Purchase College Some Dude Steals: Fill & Download for Free

Cashier at my own gas station. It wasn’t just super unpleasant, but it was humiliating when I had to call my employee ten times in one night so she could tell me how to use a register.When I was in college I worked as the night manager at a Shell station, and until recently that was the last time I had been behind a cash register. Then my mother-in-law talked me into joining her in the purchase of a new gas station close to where we live, one that was 99 percent finished when the owner ran into financial trouble and needed to unload it ASAP. We both have other businesses, and though I had zero experience in a similar market, my mother-in-law does own some snowball “stands” and a daiquiri shop, and we kinda thought that running a gas station wouldn’t be too different. All we had to do was finish some electrical and sewage work, get the licenses, contract with vendors, and hire staff and a competent manager.The first part was honestly a breeze, and we’d gotten such a great deal on the store and gas facilities that it would be hard to lose money on the venture. It’s a beautiful gas station, one of the big ones, and we thought we found the perfect woman to run it. We hired a bunch of cashiers and cooks, and everything was running smoothly until we discovered that the general manager had been illegally withholding money from the cashiers’ checks if they came up short. That is technically allowed here, but it’s something we had specifically refused to do (if someone was consistently short by unreasonable amounts we’d let them go instead), and in some cases she had withheld so much that it brought the pay below minimum wage – and that is not legal. That discovery led us to check up on her a bit more, and after occasionally pulling up the feed from the camera, we had to accept that this paragon as a manager was stealing from us and some employees. She didn’t steal from the girls she’d brought with her from her last job, so we reviewed more footage and found that they were stealing from their trainees registersAt this point we’d been open for about three weeks, and we thought things were running smoothly with our general manager, a night manager, and ten cashiers, so we had stopped taking applications. The gas station is right by the interstate in a the middle of nowhere, so all the locals had applied for jobs, and I didn’t want to waste their time or give them false hope. We called the police and had the manager and two of the girls who had been the most brazen in their theft, and we immediately put a discreet word out that we were hiring for six positions. Our hope was that the three other thieves would be scared after the arrests and give it a break until we could get some more people hired, because we couldn’t just lose half our staff. Except that’s not what happened, because those other three girls just stopped coming into work. Whether it was loyalty to their friends or fear of arrest (and that was coming either way), they didn’t even bother to send a text that they were quitting.All we were left with was six cashiers for a store that was open twenty hours a day, served food, and was generally too busy for one cashier. Plus, I wasn’t going to risk anyone’s safety by putting them in there alone, especially at night. I’m a nurse practitioner and I love my job. My mother-in-law is a stay-at-home mom with grown kids, but she watches my kids for us, and she has her other snowball and daiquiri places to manage. In the end we put the employees we had left doubled up at night and in the mornings, and we enlisted our husbands and split the daytime between the four of us. We immediately got a bunch of applications, but we obviously didn’t want to do a less thorough screening considering what happened the first time around, so it ended up being ten days before we finished hiring and training new staff.I know how to run a business, so in spite of the general manager’s abrupt departure I kept up with deliveries, vendors, payroll, and most of the other essentials, and making myself busy in the office saved me from having to work the register. It was still a giant mess, but my husband and in-laws seemed to quickly pick up the fancy POS system with its touchscreens and all that, and we hired our older nieces and nephews to keep the store clean and stocked. Then, on the ninth day, there was no urgent managerial duties and no one else to man the register. It was my turn, and I felt ridiculously confident. I didn’t want to do it, but I’ve created a successful business, I literally save people’s lives at work, and I’m raising two kids who are not at all unpleasant. Anyone who can do that will be able to work a