The Little Brother Read Online Free PDF Page B

your love. Looks like he’s bought it. He’s got that sheriff. Thinks he can buy everything. One day you’re going to figure it out.”
    â€œYou sound like Mom.”
    â€œYeah, well,” he said. “Since you left, all Mom does is talk about you. They’re both obsessed with you. It’s like I don’t exist.”
    We were quiet, and I felt sorry for Gabe.
    â€œWhy do you play the game, Son?” I said, adopting Dad’s voice.
    Gabe snorted. “Because,” he said, with a better gravelly sounding Dad-voice than mine, “you play to win.”
    â€œSon,” I said, mimicking Gabe’s Dad-voice, making mine deeper, heartier, and hoarser, “you play to win.”
    He smiled at me and we both laughed.
    Our inside joke. Dad had sponsored Gabe’s fourth grade Little League team, the Eagles. That meant that embroidered near their numbers on the backs of their uniforms was HYDE DRYWALL.
    One afternoon, Dad told us: “You don’t play to have a good time. You play to win.” Over the years, Gabe and I had repeatedthis refrain in various forms, keeping the essential core of his philosophy.
    â€œListen,” Gabe said, serious again, “promise me one thing.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œForget it,” he said, looking down.
    â€œGabe. I hate it when you do that.”
    He shook his head. “Nah, dude,” he said. “Forget it.”
    â€œI don’t want to.”
    â€œI’m sleepy,” he said. He stared at me, his mouth open. “I’m fucked up. Took some pills. Demerol, I think. Not sure. I don’t know what I’m saying. I can’t even see you that good.”
    â€œWhere’re your glasses?”
    He shrugged. After a moment or so, he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “sometimes I worry about what’s going to happen to us.”
    â€œLike what?” I said.
    We were quiet for a long while. He had closed his eyes.
    â€œNow I remember”—he said, opening them—“what I was going to say.” He looked at me. “Remember how Mom would always tell us that they had more than one kid so that we’d be there for each other, always look out for each other?”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Of course.”
    â€œPromise me you won’t let anything fuck us up.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “Like Mom and Dad.”
    â€œThey can’t do that to us,” I said, my voice fierce. “I promise. Nothing will. Nothing can.”
    He looked at me with relief and affection.
    To this day, it pains me more than anything to think about this conversation, and the way that Gabe looked at me.
    He trusted me.

5.
    B Y MY FRESHMAN year of high school in Newport and Gabe’s sophomore year in Cucamonga, I was visiting Mom every now and then (we had called a truce). She had joined a local Presbyterian church, and her ailments had improved. She volunteered on Sundays to sell coffee for a quarter from Styrofoam cups after the services, and she started to care more about her appearance. A four-month Weight Watchers membership helped her lose thirteen pounds, and she and a group of her friends started a walking club: Each morning they walked to Starbucks and treated themselves to lattes. As long as we didn’t discuss my decision to live with my dad, we did okay.
    Gabe came to Dad’s on the weekends, sometimes bringing his friends. They liked it at Dad’s for the same reason I did: not much adult supervision. They could drink, smoke pot, have sex, it didn’t matter.
    Dad had his “lady friend” by then, Nancy, a petite blond in her late thirties: quiet, smart, polite, pretty in a well-maintained way. Nancy worked in his office. On the weekends, she sometimes spent the night with Dad, but she wanted nothing to do with Gabe and me. We didn’t see her much and talked to her very little.