Lena

I can't believe he has the nerve to show his smug face again.

I run from the room, not caring a single but that I'm ditching class or what any of those people I'm leaving behind have to say about me. I don't care anymore. Let them laugh at me. What does it matter? What does anything matter anymore. My brother is dead and that asshole just want to walk into school like nothing happened?

Loved him like my own.
His words make me feel sick. He doesn't get to claim that. Especially when it is so obviously far from the truth.

He wants to claim he loved him? I'd love to know where that love was then. Where the hell was Weston when my brother was being shot to death behind that downtown movie theater? Where was he when Beck's heart stopped beating? Where was he when they lowered my brother's body down into the earth while hundreds of people watched? People who barely even knew Beck came and cried over his casket, meanwhile, his best friend was nowhere to be found.

He was off doing what he does. Drinking, partying, and ruining some other person's life. He ruined mine beyond repair. I'll never have a careless day again. My grades have slipped since I couldn't study for my exams and I'm already in danger of losing my scholarship and school just started.

None of it matters anymore anyway. I'll never be getting out of here. I'll be staying here until the day I die, just like Beckham.

I barely make it into the bathroom before I crash against the first wall and slide down onto the cold tiles and cry into my hands. How can this really be happening?

I've asked myself that every single day since that phone call changed my whole life.

My chest aches and I cling a hand to it but the pressure doesn't subside. I'm beginning to think it never will. I feel like I'm suffocating all the time. Like no matter how many deep breaths I take I can't get air into my useless lungs. My eyes burn and my throat clenches around a sob that I try to keep in but lose the battle.

Why did he have to die?

My mind replays that night all the time. A loop of heartbreak. I know I just blamed Weston, and I'd love to believe it full heartedly, but I can't. How can I pass off my guilt on him? If he's in the wrong, so am I. I had just as much responsibility to keep him safe. I did try to make him stay home that night, and it wasn't Weston that drug him back out but Beck himself. I should have tried harder to keep him home, and Weston should have tried harder to watch out for him. I'm just as much to blame for him being gone.

That phone call changed everything.

I remember trying to shake Uncle Terry awake and not being able to get him coherent enough after his mixture of sleeping pills and Jack. I screamed and screamed until my voice was hoarse. I couldn't get him up. I remember I even tried to call Weston, but he ignored the call.

Eventually I'd had to leave Yasmine with my uncle and make that awful drive alone. I can still smell the stench of too many cleaning products in that cold room where my borther's body laid on a thin sheet of metal, a single hole in his chest. His eyes were closed, but I wished they'd been open. I'll never see his eyes again.

"Is this him?" The old man asked carefully but I couldn't answer him. The way I cried over Beckham, my hot tears running off of his cold body was answer enough.

You would think that was as bad as it could get, but then the autopsy came back and the investigation into his murder was all but called off indefinitely.

He'd taken all kinds of things that night. Oxy, Molly, X, you name it, he had it. The police all but called him a drug addict.

They didn't know him like I did.

Beckham wasn't perfect. He had his demons too. He took pills sometimes and drank too much, but he never had an addiction problem. He was just looking for a way to get away from the pain he still carried over our parents and then our Aunt. I tried to explain that to the cops, but then they gave me another blow.

The spot where they found him was a pretty well known drug hot spot, and the tiny baggy of cocaine in his closed fist did nothing to paint the picture of the football loving, happy, and supportive brother I knew. Beckham had never done hard drugs like that before...at least, I didn't think so.

I cry even harder thinking about how I may not have even known he was an addict. Maybe I didn't know him at all and I'll never get to learn now.

Now it's too late. I can't help him now. I can't protect him now. How could I have not known he was struggling so badly? How did I not see it? I just loved him so much that maybe I saw it and didn't want to believe it. Maybe I'm even more guilty than I thought.

Maybe I was too wrapped up in myself to even notice my brother needed help.

I failed him so deeply and now the chance is gone.

I shove up from the floor and run out into the hallway, in a rush to disappear before the bell rings. I almost make it, but I'm still just inside the building when it goes off.

"Lena!"

His voice makes me want to scream. I keep going like I didn't hear him. Down the front steps, across the south lawn, into student parking, but I hear him behind me, yelling the whole time for me to just stop.

I don't want to but I spin back. He slams into me, closer than I'd thought he was. Caught off by my sudden stop, he mumbles something I can't understand or I just don't want to hear it.

"Did you know?" I scream.

He pulls his brows together and frowns. "Know what?"

"That he was doing drugs." I wish I wasn't still crying, but I can't choke it back in. "That he had a problem?"

"Lean..." he shakes his head. His hair has grown out, looking shaggy now and there are dark circles under his usually peppy blue green eyes.

I stare down at the ground. "Stop calling me that!"

"It's your name." He says like he's confused.