register, right? Wrong.I accidentally scanned everything that even approached the counter, often multiple times, and I scanned the weird codes for contests and crap. When I couldn’t get the scanner to work, I just guessed at prices. People tried to prepay for gas, and every single time I would forget the “prepay” button and just key in the amount, and apparently that tells the computer that I accepted that amount in cash. Did you know that there are like fifteen million types of Marlboro cigarettes, and that everyone calls them by slightly different names? Chewing tobacco is even worse, because for some reason some dumbass (me) decided that we needed all the flavors of all the brands. One person will ask for them by whatever name is printed in tiny font, but others describe the color, which isn’t helpful when they don’t know colors. We hadn’t pulled the flavored vapes yet, so that was a third nightmare, one that made me grateful when I only had to guess which size and flavor of Crown someone wanted (salted caramel, which we don’t have)!I forgot what number I’d used to start my till, so I couldn’t close it out. I didn’t have a code for the cash drop, so the computer kept aggressively dinging at me all night At one point I tried to click “help”, but that froze the screen. When I tried to unplug it, I somehow pressed the panic button I forgot we had. All of that was bad, but the lotto was my Waterloo. Did you know that there’s no way to undo it if you press the wrong button? I didn’t, but once it prints out a ticket someone will have to buy it. My shift was 8 hours, and I involuntarily ended up buying $122 worth of lottery tickets. Had I been an employee, I would have lost 18 more dollars than I made. There a like five different lottos, with different options for plats and draws, whatever that is. And if someone wants to be a dick and pick their own numbers, you have to put the paper they fill out under a magic scanner.If I only had to sell lotto and scratch off, I might not have gone fully insane, but fuck me if people didn’t also want to get paid when they won? The dude who came in and wanted to replay and check 50 (fifty!) individual tickets, cash five winning scratch-offs, and buy 17 more (all different, of course) made me want to curl up in a ball and cry. The only bright spot on my day was the lunatic who came in and asked for a refund on a lottery ticket for a drawing that had already taken place! He said it wasn’t the one he wanted (I didn’t have power rangers or something on it), and since he bought it when my father-in-law was working the register, it is entirely possible that he got the wrong one. Still, we don’t refund lotto after the drawing, scratched-off scratch-offs, or spent fuel. At least I don’t think we do, but to be honest we were fully expecting the handsomely compensated thieving general manager to help familiarize us with this business.I had to call one of our employees ten times, and when she showed up the next morning she had to spend three hours fixing all my screw-ups (my till was $2700 over). She has no management experience, and we stole an experienced one from a nearby Chevron, but I did make that girl assistant manager, because she seems to have a great handle on things. We have also made it clear that any employee can email me directly in case they have an issue they don’t feel they can take to their manager, and that no one’s check will be deducted except for what’s mandatory by law. Absolutely no one is allowed to touch anyone else’s till, they know we check the cameras now, and they will get bonuses if we don’t mysteriously lose inventory and if they have balanced tills for a certain number of days.I honestly feel like we offered good terms the first time around – optional benefits, two weeks paid vacation for full time employees, free uniforms, paid breaks, free fountain drinks and deli, and 180 percent of minimum wage – so I can’t see how we are to blame for that crop of employees stealing from us at that rate. Still, they all had excellent references, so I don’t know what went wrong. What I do know is that their job is much harder than I thought or remembered, and I think everything will work better if they feel that our success is their success. Hopefully the bonuses will accomplish that, so now we just need to figure out what we will do if someone else prints out a shitload of unwanted lotto tickets!

