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“I really don’t know how much longer I can do this,” she cried. “He said he was going clean again. After what happened last week—”
“He nearly gave me a heart attack last week,” I said. “I almost kicked his ass.”
“The fear of you kicking his ass is sometimes the only thing that keeps him clean,” Danielle told me, adding a sad chuckle. “It doesn’t work forever though.”
“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”
I glanced around again, at the house we’d grown up in. The half-completed mortgage our parents had left us with, once they’d split up and taken off in our late teens. It was a shit deal, but like all shit deals we made the most of it. Living here together, with both of us working, we kept things nice. We built up some equity in the house, and even had some money left over…
But then…
Then the crash happened.
“You’re obviously not living here anymore,” I said, nodding toward the giant mess. “How long?”
“Two months, just about,” Danielle answered. “I told him I’d come back once he was clean for a few straight weeks. That hasn’t happened.”
“It’s not going to happen either,” I said sadly. “Unless he accepts some help.”
Angrily I recalled all the money I’d wasted on rehab. We’d tried inpatient. Outpatient. Nothing stuck. I’d even moved back in temporarily, because Brandon’s problems seemed to stem from me not being there to supervise him. But we were in our mid-twenties now, and I couldn’t watch him forever. We both had lives to live. Separate lives.
“You toss his room?”
“Yeah,” Danielle nodded. “As much as I could, anyway. It’s already been pretty tossed.”
“He tosses it every time he needs money,” I said numbly. “Or when he’s looking for a fix he might’ve missed.”
It started with pills: Percocets at first, then Oxycontin. He chased them with alcohol for effect. Started swallowing Ambien at night, to force his body to sleep. It happened fast, as it so often did — spiraling quickly downward into something he just couldn’t control.
I knew… because I’d done exactly the same thing.
“He talks about you all the time,” my brother’s girlfriend went on. “How much he loves you. How much he misses you.”
My heart felt like a cinder-block, sinking in my chest. The guilt was crushing.
“Look, Danielle—”
“I don’t say those things to make you feel bad,” she countered quickly. “I’m just telling you because I thought you should know. He wants to get clean like you, his big brother. He cries and he tells me all the time.”
I took a long, deep breath. Brandon had always been faster than me, smarter than me. Better at sports. Even better at picking up girls. He had a level of charm and charisma that I could never hope to achieve, nor would I even try. And that’s because he was his own person. And I was mine.
But now…
Now my little brother lay across from me, his skin pale, drooling on the couch. He’d traded a good job for a shit one. A very nice car for a monthly bus ticket. And all because of drugs.
Fuck.
“He can’t get clean for me,” I said softly. “He has to get clean for himself. I’vetoldhim this. I just… don’t think he understands it.”
Danielle’s other hand clamped down over mine. She clutched the back of my hand hopefully.
“Then we make him understand it,” she said gravely. “Together. You and me.”
I exhaled slowly, looking out through the living room window. The sky was purple with the coming dawn. The world was silent. Frozen.
“Either that,” she sighed sadly, “or we lose him.”
Twenty-Eight
