Alex and Jared

When Jared Hayes was born on an early February morning in 2003 - Alex Hayes became a brother. His first thought about Jared – and babies as a whole population, was that they looked weird, and too squishy to be real. 

Second, he decided Jared should never feel alone in the dark, at least not on his watch. 

…. 

When Jared was 8, Alex made him take the training wheels off his bike. He wanted to teach him how to ride like a teenager, a pro. After a few false starts, Jared made enough progress to carve nebulous, timid paths into the blacktop with his bike wheels - and promptly crashed. 

Pieces of gravel embedded into his palms and knees, bloodied and stinging in the heat. Jared sat on the curb, Alex on the pavement below him. He let Jared cry. He picked the gravel out of Jared’s wounds one by one. He rinsed the old blood away with warm Dasani water they had been sharing, and the pair walked home. Alex didn’t close his eyes when their dad prayed over dinner that night or say his own before the boys slept. 

Jared’s palms scarred. 

Years later, when the brothers were in high school, (Alex a senior, Jared bringing up the rear as a freshman) Alex stopped attending church with the rest of the family. The argument between Alex and their father was inevitable, a foregone conclusion that had been brewing for a long time.  

“Why can’t you just put on a face until you leave home? I don’t give a shit what you believe – but go for your mother’s sanity, Alex, come on.” 

“I’m not going, Dad. I’m not a praying kind of guy.”

“I’m not asking you to pray. I’m asking you to save face until you move out.” 

“No, Dad. I can’t. I don’t have a big enough vocabulary to lie that well, and I’m not sorry.” 

Jared thought that Alex was the best of their family. He was the most well-spoken and honest of all of them, to a fault. At church that morning, the congregation took communion. Jared held the wine and bread in his hands, noticing his scarred palms for the first time in a while. He wondered what Alex was doing at home. 

Soon after, Jared started noticing a cloying and musky smell coating Alex’s clothes and hair, accompanied by a far-off glaze over red eyes. He was still Alex, though, smart and capable. He was making a 4.0 - he was just high all the time. Alex and his new habit graduated high school as salutatorian and started attending Boston College for computer science. 

The first time that Jared smoked weed, he marveled at his brother’s capability to do it regularly, and still be a functioning and successful member of society. 

Ha. his hands looked funny. His scars made them 2 different colors. Could he control each finger separately? 

Jared’s palms were still scarred when he started college. It didn’t bother him; he’d grown used to the slight discoloration and firm texture of the tissue. Besides, when he looked at them, he didn’t see a disfiguration or a flaw. It made him think of his brother, and they hardly ever saw each other anymore. It was nice to carry a memory of him, albeit a fading one. 

One night during Jared’s freshman year of college, he used his fake I.D. for the first time. The place his friends picked was a dive bar if you gave it a generous approximation, and a shithole if you were being honest with yourself. 

(that’s how they knew the fake I.D.s would work) 

Every college kid in their city had the same idea that night. Jared suspected that the 2$ shots from 9-10 pm, and the singular pinball machine drew in a nice crowd of underage hopefuls. Jared drank cheap beers that tasted like piss, waited too long for the pool table, and set his stack of quarters on the ledge of the pinball machine to claim his place in line. He smoked a cigarette with the old, sun-spotted bikers outside. He had seen his future, and oh god, was it bright. 

He’d been faithfully nursing another drink inside and talking to a pretty girl. The beer didn’t taste as bad as the first few had – and Jared concluded that absolutely nothing could taste bad after a Marlboro red, followed by the anticipation of getting a girl’s number. And maybe a kiss. 

Then she scratched the shit out of his arm. Her friend had yanked her away to their ride home, disrupting their conversation before they exchanged any information. She’d left him with a red, glistening mark tracking about 3 inches down his shoulder. Maybe it was the piss beer, but it didn’t hurt. 

He called Alex on his walk back to his dorm – to tell him about the girl and his neutral stance on PBR. His plans to buy a Harley and spend his summers out of college driving across the country with no sunscreen (crucial) to achieve the rough, honeyed skin of the bikers. 

The line rang twice, before Alex picked up.

“Alex, hey, I’m sorry to call you so late. Did I wake you up?

“No, kiddo, Carter and I are just watching a movie. Are you oka—?”

