D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he added.

“I suppose not.”

Most of our calls were a mixture of general chitchat – the whos, whats, wheres, and so forth – combined with awkward silence. Neither of us knew what to say. We were strangers, and that’s just how it was. About five months in, he told me he had a place lined up to stay.

“Her name’s Kirstie. She works with me. She’s sweet. I guess you could say we’re dating.”

I could hear the excitement in his voice, and I realized that he’d never had a girlfriend. He’d been thirteen when they locked him up, and he’d probably never even kissed anybody. The idea made me equally bitter and sad.

“Good,” I told him. “I’m glad to hear that. I’d like to meet her.”

I tried to imagine the kind of girl who would want to move in with a convict whose only career prospects included working his way up to the cash register. That thought made my fingers itch, and I realized my own love life wasn’t much to be jealous of.

“Yeah,” he said, the smile clear through the phone line. “I told her ’bout you. She’d love to meet you.”

We never did get together. I still don’t know all the details, but I do know that Kirstie had problems of her own – drugs, to be specific. Meth, I believe. She was a mess from top to bottom, and the two of them never really had a chance to make anything work. The next time I heard from Andy, he was out on his own, living in a little apartment. He didn’t mention her, and I didn’t ask, and that’s how it went, for a while at least.

Then Andy found out he was a father.

I dreamed again. A real dream this time, not a vision or a message from beyond. It was a simple one. Just me, sitting in the bathtub with all my clothes on. I smelled like a campfire. I glanced down at my hands, expecting them to be charred and burned, but they were the same hands I looked at every day when I sketched in a notepad or scribbled down my homework minutes before class started. I don’t know why I was so afraid, but I kept waiting for something to happen, waiting for a moment that never came. The moment seemed to linger, stretching out like taffy, far beyond when it should have ended. No blood, no monsters, no writhing pool of blackness, just me in a bathtub, the smell of smoke in the air, staring at my hands without blinking.

Andy didn’t wake me up until nearly five, barely long enough to get a fresh bag of peas on my cheek before Dad got home. The swelling was noticeable, but not so bad as to be overly concerned about. If I played it right, he might not even see it.

“What if he does?” Andy asked. We were both standing just inside the bathroom as I turned my head this way and that, trying to assess the damage.

“I slipped getting out of the shower,” I said. “Bumped it here,” I added with a slap on the bathroom counter.

“Will he buy it?” He sounded more concerned than he had all that day, and I realized how guilty he felt about the whole thing.

“He will.”

And he did. He came in, same as he always did, and though he seemed a bit more attentive than normal, checking on both of us multiple times to make sure all was well, he didn’t quite notice the obvious things that mattered. Not my swollen jaw. Not Andy’s red, blurred eyes. Certainly not the strangely clean bathroom. Looking back, I don’t blame Dad. He was, just as much as the two of us, trying to keep it together. There was no doubt that he noticed some things, but I’m sure he thought there was more time. Why wouldn’t he? He didn’t want to push too hard on me or Andy, because he didn’t want to make things any worse. I don’t think it would have made any difference even if he had known. We were too far gone by then, by the night when everything finally went down.

I think I knew it was coming, at least in one way or another. The dreams. That feeling of something large and unstoppable rolling toward me. That hopeless feeling in the pit of my belly. All of it only grew, changed, becoming deeper and more powerful as I waited for the sun to finally drop. I wouldn’t sleep. I honestly didn’t know if I would ever sleep again, at least not while the sun was down. We ate a quick bite in the living room, pizza coming around in the rotation once more.

“Everyone have a good day?” Dad asked.

Andy couldn’t even muster so much as a sentence, and I jumped in to save him.

“Yep,” I said cheerfully.

“Did you do anything?”

I scanned the question, scrubbing it for any hint of distrust, but I found it clean. “Not much. Watched TV. Andy played games mostly.”

“That right?”

“Yep. How’s work?”

He glanced from Andy to me, watching us with cocked eyebrows. Then he fell right in. “Pretty good. Got a lot of work to get done before the end of the month…”

So the moment passed without another word from us, and within a few hours, the house fell silent once again. I waited until Dad drifted away, back to his room, and I found Andy. He was in his own room, the TV off as he sat at the edge of his bed. He was staring at the floor, and he didn’t seem to notice me when I walked in.

“Can’t sleep?” I asked.

He raised his eyes. “Oh. You.”

“Yeah. Me.”

I plopped down on the bed next to him, not waiting to be asked. We sat there, my legs dangling, his feet brushing across the carpeted floor. The Nintendo sat across from us, and I briefly considered turning it on and playing something. I never got to play much when he was around because he stayed on it 24/7. I don’t think he would have stopped me.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Nothing. Everything.”

“You worried?” When he didn’t answer, I answered for him. “I am. I keep having dreams. They keep getting worse, and they seem so real, I don’t think they’re dreams at all.”

When I finished, I realized he was looking at me.

“I dream awake,” he said. “Does that sound crazy?” I didn’t answer. “Maybe that’s how you know it’s not really a dream at all. He’s still in here, you know. He’s part of me. I can’t… find myself in there. Does that make any sense?”

I wasn’t sure what he was asking. “I don’t know.”

He pressed a hand to his head hard enough to turn his knuckles white. I could see veins in his forehead, tears in the edges of his eyes, and the wild, darting back and forth that never seemed to end.

“I need you to tell me what to do,” he said, raising his eyes back to mine. “The voices keep getting clearer, and I hear something under my skin, telling me what to do. How to think. The things I need to do to feel good. The people I need to hurt.”

He was leaning into me now, pressing closer to my face.

“He wants me to hurt people. The people closest to me.”

I was standing at a crossroads. I could feel it, like my entire life hinged on how I responded in that single moment. Everything that came after would depend on how I reacted to this news. An idea flashed: me running from the room, grabbing Dad, calling the cops, doing whatever it took to keep me, and by extension Andy, safe. This was what my brain was thinking when my heart took control of my body and placed my hand on top of his.

“No,” I told him. “You’re not going to do that.”

His eyes were watering, and I could see him fighting back the urge to strike out at me, to hurt me, to choke the life out of me.

“You’re my brother, and you’re not going to hurt me.”

“I… I…”

“Say it,” I demanded. “Say it now.”

“I don’t know what—”

“I want to hear you say it.” I wasn’t asking anymore, and his wild eyes met mine.

“I’m your brother,” he whispered, the voice of a child. “And I’m not going to hurt you.”