Kevin Died

Contact: Hermano

Thu, Mar 5, 2020 (9:36 PM)

Me: Kevin?

Kev, man, where are you?

Answer the damn phone, mom is worried.

(9:49 PM)

KEV!

You’re gonna get in trouble, dude.

(11:04 PM)

You’ve never done this before. Are you good?

Sat, Mar 6, 2020 (12:21 PM)

Mom called the cops. Can you pick up please? What’s going on?

Mon, Mar 23, 2020 (2:33 PM)

It’s been a few weeks, man. Everyone’s worried. They’re saying you ran away. Please come home.

Tue, July 14, 2020 (8:12 PM)

It’s been months now, but I still hope you’ll come back and be okay. Please be okay.

Mon, Mar 2, 2021

I miss you, big bro.

The knock on my bedroom door startles me out of the trance I’m in. I push the home button on my phone, exiting out of the message thread to Kevin.

“Come in,” I say, sitting up in my bed as Ma pokes her head inside.

“Hey, Ricky.” She gives me a weak smile. “I just wanted to see if you’re doing okay.”

I hold back a snort. Things haven’t been okay around here for too long.

Ma knows this, of course. In a few days it’ll mark a year since my brother disappeared. My adoptive brother technically, since I was taken in by the Cabrera’s at the age of four. But that doesn’t matter. Kevin is my family, blood or not. So are the two people I call my parents. And with the anniversary of his disappearance approaching, there’s been this sense of foreboding hanging over me.

Life without Kevin has been strange to say the least—empty. He had such a palpable presence and now that it’s gone nothing feels right. I no longer walk into a room to hear him singing a song, or laughing out loud to an obnoxious degree at some corny sitcom on TV. I can’t walk into the kitchen in the evening and catch him dancing the merengue with Ma as Papa records on his phone, cheering them on. I don’t see him outside playing with the soccer ball or doing backflips or any of the other myriad of activities he participated in.

All those things vanished with him.

Ma looks sympathetic, pushing the door open and stepping inside. “Are you reading the thread again, mi amor?”

Words don’t come to me so I just nod. I wasn’t only reading the thread, though. I sent Kevin yet another text. I don’t know what it is. I torture myself looking at the one sided conversation I’ve been having with him. Maybe I’m hoping that a text from him will suddenly pop up if I keep sending messages letting him know that we all are still thinking about him. It’s possible after all. The way they’re spinning it—Kevin probably ran away. No one can come up with a reason as to why he’d do that, but it’s the easy route to take. Our town doesn’t get a lot of major crime, so the likelihood that something nefarious happened is slim to none.

That’s what I tell myself at least.

I always wonder if I had prodded him a bit more the night he left the house if I could’ve changed something. He’d been acting differently in the couple of weeks leading up to his disappearance. More secretive. He’d been hanging with me and my friends at our house that night and suddenly he said he needed to take off. I asked him where he was going, but he brushed me off, saying he’d be right back.

We never saw him again.

Maybe he’d been planning to run away for a while. I just can’t put my finger on why.

“You have to stop doing that to yourself,” Ma says, coming over to sit next to me on the bed.

“I want him to come home,” I mutter.

She puts an arm around me and rests her head on my shoulder. “I know, mi amor. Me, too.” We stay like this in silence for a few moments. Then she lifts her head again. “Get ready for school, okay? Hurry. Papi cooked breakfast.”

“Okay.”

She gets up to leave and I heave a sigh. Here’s to another shitty day.

***

I pull into the lot of Dalewood High and park my car, stepping out and into the sun’s beating rays of light. There are students meandering and teachers heading inside to prepare for class. A few recognizable jocks throw a football around in the courtyard while a couple other students sit under oak trees reading books. Everything seems so normal.

And yet nothing had been for a long time.

Heading into the school is always a gut punch because the school’s trophy case is right by the entrance. Kevin’s trophy for the swim team championship sits right in the middle, shiny and flawless, fitting for Kevin since that’s how so many people saw him. He truly was the golden boy for so many reasons.

It doesn’t take long before I come upon my friends. They snap out of whatever conversation they’re having when they see me approaching.

“Yo,” says Jordan, dapping me up when I’m in front of him. “How you holdin’ up?”

I guess everyone knew I’d be especially fucked up this week, because they’re all looking at me like I might break at any moment.

I shrug it off. “Could be better.”

