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angry. Underneath he was terrified he was her. In some ways he was. Rather than try to fight it, he just let himself become it.
     
    One night when he’d been sober a few days, he told me that if Kate left he had no chance with anyone else. He was right. She was about as patient as they could get. And she’d given up. Kevin was always going to be Kevin. And he was going to be that all by himself. He would ensure that.
     
    It was hard to live with him. To love him and watch what he was doing to himself. I alternated between wanting to hug him and wanting to hit him. He was going to kill himself with that shit and I knew it. It scared the hell out of me and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. It was like reliving my childhood all over again.
     
    But I was there for him. I had to be. Who else was he going to turn to? Even Aunt Dee had given up on him. No one could take it anymore. Nothing was ever going to change.
     
    He was only a couple years older than I was, but had seen so much more in life. By the time he was out of school, he was too far gone to really help. All I could do was be there. Be the person he could count on. No matter how hard it was for me, or what it cost me. So that is what I did. I owed him that much.
     
    As I lie there thinking about my brother and the bad choices he continued to make, I felt that overwhelming sense of panic again. My chest tightened and I struggled to breathe. Cement blocks seemed to keep me from inhaling as I needed to. Clenching my fists, face dripping with sweat, I tried to get the oxygen I needed.
     
    Something was wrong with Avery. It’d been almost a week since the first night we’d gone to our old apartment and she still wasn’t back in town. At least not that I could tell. If she was, she was lying low. I never saw her at the diner and her car was never at the apartment.
     
    I hadn’t tried her phone again. I was scared to. If it still went to voicemail, I’d have to go hunt her down. If I didn’t know, then I could still pretend she was out of the state and would be back soon. But inside I didn’t believe it. Either something was wrong or…..I couldn’t stomach the alternatives.
     
    There was a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach. One that said something was bad. One that said she was in trouble. I wanted to go save her. I needed to take care of her. But I had no choice. There was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t even know where the fuck she was. I couldn’t possibly find her. That left me no choice but to sit and wait until she came home. The problem was she wasn’t coming home. At least not that I could tell.
     
    I heard Kevin moving around in the other room and wished like hell he’d use that energy to clean. I was tired of picking everything up all the time. But I couldn’t live in his hell hole and have it messy, so I had no choice. Between working all day and cleaning all night, I stayed exhausted. I kept hoping that it would keep my mind off of her. But even in exhaustion I could see her face. Hear her voice. Miss her with everything inside of me. Love her unconditionally. I could also be terrified that she’d disappeared.
     
    Of course being tired didn’t help. There was too much around me that brought her to my mind. Coconut reminded me of the smell of her hair as I lie in the bed, her pressed against me and wrapped in my arms. I would hear one of those silly puns she liked so much and I could imagine the sound of her giggling uncontrollably as she repeated it to me, somehow messing up the punchline every single time. I’d close my eyes and she’d be there, smiling and saying ‘shut up Spencer!’ and smacking me because I’d been teasing her. She was everywhere I went because she lived inside of me.
     
    Everything everywhere screamed Avery and she wasn’t physically there. She might never be there again. She might never want to be there again. For all I knew, she was lying next to someone else, sighing quietly and