Page 24 of My Family

Today I'm not here to supervise. I’m here to enjoy the privilege of having one phone call a week. The timer is set for ten minutes. The guard at the folding desk reads her magazine, flipping pages with a dead thumb.

Griff has just told me the clinicals are confirmed and I'll start soon. I couldn't wait to tell my only family.

I dial my Auntie Marie's number. She's the only family I have. She'd always take me when my parents were sick of me, which was often, and she told me that I only survived as a newborn because she took care of me. I don't doubt it. The earpiece is still warm from the last kid. The phone cord is sticky, and for a second I wonder when they were last cleaned.

It rings three times, then picks up with a half-second of dead air. My aunt's voice comes through the line:

"Hello? This is… hello…?"

"Hi," I say. "It's Ethan."

There's a pause. "Ethan, honey! Is this… oh, I had the wrong time. The call sheet said next Friday."

"It rotates. I'm on the B schedule this month."

A long pause. I don't understand why. She's usually telling me all about her church and her friends by now. But now, only silence. It unnerves me, and I don't like feeling this way.

Finally it comes: "How are you, sweetheart?"

"I'm good," I say, because that's the rule. Never make them sorry they picked up. "School's fine." Better than fine, actually, but I don't say that yet. I want to save it. I want one good thing to say out loud before whatever's coming.

"That's wonderful," she says, and her voice cracks just a fraction on the last syllable. "I'm proud of you."

The silence after that is weird. I hear the sounds of her house in the background: the dog nails on tile, the television too loud in the next room.

She doesn't ask about my classes or the weather. Instead, after a full minute of breathing, she says, "Ethan. Something's happened with your brother."

My heart freezes for a second.

"What happened?"

"He… he overdosed again." She says it plain. Doesn't dress it up or walk around it, and I'm grateful for that, even as the words settle in my stomach like gravel. "This time they took him to county. He got violent at the hospital. There were charges. Possession, resisting. I don't know all of it yet."

I press the receiver closer, like maybe it will let me hear better.

"Is he okay?" It's all I manage to say. My brother was still at home when my parents sent me here. Then they left him with my Auntie. He moved out, trying to chase the freedom he never had.

"He's alive," she says, and in her tone, I hear how little that means anymore. "He's not good, Ethan. He's not… the lawyer says if there's a next time, he goes away for real. Not rehab, not juvie. Actual time. He's only eighteen… he's a kid." She stops.

I try to picture Tyler. I haven't seen him in four years. Every time I'm at my Auntie's, he's not there. He hasn't called or visited either. I don't blame him, he's just a kid. He's always looked fourteen to me, stuck in the moment I left for good. Always a head smaller, always the soft spot I couldn't harden. I used to take his punishments for him, tell my parents I was the one who broke the glass, I was the one who got in trouble at school, I was the one who was fighting, not him, never him. I think of his brown hair, browner than mine, and his green eyes. He was always a troublemaker, but things got harder after I left. He started using with friends and then it became his full-time hobby.

And I wasn't there to help.

"What happens now?" I ask.

Another pause. Another breath. "That's what I wanted to discuss," she says, and the next words come out all in a rush, like she's afraid if she stops, she won't finish. "His lawyer, the same one from your case. He says there's a chance they could send him to Aspire Academy instead of jail. He said… he said your file shows that you're thriving. That it would help his case if he stayed with the only family he has. You…" She cuts off. When she speaks again, her voice is so small I almost don't recognize it. "Would you be okay with that, Ethan? If he goes there? It might keep him out of jail."

My thumb presses so hard into the phone it's bone white. "I'll do whatever helps."

"It's the best we can hope for, I think. It's the only shot left, and maybe if you're there, maybe…"

"He'll hate me for leaving him," I say, and I don't mean to say it, but it spills out anyway. "He's always hated me for that. For not protecting him."

"Honey, it wasn't your fault," she says. And she's right. But it doesn't change the fact that I left him with two predators, my parents, when he was too young to understand.

"Is he okay right now?" I ask.

"They have him in a holding center, but they'll let him go. It might be a while until he's there. He's… he's scared, Ethan. He doesn't show it, but he is. He keeps asking if you know."