Page 54 of Poison Aches

To me, he’s just downright annoying. Like he is in this moment.

“Ah, she speaks! Praise be!” He raises both his arms as if he’s in church.

“And she bites too!” I snarl, to which he just laughs as if regarding a toothless puppy.

“Just so you know, you’re a shitty actress,” Samuel chuckles as he steps into my room, uninvited. “Even when you were a kid, you could never fool Grammy. Your poor attempts of pretending to be sick to avoid going to school are evidence of that.”

“As compared to your excellent prowess in deception?” I counter.

I can still recall when girls at my old school would surround me in the bathroom or in hallways to quiz me, puzzled about how I could possibly be related to the amazingSpider.

I’d frown and say his name is Samuel Theodore Irving, not this Spider business.

But that never embarrassed him. In fact, even the principle started calling him Spider, but I just wanted him to be called an STI.

Yes, I was a jealous, annoyed sibling.

It sucks when you’re an introverted nerd with brain issues living in the shadows of your famous, idolized older brother’s limelight, even though we weren’t in the same school. When I was in middle school, he was already a high school senior with a legacy that was way too high for my weak, boring ass to ever compete with.

And then one day, the tides shifted, the threat was imminent, and then we left…

“Well, what can I say? I’m just a lovable guy,” he says with a smile.

“And apparently, a liar.”

He sighs heavily.

“Pumpkin…”

“I told you not to call me that!”

“It’s a habit, sorry.”

I roll my eyes. “What do you want?”

“Damn,” he fake-cries. “Not even ahow are youfirst?”

I look up and into his handsome face. We look alike, my brother and I.

With deep brown eyes that are so intense, they could be identical, same beautiful brown skin, Afro, kinky curly hair, and similar noses.

But that’s about where the similarities end.

Where he’s an extrovert giving off main character energy three hundred and sixty-five days with no days off, I’m merely an extra character, barely existing in the background of my own life.

He’s intelligent without trying.

I have to put up a farce and work my ass off just to keep up. I barely made it through college these past few years.

Where he intentionally goes after what he wants, I pretend like I don’t want anything because, well, I’ve never been one to get what I want.

I always watch everything I want slip past me, never in my grasp.

I watch as other people enjoy what I worked hard for, what I wanted… so in order to avoid the intense pain of rejection—which I’m still suffering from to this day—I’ve talked myself into not wanting anything.

It’s pretty self-toxic, I know.

Pretending that it doesn’t bother me that I was abandoned.

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