Best Friend's Brother (2 page)

Every morning I start my routine with sprints to
raise my heart rate and just overall get the fibers in my muscles ready to fire
off some explosive movements. My biggest strength in the octagon was my speed.
If they didn’t see you coming…they could fight back. I did my twenty-five meter
sprints with a rest period every sixty seconds. After the first three, I heard
my phone ringing in my bag. I ignored it and continued to work out. I couldn’t think
of anyone who would be calling me during my work-out that I’d want to talk
to
. My family and my friends all knew better.

My next station was push-ups and jumping jacks and
bench dips. I did fifteen of each, alternating between them for a full five minutes.
As I was finishing that one up, the stupid phone rang again. I should have
turned off the ringer. I didn’t want to stop my work-out and go do it now, so I
tried to just keep my focus and ignore it again.

My next station was ten heavy bag
burpees
, twenty-five presses with the ten weights, Fifteen
pound weight
burpees
and then ten with no weight.
Again, I did this for five full minutes. That damned phone was driving me
crazy!

I went on with my routine, ignoring it but at the
same time, wondering in the back of my mind who in the hell was trying so hard
to reach me so early in the morning. When I finally finished I did a five
minute cool-down and got some water and then I went over and took the damned
phone out of my bag. When I looked at it and saw that I had five missed
calls…and they were all from my parents, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
Mom and Dad know about my work-outs. They know that I hate to be interrupted
and they’ve never interrupted me before. Fuck! Something was really wrong. With
my hand already shaking, I pushed the button for voice mail. They’d only left
one message. It was my mom and she sounded like she was crying. She was telling
me to call her back…now! I clicked out of that and saw I had several text
messages too, all telling me to call home. Shit! I wondered if something
happened to my dad.

I called my parent’s house and Mom answered on the
first ring. “Ian?”

“Yeah Mom, it’s me. What’s up? Are you okay?” She
dissolved into a sobbing, blathering mess and I could barely understand what
she was saying. My heart was beginning to race because I knew that something
was terribly wrong…I just couldn’t figure out what it was. “Mom, I can’t
understand you. Did you say something about Emma?”

“She was in an accident…Ian, honey, she died!” She
was crying again and suddenly my dad came on the line. His voice was shaky and
I could tell that he’d been crying too. I couldn’t remember ever seeing my
father cry. That scared me worse than my mother crying.

“You need to
come
home
son,” he said.

“Okay Dad. What happened?” Please God tell me that I
didn’t really hear what I thought I did.

I heard his voice catch as he said, “
It’s
Emma. She was in a car accident last night. She hit a
patch of black ice and lost control of the car. She hit a telephone pole,” he
sucked in a breath and let out another sob before he said, “Ian, she didn’t
make it.” My hands were shaking so hard now that I could hardly hold onto the
phone. I felt like maybe I was trapped in a nightmare. My sister couldn’t be
dead. It wasn’t possible.

“I’ll be right there, Dad.”

“Be safe, son.”

“I will.” I hung up and just stood there for a few
seconds longer. It was like suddenly, my body didn’t know what to do. The
pressure in my head was building and there was a little voice in there that
kept repeating, “Emma’s dead….”

I finally grabbed my bag and headed out. When I got
into the car and I heard that voice again, I punched the steering wheel, over
and over until my hand was screaming in pain. Fuck! This can’t fucking be
happening!

I drove to my parent’s house on auto-pilot. I was
just suddenly in the driveway with no recollection of how I got there. The gym
was on the opposite side of town from their house. Good job, Ian. That’s what
they need today, two dead kids. I sat in the driveway for a while. I didn’t
want to go in there. I could almost feel the pall hanging over the house from
here. I finally forced myself out of the car and up to the front door. The door
opened as I got there and Bill and Lucy, friends of my parents who lived down
the street, came out. Lucy saw me first and dissolved into a torrent of tears.
Bill grabbed and hugged me. I was taken by surprise, so I didn’t really hug him
back. I’m not much of a hugger.