My friend Danielle Robins—commonly called Dani—comes over to hug me, her long black hair smelling like cherry blossoms. “Oh, sweetie, I know this must suck for you.”

“The news is already making a ruckus about the anniversary,” says Sayora, another friend, as Dani and I break our embrace. “It’s gross how sensationalized it is.”

My eyes meet Sayora’s and she gives me a weak smile. I love her smile.

I love her.

Things got really complicated when Kevin went missing during our Junior year. She and I were dating, but after the Kevin thing I was so lost. So miserable. And I didn’t want her to be miserable being in a relationship with me. I ended things with her romantically, but I never stopped having feelings for her. I don’t know if she still shares those same feelings. I never bothered to ask. So we just stayed friends.

I’m not sure if things could ever go back to the way they were anyway.

“Agreed,” Jordan says, closing his locker.

“That’s the media for you. Bunch of soul-sucking bastards.” The comment comes from Luke Whittaker, who’s leaning his back against a locker nearby.

Luke hasn’t really been the same since Kevin disappeared either. It’s understandable, I suppose, since Luke took a particular liking to Kevin. He was a year older than us, so Luke kinda looked up to him. Kevin had the charisma, the athleticism, the talent, the popularity . . . everything many high school kids dreamed of, including myself. Being Kevin’s brother came with its perks. I was allowed to sit at his table of friends, he’d invite me to parties, all kinds of cool shit like that. Of course Luke would tag along, too. After our family, Luke was probably the person Kevin cared about the most.

It was like having another brother in a way. Luke and I had been best friends since preschool, after I was adopted. Even as kids Kevin had an air of leadership about him, and he took us under his wing. Between the three of us it felt like we could take on the world.

Then it was just . . . gone.

“You good, man?” I ask him.

His eyes snap to mine and after a few moments he nods. “All good.”

The warning bell sounds.

“Better get going,” Dani says, grabbing Luke’s hand. “Come on, babe.”

Sayora shoots a look my way. “How about we all hang at your place later?”

I nod and she offers another smile.

Jordan pats me on the back. “Hey, will you ask your mom if she can make those fried plantains again?”

“You mean the tostones,” I say. “I gotchu, bro.”

“Hell yeah!” He walks off and Sayora follows his lead.

When I make my way to first period, Tonya Phelps is already sitting at the desk next to mine awaiting my arrival. We’re not super close or anything, but she and my other buddy Elijah Thomas share this class with me so we all sit together.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite Dominican boy,” she says cheerily.

I force a chuckle and sit at my desk, taking off my backpack. “Hey, T.”

“You seen the news?” she asks.

“Avoiding it.”

“Good call.”

It was bad enough last year when it first happened. All the stares I got, all the people talking—speculating either foul play or Kevin being a bratty runaway senior. I was crushed by the weight of it all and fell into a deep depression. I’m not sure if I’m completely out of it, but time does help. Even if only a little bit. But with everyone treating the anniversary like some big event, those feelings are stirring within me once more.

Elijah enters the room haphazardly and sits on the other side of me. He’s panting as if he’s just run a mile nonstop.

“The hell is up with you?” Tonya asks him.

Eli takes a few more deep breaths. “I was . . . gonna be late,” he says in between breaths.

I roll my eyes. Eli is one of those punctual types. On time is late and early is on time in his book. “And why is that?” I ask.

“I stayed up late finishing a project. Overslept.” He winces as if he’s in pain. “Oh, God, I’m gonna faint.”

I smile in amusement. Eli can be quite the character sometimes. When he moved here a month ago it was a breath of fresh air. It was nice making a new friend.

“Should’ve called me over to help you,” Tonya says, smirking at Eli.

Eli doesn’t seem to catch on to the obvious hint. “Nah, it’s okay. I made it on time, didn’t I?”

I lean in to whisper to Tonya. “You know he doesn’t pick up on social cues that well, right? Your subtle flirts won’t register for him.”

She leans in and whispers back, smiling. “I’m gonna keep the faith.”

I shake my head as the bell rings and our teacher steps in. I dig through my bag to pull out the needed materials. My phone chimes on my desk. It’s a notification from the local news app. The headline reads:

Almost One Year Since The Mysterious Disappearance of a Local Teen Boy. These Are The Known Details.

I swallow a lump in my throat and decide to turn my phone off.

But it doesn’t help. The article haunts me even as the lesson begins.

Too bad I don’t know how to fight ghosts.