Alex hadn’t called him “Kiddo” since he was 10. He could probably hear the intoxication in Jared’s voice. Frustration jumped inside of him, he was tired of Alex’s overprotective nature, he was almost 19, not a kid. 

“Jesus, I told you not to call me that, Alex.” Jared interjected. 

“Sorry man. You just sound like you’re in rare form, that’s all. I miss you. Tell me about your night?” Alex sounded hurt.

“Nah that’s okay, call you tomorrow.”

 Jared hung the up the phone, Alex mid-protest. He dumped himself into his twin XL bed, careful not to wake his roommate, and fell asleep rubbing the rough skin of his right palm. 

The scratch stopped bleeding. It scabbed, it itched, it grew red around the borders. Jared worried about infection & venereal disease from the girl and her sharp fingernails. He worried about his exams and his brother. So, he picked at the scab. And picked. And picked. He always felt better after he’d pulled it clean off. There were about 3 seconds where the skin below the laceration was soft and pink before it began to bleed again. He found peace in those 3 seconds. Unsurprisingly, the ritual of picking/healing/picking left a thin, pink scar down his arm. 

Jared didn’t have many scars besides the ones on his palms from years ago, on the bike with his brother. It was a strange and sobering feeling to carry the mark of someone he didn’t have a name, or any defining characteristics besides pretty brown eyes to pair it with. He’d bear the girl from the shitty dive bar with him forever, he guessed. Every time he looked at it, he thought of her, just like he thought of his brother when he looked at his hands. 

The next time Jared and Alex saw each other was Christmastime. Alex brought his boyfriend, Carter, who was working on a PhD in British Literature. He was the poetic and eccentric artist type, and Jared thought that he balanced out Alex’s discerning and systematic mind very nicely. It was the first time the couple was visiting their parents, too. Alex came out when he was across the country in college, because he’d expected their religious parents to receive the news poorly. 

Mr. and Mrs. Hayes had taken the news with gritted teeth, and continually hoped that Alex’s bisexuality would open the door for a nice, smart girl to marry him. Jared hoped he married Carter. 

On Christmas Eve, around the time when the kids waiting up for Santa were falling asleep, Jared was wide awake and staring at his ceiling. He needed some cold air. 

Stepping onto the porch, he found Alex sitting on the steps, smoking a joint. 

“That’s a nasty habit, y'know. Mom doesn't like you smoking here” Jared said, disrupting the silence.

“Pfft... she doesn’t like that I’m dating a man either, this is nothing in comparison” Alex responded, holding the joint towards Jared. 

He took it between his fingers, and sat down next to his brother, the smoke drifting upwards in soft tendrils. He wanted to say that it didn’t matter what their mom thought that Carter was wonderful, and he wouldn’t be half bad as a brother-in-law. He wanted to say that Alex would still be his brother no matter who he decided to be with, or how much weed he smoked. That he loved him. That he felt lucky to share a last name, and resemblance with him. 

Those words were stuck in his throat, so he took a long drag instead, drawing the smoke into his lungs. He punctuated the silence with belly-heaving coughs soon after – he was not a smoker. 

“Bro, I don’t know how you do that so easily. It’s impressive, really” Admired Jared, with a laugh.

“Lots and lots of practice”, replied Alex, somberly. After a few moments, he asked “Did I ever apologize for making you take the training wheels off your bike so soon?

Jared was surprised he remembered that. “Nah. but I needed to do it anyways” he responded. 

They sat quietly while Alex finished the joint, snuffing out the end on the porch. 

Alex said goodnight as he headed inside, Jared responded with a nod. Christmas morning passed with minimal tension, Alex and Carter went back to Boston. Jared went back to school, and life got busy again. 

Jared was 20 when Alex died, in a car accident. The other driver was intoxicated. It was quick and he didn’t feel any pain, the doctors said. What about the pain he left behind? Thought Jared. Would he ever feel okay about all the things he didn’t say to his older brother? He wondered if he could still call himself a brother anymore. He tried to decide whether to use the past or present tense when speaking about Alex to others. He felt more grateful for his scars in the weeks following Alex’s death than ever. For his wonderful older brother. His scars screamed 

“I AM HERE. I EXISTED. I AM ALIVE IN THIS MEMORY.”

When he spoke about his brother at his funeral, Jared said 

“I’m not a praying kinda guy, but I can tell you about the time Alex taught me to ride a bike.”