The Only Brother (4 page)

‘It’s really not a good idea to stop taking your medication, Andrew.’ The doctor – Simonsen – leaned forward in his seat, concerned. ‘There can be adverse reactions.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Like getting excited when I fancy a girl? I like the idea of everything working, believe it or not.’

‘We can make adjustments to the medication…’

‘The only adjustment I want is for everything to work when I need it to work.’

Simonsen laughed, nodding at me.

‘We’ll work on it. I still want you on the lithium, but we’ll lower the dosage. How have you been getting along with your parents?’

‘I haven’t. I keep getting screamed at to get a job,’ I said. ‘I have a job. I make twenty-five quid an hour just designing, not including the T-shirts I sell. But I found a sign shop that doesn’t flip out on me for wearing what I do under the uniform shirt. At least the shirt goes with my pants.’ I tugged at my ‘Sign Time’ black button-down shirt, matching the black of the shirt to my baggy wide-legged black jeans.

‘So tell me more about your brother.’

Wow, what a way to shift the conversation.

‘He was a tosser.’

Dr Simonsen pulled his head back and took down some notes with his chrome pen. A lot of notes, scribbling away.

‘What are you writing?’ I asked.

‘Just notes for me to refer back to,’ he said, looking up at me after he spoke. ‘Why do you think he was a tosser?’

‘Just was,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s like every time there was a choice between him and me, it was always him. Everything I did, Mum and Dad just expected it to happen. Top grades in school, starter on the football team, even my first paying design – it was like, “we expected that”. My brother though? Everything was a miracle and they let him know it.’

‘He was really sick, right?’

‘If you call five brain operations and getting your head scrunched with forceps “sick” then yeah,’ I said. ‘Sucked for him, and it’s a shame it happened. But my olds forgot that they had another son. Getting forgotten sucks a lot too. And
I
didn’t make all that crap happen to my brother.’

My hands hurt; I kept on digging my nails into my palms. I hated talking
about this stuff. I didn’t want to be here, but Dad said he’d yank my computer if I didn’t show up and try to ‘get better’. So, I’m here. Maybe I can get something out of it.

‘I don’t think your parents forgot you,’ Simonsen said. ‘This is a lot for them to handle, from the operations to the funeral. Even when he was growing up, think of all the problems Will had with socialising. You didn’t need as much from them, so it might seem that your parents didn’t care as much.’

‘So I’m just the self-sufficient kid? I didn’t actually need them to treat me like their son?’

‘I’m not saying that,’ Simonsen said.

‘But it’s what you mean. Just because I didn’t “need”, like you claim, doesn’t mean I didn’t want or deserve. Add in all the times I did stuff and my brother got mad at me because I
could
do it and he still had trouble, even though he was ten years
older than me. Was it my fault that I could fix things when I saw how they worked, once, or type seventy words a minute to his ten?’

‘It is possible there were some jealousy issues,’ Simonsen said. ‘But you had so many advantages over your brother.’

So much for this working out.

‘So what is the best advantage?’ I asked him.

‘What?’

‘Yeah, my best advantage,’ I asked. ‘What was it?’

‘The best advantage?’

‘Yes, what’s the best advantage I had? Is it my brother trashing my toys when he’d get angry? Or my olds deciding to spend our holiday money on my brother’s weight loss surgery when he ate his way through his second year in his posh
private university in America and put on six stone? How about them making me feel like hell because
I
want to go away to uni, like he did?’

I stood up and tucked my wallet chain away.

‘The session isn’t over yet, Andrew,’ Simonsen said

‘How about the fact that I can never match up to a dead twenty-six-year-old who beat the crap deal he’d been given, and didn’t end up pumping petrol or sweeping floors for a living? How’s that for an advantage?’

I was out of the door before he could say anything. I wasn’t going to listen anyway. He really wasn’t listening to me, either.

Two weeks after Simonsen and his insistence on my ‘advantages’, the school sent a letter to the house…

Dear Mr & Mrs Cooper,

I am writing to you with regard to your son, Andrew. Recently, his behaviour in school has shown changes for the worse. He is constantly disrupting classes and arguing with both other students and his teachers. His grades have declined, even in his best classes, and there is a decided lack of effort in subjects where Andrew has previously shown great enthusiasm.

We would like to arrange a meeting with you both, so that we may discuss this matter and develop a solution together. We would also like to arrange an additional meeting, with Andrew present, where we can all agree on the course of action that we all feel will contribute to Andrew’s advancement and success.

We understand the challenge that your family has faced regarding your son William and will support you in any way possible regarding Andrew’s wellbeing and continued educational success. It is our hope that together we may effect a return
to Andrew’s earlier enthusiasm for his education, and a subsequent improvement in his grades to their previous levels.

