My Best Friend Brother

Chapter Ten

Dev’s Journal

If I didn’t have this journal to write in, I think I would lose my mind and go postal on a few people. I owe Mrs. Hamon an apology. That

woman was an absolute genius.Summer is ending in Fairview and I am leaving for University with two earth-shattering revelations

about my life that threaten to send me to the psycho ward. The first…well, I’m not sure I want to write it down. Perhaps if I don’t, it will go away. This must be how people plunge

into deep denial. Is that what happened to my mother? Should I join her there?

No. How can I possibly deny the

evidence smacking me in the face? The large cash injections traced to Gerald Franklin for the past nineteen years. My parent’s scandalous marriage certificate—dated eight months before I was born. (My mother, always behaving so dignified and pious. Ha!) The

stilted, uneasy way she acts when I bring Franklin up in conversation. And then there’s the uncanny,disconcerting resemblance.

The family motto tends to be “If it’s best left unsaid, then for God’s sake do not say it!” So I

didn’t outright ask the woman, but I hinted around it enough to make her face four shades more red and a faint line of perspiration

break out just over her plum-painted lip.

Confirmation? Not sure. Not entirely sure if I even want confirmation. Perhaps it’s best to

pretend along with everyone else. But I feel something has changed inside of me, a righteous rage taking hold or maybe a darkness in my soul. Have I been lied to my entire life

by everyone I love and trust? Who the hell am I?

That brings me to the second revelation. I may not know my own paternity, but I do know that I’m a bona fide, Class A, jack-ass, and I’ve hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. Someone quite nice, actually. Someone who seems infinitely interesting, and now I’ve blown any chance of knowing her any better to smithereens. Not that I ever knew her…because I wouldn’t allow myself to be tempted. Looks like I took care of that pesky problem as she hates my guts even more now than when we were

children. I’m an asshole. God, it sucks to

realize that. I could blame the stress of this

summer and claim it got to me and I took it out on her, collateral damage, if you will. Or is it textbook self-destructive behavior in

action? I wish there was a cure for this frustration. That reminds me of something I

read last night from Rumi:

“She is the cure…she is the

disease.”

-Dev