Chapter 1

Try growing up in a family of five children when you're the youngest. It wasn't easy, let me tell you. Especially if there is a four year gap between yourself and the next youngest child. I was fifteen years old, and just going into my sophomore year in high school.

My oldest brother, Tony, had finished college and was working as a design engineer for Boeing Aircraft out in Washington. He was twenty six years old.

My two sisters, Karen and Diana, were married and living less than a mile from my parent's house. Karen was twenty four, and she was married to Frank Frohler, a city cop, and they had two little kids of their own.

Diana, who was twenty one, had just gotten married, and worked in her husband's insurance company. It was really Tom's father's company, but they liked to pretend that it was already Tom's.

My other brother, Walter, was nineteen at this time and was just leaving for college at Indiana University.

With the exception of Walter, I pretty much got along fine with all the rest of my siblings. Maybe we weren't all that close, but, at least, we didn't go out of our way to be mean to each other.

Walter and I were never close, and we did go out of our way to be mean and spiteful to each other whenever we could. My mother used to tell me that Walter acted like that towards me because he had been the family's baby before I came along, and he had never gotten over the sudden shift in attention from him to me when I was first brought home from the hospital.

Whatever it was, by the time I was ten or so, I'd had enough of his being mean to me and I started to fight back. I don't mean physically fight back, because Walter was always a far better physical specimen than I was.

I fought back in a different fashion. I would spy on Walter and his friends and make sure that anything he was doing wrong came to my parent's attention.

When he was fourteen, I caught him masturbating in our bedroom. He threatened to kick my butt if I said anything to anyone about it. That night at the dinner table, I refused to eat my dinner. When my mother asked me what was wrong, I started crying and told her that I was just too scared to eat.

By the time I finally allowed her to drag the information out of me about why I was so scared, Walter was in so much trouble for threatening me, that his embarrassment over the whole family finding out that he beat his meat, and had got caught doing it, was only of secondary importance.

A year later, I took his little stash of marijuana out from his hiding place, and left it under his pillow, just so my mother would be sure to find it when she came in to make our beds. I told on him when he came home drunk, and again when he got a traffic ticket for doing seventy in a twenty five zone.

It wasn't all one sided though, believe me. Walter did everything he could to get me into trouble too, plus he used to terrorize me with punches, pinches and pushes that left me either falling down the stairs or sent me careening into oncoming bicycles or parked cars. Walter was a natural born terrorist. I tried to be just as big of a pain in his ass as I could be.

On the day that Walter finally left for Indiana, everyone gathered for a last family lunch together so that we could all be there to see him off. All except for Tony, who was fifteen hundred miles away.

Walter's girlfriend Carla was there too, hanging all over him, desperate for him to give his reassurance that he would be faithful to her while he was away. She wouldn't let him out of her arms without first making him promise to call her once a week, and write her at least every other day.

Walter was a big, good looking guy, and he had always had it made with the girls. For some reason, the girls chased after him, and he never really had to even lift a finger to get them interested in him.

Carla was pretty too, not a beauty, but attractive. She had a very decent shape on her. She had smallish sized boobs and a nice butt. She was five four or five, and she looked tiny next to Walter who was about six three.

Carla's best feature, at least as far as I was concerned, was her long dark brown hair. She must have put something on it, because it always had that just brushed look to it, and it had a nice shine to it as well. She could have done those commercials for shampoos and conditioners, that was how nice and rich and luxuriant her hair looked.

I waited anxiously to see Walter finally drive off to campus. I had even carried some clothes and stuff down for him, and had helped him to get his stereo and TV packed away in his trunk. Finally, just when I was beginning to believe it had been his big practical joke on me, and he wasn't really going to leave, he did.

As his car pulled away, I had an immense sense of satisfaction and relief. My first thought was that now I could live my life without always having to look over my shoulder and being afraid of what Walter might be planning for me next. I also wouldn't have to spend any more of my time and effort on finding ways of getting him into trouble.

Walter had been happy to leave too. He had told me several times that just being away from me would make his university experience worthwhile. I thought my parents were glad to see him drive away too.

Maybe they thought that they would finally have some surcease from always having to keep the two of us from attacking or tattling on each other and constantly getting each other into trouble.

It must have been hard on them, always playing that policeman's role when Walter and I were in a constant state of war. In fact, as I think back on it now, Carla was the only unhappy person in our group as Walter finally drove away to school.

My mother asked me to walk Carla the two blocks back over to her house. Carla was seventeen, and she was going into her senior year at the high school. Walter had been her entire social life for the past year. I knew that they had been screwing for nearly all of that time.

