School that Monday was hell for Josh. He was constantly being bombarded with questions about Drake, the last person he wanted to discuss or think about. "Is Drake okay?" "What were you fighting about that made him freak out on Friday?" "Did you forgive him?" "What did he do?" Eventually, Josh began answering them with glares rather than polite and diplomatic non-answers, and people stopped asking.

At lunch that day, he noticed Drake heading out of the cafeteria with strangely red, watery eyes, his head bowed. Suddenly, Drake looked in his direction, and Josh quickly looked away. Resolutely, he turned back to his small circle of friends and focused on the conversation at hand, joining in their laughter without knowing what was said.

X X X

Drake ditched chemistry, which Josh really should have been expecting, but he still found himself somehow disappointed by it. After class, Mr. Roland requested to speak to him.

"Is everything alright with Drake?" he asked, his normally stern monotone voice suddenly soft and gentle. Josh swallowed with some difficulty, and summoned a small smile.

"Fine," he said.

"Why didn't he join us in class today?" Mr. Roland said, eyes wide and concerned. Josh frowned, then shrugged.

"I have to get to Spanish, sir," he muttered quickly, and dashed out of the room. Mr. Roland made no attempt to stop him.

X X X

He didn't drive Drake home that day. When school let out, Josh reached the parking lot and told himself that he would wait two minutes to see if Drake would come, and when those two minutes were up, he would just leave.

Two minutes passed, and there was no Drake. Josh began to drive home when suddenly a CD of different songs of Drake's came on. Josh pulled over to the side of the road, calmly ejected the CD, and threw it out the window, watching with satisfaction as another car passed him, driving over it, crushing the disk irreparably.

X X X

Drake didn't show up for dinner yet again. The family sat, silent, as they ate, their number four instead of five. "Where's Drake?" asked Megan, her voice quiet. Josh looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time in days. Her eyes were almost a perfect reflection of Mr. Roland's, wide with real concern, and she was biting her lower lip in her anxiety.

"He told me that he's been feeling a bit under the weather," answered their mother. "I told him to go to sleep, for now, and that we'd save some dinner for him if he gets hungry." The family lapsed again into silence.

Suddenly, Megan pushed her chair back, the legs scraping loudly against the floor. "Excuse me," she said quickly, and then she ran upstairs. Only a few moments later, they heard her door slam shut. Josh involuntarily flinched at the loud noise, and Walter rose to follow her. Audrey laid a hand on his arm, shaking her head mutely, her eyes sad. Josh stabbed angrily at his food, not even sure what he was angry about now, that fact only serving to make him even angrier.

The family, their number now only three instead of five, finished the rest of their meal in silence.

X X X

That Monday night after dinner, Josh entered his room to see Drake sitting on his—Josh's—bed, staring out of the small circular window. His knees were drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around them. He looked miserable, and young, and so vulnerable that Josh almost broke down and hugged him right there on the spot, no questions asked. Suddenly, Drake looked his way, and Josh sucked in a breath at the expression in Drake's eyes.

The last time he'd seen that much pain in someone else had been when his father had had to tell him that his mother had died.

"I... well, I kinda... I wanted to talk to you," Drake finally managed to say. Josh looked at him for a long moment, face blank.

"Can it wait? I have homework." Drake tried to smile and failed.

"Sure. It's... we can talk later." Drake got off of his bed and left their room just as Megan entered.

"When are you going to stop being mad at him?" she asked, her voice and posture tense with barely restrained anger. Josh sighed heavily, something he had been doing more and more lately, he noticed.

"I don't know, Megan," he said flatly.

"I want things to be normal again," she said, and this time, there was an edge of desperation to her words, one that Josh didn't think should ever belong to a twelve-year-old's voice.

"I'm sorry, but... it's complicated right now," said Josh. Megan held his gaze, then, and Josh saw her eyes filling up with angry tears.

"You suck."

"I'm sorry," he said again, and he really was, but he wasn't sure what he was sorry for.

This time, she slammed his door. He still flinched.

