I have always hated my older brother. There may have been a time that I liked him but I don't think so. The more that others liked him, the more I hated him.
I'm sixteen years old now. I've had two brothers, one seventeen and one thirteen. Ever since I got into trouble with the police for stealing from Beckers, it's almost that I don't exist and that my older brother gets even more attention. Mom and Dad have given up on me. No, I take that back. I don't think they ever thought enough of me to even think that I might amount to anything.
Dad is seldom home. He works at a Chrysler plant and makes good money but spends most of the rest of his time either drinking at the Century House or at the race track. Mom got a job at a bridal shop a few years back so that there would be some money for emergencies and for milk. Often she has to sew till late in the evening so that some deadline can be met and when she gets home she either bitches about Dad not being home or cries herself to sleep. She isn't very happy with her lot in life.
The one high point of her life seems to be my older brother, Aaron. Aaron is the perfect son. Even I can see that. He is what everyone would want their son to be, everything that I am not.
Mom seems to think that Aaron might become a priest. She never talks about it directly to any of us but I overheard her talking to her girlfriend, Julie, one summer night when they were out in the back yard drinking coffee or lemonade. She told Julie how she knew Aaron was special, ever since he was born, that he was going to be a great man someday and would make her proud - and everything that she had suffered her whole life would be 'redeemed' by him. She could see that Aaron was like her in that he was religious, but it wasn't a phase he was going through, oh no, it was a deep religiousness, "born of deep faith," she said. It was through him that Dad would change and mend his ways and that I would turn myself around. She said how she had offered him up to God when he was just a child and that she knew he would save himself for the priesthood. Father Mulchahy at St. Anselm's was very proud of Aaron as well and he and mother had had many talks about Aaron's vocation. Fr. Mulchahy had assured mother that her prayers were working and that Aaron had talked to him personally about his vocation.
Everyone thinks that Aaron is very bright. He brings home all A's on his report cards and all his teachers seem to love him. I don't think that Aaron is really that bright, though. Actually, I think I am brighter than he is; I just don't want anybody to know it. I really hate school. It's so boring and so I don't do any work and even though I pass the exams they won't pass me because I skipped out too much, or the teacher hates me, or I don't have any term marks. Mom hasn't even bothered to see my teachers for the last few years. She concentrates on Aaron's teachers and she can feel good about herself..
Aaron spends a lot of time studying. I never study, but I do read a lot. Mostly when no-one is around. I had just finished a "Psychology of Adolescence", so I think I pretty well understand what was going on around home now. Usually I go to the library and start in on a section and just read through it until I'm bored with the topic and then I go on to something else. I had a pile of Psychology books on Mind Control and Hypnosis and Therapeutic Uses of Suggestion which I thought I might find mildly interesting, but I was really looking forward to the history section.
You want to know about my arrest last fall? It was really stupid, now that I think about it, but it was kind of fun, too. I had made friends with a few older guys at school out in the Smoking Yard. Yeah, I smoke. I know I shouldn't but every time Aaron gives me another lecture about it or threatens to tell Mom, I end up smoking more just to get even with him. Anyway, these three guys had going quite a business fencing stolen goods to the kids at school and they had four or five younger kids ripping off stores for items that a lot of the kids wanted - cigarettes, magazines, anything with alcohol in it, condoms, makeup - whatever. They weren't interested in the big trade of pot, acid or other stuff - that was too dangerous for these guys right now 'cause too many other dealers were into it. This was an open field. All I had to do was go through a store, pocket anything that looked interesting and they would pay me for it in cash. I didn't have a job so it was an easy way to get cigarette money, lunch money or movie money without having to do anything extra around the house. I was doing pretty well for about six months but I should have known better than to go into one of those stores with a surveillance camera. Wouldn't you know they had me on camera taking the plastic box full of money for some Disease of the Month Fund. I was getting too cocky. I was stealing that one for me. At least when the police became involved I didn't have to name anyone else like I would have it they had found me taking makeup or something. Anyway, Mom was really angry and she showed it by ignoring me completely and shaking her head and sighing at her lot in life a lot whenever I was around. I think Dad was proud of me in his own way, though. It wasn't too serious and it gave him something to moan to the guys about and another reason for staying away from home.
