Read Stay Awake for Free Online

guessed how things would eventually turn out.
    He knew it was childish, but after the incident with the cockroaches he had been unable to bring himself to pick up the scattered pieces of the game.
    He had somehow gotten the idea that he would bend over and discover that the Scrabble tiles had spelled out some kind of eerie message.
    When Brandon came home from work on the day that his parents died, he found a note that his mother had taped to the front door. It was a letter addressed to him, and he stood there on the stoop with his hand still on the side of the house, reading it.
    Dear Brandon
,
    Your father and I have made a very difficult decision and I am writing to apologize for any pain that may be caused. Please, honey, don’t feel guilty or as if this is all your fault because there is really nothing you could have done. Just always remember the happy times we shared as a family. You were a wonderful son!
    All our love
,
    Mom & Dad
    P.S. Please do not go up to our bedroom. Just call the police and tell them that you have found this note and they will come out to the house and help you take care of things
.
    P.P.S. I already sent a letter to Jodee so she should get it today
.
    This letter was one of the things that he tried not to think about too much, though sometimes little phrases from it would rise up for no reason to float on the surface of his consciousness.
    You were a wonderful son!
He thought.
You were a wonderful son!
There were a lot of ways to take that.
    He often wondered about Jodee’s letter, and whether they had told her something that they hadn’t told him. Because she was older, or more responsible, or whatever. For example, had they explained to her in more detail about why they had killed themselves?
    But he and Jodee had never actually talked about the letters.
    Every once in a while, Jodee would call to check up on him and she would talk about how much she wanted to come back “home” for a visit, just to hang out and maybe even help with whatever finishing touches he was putting on the house. Give him that added “push” he seemed to need.
    “I miss you, Li’l Bro,” she said. “I can’t believe how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.”
    “I know,” he said.
    “I hope you don’t think I’ve abandoned you,” she said.
    “No, no,” he said. He gave a kind of chuckle, and for a moment he thought again about the letter she had received from their parents. Did it say something like:
Jodee, please don’t abandon Brandon!
    “Abandon,”
he said. “Whatever.”
    “Well, you know what I mean,” Jodee said. “We had a toxic childhood—I realize that—but there comes a time when we all have to move on.”
    “True,” Brandon said. He hesitated. There often came a pointin the conversation when Jodee would offer to put him in touch with a grief therapist who had been very helpful to her.
    “When you grow up with people like Mom and Dad, they catch you up in a cycle,” Jodee said. “You can’t escape—that’s the problem.”
    “Absolutely,” he said. He considered. What did she mean by that?
    There were times when he would have liked to tell her that something really weird had been happening to him—something to do with his sense of time … or?
    But what could he say?
    He was sitting on the fold-out couch in the living room, on the edge of the bare wafer of sofa mattress with the sheets and blankets crumpled at his feet, and the TV stand right at the foot of the bed with the PlayStation wires and the console and cartridges—Tekken 3, Q*bert, Crypt Killer, that kind of stuff—and the dresser from his bedroom and the computer and basically everything from his room upstairs that he wanted cluttered in a kind of fort around the sofa bed. He hadn’t been upstairs to his bedroom in probably a long time.
    “Well, anyway,” Jodee said. “I know you’re busy.”
    He took off his socks and rubbed the itchy soles of his feet, which were being very slowly consumed