Out

by Jenna Brotsky

Gabe knew he was late before he even glanced at his cell phone, the only clock he kept on him. He kicked up some dirt on the cement front steps and tried not to look up. The sun was sinking down below the trees across the street from his house, which meant it was almost dinnertime. He was supposed to have been home at 4:30, after science lab. Gabe hadn’t gone to lab, of course; he’d been driving around aimlessly with friends, talking about everything but school and the rinky-dink town they were stuck in. What kind of sick God would come up with Oak Falls, Ohio? That’s what Gabe wanted to know. He wrinkled his nose at the Easter decorations Peter had made in April. It was October.

Gabe unzipped the little pocket of his dusty blue backpack and rustled around for his keys. After some digging, he spotted the little spaceship keychain Aunt Justine had given him for Christmas last year. Gabe fished the keys out and tried to unlock the front door as quietly as possible. Holding his breath, he pushed it open. Carefully, carefully—

“Dad! Gabe’s home!” Johnny announced from the dining room table. Typical. The house was just small enough that no matter where you were, if the door to the room you were in was open you could see the front entrance, so of course Johnny would be in the one room that didn’t even have a door, just a great big peephole.

“Thank you, John,” called their father’s voice from another room. Probably the kitchen. Gabe sighed and came in, shooting his brother a look.

Johnny looked up from the jumble of workbooks in front of him and shrugged. He put a pudgy hand through the messy brown hair the brothers shared. “Dad wanted to know when you were home,” he explained.

Gabe snorted and started for his room, dragging his backpack with one hand and reaching into his hoodie pocket with the other. His fingers rubbed against two sheets of extensively creased lined paper. Gabe had been folding and refolding them all day, rereading bits and pieces. It was the best letter he’d ever received. He pictured the signature, with those two little words hovering about it—much love—and his heart leapt into his throat. When he pictured the rest of the letter, words like lips and night and last and yours popped into his head, and heat pooled like molten lava in the pit of his stomach.

“Gabe,” Johnny said, jerking him back to the present. He was fingering the little cross on the chain around his neck. The older boy stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. “How come you’re late?”

It was Gabe’s turn to shrug. “It’s no big deal, okay?” He kept going, but stopped for a second to blow a kiss to Mom’s picture on the windowsill in the hallway, and touch the tiny piece of chipped fender next to it that Johnny had pried off of what the accident had left of her car. He slipped past the door in the hall that led to the kitchen without drawing his dad’s attention, then paused again to knock on Peter’s door.

“No!” called his youngest brother’s voice through the yellow door. “Busy!” Gabe wondered what a six-year-old could be busy with, but didn’t ask.

“Can I come in, please? I need a favor,” he said softly.

There was a pause. Then the door swung open. Peter was looking up at him with innocent little kid eyes. Gabe pulled the letter out of his pocket and held it out. “Can I keep this in your toy bin with the others?”

Peter took the papers from him. “The others aren’t in there,” he announced.

Gabe felt his gut freeze, then implode and sink down to his ankles. “What do you mean they’re not in there?” Panic made his voice break.

“Dad took ‘em. He said he needs them.”

A hand clapped down on Gabe’s shoulder. It might have belonged to the Angel of Death for the chill it sent through his body. Gabe swallowed and turned around. “Hi, Dad,” he mumbled.

“Hand that to me, please, Peter,” the head of the house commanded. Peter obeyed. Clearing his throat, their father unfolded the letter and began to read it silently. His eyes flicked to the end, and he made a strangled sound.

“Dad,” Gabe croaked.

“Just like the others, then.” Something like regret mixed with rage was dancing in his father’s irises as he folded the letter again. From his pocket, he produced a small stack of papers, all folded into quarters like the one in his hand. Gabe recognized them instantly.

“Dad! It’s not what you think, I can explain,” he begged.

“Can you.” His father’s voice was thick and cold. “Gabriel, who is Marco?”

“He’s…” Gabe couldn’t finish without lying. He snuck in late and he didn’t get all A’s and he texted in church, but he never lied. By omission, maybe.

“Because from the looks of letters you’ve been keeping in Peter’s room of all places, he seems to be a pretty important part of your life!”