Anyway the book on Adolescent Psychology says that most teenagers act out around fifteen. Except Aaron. He didn't act out - it's like he was perfect or something. He was on the school swim team and up for an athletic scholarship; he was on the debating team and had been in the school plays. He never seemed to date much although he went out - mostly on weekends, with a group of his friends - male and female. And he was never later than eleven o'clock coming home! And he was religious - he talked to God a lot. I've seen him on his knees at night before he goes to bed - and he never missed church on Sunday even though no-one else went but Mom, and her not all the time. I was trying to apply Aaron to the Adolescent Psychology book but he just didn't seem to fit the normal pattern the way they describe it. He was too good. Maybe it's because he gets all the attention already and doesn't have to be any other way. My younger brother, Gary, is dead. He was probably going to be more like Aaron than me. He worshipped Aaron, and Aaron spent time with him that no-one else in the house seemed to. Mom was always nagging at him to clean up, or pick up, or do school work, or empty garbage. Thank God she didn't bother with me any more, since the arrest. When Gary died suddenly from the hit and run accident, Mom withdrew more and more and placed more and more of her hope in Aaron.
Well, everything sort of fell together for me after I read the rest of the Psychology books. I got so interested in them I skipped out of school for two days and did nothing but read. When the school phoned home and left a message on the answering machine, I erased it, but the Principal happened to be talking to Aaron and asked where I was. When Aaron came home he started lecturing me again about the importance of school and what was I ever going to be and Mom was going to be so upset and was I smoking in the house again and how he was going to tell Mom everything unless I shaped up. Luckily Mom left a message that she wouldn't be home till late and go ahead and eat without her. Aaron would be fast asleep before she got home. He was always in bed by ten o'clock so he could get up at six the next morning.
I waited until Mom had come home and checked to see that we were all home and asleep. Then I snuck down the hall to Aaron's room, closed the door quietly behind me and sat down on the floor next to Aaron who was a pretty sound sleeper.
I used the technique in one the books on Suggestion about turning normal sleep into hypnotic sleep and even though I found myself very excited, I was able to keep my voice firm and low. I spoke over and over about how relaxed he was and how he could only hear my voice and that he was going deeper and deeper. By this time my eyes had become conditioned to the light in the room from the outside window and I could see fairly well. I started noticing Aaron's eyes flickering as the book said they would when they started to make the transition from normal sleep to the other. I kept talking firmly and softly, over and over.
I have to admit the original idea I had when I came into the room was to see if I could put Aaron under hypnosis but most specifically to suggest to him that he not tell Mom about anything I'd done or hadn't done. I don't know when the new idea hit me, but it just came to me and I tried it.
"This is God talking to you, Aaron. I want you to go deeper and deeper and get more and more relaxed so I can talk to you and tell you what I want for you." Almost immediately there was a change in Aaron. His eyelids starting moving very quickly. "Your right hand is feeling very light - like a balloon- and it is starting to rise up in the air." His right hand started to move. "You will try to stop your right hand from moving but you cannot, and the harder you try the deeper you will go." He seemed to be struggling with his hand but it just kept going up and up.
I tried a few more of the traditional things the books had talked about and they were very successful. It seemed that Aaron was even a "perfect" subject.
"You will be able to talk to me, Aaron, but you will remain deeply asleep until I wake you. Do you understand?"
"Yes." He spoke for the first time and the sound frightened me. But still I carried on.
"Do you know who is speaking to you, Aaron?" "God."
"That's right, Aaron. Do you know who I sound like?"
"Chris."
"That's right. Aaron. Since I don't really have a voice, I take the voice of someone else - in this case, Chris's. But it is not Chris talking to you. You understand that, don't you?"
"Yes."
"I am going to make you someone very important, Aaron. I have chosen you out of all the others. You will be the highest of the high. Everyone will come to me through you. You will be more important than the Pope or Mother Theresa. But you must never question my will. You must do everything I say or your soul will perish."
I thought that last part a nice touch.
"Do you understand who I am and what I am asking you to do?"
"Yes."
"Who am I?"
"God."
"And what will I do for you if you follow me?"
"I will become the highest of the high."
"Over the next while I will be testing you. Testing your faith in me. I know you will not fail me."
"No."
By this point I had been in the room almost an hour and a half. I still had it in mind that I wanted to give him a suggestion about keeping quiet about me, but I was getting more and more excited about the possibilities of how deeply he seemed to be under. Also I desperately wanted a cigarette. Then it came to me, and I changed direction.
"I want you remain deeply asleep, but I want you to sit up and sit on the edge of your bed."
He did.
"I am going to ask you now to count down from fifty. Each number you say, you will go deeper and deeper, as though you are going down in an elevator. When you get to the number one, you will be as deep asleep as you can possibly get and you will be ready to hear what I want you to do." He started counting backwards. I got up quickly and left the room, returned to my own room and picked up my cigarettes and an ashtray from my desk drawer and headed back.. When I shut the door Aaron was at 23 and still counting.
When he reached one I began again.