Aaron Read Online Free PDF

Their mother, terrified and completely bewildered, knelt next to her eldest son.
“Mom, don’t let me go! Please, they’ll hurt me, Mom! Please….” Aaron pleaded, trying to force the images, the memories from his mind.
    Allen’s date, who had no idea what was happening, began to get scared, backing slowly toward the door. Allen looked over at her, and then at his brother on the floor. If Aaron had been seeing his brother at all as he knelt on the floor trying to keep from sobbing, he would have seen that Allen’s face, now ruddy and flushed, was livid. Their lives had been so fucked up for so long, and Aaron was ruining the first real sense of normalcy, the first real date Allen had ever had. Aaron knew that both Allen and Anthony must catch shit at school for their freak brother, and Allen had finally found a girl to look past that.
“Shut up, Aaron!” Allen roared, obviously humiliated by his brother’s psychotic meltdown in the middle of the living room.
    His hands were gripped into tight fists at his sides, and despite all the love and respect he surely felt for Aaron, Allen had seemed to finally reach his breaking point. Two years of their parents’ misery, two years of night terrors, and two years of wanting more than anything to have his brother back had finally taken its toll on Allen. Shaking, he turned to his date and held out his hand wordlessly.
“Maybe we should do this another time,” the girl said, with one hand on the doorknob. She looked like a frightened fawn ready to bolt.
    “No, Carrie, just give me a minute, please….” he pleaded with her, and she nodded as she continued to wait with her hand on the door. Allen turned on his brother, his eyes ablaze, fueled by his date’s fear.
    “I am not you! I am not stupid enough to be lured into a goddamned van, tearing my whole family apart!” Allen yelled, and all the blood left Aaron’s face as the flashback began to recede and he realized what he had done. Everything Allen had to deal with just living in the same house with him, and he had just terrified the poor girl before they could even get out the door. He felt like Quasimodo in the bell tower, the freak that should be hidden away for everyone’s peace of mind, maybe even for his own good.
    “My brother is a lunatic,” Allen told his date, almost drowning out his mother’s shocked gasp. Before anyone could call him back, he grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her out the front door, leaving his trembling brother kneeling helplessly on the living room carpet. It was the first time anyone had said it aloud, but Aaron felt with perfect clarity that it was true. He would never be normal. He would never be anything but a burden, a source of shame and discomfort for his parents and his brothers. Not for the first time, Aaron wished he had died with Juliette and not been left to linger in this damaged shell.
    Hours later, after Aaron had been properly medicated and put to bed, Allen came in to check on him. Aaron was propped up on pillows, staring blankly at the wall near the foot of his bed. It was always like this when he was drugged, like he was in some kind of suspended animation. Unable to move because his limbs were just too heavy, unable to think because his mind was full of fog, he simply existed. If they stood him in the corner, he could have been a potted plant, except he no longer had any aesthetic value. Aaron had heard Allen enter the room, but it took him a moment in his medicated state to respond. The guilt that consumed his brother was plain on Allen’s pale face.
    “Aaron,” he said tentatively, like a boy drowning in waves of his own self-hatred. He still smelled faintly of the aftershave he’d worn to impress his date. Before the attack, when he was still able to smile, Aaron might have teased him about it. It all seemed so frivolous. Allen pulled Aaron’s desk chair up next to the bed and sat down. With almost painful slowness, Aaron’s blank stare moved from the