Yours sincerely

Dr Alice Hull

Dean of Students

I didn’t pay much attention in the meeting, at least to what my olds said. Dr Hull, however, isn’t the easiest person to fool. Besides, she actually wanted me to do better, and focused on me and how I felt. I played along with my olds, nodding when I needed to, agreeing when I needed to, even throwing out a few ideas on how I could be a better student.

Of course, I
want
to be a better student. I figure four A Levels will get me into any university I fancy, including overseas ones. I’ve been looking at Columbia and Pratt in New York City, and a few others on the
east coast of America. I can pull my grades up before the end of the term, enough that they’ll look good when I apply to schools. I may take a gap year, I may not. I have money put away in a savings account my Nana set up for me when I was born; I’ve just kept on putting money into it and my parents don’t even know it’s there. I do my banking online, so there’s never a statement sent to the house. Screw the olds. Why should I tell them anything?

Of course, I picked the last days of the term to let something set me off. It’s actually good timing on my part. With exams for the term wrapping up and me salvaging my grades for the final run for A Levels next year, getting into trouble wouldn’t hurt too much. It felt good, too, to take it out on someone who had been bothering me for a while.

Hayden Smith was one of those guys who gathered a mob of people around him. Tall, blond, popular, athletic, he was perfectly
mainstream, surrounded by posh girls and the guy friends who handled his overflow. He had a problem with, well, anyone who bothered him. And what bothered him depended on the day, the weather and lots of other stuff I didn’t even know or understand.

Hayden and I had actually been mates, believe it or not. Same crew, same parties, same friends. Except when the bills started rolling in for my brother after his last op, and I only really had time for Sara and working rather than loading up on booze with Hayden and the rest. Hayden took it as a personal insult and he hasn’t let up since. I guess you could say my existence bothered him.

‘Andy!’ he yelled to me when I was about to make it down the hall past him.

I just ignored it. Normally, it would feel like someone was squeezing my heart in my chest. Guess the Xanax is working. I simply walked on by, back into the crowd to be off on my way.

‘Cooper!’

He ran in front of me with a slide. His friends followed, hovering at the sides in the hallway. People floated by, avoiding eye contact with me, just wanting to get past the scene that was about to happen.

‘What do you want, Hayden?’ I asked.

‘Just wanted to know if everything’s working out. You never keep in touch any more.’ He faked a smile. I caught a fit blonde in the back of the crowd who didn’t look like she wanted to be there: Caroline. We’d only gone out for a few weeks, and she was fun as fun could be, but we both thought it wasn’t a good idea to keep together, since Hayden would make her life hell for doing anything with me. This was just before Sara showed up and spun my life around. Caroline looked concerned, and I wondered if she was going to speak up, if she still fancied me.

‘Been busy,’ I said as I tried to step past. Hayden stepped back in front of me, his crew adjusting to block my way.

‘Too busy for your mates?’ he said. ‘Or got too many important things to do?’

Here he goes again. This is getting old.

‘Well, yes. Too many important things to do,’ I said with a smile. ‘So, I don’t want to waste time doing unimportant things, like being seen in the same town with you and your minging girlfriend.’

Hayden seethed; he liked being the centre of things, the important part of everything.

A few people passing by stopped, catching what I’d said and laughing at Hayden. Caroline smiled; I smiled back.

Hayden wasn’t smiling, not when people laughed at him. He stepped up, but then stopped.

‘I’d give you a good slapping, but you might have a brain problem like your brother…’

‘Hayden,’ Caroline pleaded, ‘Just leave it alone…’

‘Was it hard to pull the plug, Andy? Or did your parents rush to it because they didn’t want a cripple or a stump at home? Where do you take a vegetable on holiday, by the way?’

I just kept on punching, and punching, and punching. I knew what I was doing, but I don’t know why I was doing it. I didn’t love my brother. He was a jerk. But then Hayden was a jerk too, and he had no idea of the kind of raw deal life had dealt my brother. Maybe there was a small part of me that wanted my brother and me to be family, real family, and it just rose to the surface.

Hayden had wanted to get a rise out of me so that he could show off to his mob; he’d got one, and a black eye and bruised cheek for it. My back was killing me from getting thrown into the wall. My arms hurt from when Hayden’s friends broke us up and dragged Hayden away, getting him out of sight before any teachers arrived on the scene.

And Caroline had pulled me away from the fight, putting herself between me and Hayden, pulling at his arm when he took
a swing at me. I’d forgotten how wonderful she smelled and how soft she felt.

Then she broke away from me,
half-dragged
by some of Hayden’s boys, who scattered before a teacher showed up. She left her hand on mine for a moment longer than she should have. Her glance lingered, longer than perhaps it needed to. Even as I scrambled down the hall, I could hear Hayden yelling at Caroline for helping me.

But I could tell that she still fancied me. I was sure of it.

‘So, how does that make you feel?’