In fact, I had punctured at least ten of Walter's prophylactics with my mom's sewing needles in hopes that he'd make her pregnant and his life would really be screwed up then. That never worked out though, since during all the times I did that, Carla never once got pregnant.

"Barry, do you think Walter will really stay faithful like he promised he would?"

I'm a prick, okay? I know it. I'm not telling this story and trying to gloss things over to make it seem like I'm the poor victim here. Walter and I hated each other. What hurt him, helped me. If he had had a fatal car wreck heading up to campus, I don't think I'd have bothered to shed a single tear.

I know it's politically correct to pretend great love for all of your brothers and sisters, but Walter and I had never been loving siblings. There were too many insults and injuries between us for something like that to ever take place.

"Carla, what makes you think he didn't already cheat on you while he was still right here in town?"

She looked at me, shocked to hear me say that about Walter. It wasn't that she didn't know how much he and I hated each other, she just couldn't believe I'd say anything so obviously untrue.

She had done everything she could do to make sure that Walter never had time to cheat on her, hanging all over him whenever she could. I could tell she didn't believe me, not even for a second.

"Kiki Elder, while you were visiting at your grandmother's house in April. I heard them in Walter's room. I couldn't help hearing them, since Kiki is such a screamer. I think they did it again that night he told you he was helping Freddie move into his apartment. I saw him driving away from Kiki's house. I'm only positive about the once though."

"Barry, why do you have to always be such a hurtful little shit? It must make you really happy to be able to dump this on me right now, when you know I'm already very vulnerable with all my own doubts and fears. Why didn't you tell me this when Walter was still around to defend himself and when he could have a chance to deny and explain?"

She was crying even harder now, and trying to shift the blame over to me, the messenger of these bad tidings. I had waited, not telling her, partly because I wasn't certain I should say anything, and partly because I knew that Walter wasn't going to even try to be faithful to Carla. I had really thought that they'd break up before he left.

I was a hurtful shit, but not little, and, in a way at least, I had been trying to do her a small favor. I didn't have anything against Carla. I did have a hard time just sitting on the sidelines, watching anybody being taken in and screwed over by my fucking brother, Walter.

"I'm sorry Carla, but you were the one who asked me. I guess I thought it was as good a time as any for you to finally know what a rotten bastard you've fallen in love with. Ask Kiki if you think I'm lying, I doubt she'd even care enough to try to deny it."

I hadn't planned on telling her about Kiki that way, if at all. That's what happens when you spend so much time and energy trying to catch someone else doing something wrong. You lose perspective on what will further your aims and goals. I wanted to get back at Walter, but telling Carla about Kiki would probably, ultimately, make things easier for him instead.

Now, when he came home on school breaks, he wouldn't have to even make up lies and try to cover up over all of the cheating that he'd been doing. I walked Carla up to her front door, just standing there, while she went in and slammed the door in my face.

I guess Walter called Carla the minute that he got to his new dormitory, and it wasn't too long after that, before he called home and was screaming at my parents about what he was going to do to me the next time he came home and saw me.

I sat in the living room, carefully explaining the entire sequence of events that had led up to me upsetting Carla. When I finished speaking, both of my parents sided with Walter, telling me that I shouldn't have meddled in any of his personal relationships. They said that the fact that she had asked me a question, didn't relieve me of the responsibility of respecting Walter's privacy.

"Well, I'm guessing then that the fact that Walter is a cheating, lying, disturbed and dangerous sociopath, isn't going to play any part in this discussion, is it? If you want to talk about meddling sometime, why don't we discuss all of the reasons why you chose to not meddle when Walter was throwing me out into traffic, or tripping me so that I'd fall, head first down the stairs?

Maybe if you'd ever bothered to meddle in what he was doing, I wouldn't have felt such a strong need to meddle myself. I don't cover up for Walter, and I don't really care if he doesn't like that. When he comes back home, if he so much as lays one finger on me, I'm calling the police and filing criminal assault charges against him. He's an adult now, and I'm still a minor.

It wouldn't bother me at all to see him arrested and maybe jailed, even if that meant that he'd have to lose his scholarships and have his entire future ruined. Today marked the last day that I'm going to put up with his terrorizing me. So, unless you want to see that happen to him, not to mention what the legal expenses of his defense would do to you, I'd suggest you have a talk with him about his responsibilities, and what the consequences are of his continuing to be my personal nightmare."

They looked at me as if I'd suddenly become a stranger to them. I'd never threatened anyone before as far as they were aware of. I felt good about the way the conversation had gone.