I graduated high school in June of 2019, so technology-wise, there’s not a huge difference between then and now, however here’s a list of crazy things I experienced in high school:I had a stalker who threatened to kill me with a machine gun during a Socratic seminar in one of my AP classes. My classmates were stunned and reported him to my teacher. The principal got involved, and later that night, his house was raided by the FBI. No machine gun in sight, but he was removed from my class.One guy got extremely into ISIS and wanted to bomb the school, he changed his mind and was talking to a ‘friend’ online about bombing the local mall. This ‘friend’ was an undercover FBI agent, who he was wiring money to for bomb and gun purchases. He was soon arrested by the FBI during school, and taken to jail. The news stations showed up, some of my friends ended up on it.There were multiple lockdowns throughout the years due to people running around with guns and stealing nearby while, again, the FBI chased this dude. We were in lockdown for two hours. This happened a lot. (Fun fact: and old friend of mine had to pee during this, the teacher gave her a bowl and told her to do it in the back of the room. She did. A few minutes later she accidentally sat on it and broke the bowl. She sat in her own pee for hours)I missed almost a full semester of school due to mental health issues, and all of my teachers passed me. The next semester, I only took 4 credits.I had a psycho ‘best friend’ who screamed at and threatened to hurt my boyfriend because he took away all of my attention. She was crazy, but me and my boyfriend have been together for three years now, attend the same college, and are planning on getting married!I lived with an abusive parent for the majority of high school.I set my school’s microwave on fire (ON ACCIDENT) and ran away. I was given detention after they saw me on security tapes, the lady giving detention let me go early. Everyone knew about it, it was the school’s inside joke.I started and became president of the chess club. I know.I went to my car with my boyfriend to get a jacket during a class period, a cop came out and questioned us about some dude skipping class. We had no idea. An administrator came back and picked us up on his golf cart. Somehow it got around before I even made it back to my same class.We had a protest for equality and women’s rights, everyone left class to join.My friends and I went to a museum well out of town since the school day was short. I didn’t tell my parents. We took a wrong turn into the wrong part of town. My friends and I were berated by homeless people at a red light (I was the driver). They called us horrible things, tried to open the car doors, hit the windows with a knife, circled around the car, and tried to slash our tires. I didn’t move because I didn’t want to get a ticket and have my parents find out. Worst 5 minutes of my life.A server at a restaurant took a liking toward me because I ordered water in Spanish. I was followed to the bathroom. Very uncomfortable and scary. I left the bathroom, he offered me alcohol, I said no, he followed me back to my table. Creep. He paid for me and my friend’s meals though. Never went back.A bunch of pedophiles hit on me, of course while I was working in the restaurant business (both customers and managers)A man who came into the restaurant I was working at (fancy restaurant) offered to take me to Las Vegas with him, as he was in charge of festivals and said I would meet Post Malone. I declined. He ended up being a sex trafficker.I befriended an old man who worked at the Einstein’s I visited (too often) before school with my friends. After a few months, he left an extra cookie and a note with a pickup line on it, also including his Snapchat. We stopped going to Einstein’s.My boyfriend and I befriended the woman working at the McDonalds drive through during our lunch period. She always remembered us (even over the intercom) because of my order: hotcakes. She was awesome.I studied for my AP tests every day with my best friends, it ended up becoming a way for us to get Torchy’s Tacos every day (YUM)I became great friends with my teachers. This wasn’t even because of a ‘teachers pet thing’ because I did not do any of that stuff. They were all just very fun and nice people to talk to and I keep up with them to this day.I helped my friends paint their senior parking spots!This is all pretty normal and relative stuff that most people in high school have experienced. It was fun to reminisce. I hope my answer brings you some happiness!

