Evan wants a swimming pool in the backyard. He wants to substitute showering for lying comatose in chlorine and the luxury of lounging on a pepperoni pizza floatie at 2pm on a Tuesday. He wants to watch his skin dehydrate in slow motion. Evan wants a lot of things.
When Evan’s not wanting things, he moonlights as a delivery boy for GrubHub, pocketing Suburbia’s tips for better weed and gas money. He wasn’t always like this—mooching off Dad, withering into a pile of bones in the attic—he went to university. He got a degree, a job that required him to wear a tie and sit at a desk. He majored in business finance like every other prick from our high school and got the best internships because he’s quarterback-attractive and can hold a conversation with a trio of half-deaf AARP cardholders.
Evan is my older cousin. I’ve spent my entire life wanting to be him.
*
Evan is crowned ‘The Chosen One’ before he hits puberty and before I can walk. He’ll take over Dad’s company. He’ll stiff arm the grunt workers, the minimum wage crybabies, middle management. He’ll coax and chew and puppeteer them until they’re stuffed with 401ks and blind allegiance. Evan will be King, and I will watch.
In preparation for dictating a small monarchy, Evan’s shipped off to Wall Street for training. He fucks girls of all ethnicities in graffiti-colored bathrooms and attends rooftop parties for the 1%. He flirts with anyone with a pulse, gives five-star Uber ratings, tips generously. Everybody likes him. He eats steaks and shrimp scampi, calamari, lobster tail. He experiments with drugs. He goes to art galleries. Evan makes New York money.
Dad’s so proud that he starts whistling again.
But Evan’s young. He’s green, impressionable, a midwestern sheep among city wolves. His supervisor sees this as means to exploit him.
‘Someday you’ll cave, Evan. You’ll buy a dog, a car, a house, a wife,’ Jones says, fingering his $39 Chinese take-out. Jones is just pissed because his hair is thinning, he can’t fuck his wife like he used to, and he’s still waiting for a promotion. He crushes Viagra with cocaine and prays. Jones never had to pray before.
Sometimes, Evan jerks off to the idea of punching Jones in the face. He’d openly piss on Jones’ grave given the opportunity. He isn’t ashamed of that. ‘I doubt it,’ Evan says, tightening his fist to stop his tremor.
Jones notices. ‘Careful. No one likes a coke addict, kid.’
They laugh. Everyone gets by with just a little cocaine—it’s just how to survive.
After four months on Wall Street, Evan gets addicted. No one’s surprised when he shoves his stapler, his lone coffee mug full of blue pens, and his calculator into a cardboard box. Jones ushers him out with a shit-eating grin, but Evan’s too chickenshit to deck him. He gets day drunk at the nearest strip club instead. The next morning, his credit card declines at the bodega. He has bite marks up and down his arms and can’t afford an Uber. His pilgrimage underground feels both sardonic and spiritual.
His life is over.
*
When Evan moves back to Indiana, Dad gifts him the attic. He tells Evan to take the year to piss off, curb his addiction, and get laid. He actually says this because Dad still needs Evan to run the family company. But Evan just wants to have fun because he knows he’s going to die.
I graduate top of my class and leave for Indiana University to study Biology while Evan walks around the neighborhood barefoot. He eats grass and contemplates living by his Scorpio horoscope. Every other weekend, I come home to him staring at the refrigerator with his mouth open, cool air engulfing him into a manic trance. His eyes are always bloodshot, leaky and dazed, and he’s always scratching an invisible scab, waiting for his phone to ring for another fix.
‘If it isn’t Little Miss Perfect,’ he says, chugging milk straight out of the carton.
I go to my room and peel wallpaper off the walls.
I listen to Evan fuck the moms of girls from my high school. I hear the bed frame scratch against the wood. The ‘oh, yes,’ the ‘harder.’ I pretend it’s me. That someone, anyone, pounds into me until I see a collection of stars, until breathing is complimentary, optional, and not this heavy chore burdened by being alive. When it’s over, I wipe my legs with a dirty t-shirt and read Ted Bundy’s Wikipedia page until I fall asleep.
At university, I am an extension of the library. I hook up with some girl in Biology 101, twice. She smells like oranges and is only interested in me for my lecture notes. I slam the door in her face, smashing her big nose against the glass, and watch her bleed. Sometimes, she sends me a string of crying emojis at 3am. Sometimes, I pinch myself until welts appear on the underside of my arms. Sometimes, I think about the silence that must accompany dying.
Evan and I aren’t so different, I think. Maybe we share the same recessive gene. Maybe were both dropped on our heads at birth.
When I come home for winter break, Evan knocks on my door and asks if I want to do coke with him. I say sure because I’ve never done it before.
I laugh, remembering when, once upon a time, coke was just soda in a can. 139 calories.
We go to the backyard and lie in the hole the pool company dug before it snowed. I’m in Dad’s winter coat, the one with the fur collar, and Evan wears a t-shirt and basketball shorts.
I ask him if he’s cold.
He says, ‘Nah. I don’t feel anything anymore.’
I want to tell him I understand, but I’m freezing.
Gabrielle McAree is a reader, writer, and cereal enthusiast from Fishers, IN. She studied Theatre and Writing at Long Island University Post. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Dream Journal, Milkyway Magazine, Tiny Molecules, Mixed Mag, Second Chance Lit, Versification, and ThereAfter. Find Gabrielle at @gmcaree_.
I like to think of myself as a writer, I’ve been published a few time. So, I think I have somewhat of a right to expound of the stories currently being presented here. So, after reading four of this months posted stories, I’ve finally found one that to me has merit. Good job Gabrielle.