My Brother, the Role Model

I do not know much, but I know to be cautious.

I was fourteen. I spent every day working ahead and waiting for the bells to ring, and then piling onto a sweaty bus. I liked its hum; I liked setting my head on the windows and bouncing.

My brother was eighteen. He drove me to school every day, but left me on the bus in the afternoon. He did not like me. He hardly went home after school, anyway, with his football practices, so he did not have to explain to my parents why he left me.

I do not know how it worked out that he was my ride. The wind whipped around me and bruised my skin, and the buses were freshly gone. My body sagged under the weight of my things. I barely knew where I was as I walked. He beeped his horn when I passed his car and I climbed into the passenger’s seat, and dropped my bags.

“No,” my brother said. “Sit in the back.”

I thought he was joking. Then I thought he was being mean. “No,” I said, “what?”

A large hand came down on my window and left a sweaty print. His friend.

My brother cackled. He reached over me and shoved the door open. “Get out,” he ordered.

I unbuckled and slid into the backseat. His friend threw my bookbag over the console. They talked, and I shoved earbuds in, with the hope they would leave me alone. They did; I was a ghost to his friend, and an obligation to him. My brother twisted the knob on his radio and cranked the car from parked to reverse.

The music shook my bones. I felt it in my jaw. I clutched the cupholders. It was far from the hum of the bus that would cradle me. It drowned out my earbuds, the sound of my breathing, and the conversation they spat back and forth. The engine still vroomed under my brother’s foot as he drove out of the parking lot.

I was prone to believing I would die: I was a child, lanky and awkward, and freshly diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I said my prayers under my breath and tried to reason with myself that I’d had a good life, long enough to be happy.

He sped down the roads with his friend laughing in his ear, blowing a stop sign, metal music blasting.

Another car sat on the street on our left. It paused at its stop sign and went on.

My brother drove past ours.

Horns blared. My brother slammed on the breaks and held his arm out to catch his friend’s chest. I slammed into the back of his seat.

He turned down the radio.

“Is everyone okay?” he whispered. His voice quivered. We creeped along the middle of the intersection. He did not want to stop, but he did not want to drive anymore.

“I’m fine,” his friend said. My brother loosened his grip on the steering wheel. He drove carefully forward, and I said nothing.

He caught my eye in the rearview mirror.

“Erin,” he said, “you won’t tell Mom and Dad about this, will you?”

Again, I kept my lips pressed together.

This was not the first time he had almost crashed with me in the car. It was his friends that distracted him, or his thoughts, or his own anger. Once during our morning drive, I was five minutes late to the car, and he started down the driveway while my legs were still hanging out of the side. The door caught on our basketball hoop and dragged it down the yard, and my parents grounded him for months.

I am sixteen now, in my junior year of high school, and he is a well-rounded adult. He is different now. I am not the annoying younger sister he has to drive to school every morning; I am an only child most of the year. I drive myself.

My father took me to a graveyard to drive around its roads. When I laid my fingers on the wheel, I thought of my brother, and my stomach dropped to the seat.

I keep the radio muted when I drive. I keep my eyes and thoughts on the road. I have saved myself already from a dozen accidents just by staying cool.

Keep feelings off of the road, whether they are friendly or not. Keep your thoughts focused on your safety. I do not know much, but I know what I have seen, and I am lucky to be alive.