I was on my way to yet another mental hospital to visit my brother one summer day. It was close to 120 degrees in the shade and I was alone in the desert heat. Or almost alone if you don’t count the Uber driver ahead. Our mother had returned to the lake house and my father was consulting for a tech firm on the east coast at the time. My brother and I were virtually all each other had after moving to the armpit of the American southwest a few years prior.New friends were not easy to make, but my brother found friendship and camaraderie’s solace on our new school’s baseball team. I found hard drugs and alcohol, but that’s another story for a different day. After high school ended we both attempted attending the local university. To avoid summer jobs (I mean to stay busy) we enrolled in the accelerated summer classes the school offered. My brother was never a big studier. Even pre-marijuana he was a day dreamer. I often heard him speaking for hours on end in the bedroom next to me, having full-blown conversations with a slew of stuffed animals seated in a semicircle around him.I attempted exiting the Uber, but perspiration caused my skin to stick to the leather seat. After tearing several skin cells I am able to slide out the door. Why was I Ubering mid-afternoon? Well, I had “voluntarily” forfeited my driving privileges a few months prior to avoid jail time after receiving my second DUI in as many years. Shout out to the law offices of Dewey, Cheetham & Howe! I swallow heavily and open the heavy metal doors. The “click” of the lock behind me causes immediate panic.I am a fan of freedom and personal liberties. I believe all drugs should be legal or at least decriminalized. However, years of neglect and alcohol abuse during my formative years have left me with a slightly shattered psyche. Let’s just say I’m never in the most stable mental state. This is why I usually have to pound a beer or two before visiting my brother in the loony bin.We’ve had a running joke for years about collaborating on a travel book for people thinking about visiting the valley’s mental hospitals or penal institutions. I had frequented three different jails at the time and my brother was on his eighth or ninth stint in a mental hospital. He had a tendency to call the police on himself when he was high or in a manic state. Of course my mother had also called the cops whenever he threatened to kill himself.It usually wasn’t that big of a deal and he had no criminal record. The doctors would hold onto him for a psychiatric evaluation, get him back on his medication and then release him after approximately 72 hours. Either I or my girlfriend generally drove to pick him up and take him home.The intake physician would call our out-of-town parents who would then phone me. I generally had to make two trips for every one of his stays. The first would be with some of his clothes and a Ziploc bag full of quarters. The food in state-run facilities is not the greatest so inpatients utilize the many vending machines scattered throughout the building. I believe the laundry machines also took quarters so unless you wanted to wear the free patient gowns they provided you needed someone to drop off different clothes or quarters to wash the dirty ones you were wearing in which you were admitted.I enter the facility and sit down at a table in the cafeteria, “Holy Shit Jack” is all I can say to the figure across from me.Sheepish smile.“No dude, holy shit.”His eyes start to tear up.“What the fuck happened?” I ask.I had received very few details over the phone. Since turning eighteen the physicians aren’t allowed to release any additional information than what Jack wanted us to know. Plus, what little information I did know was relayed by my parents over 3,000 miles away. All I knew is that a police officer reported him unresponsive at a bus stop thirty-six hours ago.His voice cracked and I could see his lips were dry and peeling. A dry cough escaped his troubled mouth. He was parched. I looked in his eyes and asked if he was thirsty. He nodded and motioned towards the juice machine. Usually he grabs the bag of quarters as soon as I get there and runs over to vending machines, generally sharing one of his drinks or candy bars with a fellow patient on the way back. He was an animal lover and always one to help strays.Did I ever tell you about the time he took a twenty-one-year-old female crystal meth addict home with him from one of those places? True story. These mental hospitals won’t release you unless you provide a legitimate address and her parents had kicked her out of their apartment and moved without telling her. They were sick of her stealing their stuff to pawn for drugs. She had nowhere to go and did not want to be released to a women’s shelter. Jack to the rescue.After he got out he gave her his address, picked her up and let her move in with him. Those were an interesting few months. A manic depressive, bipolar, marijuana-smoking borderline schizophrenic cohabiting with a methamphetamine-injecting nymphomaniac…they should have had their own sitcom. One day she stole all his cash from his wallet and disappeared. He called me in despair.