He Ain’t Heavy by W.S. LongI looked at the clock ticking away against the wall. If we left now, we’d be at the airport in thirty minutes. Forty minutes tops. But Mom wanted to wait until Bruce, my stepdad, came home. She thinks it’d be great to welcome Emerson back as a family just like we were before Emerson, lured by the GI Bill, took off for the military. But I know it’s a lie that my mom is telling herself to avoid the ugly truth. Emerson, my stepbrother, isn’t the same. The bomb damaged him, inside and out. And it changed all of us, too. No one wanted to talk about it except me. Since his injury, it’s like we closed our eyes to what happened. Iraq apparently did all this to him, but no one wanted to talk about it.
In the Lively household I learned that it’s much easier to ignore some