X X X

The next few days that passed went much the same way for Josh. He found himself getting angrier, more frustrated, with each passing day as he watched his family slowly fall apart, because he just couldn't figure out why, he couldn't figure out how to fix it, and no one else seemed to realize what was even happening. Megan rarely came out of her room, and when she did, the only person she spoke to was Drake, who never answered, only giving her small, empty smiles. Drake came home less and less often, and he was rarely at school. He told his parents that he had a gig coming up that Friday night again, and so his band was going to need to practice a lot that week. Audrey and Walter seemed happy for him, encouraging him. It never even occurred to them that they didn't see Drake a single time with his guitar during that week.

Josh noticed all of it. He watched them all start drifting away from each other, listened as conversations became more strained, more stilted. He pretended that he was okay, that he was unshaken, that he was a rock through all of this. He worked shifts at the Premiere, joking with his coworkers and with Helen. He went to a couple of study groups with his friends, and he wasn't even asked about Drake anymore at school. But Josh was a whirlwind just beneath the surface, watching his family members begin to leave each other behind, go their separate ways. It only served to fuel his anger, and somehow—though he didn't really know exactly how or why—he knew it was all Drake's fault.

So when Drake would come home every day after dinner, the sun having set long ago, his eyes perpetually strangely red and puffy, saying only a few words to their parents, and nothing to him or to Megan, Josh didn't comment. When he heard Drake slip into their room and climb into his bed long after Josh had finished his work and gone to sleep, he didn't say anything. When he heard Drake shifting in bed all night, rising in the morning having gotten only a few hours of sleep, Josh didn't say anything.

X X X

For one of the first times in his entire high school career (when he wasn't sick, that is), on Thursday night Josh went to bed without having gotten his homework done. He couldn't concentrate on any of it, couldn't think when Drake's eyes, red and so full of pain and anguish, suddenly kept filling his head every time he blinked. Josh noted as he turned out the lights that Drake hadn't come back yet that night, and that it was late, even for how long Drake had been staying out the past week. He laid there for an hour, watching the numbers on his clock change, counting down how many hours, how many minutes, how many seconds he had until he would have to get up again and be normal again, go to school again, and act like he was okay, like things weren't inexplicably falling apart and he wasn't angry at all.

Hearing the door creak open at last, Josh quickly closed his eyes and feigned sleep. He didn't know why he did it, but when he heard Drake's voice, he was glad that he had.

"Josh?" whsipered Drake. "Are you awake?" Josh gave no answer, even though he was sure that Drake would know he was pretending, that he wasn't really sleeping, because he'd been told that he snored when he was asleep.

"I'm sorry," Drake continued, his voice sounding choked. Josh wondered if he'd been crying, and thought distantly that that would explain why his eyes seemed so red lately. "I'm sorry that... that I'm so selfish and so irresponsible and all that other stuff you said, and I'm sorry that I... that I never showed you how much I fucking love you, and I'm sorry that I'm... such a fuck-up. I really meant what I said to you in class that day, Josh. I'm sorry that I'm the worst brother in the world, and I know that I need you more than you need me. But.. it's okay. I'm going to try to... to not need you anymore. You won't have to deal with me. I'm sorry. I just... I wanted you to know that."

Josh wanted to say something, but continued to pretend to be asleep because if he opened his mouth, he had no idea what would come tumbling out of it. I hate you for ruining our family, Drake was just as likely right then as damn, Drake, I am so, so sorry and I never knew, I never really knew just how vulnerable you really are, how much this would hurt you.

For the first time that night, sleep was a long, long time coming for Josh, and for once, he heard Drake crying, his tears coming in long, drawn out, broken sobs that must've wracked his entire body. Josh knew then what he was going to say, and fell asleep resolving to talk to his brother in the morning, tell him everything was going to be okay, that he was forgiven and they could work past this.

He got up that morning feeling better than he had in weeks, and even seeing that Drake was at school and acting like his normal, suave self couldn't ruin his good mood—in fact, it only served to bolster it. By the time school ended and Josh went to wait for Drake by the car, he was whistling to himself. Impatient to get his brother in the car where they could finally talk to each other, Josh pulled out his phone to call him, and, honestly for the first time, noticed the week-old voicemail on his phone.