“What do I do big brother?” his concern was genuine.“Do about what?” I asked, partially annoyed he was keeping me from the line of Oxy on the table.“She’s gone!” He cried, “She took my cash and left! That was two days ago.”“Well bro,” I level, “sometimes women do that. They just need some space. If you truly love her, let her go. If she comes back…she’s yours!”“That’s not what I mean,” he yelled. “I don’t need some cliche advice about love. We are not like you guys!”I gulped and handed the straw to my girlfriend, “You go first.” I whisper, “This may take awhile.” I enter the bedroom and closed the door. “What’s going on bro?”“Dude, she’s gone. She took my money and left. She hasn’t been back in two days. I think she’s relapsed!”I hear the frantic tone in his tenor voice, “Relax man. Relapse is part of recovery.” I hope she’s not doing my line too, I think to myself.“It’s not just that…”“What is it?” I ask.“I think she’s prostituting again. I’ve driven up and down Baseline road and I still can’t find her. I looked under some bridges too and don’t know what I should do.”“Ummm…” my brief and unsuccessful stint in alcoholics anonymous did not prepare me for these types of questions.“Should I report her missing? Do I call the cops? I don’t even know her parents’ number!”Well if there is one thing I do know it’s this, “Whatever you do, do NOT call the cops. Do not report her missing. If she’s an addict she will be out scoring somewhere and you don’t want to put that heat on her. She just got out of the mental facility, sending her back right away isn’t going to do shit. You need to let her hit bottom. She needs to want to get better on her own.”I could hear him crying on the other end of the line, “I know, but I just love her so much. I think she’s back at her dealer’s house. I just can’t stand the thought of her selling her body to him again…”I could go on but that story is neither here nor there. I just wanted you to know he was one of the “good” guys, someone who feels so terribly because he cares so deeply. He was my brother and I tried my best to raise him right. But I was only two years older, a kid myself. Driving him to school. Teaching him how to tie a tie, shave, throw a curve ball…As I walk back to the table with a bottle of orange juice I notice the pair of crutches lying next to him on the floor. He was already seated when the visitation hour started so I did not notice the cast on his left leg either. Most of his left arm and left side of his head were bandaged. I notice raw, pale, pink skin protruding underneath the edges of the gauze dressing. My initial thought is that someone dumped gasoline on him and lit him on fire—I was not far off.“Are those burns?” I ask. He takes a small sip of orange juice. I see raising his hand to his mouth causes significant discomfort.“Yeah…third degree.”“Third degree burns? Jesus Jack…what happened?”His eyes water, “They’re on 40% of my left side.”“Jack, what happened?”He looks towards the ceiling as he takes a slightly larger sip of juice. “Well I took too many Sudafeds and went on walkabout.”“Oh no Jack.” Walkabout is his term for wandering around aimlessly at night with no direction in mind. “You didn’t…”“I did,” he smiles sheepishly for a second before frowning again from the pain.I wonder aloud, “And then what happened…?”“I passed out on a cement bus stop bench on the side of the road.”“Oh my god,” I can’t believe what he’s saying. “You weren’t looking for what’s her—”“No,” he interrupts. “I just took so many pills I couldn’t see straight. I was just kind of following the stars when I got tired and laid down to rest.”“Dude, you could have died.”“I know, they had to pump my stomach when I got here.”“So who found you?” I ask.He shrugs, “I guess some woman walking by. She thought I was dead and called the cops.”“You look like death.”“Thanks bro,” he attempts a chuckle.“What time???”He looks down at his tattered shoes.“What time did they find you?” I ask again.“Around noon,” he sighs.Now my eyes start to tear up, “You were lying on a concrete bench by the side of the road in the middle of the summer until noon?”“Yeah,” he laments.“Dude it’s 120 degrees outside.”His lower lip protrudes and trembles, “I know. I could have died. They had to peel me off the bench. Do you know how bad that hurt? I was literally fused to the concrete. It ripped my skin. It hurt so b-b—”.Now we’re both sobbing and looking into each other’s eyes. “It’s okay buddy, it’s not your fault. You were lucky. Someone is watching out for you. I’m not sure who that woman was but she must have been your guardian angel or something. It’s so hot out there people are dying left and right.”“I know,” he says. He sighs strenuously and sits back in his seat.