27. Micha
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MICHA
Ihate my dad.
I hate my new stepmum.
I hate myself.
But I don’t hate my stepbrother.
I sneak into Arlo’s bedroom, gently releasing the handle so it doesn’t snap loudly and alert our parents. They can’t know I sneak in here.
Arlo’s bright hair is peeking out from behind his bed. He’s curled up and rocking with his head in his knees.
I’ve not known Arlo for long, but he’s sensitive. My dad has never been nice, but he’s been brutal against Arlo since he showed up four months ago and announced he had married Nancy. Nancy doesn’t care that my father beats her son; she doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything.
He’s only one and a half years younger than me—fifteen—but he can’t cope. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard my father yelling and Arlo screaming in pain. I always find him in the same spot behind his bed.
It’s six o’clock, and normally, we’d be forced to sit and eat dinner in silence.
But plans have changed. I heard my dad opening the door and inviting people inside, and we never have people over.
Nancy’s housewife voice was loud and bright to replace its usual monotone symphony.
I couldn’t hear exactly what they were all saying, but I had to check on Arlo.
I’ve come to care for him, even if he’s nervous around me.
“Where does it hurt?”
He raises his head, sniffling and wiping his nose with the back of his hand. I see the blood on the corner of his cheek and the red mark surrounding it that will form into a nasty bruise to match the fading ones on his arms.
“Shit,” I mutter. There’s nothing I can do for that. I have no ice.
“How was school today, Micha?” He’s trying to distract me from it. He doesn’t make eye contact.
“It’s the summer holidays, Pipsqueak. I’ve finished school now.”
“Oh.”
Arlo doesn’t go to school. He doesn’t go to the doctor or have any friends. He’s not allowed to leave the house.
I don’t even think anyone outside this household knows he exists.
Arlo’s been here with his mother since she eloped with my dad. His clothes have always hung from him like they’re oversized, but they seem looser in recent weeks. And he’s always been shy, nervous, to himself, but I catch his gaze fading in and out of focus, his head sometimes lolling to the side.
I think it has something to do with my father and stepmother watching him as he eats. They don’t pay attention to the amount of food leaving my plate, only Arlo’s. It’s his one meal of the day, and they’re fixated on it.
My dad has always hated me. Ever since Mum passed, he’s taken his frustration out on me. Since Arlo turned up, he doesn’t bother.
That doesn’t make the nightmares any easier or the horrors of the things he’d force me to watch as a child any duller.
The sight of clowns still makes me shiver.
“Arlo!” Nancy shouts from the bottom of the stairs, and we both snap to look at the closed bedroom door like it’s going to slam open any minute. My heart beats harder as my mind whirls with possibilities. Why does she want him when those strangers are down there?
When I turn back to Arlo, his eyes reflect my fear tenfold, and tears brim at the waterline. We’re never called downstairs at this time.
He doesn’t look away from me, and I don’t look away from him.
I crave to be around him constantly, to protect him and reassure him, but he’s my stepbrother.
I know the way I feel is wrong. It’s a feeling I’ve never understood or experienced so strongly with anyone else, and my father would lay his hands on me if he knew.
The day Mum passed from a stroke was the day the light behind his eyes died. Six years of dwelling and torment, of training me to be a ‘bigger man’, of forcing me to take beatings and watch snuff films to prepare me for the ‘real world’.
Clowns will always haunt me. The first film he showed me was of three clowns brutally murdering a man with an ice pick. I was ten.
I’m not soft—Dad’s plan worked, I guess—but I’m soft for Arlo.
“It’ll be okay,” I whisper, taking a gamble and tucking a long curl behind his ear.
“Then why do you look so scared, Micha?”
“I’m just angry,” I lie. “He shouldn’t be hurting you.”
Arlo smiles sadly, and it breaks my heart. “Thank you for caring about me.”
That’s the final straw that makes me look away from him. No one should be thanking someone for that. I’ll take care of him for as long as I can. I feel attached to him like the way he’s attached to drawing ink across his arms, creating patterns and hiding them beneath a jumper.
Arlo stands up, and I follow, itching to grab his wrist. He waits in front of me, like he’s not sure what to do, and then he wraps his arms around me.
I can feel my heart beating uncomfortably hard, and I force myself to hug him back.
I’ve never enjoyed too much physical attention, but Arlo is small and warm. He’s perfect, really.
But broken.
Maybe I can fix him.
How can I when I can’t fix myself? I hate the world, everything in it and around me. Except this boy.
