trouble? Keeping a suicide attempt a secret is an ultimate "no-no" in the therapeutic universe. Guilt hinted at me. How could I give myself all the credit at realizing my stupidity? She was the one who'd saved me that day. I never would've gone back home if she hadn't caught me.

 "Look." I backed towards the front door. "I'm—I'm not the same person I was five months ago. You don't know how bad I was. W-what it's like to feel like everyone would be better off...if you didn't exist." 

Mom choked. I grabbed my next breath. It's hard to think that only a few months ago I wouldn't have cared how she felt.

What a time.

Dad's eyes watered. "I can't believe...how could you—why would you—"

"See?" Kyle said. "You're both so caught up in your own agenda that you miss what's happening right under your noses! If you let him come with me-"

"I'm not done yet," I said. The fresh air called me, the outside world, freedom, more Tylenol. "I didn't go through with it because I realized I wasn't ready to give up yet, and I'm still not! Maybe I have to fight a little harder. But that's okay. You have to trust me. I'm never going to do anything that...stupid again." I turned to my parents and attempted to mouth an apology. My feet staggered towards the door. "I'm not going with Kyle. I'm not going to another doctor. I've found something here. Whatever I do, it will be my choice, because I know that I'm capable of doing the right thing."

 My brain was a swarming beehive. I couldn't believe I'd just said that. It was so corny.

 Neither could they.

 My fist shook at my side, and I clutched it with my other hand. Do you remember what I said about me growing up a lot, but not enough to change everything about me? One conversation doesn't change a lifetime of personality sculpting. Ice is just frozen water. Let me prove my point. 

I needed to get out of this environment. My body physically couldn't do it anymore. Both of my parents were melting ice sculptures. My brain activity? A battle with no winner and a lot of casualties. 

As I whipped the front door open, I didn't see Kyle grab my arm. I felt like a stuffed animal in a claw machine. "Ben, you're not leaving me here with them like this!"

"Get OFF of me!"

I broke loose and bolted out the door.