“Let me see the damage,” I say. He peels back a few of the bandages. A mixture of brown cement, raw skin and yellow puss protrudes. “Ewww…”He smiles doggedly.“You are one crazy son-of-a-bitch. Do you know that?”He nods.We stand up and embrace. He looks at the clock. “Visiting hour is almost over.”I nod and hug him again. I don’t want to let go. Part of me knows there may not be many hugs left. “Want me to pick you up once they let you out of here?”“Yeah, of course. I’ll call you as soon as I’m discharged…”“Love you bro.”“Love you too.”And that’s where the story ends. Or should end. In a fairy-tale world he calls me after 72 hours and tells me to drop him off at a long-term mental health facility. One of the few he didn’t mind staying at before. He voluntarily checks himself in and stays for 6 months. After successfully completing treatment and finding the right combination of meds he tells the outtake nurse to “send the bill to my dad,” before signing himself out and exiting a new man. He goes back to art school. Becomes a teacher. Meets a nice woman via online dating. Paints and sculpts on the side. Lives a full and long life helping children create.Read on at your own risk or if you have the time…But that’s not what happens. That shit rarely happens. Most people don’t get better. Many die from their addictions. There are few happy beginnings and even fewer happy endings. The white knight does not save the day from black and our princess ends up stuck in the castle with her evil stepmother until the old hag finally croaks. By this time sleeping beauty is sixty years old and a man-fearing agoraphobic. She signs up for an online dating site, but stabs the first guy who tries to make a move on her. She tries to hide the body but she can’t go outside because of her debilitating fear so she cuts him up into little pieces and whistles for the the songbirds to carry his ass out through the window. Unfortunately one bird takes a shit on the constable’s head and the scat contains a human tooth. DNA evidence proves it’s from the town’s missing art teacher. After looking through his phone and computer records the cops bust Rapunzel’s sorry ass and throw her in the slammer. Two days later she is found dead in her cell hanging from her own golden locks. Eat your heart out Jeffrey Epstein.Jack calls a few days later, “They’re releasing me!”I grab my hat and sunglasses and head to the garage. My girlfriend and I had gotten into a huge fight over me sneaking extra lines of Oxy while she was in the shower and had kicked me out. I was currently residing in my parents’ uninhabited winter residence and could not resist driving my dad’s old Ford Mustang despite my driving restrictions.“I’ll be there in 30 minutes!” I shout. I peel into the parking lot and burst through the metal doors, “I’m here to pick up Jack!”A gruff woman in a floral V-neck nurse’s shirt barks at me from behind a desk, “Sign here.”I sign my name and they page Jack. A kind orderly walks beside him as he struggles with the crutches. When he sees me he starts hobbling more quickly, obviously favoring his right, un-burned side. He wraps his good arm around me and signs the necessary document on the counter next to us.“Let’s go,” he yells. I open the door for him and he shuffles through. “Where’s the Uber he asks?”I grin mischievously and gesture towards the Mustang.“You’re license is suspended!” he cries.“Voluntarily surrendered, technically,” I inform him.“Same difference! You’re so bad.”I flash a devious smile, “But I just wanted to get here as soon as possible. Plus I’m kinda broke right now.”“What happened to your monthly allowance?” he asks.“Gone,” I say.“Gone?” he asks incredulously.“Spent.”He frowns, “Ben, it’s only the 12th.”“I know, it’s going to be a long two weeks.”“I can maybe help you out…just until next month.”I smile, “I love you bro.”“I love you too,” he says.It would be one of the last times we would say those words but I was unaware of it. I was pretty deep into my own addiction, but I did want him to get better. I asked him if he wanted to go to a long-term treatment facility but he said, “Take me home,” instead. I should have tried to have him involuntarily committed, but I didn’t. I drove him home or rather to the gas station next to his apartment. He ran in to buy a pack of smokes and use the ATM. He hands me $200, saying “try and make it last a week.” Unlike me, my brother’s credit card had not been deactivated by my father for overuse. Unfortunately I was relegated to receiving a check on the first of each month. The generous amount of funds never lasted more than two weeks.He gets in the car and hands me the money. He rolls down the window and lights up an American Spirit. He tried handing me one but I decline. Smoking before getting high just makes me even more dope sick. He takes a deep breath and finally says, “I need to tell you something.”I see his hand trembling and cigarette shaking. “What is it?” I ask.A silent eternity slowly passes between us before he answers, “I—” his voice cracks and he begins again. “I need to tell you about what happened when I was younger.”