Gabe watched his sneakers rub at the ground as if he could dig a hole straight through the Earth and escape. “He is,” he whispered.

“Gabriel, I’m…very disappointed. I thought you had better judgment than this.”

Gabe’s eyes were burning, prickling, hot. “It’s not about judgment,” he tried.

“No? You have a boyfriend! Are you going to tell me that wasn’t your fault? That it wasn’t your choice?”

“Yes! I mean, yes, I made the choice to have a boyfriend, but not…but not why. Dad, I didn’t—”

“I don’t get it,” Peter interrupted. “I have a boy friend, too. Lots! Trent comes over to play all the time, and so does Tommy and Roger…” The kindergartener spread out his hands as if to illustrate. “Girls are gross.”

For a brief moment the father’s lips quirked up. “This is different, Peter,” he said gently. “Don’t worry about it. Go into your room, okay? Gabriel and I are going to discuss this elsewhere.” Peter looked confused, but he retreated anyway. His door clicked shut, locking away all the color and toys scattered around it. All the warmth.

Gabe swallowed. His father put a hand on his shoulder once more. It was heavy. “Gabriel. Kitchen, now.” Gabe let himself be steered into the kitchen.

Johnny had been getting pretzels out of the ceramic jar on the counter that protruded from the wall closest to the dining room. From the redness of his face, Gabe guessed his brother had been eavesdropping. “John,” their father said. He didn’t have to say anymore: Johnny knew his cue to leave.

“Dad,” Gabe tried again, voice lower than before. “I love Marco, and he loves me. That’s not a bad thing, okay? Jesus said to love people, right? Why does it matter if—”

His father pounded the counter once. Hard. Gabe could almost feel little lines of heat rippling outwards from where his fist beat the glossy surface. “Our Lord said man shall not lie with man,” his father growled. He brought a hand to his face, breathing hard. When he removed it, his eyes were wet. “Gabriel…I know you’re not to blame for this. I know.” Hope swelled in Gabe’s chest. “I should take some responsibility. I know it’s hard, with your mother gone…I’ve been worried something like this would happen, with no women in the house.” The bubble of hope burst. Gabe stood, shaking with something he could not identify.

“That’s not how it is!” he shouted. Everything was hot. His father’s powerful eyes, brown-yellow and wrinkled with age and hardship, a vision of his own in thirty years, suddenly seemed very far away. Gabe’s gaze flicked to the metal cross above the sink, the cups he and Johnny had painted years ago at their church’s annual community day, one of the many Bibles nestled between the cookbooks underneath the counter. He glanced back to his father, about to speak, and cut him off. “You don’t have to understand it,” he announced, voice harder than he’d thought possible. “You won’t.”

The world was quiet, shivering. Then, almost without his brain’s consent, Gabe’s mouth flew open again. “I bet Mom would have gotten it. She would be on my side.”

His father’s face drained of all color. An odd satisfaction blared in Gabe’s chest.

“Don’t you dare,” the man gritted out after a moment. “Don’t you dare throw that at me! Your mother was a good woman!”

“I know that!” Gabe yelled back. “And she would back her son!”

“Not if he was directly defying God’s will! She was a good Christian, Gabriel! And she would be very, very upset to see what her son has become!”

Gabe felt his gut squeeze in on itself and his heart beat double time. “She’d be more upset about how her husband is acting,” he spit back.

“You little shit.” His father was breathing hard. Eyes wild, sweat-slicked strands of hair stuck to his forehead, he was the picture of rage. “Since when the hell is it acceptable for you to use that tone with me in my house, young man!” his father thundered.

“It’s not just your house, Dad!” Gabe snapped. “Other people live here too! I’m so fucking done with your stupid rules, and your stupid fucking religion!”

For a second, Gabe stood there, feeling tall. He savored the shock he had caused, the absence of that particular weight on his chest. And then the world became the sound and pain of the solid slap across his face, delivered by his father’s hand.

From the other room, Johnny gasped. Gabe reeled, his hand flying to his nose. It was cold and surprisingly intact. Everything in his head buzzed.