I found out after school started in the week following those events, that Carla and Kiki had gotten into a conversation about Walter when they ran into each other while out shopping at the mall. This conversation had quickly degenerated into a hair pulling, biting, scratching and screaming cat fight.

Those that had seen it swore that it had been the best cat fight that they'd ever witnessed. Carla had won the sympathy and support of the entire high school sisterhood, and Kiki was even less well thought of than she had been before the fight.

Of course, that applied only to the girls at the high school. Kiki lost none of her popularity and social standing among the boys. If anything, she became even more appreciated.

Several boys, ones whose girlfriends had been slow to give it up, could be seen speaking with Kiki in the lunchroom or between classes. This was supposed to send a, not too subtle, message to their girlfriends, that if they didn't want to come across, there were other girls who would.

I was sitting in my homeroom the first day back to school when Carla walked in with a big box of crap that Walter had given her over the year plus that they had dated. She dropped the box at my feet and left the class without speaking a word to me.

I left the box right where it was, and had no idea of what would become of it. I wasn't about to meddle in any of Walter's personal relationships. His much prized letterman's jacket was in that box too. Oh well.

Carla went through a brief period of dating wildness right after her breakup with Walter. I guess she wanted to show everybody that she was over him, and that she was back in circulation with a vengeance.

It was only a brief time though, and then she stopped going out on dates at all. When Walter came home for Thanksgiving, my parents both sat him down and told him what I had threatened.

Over the years, I had shown Walter that I wouldn't take his tormenting without fighting back in any ways that I could. He knew that I'd do exactly what I'd threatened. As much as he would have liked to smear me against the side of some wall, and beat on me until I turned into some bloody mush, he knew that he couldn't without consigning his virgin ass to some big inmate named Bubba.

He was smart enough to know that he wouldn't get enough enjoyment from pounding on me, to warrant having his ass ripped wide open in some dark jail cell. I don't think he and I spoke a single word during his week long visit. He did walk over to Carla's house once, but she refused to open her door or even speak with him. I was relieved when he left and returned to school.

I was starting to enjoy school again, not to mention the freedom to live my life without the constant threat of harassment from Walter. I tried out for the school play, a musical, and was pleasantly surprised when I was cast as one of the four main lead characters.

Carla was also in the play, but she had chosen to work behind the scenes, doing set decoration and helping with the lighting. I had managed a little growth spurt in the few months since school had let out the previous June, and I was five eleven and had managed to lose a lot of the baby fat that had plagued me from my earliest onset of puberty.

I wasn't handsome, and certainly not in Walter's league, when it came to looks, but I was beginning to start to attract some notice from the girls. Girls were the only reason why I even tried out for the play. I had a slightly trained singing voice, and had performed in the church choir for years, even soloing on occasion.

I had sung in front of a couple hundred people on many occasions, without ever getting nervous, so I just assumed that I'd have no problems with my nerves when we actually performed the play. I was fine through all the rehearsals.

On the night of the play's first performance, I choked like a dog. I forgot all of my lines, and refused to listen or process the cues that people were frantically trying to feed me. It was so bad that another student had to come out on stage after I froze, and lead me away.

I heard all the audience laughter, and most of the catcalls, but I didn't care. I was so glad to get out of the audience's view that I didn't even stop to think about what kind of reaction I'd be getting the next day in school.

As soon as I was once again safely backstage, my nerves went away and I could breathe normally again. Jim Terry had been the understudy for the two male leads and I heard him on stage, singing my first number, so I wasn't that worried about how the play was faring without me. Mr. Grottle, the teacher who was in charge of putting on the play, was nice to me, and told me not to worry, that stage fright could be overcome.

I don't know whether he actually thought that I'd be willing to go out there and try it again, but I knew certainly that I'd made my last public appearance on any stage. There was simply no way that I'd allow myself to get put into that horrible position again.

I was standing backstage, trying not to get in any people's way, when Carla came over and actually tried to cheer me up. She even made a joke about me getting ready for the curtain call when the play was over.

I looked at her, and for the first time since I'd walked her home, on the day that Walter had left for school, she wasn't looking at me in anger. I tried to smile, but I think it was right at that moment that the seriousness of my stage failure started to dawn on me. I was going to be the laughing stock of the whole school.

I was never going to be able to live it down. Any progress that I had made, socially, since the school year started, would be swept away by this terrific, public, screw up. I was right back in a another panic situation again. This time, it was because I wanted another chance to go out there on stage.