“What happened?” I try thinking back to some tragedy in the past.He pauses again, takes a deep breath and exhales…“I molested our cousin.”“What?” I ask. “What the hell are you talking about?”“You know our aunt’s kids…the younger one.”“The YOUNGER one?” My grip tightens on the steering wheel and fiery gaze burns a hole in the gas station’s wall.He breaks down crying, “I can’t keep it in anymore. It’s killing me. She was just sitting on my lap when I was in the pool and I couldn’t help it. She just felt so good. She was in her bathing suit. I was in my bathing suit and it just sort of happened.”I’m livid, I know exactly who he’s talking about. She was one of my favorite cousins and I always took a liking to her because we shared the same birthday and favorite color. I fume, “How could you!”My brother’s body is convulsing, “I didn’t mean to, I just got excited. She told her parents afterwords and there was this whole thing because of it.”“What whole thing?” I demand.“Her parents threatened to sue our parents so they paid them off…”“You have got to be kidding me.”My brothers eye’s are puffy and he is now bawling uncontrollably . “I’m so sorry. I’m so-so sorry,” he stammers and becomes incomprehensible.This is where logic fails me. I should have stepped back, taken a breath and thought through the situation. Even if it were true there is no crime in being thirteen and getting a boner. There is nothing illegal about getting a stiffy…even if it is from your cousin. Shit, in most parts in the world you can still marry your cousin. Even in some parts of the United States! But that’s not what I thought my brother was admitting to. I assumed, given his current level of agitation, he was admitting to something much worse. But he was convincing and sober, back on his meds. I thought he needed to unburden himself in one of his few moments of clarity.I was furious at him. I was disgusted by my parents’ actions. How could they sweep something like that under the rug? That poor girl. My poor cousin. She must be a wreck. I wonder how bad she’s messed up, which kinds of drugs she’s using to cope with the pain. I wonder if she has any extra…“Get out of the car,” I demand.The tears from my brothers’ eyes meld with the mucus oozing from his nose and he gasps for breath, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”I glare at him, “Stop stammering and get the fuck out of the car.”And so I left him there, outside the gas station next to his apartment complex, crying hysterically. I immediately drive to my opiate dealer’s apartment and purchase $200 worth of 80mg Oxycontin. Four fat lines later and I am back on earth, back to reality. My heart rate and blood pressure normalize. I shake my head as I sit on a filthy leather couch littered with cigarette burns.“What’s wrong?” he asks.“Nothing, just found out some shit about my brother. I’ll tell you next time.”I slowly drive back to my parents’ empty house on my suspended license. It wasn’t voluntarily surrendered as I told my brother. My own addiction keeps reality at bay as well sometimes. I had become so used to living in my own denial that I had lost touch with the real world. There was no way my brother could do anything like that. He rescued strays. He caught spiders in the house and let them go outside. He would spend nights talking to our dog (I assumed only after his stuffed animals went to sleep or stopped responding to him).I used to think one of my biggest regrets was not forgiving him before he died. But there was nothing to forgive. I regret I couldn’t comprehend the severity of his mental illness at the time. I saw him on a few more occasions after that. In one instance he confessed to having homosexual fantasies and frequenting gay bars. He told me he was drugged and raped by an older man while he was out one Saturday night. He also told me he went back to the same bar and the same thing happened the following weekend. This is when I started to really question his conception of reality.“Who goes back to the bar where they were raped?” I ask him.