“Don’t you dare.” All the lines in his father’s face were tense. His shoulders shivering with suppression. His fingers flexing. “Don’t you dare.”

Gabe opened his mouth but there were no words.

“You’re really so sick of my rules, my religion? Goddammit, Gabriel, you’re baptized! You’ve had your Confirmation, you’ve…” Something that might have been a sob died on its way out and his father shook his head. “I did everything right. I did everything right,” he implored, eyes on the ceiling.

Tears pounded at the doors of Gabe’s eyelids, forced their way out with a battering ram. He felt them drip down his stinging skin. “It’s not about what you did,” he managed to murmur.

“Then why, Gabriel? What made you choose this?”

The softness of his father’s tone surprised him. Gabe raised his hands, then lowered them. “I didn’t choose it. I just…I’m gay, okay? It happens. It’s not anybody’s fault, it’s not…It happens.”

The older man let out a choked breath that wasn’t quite a snort. “It happens?” he repeated incredulously. “That’s all you have to say for yourself? It happens?” There was more of an edge to his voice now, and his eyebrows were crushing down.

Gabe considered the man before him, the man who had raised him and loved him for sixteen years, who had taken him to church every Sunday of his life, who had yelled at him for getting C’s, who had tried to get him to join Little League no matter how many times he said no, who had stolen his private letters, who had slapped him for being who he was. He looked that man straight in the eyes and said, “Yeah. You don’t have to like it.”

Closing his eyes for another slap, Gabe didn’t see his father’s jaw drop open a little bit, hang. Then it shut. “I sure as hell have to like it if you live in this house!” he proclaimed.

Gabe’s eyes opened. “Well, maybe I don’t want to, then,” he dared. “I bet I’d be better off if I didn’t!”

“Oh really? That’s what you think?”

“That’s what I think.”

His father almost laughed at that, which hurt. “Well, then, consider yourself out. Good luck finding someone to take in an, an ungrateful…disobedient, little…Faggot!”

The slur stung worse than the slap. Gabe started to say something, to protest, to fight, but he was interrupted.

“Pack a bag. Now. You are not staying in my house while you act like this, and and especially not while you’re seeing that boy!” the father declared.

“Fine!” Gabe retorted, throwing up his hands. “Fine!” His throat was raw. “Fine! Then I’ll just stay with Marco!” he lied. Marco’s parents didn’t know either. “He loves me!”

Shock again. Then, “Good!” his father roared. Spit flew from his mouth. “Go!”

Gabe stood there for a second, shuddering, seething. Then he stormed past his father, snatched up his backpack and ran into the room he shared with Johnny. The door slammed behind him. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Everything hurt, everything was…was wrong. He grabbed the first couple of t-shirts he saw in his drawer, a pair of jeans, some boxers, his cellphone charger. Socks. He shoved them all into the backpack with force he didn’t mean to use and banged the door open, right into Johnny’s face.

“Gabe!” the middle brother cried. “Come on, he’s not serious. Dad, you’re not serious!”

“Yes he is,” Gabe snarled.

“Yes I am,” their father confirmed.

Johnny’s mouth kept trying to form words. Peter was peeking out from his door, big eyes brimming with tears. Gabe pushed past them both to the front door.

One foot out the door, one foot in. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what it was.

“Gabe,” Johnny pleaded. “Gabe?”

When he turned his head, what he saw was his father, arms folded, watching him go. The biggest Bible of all was sitting on the coffee table, leering.

“Bye,” he said. That was all he had left.

The whole town was dark and sleeping. Stars winked down at Oak Falls, but the moon was almost gone, a sliver of its former self. One other light flickered: the screen of Gabe’s cell phone. He used the phone like a flashlight, illuminating the catch on the gate of his former home. Gabe wondered if he could flip the cell closed and make his way to the house by memory, but he didn’t try it. He didn’t want to find out that even a week had been enough to erase all signs of his sixteen years here.

