Alex’s neon sneakers squeaked on the school’s empty tile hallway. The lockers along the walls seemed to stretch on forever, each perfectly symmetrical with each other, not a screw out of place. After a minute Alex reached the bathroom with the pass in his hand, but as he entered the doorway he smelled something strange over the bathroom’s stench. The smell was like the time his dog Buster got sprayed by a skunk last summer. He followed the sound through the halls with the bathroom forgotten until he reached a back row of the school library nearby. He could clearly see the source of the noise now, it was another student stood with his back turned and hunched over something in his hands. Alex pushed up his glasses and squinted to try to see what the other older boy was doing.

Alex saw a trace of smoke slowly rise from behind the other kid’s back and was frozen with terror. It was a lighter, the kid was trying to burn the school down! Of course he would start in the school’s overstuffed library. Alex’s eyes darted around looking for another person but the library was deserted. If only he could find his older brother Sean, he would know what to do. Alex nervously rubbing his hand against his jeans, frozen in the school library, too scared to stop the kid from setting the library on fire and too scared to run away.

His inner debate was quickly cut short when the kid finally noticed him and turned around. The first thing Alex noticed were his eyes, they were filled with the kind of fire that burns too fast for its own good. They were locked onto Alex’s with a look of a sort of wild desperation like a cornered dog ready to snap. The next thing Alex noticed was that he was staring back into his own brother’s face. He hadn’t recognized him because he was wearing a large coat with a hood that Alex had never seen before, but it definitely was Sean. The two brothers stared at each for an eternal instant, but then Sean hissed at his brother with an angry strained voice.

“What do think you’re doing here?!” Alex’s eyes traveled slowly down to see that instead of a lighter, Sean was holding a cigarette with a lighted tip.

“I- I was just- I was just following the smell I-” He mumbled and rubbed his hand faster against his jeans. His brother was much taller than him and towered over him.

“No! I don’t want to hear it. Don’t you dare rat me out you little twerp! You get the hell out of here now!” Sean snarled back, a look of desperation in his eyes.

Scared little silent shakes travelled down Alex’s body as he moved his hands to cover his dripping eyes. He didn’t know what to do. His brother had always been the only one there for him, always in his corner even on Alex’s roughest days. Alex didn’t have many close friends, or any friends really. His small stature left him ostracized from the other kids at school and the massive glasses that covered half his face made him the subject of constant teasing. Each morning he dreaded leaving his house and waited until the last possible second to get out of bed. Sometimes he would purposely miss the bus just so he could be late and avoid waiting at school before classes started.  He was very familiar with being picked last during gym and eating lunch in the stalls. The stalls were always terrible, smelling like a combination of a cheap vapes, bleach, and a sewer. As he ate the sandwiches his mother made him he would read the curse words that were carved into the plastic walls quietly to himself and try to figure out what they meant by how they were written. Each lunch period seemed to stretch on forever, he could only read to same phrases so many times until they held no meaning at all. The overbearing smell made his food taste revolting, sometimes he couldn’t even stomach it down and resorted to flushing it down the toilet. Lunch had been the worst part of every day until this year where he and his brother got one year in high school together before Sean graduated.

This year his brother let Alex sit with him among his friends during lunch and it was Alex’s favorite part of every day. For once he felt like part of a group where people wanted to be around him. Sean’s friends would talked to him like he was one them which sent him over the moon. He could finally open up and be himself for once in his life. Emboldened by this, he started talking in class more as the year went on, realizing that he didn’t have to hide himself away just because he was a little different. To his surprise, his classmates accepted him and he was finally able to connect with people his own age, even make a few friends. High school was going to be a new start, a way to redefine himself from his past. And the person to thank was his brother which is why what was happening in this library cut him so deep.

As he covered his face Alex felt his brother’s anger shoot through him like a crack down his body. His confidence, his happiness, his heart, he couldn’t tell what exactly was cracking, but that crack shot through his body, leaving him quivering among outdated textbooks and musty novels. The crack cut him so deeply it took him a several seconds before he even could make out the words that his brother was saying.

“Wait man I’m sorry I didn’t even really think it was you I was just worried that you tell someone I couldn’t let that happen” The words tumbled out of Sean’s mouth like a train off its rails, a constant stream of apologies that only seemed to make everything worse. His eyes were still desperate, but a different kind of desperate, like the eyes of a child who’s broken their mother’s prized China vase and now has five minutes before she comes home. Sean hurriedly looked around the library as he tried to console his brother, wrapping his arms around him in protective hug.

“You know I would never be upset with you, it’s just one moment, I’m not angry at you” Sean said quietly as Alex’s shakes slowed down. Sean moved down to look Alex in the eyes. “You mean everything to me man, it’s gonna be ok”

“You really mean that?” Alex sniffled back, staring into Sean’s eyes.

“I mean it.  Look, how about I get rid of this and we can go back to class, I’m not gonna make this a problem if it’s gonna mess you up.” Sean rubbed the cigarette out on the carpet and tossed it into a trash can. Sean put his hand on Alex’s shoulder and led him out of the library; today was not the day their friendship would fall apart.