I just ate this weird, old, squashed peppermint candy, so I was pretty high when I wrote this.
Anyways, please review honestly. Don’t be afraid to tell me it’s sh*t. I understand perfectly.
Oh, and if I added little *’s in words that you don’t consider cusses (yes, I used some), then it’s just ’cause I’m afraid of offending people. And I cuss so often, I hardly know what one is and what one isn’t, anymore.

I’ve gotten to thinking about it, and I’ve concluded that I’m must just be better at lying than telling the truth. Especially when it comes to myself.

When you’re bored as h*ll, time passes a whole lot slower. I sat in the car while my dad and brother took their time inside talking to the doctor, ‘cause our junior year was about to start. Loads of sh*t to talk about.
I pushed my ear buds in and sat like that for a while. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I saw it was dark outside my window. My brother, Caleb, and my father were still inside. I directed my attention to some guys about a hundred feet away, talking. They were standing by the building. In their hands were what looked like cans of spray paint.
I pushed myself up and squinted, watching them, barely breathing. I’d never seen a crime before. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was too afraid to tell them to shove off, and it wasn’t my business anyway. And I didn’t even know who they were, so it would be pointless to worry about it. But still, they kept working on their piece.
I pushed my ear buds in again roughly and stared down at my hands.
Five minutes later, I heard their car start, radio switch on, and tires skid away across the gravelly pavement.
Caleb and my father didn’t come back till a while after.
“Oh, we missed the news!” my father said, completely oblivious to my determined gaze. “Oh well. C’est la vie.” The elegant precursor to “sh*t happens”. But at least he knew what he was talking about.
A minute later, our car drove off, and I finally pulled myself away from my palms to try to catch a glimpse of the graffiti. The paint was wet, and the sky was dark, but the artists were good – zero drips.
By the last lights of the day, I could read the words: ‘PEACE + ANARCHY’.
“Go figure,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” Dad asked.
“Nothin’.”

“Your father’s an unfortunate case,” the shrink will always tell me, so condescending, like even knows what the h*ll he’s talking about. “And you’re brother’s a result of it.”
But the shrink doesn’t know the whole story. I don’t think my brother does either, or even my father. Due to circumstances, their viewpoints are twisted. No, that’s not right – they’re just exaggerated in certain ways. Not twisted.
My mother died several years ago. My father was heartbroken. They were what most people would describe as soul mates – perfect matches. And then one of them died.
We lost a lot of money with mom’s chemotherapy. But cash can’t buy you everything. And not a life back, as my family knows well.
Mom died of breast cancer. For the last month of her life, my dad’s sister was almost always in the hospital with her. I’d remember the two holding hands, my aunt whispering encouragement, my mother smiling her beautiful smile. She’d laugh for what seemed like the last time and then my aunt would pat my father’s back and say goodbye. She’d be back an hour later.
There was a reason. At the time I never quite understood, but later I learned. The night of my mother’s death, my aunt was there. I don’t know my father’s look the moment he was told my mother had passed, but Caleb did. I was too afraid to look to Dad, so I looked to my brother, and saw the most awful face I’d ever seen. Because Caleb had seen my father’s face.
My aunt wrapped an arm around me and another around Caleb. She told my father that she’d take us home. I was so weak, so unsteady, I leaned on her for support as she hurried us out.
We stayed with Auntie much longer than that night. We were with her for months. And we never once saw my father. We called him a few times, but not until we’d been staying with my aunt for a month already.
We asked hundreds of times why we had gone with her, where my father was. And her answer, always: “He’s got some recovering to do.” I don’t think he really ever recovered, but he did a lot during those few months. Later we learned that he’d lost his teaching job when he stopped coming to work. He lost the house not long after. He got an apartment to live in, but the bills were piling up and my aunts and uncles had to send him the money to get by.
But at some point along the road, he finally bowed down and got a shrink – a suggestion of my aunt’s. A while later, he got another job at a new public high school, once an old factory. It was a new school, and a new start. A month and a half later, my brother and I moved back in with my father, into a large apartment, and read
Oh, it got cut off, sorry. Well, just try to review what you see here.

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