“I don’t know…I guess maybe it wasn’t completely non-consensual?” he admits.I read my brother’s old journals in his closet when I returned. The writing was disturbing. Some entries were in a different handwriting. He told me he oftentimes paints with his non-dominant hand. He told me sometimes he even paints with both hands simultaneously.He wrote a short story about a boy telling his parents he was gay. It was well written, touching and beautiful. The boy’s parents were furious. The dad threatened to disown him. I don’t think it was one of his memories. But who can be sure. My brother was never a very good actor. What he told me in the car before was the truth. But it was the truth in his own head, his version of reality. Perhaps once he had a fantasy about an older man, maybe once he had an inappropriate thought about our cousin. The lines between fantasy and reality had become blurred in his burdened brain. Some particular neuron did not match up with the right synapse in the latter stage of his brain formation.That’s one of the strangest things about mental disorders. Many of them manifest when you’re in your early 20’s. He was a pretty normal kid, albeit imaginative, introvertive, thoughtful and kind. Who knows what causes someone to lose touch with reality? It could have been the overdoses of Sudafed (pseudoephedrine) or Benadryl (diphenhydramine). It could have been the steroids in the inhaler he used for his asthma as a child. Maybe it was one of the chemicals in the American Spirits he smoked. It could have been from that one time he hit his head when we went sledding down Breakneck Hill. But for whatever the reason he lost his grip with the real world and I couldn’t help him hang on.I was one of the few people on this planet who knew how bad it would get. He tried to keep it together in front of our parents. But when they left for the summer I was there to see him scream at the voices in the walls. I was there when he would talk to some imaginary figure sitting next to us on the couch. I saw the level of filth he let accumulate in his apartment. A teetering mountain of fast food bags and pizza boxes were usually piled high on the kitchen table. Hundreds of paper plates covered in paint were strewn across the carpet. His dark blonde beard fell well below his chin. His hair was matted and oily beneath his old baseball team cap. The word “BREATHE” was written in all capital letters on the bill’s underbelly. To this day I’m not sure exactly what it means.We went to dinner one time and I smelled him from across the table.“Dude you smell.”He smiles, “I’m seeing how long I can go without showering.”“Really?” I ask. “How long has it been?”“Three weeks,” he proudly states.Pity is the wrong word. So is sadness. I supposed sorrow would suffice, perhaps complete and utter woe? There are no words I can say. He gazes in my eyes as I start to cry. He does the same.My dad flies in a week later after I relayed the story. He cleans my brother’s apartment and takes him to the barber shop. They go to the dealership and trade in his beat-up Toyota Camry for a new Chevrolet. My brother picks me up a week later after my father returned to work. He looks better. He still has a bandage on his left arm where he was most severely burned, but his legs are much improved.My father took the keys to the Mustang back with him so I wouldn’t be “tempted” again so Jack picks me up in his new car. He is beaming from ear-to-ear. It’s one of those smart compact cars and his neatly cut hair nearly touches the new roof. We watch a football game at the local pub and reminisce about old times. He struggles to eat his chicken wings because of the cast. I cut them off the bone for him. He takes me home. I never see him again.After I got sober I took my youngest cousin out to dinner. She was in her first year of law school at a prestigious college after acing all her undergraduate classes. Midway through dinner I casually ask if, “Anything out of the ordinary ever happened when she visited my family’s summer place?”She laughs, “Out of the ordinary, whatever do you mean?”“Like anything…inappropriate?”She snorts and giggles, “I have no idea what you’re talking about silly.”I laugh, “Me either, just checking. I mean my parents are kind of weird.”She looks at me, “Well yeah so are mine…we’re related remember…weirdness is to be expected and definitely NOT out of the ordinary.”She does not hesitate, blink, fidget or avert eye contact in any way. I know she’s telling the truth. My thoughts return to my brother as they tend to do in the moments between the seconds. I choose not to remember him bandaged and bound, a prisoner of his own mind. I remember him running onto the baseball field and rescuing strays from the pound. I remember him showing off his latest piece of pottery and placing the first brushstroke on his last canvas.I miss you buddy.What Jack told me about our cousin was disturbing, however the fact he died believing what he told me is what disturbs me most.