In the pale white light playing over his shoes, Gabe scurried up the path, but didn’t go up the front steps. Instead, he darted to the right, and made his way along the wall until electronic light glinted off his youngest brother’s window. Silently, stealthily, guiltily, he jabbed at the faulty lock with the mechanical pencil he’d brought just for this. Peter, always a heavy sleeper, didn’t so much as roll over as Gabe pushed the window open and snuck into the room. He shone the light on the floor so as to avoid the building blocks and crayons that littered the green-in-daylight carpet. He weaved his way through to the door, then held his breath in panicked prayer as he turned the door knob. For once, luck was on his side; no hinges squeaked, no thuds sounded as the door banged against toys left just outside it. Down the hall, cell phone leading the way. There it was, their door. Well, Johnny’s door now.

Gabe twisted the knob he’d long kept oiled for occasions like this, and slipped inside. Johnny, like Peter, usually slept like a rock, so he didn’t worry much about the scraping of wood-against-wood as he opened his top drawer. First on the list, the rest of his boxers and undershirts. He’d been living with his aunt and uncle for a week and a half, and he really couldn’t keep asking Aunt Justine to do laundry every few days. That was no way to show gratitude, not when she’d taken him in even after hearing everything from his dad.

Placing his cell on the top of the dresser, Gabe cleaned out his side of the top drawer, and made a neatish pile at his feet. He opened the second drawer, and rifled through his half, mentally sorting it into two stacks. No, not the ugly orange shirt from Nana. Not the plain greys and blacks Dad thinks are manlier than patterns. Oh hell no, not the stupid church fundraiser one. Ah! There! Gabe tugged at a brown shirt at the bottom of the stack. He’d bought it two years ago, at the sci-fi/comics/anime/Dungeons & Dragons convention they held every year in the next town over, the one all the misfits in the surrounding 50 miles flocked to. He ran a thumb lovingly over the word “Browncoat” printed across the chest. The shirt marked him as a proud fan of “Firefly,” a science fiction western he’d tried to explain at least six times to his father.

“Gabe?” came a shocked whisper. Gabe froze, then turned slowly.

“Hey, Johnny,” he whispered back.

His younger brother was rubbing at his eyes like he’d seen a ghost, half-sitting in bed. “What are you doing here?” Johnny hissed, once convinced Gabe was really there.

“Getting my stuff,” the older brother explained. “I left—”

“I know.” Johnny’s voice wasn’t louder than before, but it was colder and more powerful. “I was there.”

Gabe sighed. “That’s not what I meant.” He dropped the Browncoats shirt on top of his pile. “Look, I’m sorry, but Dad—”

“You’re not sorry,” Johnny cut him off again. He swung his feet over the side of his bed, and sat all the way up.

“Well, not about leaving.”

“Then about what?” There was something mean in Johnny’s tone, something sour.

Gabe tried to think how to answer that question. “Waking you up, I guess.”

“And that’s it?”

Gabe scratched at his nose like it would let him read Johnny’s mind. By the feeble light of the phone, it was impossible to make out his expression. All he could see was a downturned mouth and the shadow his bangs made across his eyes.

“What do you want me to be sorry for?” he asked.

Johnny’s mouth twisted. After a pause, he said, “People talk at school, you know.”

Gabe frowned. “Yeah?”

“About you. And Marco.” There was hatred in the way he said the name. “And me, because I’m your brother.”

Gabe snorted, but quietly. “Yeah, I know. People talk at my school, too. It’s probably worse than what they’re saying at yours.”

“Gabe.” Johnny looked down, then back up. Gabe thought he saw his brother’s jaw tremble. “Why can’t you just like girls?”

The question took Gabe by surprise. Pain dug at his heart, an angry dog pawing at the ground. “What?” His voice betrayed him, too, cracking.

“Then you could move back in, and people would stop making fun of us. It’s not just you, you know that? Yesterday Chris Henderson called me a fag, ’cause we’re related, and he said everyone could catch the gay from me ’cause you used to live here, and we used to share a room.” The slur hurt worse coming from Johnny than from his father, but Gabe couldn’t figure out how to speak right then.

“News travels, fast, okay?” Johnny kept going. “At church everybody was staring at us. And I want to ask Emily Johnson out, but she’s not gonna say yes, ’cause she thinks I’m a fag like you.”

“How terrible for you,” Gabe replied. “It must be so awful to have me for a brother.”

