All the Things We Lose

Sunday

It was just after midnight when I broke the window.

Not for anything dramatic. Not to steal. Not even out of anger. I think I just wanted to hear the sound of something shatter that wasn’t me.

The convenience store on 7th and Lowell had been closed for hours, but its lights still hummed like they were waiting for someone. I stood across the street for ten minutes before I picked up the brick. It was cold, still damp from the spring rain. I tested the weight in my hand like I was in a movie or something.

Then I threw it.

The glass screamed and caved in like lungs giving out. An alarm shrieked into the empty night, and I just stood there, breathing. I didn’t run. I didn’t move.

By the time the cop car rolled up, I had sat down on the curb, legs crossed like I was waiting for a damn picnic. The officer was young. His eyes did that thing adults do — halfway between disgust and pity. Like I was a stray they didn’t want to touch.

“Ardent again” he muttered, reading my name off the ID I handed over.

“Didn’t your brother die last year?”

Seriously?

I was so close ripping the guy’s teeth out but that would only get me in more trouble I didn’t need, so I just sat there with my mouth shut. Didn’t nod. Didn’t blink.

—

They called my mom — again. She didn’t even pick me up this time. Sent a neighbor. Mrs. Palmer from two doors down. She smelled like canned green beans and gave me that dissapointed sideways look I always get from her: “You’re not the boy your brother was.”

Frankly, she’s right. I’m not.

No one ever said it out loud. But I could hear it in the way they say my name.

—

Back home, the hallway light was off. My mom was already in bed. A note sat on the kitchen table:

Camp starts June 5th. Maybe it’ll help.

No signature.

—

I stared at it for a long time. Not because of the message — I’d already guessed that was the plan. But because it was the only time she’d written anything to me in months. And even then, she hadn’t bothered to sign it.

I folded it once, clean down the middle, and tucked it into my pocket. I lay on my back in bed, eyes wide open, ceiling cracking into shadows above me. My room still had Ben’s old posters — not because I wanted them, but because nobody cared enough to take them down.

One was for some band he loved. Their name looked like someone spilled Scrabble letters and tried to form a sentence. He used to blast them while brushing his teeth, drumming on the sink with the handle of his comb. I always thought it was funny but he was just glad another day started.

Now the poster’s curling at the edges like it wants to peel away and escape the wall.

Once, on a Thursday night, I opened the bathroom door without knocking and caught him mid-performance — foam at the corners of his mouth, headbanging with the toothbrush still stuck between his lips. He didn’t even stop.

Just pointed at me and shouted, “Witness greatness!”. Then did a spin that almost took out the towel rack. We both laughed so hard, my sides hurt.

He had this way of making dumb things matter. Of turning a bathroom into a stage.

I stared at the poster for a while. Let it blur.

—

You’d think grief would feel like sadness. But mostly it feels like nothing.

Like you’re sitting at the bottom of a drained pool, and people keep asking if you want to swim. And all you can do is blink and wonder why the hell they’re not seeing the cracks.

Ben was the only person who ever looked at me like I was real. Like I wasn’t a mistake that made it past the factory line. He made stupid jokes about cereal, let me borrow his headphones, punched a guy once because he called me a freak.

The last thing I ever said to him was “I’ll see you in September.”

—

The air in my room always felt heavy at night. Like there were things in it I wasn’t supposed to breathe.

I rolled over and stared at the wall. It was pale blue, but in the dark it looked like ash. There were four paint chips near the light switch. I’d memorized them like constellations.

I thought about the cop again.

“Didn’t your brother die last year?”

Like it was trivia. He just threw that at me like I was some animal.

Ben wasn’t a year ago. He was always. He was everything.

—

My eyes burned but nothing came out. I hadn’t cried in months. Not since that one night under the tree at camp. And even then, it felt more like screaming without sound.

My mom’s note crinkled in my pocket. I hadn’t taken it out. I kept it there like a thorn. A reminder that I was being shipped off again.

Camp starts June 5th. Maybe it’ll help.

It won’t. But at least it’s somewhere else.

—

I had school the next day, so I finally closed my eyes around 4 a.m. – again. I didn’t dream. I never do anymore. At least not that I remember of.