My brother never relented in his efforts to try to win us over.
He was hardworking, dedicated and he studied hard. He was a top student and a model student. Even as he grew older and started to understand that I wasn't warm or loving, he never stopped trying to get us to notice him.
He'd knock on my door and ask about my day, or he'd wait for me after school and walk home with me. Sometimes, he'd even sit beside me in silence and hope that I'd say something.
Sometimes, I did.
I never pushed him away. I enjoyed the company, even if I didn't want it to be him. I let him stay, and occasionally, we'd talk about deep things. But we mostly talked about random things.
He once told me he wanted to be a writer, that he liked how stories could end better than in real life.
I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I had wanted to ask if he thought our story could have a happy ending but I decided against it.
He still smiled. He always smiled, no matter how badly he was hurting, he always smiled. No matter how many times my father turned him away, he smiled.
No matter how much I ignored him, he smiled. In a way, he was stronger than me. I could never do that. I could never smile as much as he did. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time I genuinely smiled. Life was bleak for the both of us, and yet, there was always a smile on his face.
But then, my father died. It was a plane crash, there were no survivors. The news came through a phone call from a relative we hadn't heard from in years. I sat on the couch with the phone to my ear as my brother watched me with curious eyes. When I hung up, I looked at him and said, "Dad's dead."
He blinked over and over, as if he was unsure how to process it, or what kind of emotion he was supposed to put on. He didn't cry, and he didn't ask questions. Not about how he died, or what had happened.
My brother stared at me with the same curious eyes, but this time, there was no emotion behind it.
We both sat there in silence.
I couldn't explain what I felt, it wasn't grief or relief. It was nothing.
That nothing scared our extended family. Suddenly, they wanted to be involved, suddenly, they remembered we existed. We were drowned in a flurry of phone calls and visits. All of them appeared at our door with fake concerns and hugs that were too tight.
Their statements always started with, "Hi, honey. Remember me? I held you when you were a baby."
Or, "I played with you when you were a toddler."
Or, "I comforted you at your mother's funeral."
They all brought a story with them, a story that they assumed would help us remember them. They didn't care about us, they only cared about what my father had left behind.
They wanted his money, his house, his company, everything. But as his children, we were the keys to his empire and they wanted to seize it.
Little by little, they started to fight amongst themselves for a fortune that didn't belong to them. They fought over who would take me and my brother in, even though no one told them to.
If I had it my way, I would've continued to live in the house with my brother, but because I was sixteen, underaged, the law demanded that we were taken in by a family member. It was stupid, really. Even when my father was alive, I was the one taking care of the house, and it didn't really matter now that he was gone. I could still continue to take care of my brother and myself, without anyone's help.
But they didn't listen, they demanded that I could file for guardianship when I become an adult.
In the end, my uncle took us in. He was supposedly the good one, he was the only one who didn't fight over the rights to my father's inheritance. He was the one with the clean house, two children and a beautiful wife who had a dashing smile. He flew us out and gave us two separate rooms in his house. He provided us with warm food, clean clothes and as much privacy as we needed.
It wasn't awful. We were allowed to do our own things and we weren't being abused. It was peaceful.
Though, I missed my friends back home, they had clung to me and hugged me tightly when I was leaving. We all had the goal to enter the same university, so I had hope that I would be seeing them soon.
As for my brother, he watched us with envious eyes.
Had I ever hugged my brother?
He had tried to hug me when he was younger but I had pushed him away and warned him sternly never to try something like that again.
I shook my head. There was no point feeling bad for him. I didn't maltreat him and that was enough. It wasn't like we were ever going to be like normal siblings.
When the court handed custody over to my uncle, I had thought our lives would be overturned and we would end up like those poor children in movies. I had thought that I would have to suck it up and deal with it for one year.
But nothing of the sort happened, and to my surprise, I was relieved that my brother wouldn't have to deal with something else with all he was juggling.
I knew he was hurt by our father's death. How could he not? Even to the bitter end, my father refused to acknowledge him as family.
Even though my uncle's house was peaceful, I eventually learnt that peace doesn't always mean safety.
I didn't know it then, that my brother had just walked into the worst nightmare of his life.