Johnny licked his lips and ducked his head. With a slightly more sympathetic tone, he said, “Gabe, look, I’m…I’m just trying to say, if you just went with girls, you could—”

“Johnny! Stop it! It’s not a decision, alright? Jesus.” He didn’t want to have this discussion, not now, not ever. “Look, just let me get my stuff and go.” But it was too late for that.

“Gabe?” came a small voice from behind him. Gabe turned, and standing just outside his door was Peter, very confused and clutching his teddy bear to his chest. “Are you back?”

“Um.” Gabe scratched his chin. “Not, uh, not exactly.”

“Peter…” Johnny called. “Go back to bed, okay?”

The youngest brother shook his head emphatically. “I wanna know what’s happening!”

Gabe knelt down. Softly, he said, “It’s complicated. Just trust us and go back to bed for now, okay?”

“No. Not okay.” Peter stuck out his lower lip in protest. “You went away an’ now you’re back and nobody tells me anything!”

“It’s really better that way,” Johnny asserted. “It has nothing to do with you, Peter. Unless Gabe keeps involving you.” There was nastiness in that statement that surprised the oldest brother. Gabe glanced back over his shoulder.

“I’m not involving him! I’m with you, Peter should go to bed.”

“I didn’t mean now,” Johnny snapped. “I meant ever.”

“Stop fighting!” Peter interrupted. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”

Gabe turned back to Peter and put a reassuring hand on each of his shoulders. “Hey,” he soothed, “Calm down, kiddo. Johnny and I aren’t fighting. We just…have a little disagreement.”

Peter scowled and hugged his teddy tighter. Gabe thought he could make out the bear’s plastic eyes bulging out from its fur from the force. “You always fight,” Peter mumbled. “I hate it.”

Gabe looked away. Something twisted in his gut. “Yeah. Well, don’t worry, I just have to pack up, and then Johnny and I won’t have to fight anymore.”

“NO!” Peter shouted. “No packing up! You have to come back!”

“Peter,” Johnny started.

“No! No, no, no! It’s not fair! You don’t get to leave me again!”

Gabe sighed. “I’m not leaving because of you, kiddo.”

“He’s not,” Johnny backed him up. “He’s leaving because of him.”

“Excuse me?” Gabe snorted. “I’m leaving because Dad won’t—”

“Because Dad won’t give up everything he believes in just because you want a boyfriend!” Johnny yelled. “Everything we all believe in as a family!”

Peter tilted his head back and started to sob. “No fighting, no fighting!”

“Goddammit, Johnny! Look what you did!” Gabe cried, raising his voice over Peter’s fit.

“Look what I did? You’re the one who left!”

“I left because you and Dad think I’m going to Hell just for being—”

“Queer?”

“Me! For being me, Johnny! If you don’t like it, I don’t give a shit!”

“Clearly.” Johnny’s voice was like ice. “If you did, Peter wouldn’t be bawling his eyes out ’cause of you.”

Gabe couldn’t figure out how to speak anymore. He made some incoherent sounds of frustration instead, but was interrupted by his youngest brother.

“S-stop it,” Peter sobbed. “Y-you guys are b-being s-s-o mean to-to each other!”

The older brothers sighed in unison. “Peter, please,” Johnny said. “Just go back to bed. Gabe is leaving, anyway.”

Peter turned tear-filled eyes to Gabe. “No! You hafta come back!”

“I…I can’t, Peter,” Gabe explained, as gently as he could. “I just can’t. Not right now.” Peter, realizing he meant it, let out a last wail, and fled back to his own room, dragging the poor teddy bear behind him. Gabe braced himself against the slam of Peter’s door.

“Great,” Johnny muttered. “Just fantastic. Way to go, Gabe.”

“Yeah,” Gabe rejoined. “This is all my fault. It’s not like you were yelling or anything. But I know what you’re thinking: if he doesn’t burn in Hell for being gay, he can burn for making his kid brother cry! Great for you!”

“Gabe, come on, you don’t have to go to Hell if you just repent.” This time Johnny’s tone was selfless, sincere. It hurt that much more.

