The Other One {Harry Styles AU}

27. Then

Twinkling lights sparkled in the plastic tree, flashing off the glass and metal ornaments and bouncing colorful shadows onto the white walls of my grandparents' house.

A shiny green package was pulled from my hands, a different box, not as shiny, placed by my feet. "Matty, you need to read the labels more carefully," my mother muttered. Matty. Maddie. He was old enough to know the difference. He knew the difference.

"But I like this present," he said, holding up a pretty red haired, pale skinned baby doll. I liked her, too.

My grandmother looked horrified. Horrified that her eight-year-old grandson wanted to play with a baby more than Legos. Horrified that he would say so. Horrified that he wasn't like her other grandsons, playing sports and building model cars.

My father wrenched the doll so sharply from Matty's hands that her arm came off. I started to cry. Matty threw the rest of her body at my father's retreating back.

It was monstrous. He was monstrous. His large, fat-fingered hand reached down and grasped Matty's wrist. And yanked upward. Like he wanted to rip Matty's arm off, too. The sound was monstrous. The pop. His shriek. My mother's screams. The slamming door and screeching tires. My grandmother's silence.

He dislocated my brother's shoulder and left us there. In his mother's house.

"I would have called her Sara," Matty told me that night, his arm pinned to his body by a sling.

I pet his hair, smoothing the parts in the back that liked to stand up. "You still can," I whispered, pushing her to him with my chubby hands. I had used my grandmother's crochet hook to attach a new rubber band to her arm, looping it in place carefully while my mother and Matty were at the hospital.

"No," he cried, covering his face with his other arm. His tears slid down the sides of his face, trailing droplets magnifying his freckles. "She's yours."

I put my head on his undamaged shoulder and rested Sara on his belly, just by his braced hand. "She's ours," I insisted. I would have happily shared everything I had with him. His fingers twisted into her hair as he brought his other hand down, pushing me away.

He flung the doll against the wall. My flimsy fix failed, her arm flailing away from her body again. "Leave me alone." I did. I shouldn't have. But I did.