"No shit." I snap, glaring up at him. "But you never called me that before and I don't want you to start now. I don't want your sympathy for the poor loser who everyone around dies."

I asked for no sympathy, but my words make his shoulders slump as he looks down at me.

"I'm not being sympathetic by calling you your name." He says after a beat. "I'm just...I'm going to try to be better. I want to help you." He shoves his hands into his pockets and glances away uncomfortably.

"That's called pity." I point out. "And you're the last person I'd want help from, and I don't even need help!"

He groans, clenching his jaw. "God, you are so annoying. I'm not pitying you. I just get it. I feel like shit too. I'm sad too. Say what you want, but I did love Beckham. He was the only real friend I had and it sucks being without him. I figure you're feeling the same way and so you don't deserve to be treated like shit."

"Oh, but I did before?" I roll my eyes.

He jerks his hands up to his head and squeezes it between them. "Oh my god." He groans. "No, maybe not, but that's not my damn point. I'm just trying to tell you that I'm here for you." He's yelling now too.

I cross my arms and stare pointedly up at him. "I don't want your's or anyone else's help. So you can shove off with your fake sympathy and stop trying to use me to make yourself feel better about yourself." I turn on my heel and stomp away, still fuming. I'm not some charity case that needs looking after. Especially not by someone like Weston freaking Ford.

"Fine!" He yells behind me. "I was just trying to...just fuck it!" I hear his own feet pounding on the pavement into the opposite direction. I'm no more than a few yards more into the middle of the parking lot, heading for the road when I hear him curse again. "Hey, wait!" He yells.

Is he seriously following me again??

I keep going, picking up the pace until my feet find the sidewalk that runs along the highway. Suddenly I'm jerked back by the elbow, turned and facing a red faced and pissed looking Weston, yet again. Why can he not take a hint and just leave me alone?

"Where are you going?"

"Home!"

"You can't walk home from here, it's like a fifteen minute drive, it'll take like three times that walking." He points out.

"I want the time alone." I emphasize the alone part.

He grabs my face with one hand, shocking me with the sudden contact and forces me to look up at the sky while pointing up at it with his other hand. "I might not be the brightest damn bulb in the box, but even I can fucking tell it's about to storm."

As if on his very command a fat rain drop lands on my cheek, blending in with the tears that still streak down my face. "I don't care." I shake my head, slapping his hand away from me.

I can see how frustrated with me he is, and he pulls his lips into his mouth, conflicted with something in his mind. The muscle in his jaw twitches and he sighs. "I will drive you home." He says like it's final.

"No." I snap and he loses his composure all over again. He paces away, his hands on his head again then swivels back to lean into my face.

"I am literally trying so goddamn hard right now to not lose my shit, but you are seriously pissing me off."

"Good!" I scream over a rumble of thunder. "Then you can leave me alone now."

"No!"

"Yes!" His shoulder knocks the air right out of me as it smacks into my stomach and he flings me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Put me down!" I scream, kicking like a lunatic until his hands find my bare legs and holds them in place. I switch to punches against his back but he doesn't seem to notice.

As he walks me the punches turn to slaps and then to nothing while my screams turn to cries then to silence. By the time we reach his car in the very front of the lot I've gone completely still and quiet.

He puts me on the ground beside the car, the tension in his face gone too. He just looks...sad? Defeated? I don't know. "You done?" He mutters and I nod once. There's no point in fighting anymore.

He holds open the door for me and I slide into the seat. A second later he's behind the wheel and the rain starts to pour. "Are you putting on your seatbelt or are you going to make me do it?"

I swivel my head over to look at him and he raises his brows, daring me to argue. For once I don't take the bait. I just pull the belt across me and lean my head against the window while he drives. I'm so thankful that he doesn't turn on the radio. All music depresses me now. Something I used to love so much.

We don't speak again until we pull into my driveway and he parks the car right behind my uncle's pickup. "Terry not working today?" He mutters and I shake my head and get out.

"Obviously not." I mumble and close the car door.

I leave him out in the car, not bothering to mention the fact that Terry hasn't bothered to go to work in weeks. I also don't mention the stack of bills piling up on the counters or the final notice late rent flyers I pull off of the door.

I close and lock the door behind me and I hear him pull back out into the road.

Inside it smells like the inside of a bar. Empty bottles already litter the floor and coffee table even though I just cleaned the whole house of them before I left for school.

On the couch Terry is passed out, a fresh vomit stain on the floor beside it. I want to cry, but I've done enough of that for one day. Instead I go about cleaning the room again and making sure Terry is breathing before I dig out the paper and start circling jobs.

We are going to lose the house if I don't find something high paying that I can do around my school hours.

I only find one option that seems viable and I have the same thought I've had a billion times today alone.

How has this become my life?