“John,” Gabe said. “Stop, okay? I don’t believe in that.”

Johnny made an impatient sound. “I know you were angry when Dad was yelling. I know! He hit you, that was…wrong. But you don’t have to stick with this stupid atheist stuff, okay? I know you were just mad.”

Gabe realized with horror that he meant it. “Johnny. It wasn’t because I was mad. I just…I don’t believe in God. Or Jesus. Or Heaven or Hell or any of it. I think it’s shit. I mean, look…” He put a hand to each temple. Somewhere out there, he thought he heard a door open, but he didn’t turn around yet. “Who wrote the Bible?”

“Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You know that,” Johnny answered.

Gabe wanted to grind his teeth. He held back admirably. “That’s the New Testament,” he tried. “What about the Old?”

Johnny was obviously confused, even in the half-light. “I dunno. Moses? It’s God’s word, so, I don’t—”

“No!” Gabe realized how loud he’d gotten, and took the volume down a few notches.

“No. People, Johnny. People wrote the Bible, not God. Religion is a manmade thing. That’s why the Bible contradicts itself, why everything is so fucked up.” He ignored the little sucking in of breath that indicated Johnny didn’t approve of his language. “I mean, Jesus, look at all the sects of just Christianity! How would that work, if God wrote the Bible, if God was real?”

Johnny sighed heavily. “Gabe. That’s stupid. Just because God exists, doesn’t mean everyone follows Him correctly. You can’t make people accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. It’s a personal decision.”

“Well, then, stop trying to make mine for me.” Gabe knew an opening when he saw one. “If I get damned, no blood on your hands.”

“Gabe!”

“No, I’m serious. God could smite me the fuck down, I don’t care. Hell, maybe if I go to Rome sometime, the Pope can just smack me or something. But you can stay out of it.” Gabe whirled back around and shut the second dresser drawer. His blood was boiling, and everything about him was going too fast. He knew he had gotten loud again, but he couldn’t think straight enough to quiet down.

“Gabe,” Johnny pleaded. “I can’t do that. You’re my brother.”

“Look how well that worked out for Abel,” Gabe tossed back. “Get away from me and my handbasket while you can,” he added darkly. “Or Dad’ll kick you out next.”

“Dad was angry.” There was something irritatingly understanding in Johnny’s voice, a compassion Gabe didn’t think he had possessed at thirteen. “He’d take you back in. We could be a family again, if you just—”

“Broke up with Marco and started dating girls, I know.” Gabe was trying to sound as bored as he could. He had opened the third drawer, but hadn’t done anything. He didn’t trust himself to take out his last pair of jeans without spilling everything else all over the floor. “And we’re not going to be a family again. Ever.”

“We could be.” Johnny sounded sure.

“Oh yeah?” Gabe turned back around to face his brother, fists clenched. “Oh yeah, we could be, oh yeah? How? What would I have to do to make us a family again? Move back in? Repent? Stop dating the boy I love?” Johnny’s mouth opened but Gabe didn’t let him speak. “Jesus said to love, you know. All this hypocritical Catholic bullshit about love thy neighbor, but oh god, if your neighbor happens to be of your sex, run for the fucking hills and never look back. You can love thine enemies, but not the gays, they’re a fucking blight on the face of the Earth, a disease, the leaders of the marching band sending America straight to Hell. Oh, and while you’re at it, hate the Protestants, too, and the Jews, and the Muslims, and the Buddhists, and everyone who isn’t us. Yeah, that’s just what Christ said.”

“Gabe—”

“No, you’re right, I got off topic,” Gabe sniped. There was an ugly sneer on his face, but he couldn’t control it; it felt so goddamn good to finally say it. “So after I give up Marco, then what? What else doesn’t Dad like about me? Oh, no, I’m sorry, I meant what doesn’t Jesus like? I should stop doing plays at school, too, and instead I should play baseball, right? Because baseball’s so much fucking manlier. And I should stop playing soccer, too, ’cause that’s not as good as football. I should be like you, right Johnny? You play whatever the hell Dad says to.”

“I like football—” Johnny started.