“We’re so sorry,” Bill said. “We’re just so damned
sorry.”

I cleared my throat. There was a lump that had been
there since I got ahold of my parents.
“Yeah, me too.
Thanks.”

“You
be
sure your mom calls
us if she needs anything,” Lucy said.

“I will thanks.” This was so freaking weird. Old
people die. Sick people die. Young, healthy nineteen year old girls don’t die.
It was too unreal. I stood there a few seconds after Bill and Lucy were gone
and then finally I grabbed the knob of my family home and went inside. The
first thing I saw when I walked in was the baby photos of Emma and me that my
mom had hanging in the entryway for as long as I could remember. That was when
I finally lost it. I sunk to my knees on the hard tile floor and I cried…I want
to say for my sister, but mostly it was for me and my parents…those of us who
are left to go on, knowing we would never see her again. I couldn’t remember
the last time I had cried. It may have been when that picture was taken. I
wasn’t a crier or a hugger.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but when I
finally pulled myself together, I got up and went to find my parents. My dad
was sitting on the couch in the living room, staring at a spot on the wall.
There was a plate of food in front of him and an unopened can of soda. I’m sure
Lucy left it there, trying to get him to eat something and keep up his
strength, but the sight and the smell of it from where I was standing made my
stomach lurch.

“Dad…” He turned his head so slowly it was literally
like
I was watching it happen in slow motion. When he
saw me, he pushed himself up off the couch and I went over to him. He wrapped
me up in a hug
like
I hadn’t had from him since I was
eight years old probably and he held me so tightly that I felt like I couldn’t
breathe. I guess when people die, that’s what other people do…hug. I didn’t
move or pull away though. He was crying…he obviously needed to get it out. When
he finally pulled back, he looked at my face and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t say you’re sorry,” I said, clearing
the lump out of my throat again. “As bad as I’m feeling right now, I can’t even
imagine what you and Mom are going through. Where is she? Is she doing okay?”

He cleared his throat now and swiped the tears away
with the back of his hand. He suddenly looked embarrassed about breaking down.
I didn’t want him to feel like that. “She’s in your sister’s room. She’s lying
on her bed…she won’t come out.”

“Okay. That’s okay. She probably feels closer to her
in there.” I moved out of my parent’s house before I turned eighteen. Emma had
been gone for a year and a half now at college. My mom hadn’t touched either
one of our rooms. When I came home, I always felt like I was caught in a time
warp. I never really understood it…until now. Maybe she was hanging onto them
to help her remember us when we weren’t around. When I opened the door to my
sister’s room and I saw all of her things, I could feel her presence there. Not
like a ghost or anything weird like that…but just the spirit of the girl who
grew up there. Happy, sassy, beautiful and taking life by storm…Shit! My
fucking chest felt like a weight was crushing down on it. I went over near the
bed where my poor mom was curled in a ball and gripping onto some old teddy
bear that Emma hadn’t looked at in years. She had her eyes closed, but I could
tell that she wasn’t sleeping. She was probably just trying to shut out the
pain.

“Mom?”
She opened her eyes and looked at me. It seemed to take her a minute to process
that I was there. When she did, bless her maternal heart, she smiled at me. She
reached her hand up then and took hold of mine. I sat down on the bed next to
her. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

She didn’t say anything. She was probably afraid she
would start crying again. She sat up and wrapped her arms around me and we sat
there while I rocked her back and forth
like
she
rocked me when I was a baby and she cried some more. Every so often she would
utter my sister’s name, or she would say, “Oh God Ian, what are we going to do
without her?” I didn’t answer her, because I didn’t know. I just held onto her
for a really long time, until she finally passed out. I laid her down on the
bed and kissed her forehead. I put a blanket over her and went out to check on
my dad. He was sitting in the same spot I’d left him earlier. I sat down next
to him on the couch and said, “Hey Dad, are you doing okay? Do you need
anything?”

