XXXVIII
He was walking down the street with his little brother, Allen when they both stopped at the same time. He looked up and said: “The sky looks beautiful, doesn’t it?” ”Yeah…” was all that Allen said in reply. They had never been all that close. Well, that is not entirely true. When they were little, they had been close. They grew up on a farm outside of town and for their first few years, they only had each other to play with. When they moved after their parents split up, they started drifting further and further apart. He got involved in lots of things at school and was just in the computer most of the day when he was home. Allen started hanging out with much older kids and getting involved in all kinds of drugs at a pretty young age. He had lots of issues at school as well as at home. They rarely saw each other save for when they ate dinner with their mother and stepfather. But even then, they sat across from each other, not really speaking.
They kept walking and Allen started telling him brother how he had always looked up to him and wanted to be more like him but had always been too much of a “fuck-up” to actually even try. He told Allen that he was his own person and should try to grow into who he was and not into somebody else. Allen nodded in agreement and they finished the walk home to their mother’s house. She had made supper and during it, Allen made fun of his brother for not eating meat and everything was back to normal.
That night, Allen went to a party with some of his friends from high school. Allen took a bunch of mushrooms, drank whiskey and vodka, and drank too much beer. He started having an emotional breakdown and could not stop sobbing. He went to where his friend kept a loaded handgun and tried to kill himself with it. If his girlfriend hadn’t been there, he would have succeeded. She talked him down, reminded him of everyone that loved him. His family, his friends, her. Allen started cleaning himself up after that. He stopped doing drugs, quit smoking, and knew when to stop when he drank. He started getting his life onto the right track.
