Back To Us by Teresa Roman Read Free Book Online

A lifetime of hearing that from your parents tended to have that effect on a person.
    I wasn’t able to find my brother anywhere, and he didn’t answer any of my texts so I said my goodbyes. I felt kind of bad leaving Mel when she was so upset, but she had her family—tons of cousins, her mom, her brothers, and Mike and I only had each other.
    “If I see Mike do you want me to tell him to call you?”
    “Nah, don’t worry about it. He’ll call.” She sounded totally unworried, which wasn’t surprising, Mel knew my brother was head over heels with her.
    Going home to look for Mike was going to be a waste of time, I knew my brother well enough to know if he was pissed he wouldn’t have gone home. He would have gone to one of his friend’s to either drink or smoke some more. By three in the morning, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. Mike hadn’t shown up and he hadn’t answered any of my calls or texts. The only thing I could do was pray that whatever my brother was up to he wasn’t getting into the type of trouble he couldn’t get out of.
    Sometime before the sun came up my brother finally made it home. I heard him as he fumbled through my room in the dark on the way to his bedroom. I drifted back to sleep and woke up a few hours later. It took me a minute to recognize the noises coming from my brother’s room. He was puking his guts out, probably from all the drinking he’d done. Mike ignored me when I knocked on his door—I went in anyway. He was lying in bed curled into the fetal position and he looked like shit.
    “Exactly how much did you have to drink?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, his speech slurred. “Four, maybe five, or ten.”
    He was making no sense. It was almost ten in the morning and he’d been home for a few hours already. Which meant that even if he’d been drunk when he got home most of the alcohol should have left his system already. That made me wonder if something else was going on.
    “What else were you doing besides drinking?”
    “Took some. . .” Mike pointed to his bedside table. “To help me sleep.” He was speaking in broken sentences that I couldn’t make much sense out of. There was a pill bottle lying on its side, completely empty. I picked it up and held it in front of my brother’s face.
    “What the hell was in here?” The label that had been there was torn off.
    Mike didn’t answer. I shook him to try and wake him up, but all he did was moan and try to knock my hands away. I stared at him for a moment trying to figure out what I should do. What if he’d overdosed on something? Panicked, I ran to my room for my cell phone. If I called whichever friends he’d been hanging out with they’d know what was in that bottle, but I wasn’t sure who to call and my brother was too out of it to answer any of my questions. Before I was able to figure out what to do, my phone, which was still in my hand, started ringing. I picked it up without even bothering to see who it was.
    “Hello.” I could hear the panic in my voice.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Who is this?”
    “It’s Justin. Did I call too early?”
    “No. . .no, it’s not too early.”
    “You didn’t stop by yesterday.”
    I glanced at my brother who was still and pale. I tried shaking him. “Mike, Mike.” He didn’t answer. “Can I call you back, Justin? Now really isn’t a good time.”
    “What’s going on? You sound really upset.”
    “It’s my brother.” I was too worried to keep my mouth shut. I felt like I was on the verge of tears, but I bit them back as I spoke. “I think he might have overdosed on something, but I don’t know what.”
    “Did you call an ambulance?”
    “No. I can’t do that. What if they think he tried to kill himself or something and make him stay in the hospital?” I’d seen it happen more than once to some of the girls I lived with at the group home. “He’ll kill me for doing that to him.”
    “Give me your address.”
    “What? Why?”
    “I’m