Don't Hold Your Breath

Chapter 3

"Jesus, you are never taking any online courses again. Now look at you, you think you're some kind of psychiatrist."

"Hey! I'll have you know that my "A" in psych was certified!"

"Moron." Zeke muttered. I heard the fridge opening and figured one of them was making food.

"Ah-hah! Look at this!" Dex suddenly exclaimed.

"Keep your voice down." Zeke said. I couldn't almost imagine him rolling his eyes. "What is this? An old news article?"

My heart instantly sunk at that. I knew what they had found.

I wanted to run out there and shut the computer down, I wanted to throw it out the window. The pause in the conversation was like a physical weight on my chest because I knew what they were reading, I knew every single thing that article said.

They all said the same thing.

I closed my eyes tightly as the headline, printed in big, black writing across the top ran through my mind.

"Fifteen Year Old Boy Burns Down House, Killing Self and Parents."

The article would then go on to villainize the boy. It would blame society's violent culture, it would blame video games, and it would blame the cheap home with its faulty wirings that allowed the fire to spread quicker; but in the end it would always blame the boy the most.

I always found myself questioning why my brother would do that in the first place. I had idolized my older brother, there were times when he was sweet and kind and would help me with my homework. He was the one who had taught me to tie my shoelaces when I was three. But the part of me that had grown up and taken off the rose-tinted glasses knew perfectly well why he did it. Even when I was young I knew perfectly well the kind of person he had been, I was probably the only one he let his guard down around. I had just thought it was normal.

Now the last memory I had of him was of a pair of indigo colored eyes, the exact color as mine, looking from a sooty face, neither remorseful nor gleeful. They were simply empty.

I had been eight years old when my brother burned down our house. When I was pulled out of the fire and saved from burning. When I witnessed my parent's screams and cries as they burned to death. Only eight years old and burdened with the question of why my brother would murder his entire family. I didn't even got to mourn him properly, they never found his body and we never held a funeral for him.

But the article wouldn't mention any of that. It would simply state the facts and slip in some subtle hints as to who we should see as the bad guy. My brother, of course, would be piled high with blame while the little girl the valiant firemen saved, the innocent sister with her wide and beautiful eyes, with her sooty hair in pigtails, with her painful burn wounds. She would be seen as the victim.

They didn't understand and I hated how they portrayed me. I hated everything about the article, from the school picture they showed of my brother that tried to shock its audiences with how a sweet looking thing could be a monster, right down to the pictures they had of me after the fire.

The pictures showed me in the arms of a fireman as he put an oxygen mask over my face. I was wearing bunny pajamas, but the bottoms were burned badly and showed off the heavy burns afflicted upon my legs. They had managed to take the picture right as I was looking at the camera and online, where there was color to the photo, you could see the full extent of my intense gaze and the color of my eyes.

It was that which made so many people wish to foster me in the first place. They had been fascinated by my eyes and then had given me away after the fascination had run its' course.