"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?" ~Ernest Hemingway
Broken Sleep, Broken Ease
He couldn't sleep at night. Sometimes he felt he couldn't breathe. His heart was burning, and his head was screaming at him to think of something... but he couldn't. His family was falling apart at the seams, and there was just nothing he could DO about it.
Rolling over in his bed, JC looked on at the bed across the room from him. There lay his sleeping 11-year-old brother, Michael. His 11-year-old brother who, come morning, would be very, very sore.
I tried to stop her; I did. I tried to tell mother – she wouldn't listen. Dad... ... dad. He was there. He witnessed it. He saw everything and he didn't do a thing to try and fix it!
She had pushed Michael. Liz had come up behind him, and despite her older brother's protests as he rushed to stop her, she pushed Mike down the stairs. And Richard Stoker... did absolutely nothing. JC had called to him multiple times as the man turned his back and, without a word, locked himself inside his private study. Soon after, the kids' mother swooped in, demanding to know what had happened as she knelt at the bottom of the steps, cradling her dazed youngest in her lap. The words weren't out of her mouth before Liz had gotten halfway down the flight, like an angel descending from heaven in her mother's opinion. Somehow it was established that Mikey simply fell, although whether it was stated by Mike or Elizabeth, JC still wasn't sure. No matter. The woman bought the little not-quite-but-just-enough-to-be-a-small lie. And that was it. Settled. Done. JC tried to tell her what really happened, but... angel from heaven. The girl had no faults when placed on a pedestal before their own mother. His words were brushed aside, a son's worries unworthy of her concern, it seemed.
JC wouldn't cry now. He refused. He was supposed to be the oldest, the strongest. And yet with this he could do nothing – all he could do was stand on the sidelines as everything he loved was crumbling to pieces around him. With either a clueless or simply ignorant mother and a careless step-father, the 16-(and a half)-year-old teen felt very alone in all this. It was as if he was truly the only one who understood that their world was coming to an end. As if he were the only sane person left in the family.
It's not that he's simply careless, JC realized about Richard. It's more like he's dead. I call to him, but he doesn't respond. I look into his eyes, and it's like... it's like nobody's home.
He watched. He saw what happened, and he just... walked away.
Some dad, right?
Michael turned over in his bed, kicking under his sheets. A quiet moan escaped his lips, and JC felt as if his heart was breaking. There could be no more sweet dreams for the child, no restful nights. Sometimes he'd wake up screaming in the dead of night before running to hide in the closet for fear he had woken Elizabeth. Sometimes he stayed in there the whole rest of the night, huddled in on himself, eyes wide and fearful, ears trying to catch the sound of footsteps shuffling down the hall, signaling his sister's arrival.
I hate him, JC decided angrily, even though the thought made him want to cry. He knows what's happening, he knows what Liz is doing, and he doesn't do anything to try and stop it. I hate him for it. I'm glad I'm not his son.
But even so... I wish I could think of something that would help. Something. Anything.
But no matter how hard he tried, there simply was no such glue available to him that would stick a broken family back into place and have everything back to the way it was before. For one thing, one of those pieces – namely Tyler – could never be replaced. And for another... well, even if a badly broken vase is put back together again, it will never be the same as it was. Fragility would forever be it's downfall, for if ever it crashed again... there would be nothing left to fix.
JC couldn't call the police; that would just make things worse! His family might be falling apart, but at least their lives weren't being invaded by strangers who didn't know what the people involved were feeling about it, nor would they care. Elizabeth would probably be locked up somewhere, and what with her being her mother's favorite, Cecelia Stoker might just become as... listless as her husband. So soon after Tyler's death? No. He couldn't do that to them.
Nor could he stand on a podium on the upstairs balcony and preach them all into coming to their senses. His own mother wouldn't listen to him when he implied anything was wrong about sister dearest.
So... just wait long enough for the inevitable? Speed up the process? Either way he looked at it, he could find solutions – permanent or temporary – in neither. JC had long given up pretending that this was just a bad dream and that someday soon he would wake up and everything would be all right again – back to normal. He was just tired, now. And he wanted everything to be over. Or for the world to freeze so that the coming end never would. Or for time to freeze for him so that he wouldn't have to watch it happen. Final. Done. Over.
That's all I want.
Between a rock and a hard place. No matter how he situated himself, JC knew that sticking himself between the two would eventually crush him. And the rest of his family would shortly follow suit, as it seemed they were inevitably destined to be ground mercilessly into cruel, harsh reality. All he had to do...
Was wait.
How he eventually eased into sleep that night, JC would never know. He'd never ask.
.
.
.
.
A/N: Not sure whether or not I'll do a third and make it a set. Wish I had a better title for this...