“And I should start getting all A’s, too. I should put in all my free time and I should be a model fucking student. Like you, right? Never mind that fact that I got A’s in the 8^th grade, too, never mind it might be a little harder in high school, and never mind all my classes are bullshit and I don’t wanna go to college anyway. And I should go to church, and pray, and believe everything I say, because if I don’t, something’s gotta be wrong with me, right? It’s my fault, it’s all my fault! I’m the goddamn ruiner of the house, of the family! I should just give up being me and be you instead, is that it?”

“No, you asshole!” Johnny shouted, standing up. “That’s not what I said! Goddamn it Gabe, don’t you get it? Don’t you effing get it, Mom is gone! We’re already wrecked, but you just make it worse!”

Gabe stood there slack-jawed.

“You have to keep trying things, pushing Dad’s buttons. Pushing mine! You aren’t so perfect, you aren’t so tortured. You sneak in after midnight when you’ve been with your friends, and you skip school, and you, you hide letters about you and your boyfriend and sex in Peter’s room! How the fuck could you hide something like that in Peter’s room?” Johnny was sobbing without crying, shoulders shuddering. “He’s six, Gabe! He’s six and you could mess him up for good! I’m old enough to decide for myself to follow Jesus, and be a good son, and so are you, but you keep running around the house like you’re a fucking prince, and Peter sees it too! Don’t you get that? Mom is gone, and you’re the big brother, so you’re the most responsible except for Dad. I could give a shit about your soul if that’s the way you’re gonna act, and I agree with Dad, if you keep it up you’re going to Hell so fast your head’s gonna spin. But for Christssake, Gabe, don’t do it in front of Peter!”

Both brothers stood there, shaking with rage and hurt and love and hate, real genuine hate.

The cellphone, which had only been set for ten minute’s time of backlighting, went black. Gabe didn’t even reach to turn it back on, just stood there shivering.

“I should go,” he said quietly.

“You should.” Johnny’s voice was flat, reserved. Gabe was glad they were invisible to one another.

He grabbed up the bundle of clothes at his feet by feel, and slid a hand across the dresser’s top until he found the phone. Reluctantly, he pressed a button to light up the screen again, and yanked his jeans out of the drawer he had open. Johnny said nothing while his older brother finished gathering his few precious things, took his old duffel bag from the closet and headed out. A thought suddenly struck Gabe from just outside the doorway.

“Why isn’t Dad up?” he asked, emotionless as he could be.

“He’s on a business trip. It was on the calendar before you left.” Something in Johnny’s voice broke as he added, “I don’t know how to drive Peter to school, so we take the bus there and back.”

All the heat in his core suddenly fizzled into a cold weight. “Do you guys have enough food and stuff?”

“Yeah. And Aunt Justine actually shopped some for us.”

“She did?”

“Apparently she likes all her nephews.” There was something like humor in Johnny’s tone, but not a lot of it.

“Oh.” Gabe tried to think of what to say next. He stared at the little light emanating from his phone, at the half of his arm it made visible.

“You should go,” Johnny reminded him.

Some of the cold in Gabe’s heart reheated. “I’m going,” he answered. He turned his back and took a few steps towards the front door. At this time at night he usually avoided the door, but…he wasn’t going to be using it again.

Gabe took a deep breath. “Hey. Tell Dad the lock on Peter’s window is still broken, okay? Someone could get in that way.”

Johnny took a strained breath. “He knows,” he admitted softly. Gabe almost turned back around at that, but he was afraid of what would happen if he did. “I said he would take you back in.”

Gabe wanted to ask whether Johnny would, too, but he knew himself too well. There was no point in getting his brother’s hopes up. Apparently he’d already done enough damage here. “I’ll see you,” he said instead.

There was a pause. The air was heavy. Gabe hurried now, before things could get even harder. His light stayed focused on the floor, never illuminating anything but carpet. The door clicked shut behind him. He let light play over the chalk Easter bunnies Peter had drawn.

Gabe fumbled for a second with the cell, and switched it into camera mode. He focused in on the drawings and clicked. A small flash, and the front steps of the house were forever saved to his phone.

As he closed the gate behind him on the way out, he realized that was all he had left.