If I'd known then what I know now, I never would have left. If I had known that I wouldn't be able to look into his pale green eyes and pretend everything was okay or run my fingers through his soft blond hair again, I would have kept my promise. We always want what we can't have, which is especially difficult when you know that all you have to do is wait for it. You would grow impatient, eventually falling back into that dark hole of despair. Perhaps the situation would have been different if we had never met in the first place. I keep thinking about what would have happened if things were different.
June seventeenth, two thousand and twelve, the day that my brother, Preston, left. From what I remember, we had gotten into a fight about chores. There were always small arguments but they were frequent enough to keep me on my feet. I believed that the main reason why he always got so angry at me was due to the fact that he had picked up drinking after our parents died. He had tried everything in his power to disassociate himself from our parents and their death; between skipping school and not going to mass to shaving his head and completely closing himself off to others. I think I knew that he would leave one day, but I didn't want to believe it.
The day that he left, he nearly destroyed the house. He had opened the cupboard and yelled at me for putting the glasses away wrong. I now understand that he was probably under a lot of pressure, being only twenty three and having to take care of his sixteen year old sister. He threw the glasses on the floor, all of them shattering. He proceeded to get even angrier, telling me that he's had enough. Within the next ten minutes, he's out the door, bags in hand. I watched him drive off in our dad's nineteen ninety-eight Toyota Corolla.
There was this social worker that used to call my brother on his cellphone every week to check in. Her name was Irene. She showed up at the house two days after Preston left, along with a folder filled with various forms and brochures. I remember her telling me that there was nobody else that could take care of me, I had no other surviving family members. At first, I didn't know how to react. I told her I could take care of myself, as I had been doing for the past few years, even with my brother around. Irene frowned at my plead, she knew I didn't want to leave my life behind just because Preston decided he had enough. She sympathized with me, apologizing every chance she got. Camp Noble was written on the front of the folder she dropped on the table. Irene told me that I would be able to learn as I did at a normal high school and I that would be cared for. I flipped through the brochures and forms that she handed me, I knew I didn't have much of a choice.
Days later, I had packed as much as I could in the three bags I was allowed to bring. I remember walking through my parents' house for the last time, taking in the memories that flooded each room. Irene dropped one of my bags into the trunk of her company car, eventually looking back at me, waiting. Closing the front door one last time, I took a deep breath and turned my attention to the rest of my surroundings. I saw the mundane yet familiarity of my neighbourhood; flowers blooming in the garden just past the front door of each house, somebody walking their dog across the street and cars driving past. I would miss living in Toronto, but I believed that the stillness of the nature that surrounds Camp Noble would be better than this. I placed the remaining two bags in the trunk, turning to take one last look at the life I would have to leave.