“I don’t know where to start, Ian. I don’t even know
how. I feel so empty…you know. It feels like there’s just nothing inside of
me…like that nothingness took hold of my heart and soul and before long, it’s
just going to absorb me completely.”

God, I hated this. I love my family more than
anything on this
earth
, but words have never been my
strong suit. I wanted to hit something. That would make me feel better. I
looked at my hand and remembered I’d already done that, and maybe it wasn’t
such a good idea. “I know, Dad.
Me too.”
I told him
finally.

He looked at me then and his normally blue eyes were
so streaked with red that they were a strange shade of dark purple as he said,
“You know, the policeman told us that she died instantly and she didn’t suffer.
I guess that is supposed to make us feel better…maybe it does, I don’t know.
You know what would make me feel better?”

“What’s that, Dad?”

“If she hadn’t died at all.”

“I know Dad, me too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, please. Is there something I can
do? What about calling everyone…I guess we should do that?”

My dad suddenly started shaking again. He put his
hands over his face and said, “Oh God! I forgot about your grandparents and
Aunt Karen and Uncle Don! Oh God! What if they heard it on the news? That would
be so awful…”

“
It’s
okay, Dad. If they
did, I’m sure they would have called by now. I’ll call them, okay?”

He nodded, “Okay son, thank you. I’m sorry.” I could
tell that he felt bad about asking me to do it, but he was obviously not up to
doing it himself at all.

“Stop saying you’re sorry,” I told him. “I’ll be
right back.”

I went into the kitchen and just stood there gulping
in air. God, I would rather pull out my own teeth than do this. My
grandparents…all four of them, are really old. They live about a hundred miles
away and I know they’re going to want to head over here right away. I hope my
Aunt Karen is around to drive them. They’re all too old to be driving on a good
day. Shit! I picked up my phone and called my Mom’s parent’s first. My grandma
Sadie answered the phone on the first ring. In a melodic voice she said,
“Hello?”

“Hi Grandma.
It’s Ian.”

“Ian?
My grandson, Ian?”

“Yeah Grandma, it’s me.”

“Ian?” she said again. Then she said, “I think you
were twelve the last time you called me and that was because your Mama made you
do it. Oh no! Ian, what’s wrong?”

Shit! “Grandma, is Grandpa there with you?”

“Yes, he’s here and Uncle Don too…Ian, what’s
wrong?”

“Maybe I should talk to Uncle Don…”

“Ian Michael! You tell me what is going on right
now!”

“Emma was in a car accident….”

“Oh no!
Ian, is she okay? Where is she? Why isn’t your mother calling me?”

“She’s not okay, Grandma. She died…” There was an
almost inhuman wail on the other end of the phone and I heard it drop. I could
hear men’s voices in the background and then finally My Uncle Don picked up the
phone and said, “Ian? What’s going on? Mom looks like she’s having a stroke!”

Fuck! “Uncle Don, Emma died last night.”

“Oh shit! Oh God…Oh Ian, I’m so damned sorry…Your
mom! Oh God! She must be devastated, and
your dad…damn
it!”

“Um…yeah, she is, they both are.” I could still hear
my Grandma wailing and I think I can hear my Grandpa crying too.

“Okay son, I’m so sorry. Let me deal with Mom. I’ll
call you back in a while to find out what we need to do. Oh damn!”

“Okay, thanks, Uncle Don.” I hung up the phone and
that was when the bile that had been churning in my stomach all morning reached
the back of my throat. I went over to the sink and I was finally able to puke.
It was disgusting and a relief all at the same time. Damn it! I still had to
call my dad’s parents. I rinsed my mouth and called the other grandparents. The
reaction was about the same…then I called Aunt Karen, my mom’s sister. Her
daughter
Cammie
answered. “Hi
Cammie
,
it’s
Ian.”