The Trouble With Bodyguards: Part 2 Read Online Free PDF

mean.”
                  He looked to her, a wry smile curling the edge of his mouth, and she nodded. True, she had never been a teenage boy, but she knew where he was coming from.
                  “The thought never crossed my mind that something sinister could be going on, something dangerous. I noticed that his attitude changed, that he began to engage more in conversation, to participate in more of the everyday activities. I thought, wow, perhaps the doctors finally found the right balance of medications, where he can be a normal guy again. Maybe after all this time I finally get to have my little brother back again.
                  “One night, standing out in the garden outside his window, I was amazed to find that the constant chatter of his late night ‘conversations’ was not to be heard. For the first time in longer than I could remember, my brother was silent in the darkness of his bedroom, instead of ranting to his imaginary companions. I was so excited I could barely sleep that night, expecting him to burst out screaming, his bottled up lunacy bursting forth from where he was attempting to keep it trapped.
                  “But it didn’t happen. Not a sound came from his room that night,” he continued. “I awoke to the alarm going off in the morning, and walked into the kitchen to find my brother busy making pancakes at the stove. He looked up at me, smiling. Smiling! I hadn’t seen him smile since he was a little kid, not really. Only the grin of the lunatic had I seen on his face in ages. But here he was, greeting me with coffee and breakfast, well-rested and happy for the first time in longer than I could remember.
                  “Things were amazingly normal. In the beginning, when I left for work each day, I worried constantly that this peace that had come over our lives was going to come crashing down, leaving things worse than they ever had been. And each day I came home to dinner on the table, my brother having gone to the store, or the post office by himself, normal things. I was lulled into a sense of calm by it, content. I thought that everything was going to be all right.”
                  “What happened?” Alex asked. She could feel the tension building in his story, knew that the tragic turn of events was coming.
                  “I went into his room,” said Rick, the color draining from his face. “I never went in his room,” he continued, “I never really had a reason to, and I was giving him a little bit of privacy, you know? Yeah, I would glance in there, when the door happened to be open when I was walking by, but I never really paid any attention. Things were going so well. Jake seemed to be regaining a bit of his old self. I was relieved that our lives seemed to be returning to a semblance of normal.
                  “But something was bothering me, some small voice in the back of my mind that I wasn't seeing something that was very important, that I was lulled into a sense of security by his change in attitude, and missing the big, screaming danger that was underneath it all. I would wake in the middle of the night, to nightmares that he had murdered our mother, and that he was glad that he had done it. It didn't make any sense, but I had to try and see what he saw, when he was in there with the door shut. So I did.
                  “It was a Saturday, and I had the day off. Jake was out in the living room, watching something on the TV. I was coming out of my room, just having taken a shower, and I stopped at his door. It was always shut, his sanctuary closed off to the rest of the world, and I reached out and tried the knob. I don't know why, but I expected it to be locked, barring me entry into his space, but it wasn't. The knob turned effortlessly in my hand, and I pushed the door open. The walls were plastered with photos, all cut carefully from magazines