“Now!” Nancy shouts.
He pulls back, smiles sadly again, and walks around me to the door. I don’t know why watching him leave feels so final. Dooming. My stomach plummets, and I follow my instinct.
Arlo’s body is significantly lighter and smaller than mine, and he makes barely any noise without trying as he walks down the stairs.
It’s a fight for me to avoid the creaking floorboards with every step, and I sneak my head around the staircase as Arlo reaches the bottom step.
Nancy grabs his forearm and drags him towards the living room.
I can hear voices downstairs as I follow after and put my eye to the crack in the door, keeping myself hidden as I watch the scene unfold.
Two strangers—a woman in a deep red dress that looks like it sparkles when it catches the light and a man dressed in a black silk suit—sit on the couch.
My father leans back in his recliner, conversing with the man, and Nancy is setting out a tray of drinks on the coffee table.
And between them all, in the middle of the small room, is Arlo, standing like he isn’t sure what to do with his hands or where to let his gaze rest.
“Well, tell me what you think,” my father offers, gesturing his hand at my stepbrother.
The woman switches which leg is folded over the other as the man stands and straightens his expensive suit jacket. I can only see the back of his head, and I’m fixated on the way Arlo tracks him. Eyes wide like he’s terrified and throat bobbing as he swallows.
The man grabs Arlo’s wrist and drags up his arm before releasing it to slap against his side, as if he’s testing the weight.
He pulls at Arlo’s t-shirt, threads his hand through his curls to examine the strands, and kicks his leg between his feet to widen his stance.
He’s tracking him like something to be inspected, and my blood boils as I watch.
“Small. Weak. He wouldn’t last a month.” The man finally turns, and it’s the evil grin on his lips that makes me realise why Arlo looked so terrified.
He’s looking at my father like he’s pleased with Arlo’s thin arms and short height.
His eyes are malicious, and his lips look slightly too big for his face.
“He only has one meal a day,” Nancy explains, sitting on my father’s lap. Arlo watches the pair and swallows again. “That’s when we give him the benzos. Keeps him sleepy.”
I should have known. The swaying, the momentary losses of focus, the drowsiness—they’ve been drugging him.
“What do you think?” the man asks, and the woman stands. They swap places, and she narrows her painted eyes on Arlo as she circles his body like a predator, scrutinising him harder than her partner had.
“If we fattened him up, would he fight?”
Nancy and Dad exchange a look. “No,” Nancy answers, and the woman frowns.
“I like a fighter. The bidders like fighters too.”
“But they also like easy breakers,” the man counters, and my stomach twists as I slowly start to realise what they’re referring to.
Bidding.
Our parents are selling Arlo.
To people who want to break. To people who like fighters.
My vision turns red. The strangers keep prodding and touching Arlo, and I can tell he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He looks confused and scared and out of it.
“I think we’ll take him tonight. You’ll get half up front now and the other half when he sells.”
“That’s not what we agreed,” my dad argues, pushing Nancy off to stand. “Full up front. Or the boy stays with us.”
I stumble back, my hands vibrating with anger.
How could they do that? How could my father do that? How could Arlo’s own mother do that?
Arlo’s confused and scared eyes find mine as I back away into the kitchen without thinking.
His bruised cheek and look of terror are the last thing I see before I fall against the countertop, grasping the edge and sucking in a deep breath.
But it does nothing to console the war raging inside of me. The disgust. The betrayal. The hurt.
I can’t let Arlo go with them.
I can’t let Arlo be taken.
My hands search the grey countertop hurriedly, my vision fading in and out, like the fury is fuelling my movements. I don’t know what I’m doing when my palm wraps around a handle. It’s stiff and sleek and follows me as I retreat to my previous hiding spot.
But I’m not hiding anymore.
They’re still poking and prodding at Arlo’s small, slim body.
It makes the fire inside of me flame brighter, hotter, raging tenfold.
I move without thought.
I see red-painted fingers around a slender, pale neck.
And then I see nothing.
Someone’s screaming. A woman. She’s on the floor.
My knife dives in and out of her chest, her cries of protest thinning out as people yell around me.
I black out.
My knife finds another victim. Nancy.
Blood squirts out her neck as I slice the blade across her flesh.
“Don’t ever touch my little brother again,” I grunt, stabbing her pallid face and marring it with bright red blood.
My vision fades in and out. I have no control.
I find the suited man. He’s begging the woman to wake up.