Asterisk*

Restriction and Rampage*

*Referring to the matters of the heart

Martyr of the heart,

Saint of the mind,

A grueling pain of both in each other.

Laughter dies out,

But pain drives in,

Both leave.

And love arrives,

Over the moon and under the sun.

Marcus

When I was six years old, Dash snuck me out for the first time. He was eleven. He took his fifth grade girlfriend as well, and we went to get ice creams in this little corner shop. It was ten o'clock, and my parents had gone to sleep. The guy serving ice cream was always the same; a really old man that could barely walk with one really muscular arm, probably from scooping ice cream. He always wore the same apron, which had the Home Depot logo on it instead of the ice cream shop itself.

I remember using my tooth fairy money to buy some, which made me feel so grown up. Dash ruffled my hair like he was my dad and I hated it, but I knew he was trying to be more grown up to impress his girlfriend, so I let it happen. Dash kept stealing parts of my ice cream the whole time, but he let me have his in the end because he felt bad.

We got yelled at the next day. Dash told my parents that it was my idea, and that I had thought up the whole plan for us to go out together. Nobody believed him, but that didn't stop it from hurting. Dad told him that he had to make it up to me for using my name to lie. He never made it up to me.

When I was thirteen, I snuck out with Aiden and Kadance for the first time. Dash was a senior, so he was at some Friday night party. The three of us were just chilling, not doing anything illegal at all. We had walked to the park, just sitting on the swings and talking about things. I came home at one am, a few minutes after Dash. Our house was a ranch, so I could easily climb through the window. My parents were deep sleepers for the most part. They worked long hours for most of my life, so they would always come home from work thoroughly exhausted.

Dash yelled at me the second I got home, like he hadn't done the same thing when he was my age. It was so hypocritical of him to even mention it considering he was half drunk. That was a common pattern through my entire childhood. Since he was so much older than me, he sometimes thought it was okay to act like my parent instead of my sibling. I understood why he did that. I was around him more than I was around my parents. But it was so annoying when he had done those things himself. It was like he was allowed to be completely reckless, but I wasn't. In his head, he had this standard that I was completely perfect. Like I wasn't going to fuck up. Like I wasn't already messed up in my head, like I wasn't waiting for the day where I would magically wake up and all my problems would go out the door. I felt like I wasn't allowed to be a child, and I still do. That doesn't all stem from him, but a good deal of it does.

As much as that parenting pissed me the fuck off, at least he cared enough to say things. Once he went to college, we stopped talking for months at a time. Whenever he came home, he made sure to try to avoid me the best he could. This was our current vibe too, which is why I was so surprised when my phone rang, and the caller ID displayed his name.

"Hey, yo, where are you?" Dash asked as soon as I picked up the phone, his voice breaking up slightly before getting a secure connection.

"I'm at a friend's."