This got really angsty, really quickly. Trigger warning for implied child abuse, not in great detail but very much present.
05. Kneel
Maddie hated praying.
At five years old, she could remember kneeling next to her bed and begging God to let her little brother be okay. He had been born too early and her first memory of him was a bunch of wires and a plastic box. A few weeks later, he was home and she was staring into his crib with a grin on her face and she told herself that praying had actually worked.
When she was seven years old, she asked God why he had taken her older brother away. Her parents had always promised them that if they were good and they did everything right, everything perfectly then God would be good to them. But she had just gotten home from her brothers funeral and she had overheard her dad asking God why he would take his good child away. She had held Evan close to her that day as she prayed, her eyes closed tight but she thought about what her dad had said and if that meant her or Evan weren't as good. She made a promise to try harder to be as perfect as he was.
When she was ten, Maddie pulled her brother down next to her and showed him how to clasp his hands together. She prayed that her parents would love them again, and she asked God if he could help her be a better daughter. Nothing she or Evan did had ever been good enough, living in the shadow of their dead brother. No grade was good enough, Evan was proving to be nowhere near the natural football player their brother had been and she couldn't play the piano as well as he could. Evan was five and all he asked for was to be allowed to go to karate instead of piano because he hated it. But Maddie knew he felt the overwhelming disappointment of not being enough already. And so, she made a promise to her little brother that he would always be good enough for her.
When she was twelve, she listened to her seven year old brother sob as he asked God why his mother and father didn't turn up to his concert, when he had tried so hard. He had watched the video of their older brother performing at the same school concert when he was the same age as Evan, and he had vowed he would be just as good. But his parents hadn't sat in the seats he had carefully placed reserved signs on. Despite them not coming, they still berated him for a mistake he had made halfway through the piece and he was reminded he would never be good enough. At least, not for his parents, his sister was there with a huge grin on her face and a loud cheer when he was finished. Neither of the younger Buckley's had any musical talent, but they tried so hard to please their parents.
At fourteen, Maddie prayed for the last time. Her cheek still sore from the slap her mother had delivered after she had expressed her disgust that neither of them had bothered to celebrate Evan's birthday. It was his tenth, and it marked the moment he had surpassed the age of their brother, who would forever remain nine. Maddie had thought it would mean an end to the lifetime of comparison they had both endured, but instead, their dad was out of town and didn't even bother to call and their mom had spent the entire day sobbing in her bedroom.
She prayed that her little brother would be okay and that he would realise he didn't need their parents approval. She asked God if he would keep Evan safe, and stop him from being hurt because he wasn't ever going to be Wyatt. Neither of them could have lived up to the life their oldest brother should have had – he was so talented and so good – Maddie wasn't particularly good at anything. She got decent enough grades but she had to work hard to get them, she ran track but barely won races and she had made her mother cry when she had quit piano two years prior despite the fact she was terrible at it. Evan, on the other hand, tried a lot harder to be perfect than she did but he struggled academically. He wanted to impress their parents so much, too much, that she could see how much he was suffering because of it.
When she held her little brother in her arms just ten minutes later as he cried and asked her why he wasn't perfect, she vowed she would never pray again. No God would let him feel so heartbroken at ten years old, "You're perfect to me." She whispered, and pressed her lips against his forehead, her fingers running through his short hair. She wished she could tell him that life would be better one day, that he would escape the house and he would become his own person but instead, she pulled away and held out her pinky finger.
"I promise that I'm going to be there for every concert, every birthday, every competition, anytime you need me. I'm your big sister and I will do everything in my power to stop them from making you cry." His finger wrapped around hers and despite the tears, she managed to get a smile from him.
Neither of them knew that it would be the first promise she would break just four years later.