I’m sore from sitting in this pew.

There’s a crick in my neck from staring at my lap. But I can’t look at the coffin, can’t look at the pastor drawling on. So I stare at my knees, focusing on the crease of my black slacks, fiddle with the end of the tie choking air from my lungs.

After, I hear them. Voices, hushed murmurs, everyone’s two cents about my younger brother, talking as if they knew him, talking as if they had any idea what he was like.

“Such a sweetheart, that one. Quiet - but always with that big smile.”

“I remember when he won that math award a few years back, his parents were so proud! I think he tripped on his way up the stage, but then he gave a peace sign to the crowd and everyone was laughing. He knew how to keep things light… What a kid.”

“Didn’t he give your boy his baseball glove last summer? Once he knew- I mean… once he was no longer able to play?”

Sugar-infused punch washes down my throat. I’ve never wanted to be drunk this badly, but alcohol would never be allowed at the funeral. Never be allowed anywhere, so long as Dad’s in the vicinity.

“Poor Cameron… first her man, now her little boy… at least Jon-Luke got that scholarship. That’s something to be thankful for.”

I’m not a violent person.

I’m not a violent person.

I will not be a violent person.

In the car, Mom turns to me. Her eyes are red. The wrinkles lining her forehead look a thousand times deeper.

“Let’s go home,” she says, patting my knee.

Her voice is like sandpaper.

I nod, because that’s all I can manage, and we pull out of the gravel parking lot. The tie comes off on my third attempt. Staring out the window, I massage my neck.

“He was sixteen,” I say. Townhouses rush by in a blur.

Mom says nothing.

“Everyone keeps calling him a little kid. He would hate that.”

Blue sky shouldn’t be allowed today. This is a day for rain, for drenching rain, maybe some thunder. Not some stupid, bright, open expanse. Sunlight turns our car into an easy-bake oven.

“Some happy-go-lucky kid. A good sport, a generous boy, a sweetheart.” Cranking the AC, I look at her. “Do you remember him like that?”

She’s crying again. Soundlessly, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“None of them saw him angry. The way he never shared his game console with the cousins. None of them had to listen to him crying and yelling and pulling what was left of his hair out.”

“Jon-Luke.”

My throat obstructs.

Wiping her nose, Mom asks, “Did you talk to Dad?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“He was at the back of the church. Got there on time and everything. You should have talked to him, he’s taking this hard too.”

I look out the window again.

Is a man who walked away allowed to take this hard? A man who only now slunk back into our lives after six years of absence, bringing his addictions and spineless ways with him?

“He hated him. Vyvian.” My brother’s name weighs on my tongue. “He hated dad.”

We drive past a park, its empty slides and swing sets staring back at us.

I think about burning the tie in my hands. Digging Dad’s old cigarette lighter out of the drawer in Mom’s bedroom and turning the piece of silk to ashes. How would it smell? Sweet? Bitter?

Like plain old smoke?

Mom turns onto the highway. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“Vyvian didn’t know how to hate anyone,” she says.

A week passes.

I’m supposed to go to school, to finish my last night of grade 12 with a bang. To don the wine-red cap and gown, ascend the stage with my classmates, shake hands and get my diploma.

I sit on the back porch and smoke.

It’s the stupidest thing to do, really; Vyvian would be furious if he saw it.

“Want to wreck your lungs?” He’d ask. “Get cancer on purpose?”

I’m not being fair. But the thought of him being angry with me is better than the reality of him not being at all.

Dad smoked for years, since before he and Mom met. He quit when Vyvian was diagnosed the first time.

“Don’t want to make the kid sicker than he is,” he’d said, like his smoking hadn’t been a contributing factor.

He left soon after that.

The screen door slides open.

“They’ll miss your speech,” Mom says. I hear the intake of breath when she spots the cigarette between my lips. “Jon-Luke, get that filthy thing out of your mouth right now.” She grabs it from me, throws it to the porch, stomps it flat with her slipper.

“It makes you look like your father,” she says. An angry flush crosses her cheeks. “It’s a disgusting habit, and it kills”-

Her voice breaks.

The sun is setting behind the mountains, throwing shadows over the lawn. I kick my feet over the edge of the porch, imagining a smaller pair of sneakers swinging beside me.

“Sorry,” I lie. “I won’t do it again.”

The wood creaks as Mom sits beside me.

“I’m not the valedictorian. Just the class historian. They won’t miss me.”

She crosses her legs, charcoal smeared across the bottom of her slippers. “Everyone misses you, Jon-Luke. Your friends have been calling, saying they can’t get ahold of you.”

My cell phone is in the back of my closet. Same place I threw it when I got the news.

Mom runs her hand over my hair. “Don’t disappear, okay?”

Her touch is too much.

I pull away.

Summer brings heat, sunshine, the smell of mown grass and the taste of lemonade.

My hands turn rough and blistered from blue collar work. It pays well. I might enjoy it, too, if not for the fact that it leaves my mind free to wander.

September nears. The boss calls me into his office.

“Crew treating you well?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Glad to hear it. You’re a good worker, Jon-Luke.”

He leans back in his swivel chair, turns it slightly. “I’d like to have you stay on, if you’re interested. The job’s got good benefits, and you’ll be set for years if you keep up the way you have been. What do you say?”

Mom pinned my university acceptance letter to the fridge. Stuck the email confirming my scholarship right next to it.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

He nods. “Take the week to decide. If you still want to leave, you’ll get a good reference letter.”

Letters, letters, letters.

My boots send up little dust clouds as I cross the worksite back to my post, slip my fingers back into a pair of the gloves, stiff and new. My second pair of the summer. First ones were old anyway - Dad’s, leftover from past winters of loading firewood. Holes in the end of a few fingers. It didn’t take much work to see how useless they were.

Fitting.

Mateo looks down at me from his ladder as I pass, neon orange hard hat flashing in the sun. He’ll take that thing off the second he’s on the ground, wipe a brown arm over his sweaty, receding hairline, crack a grin at anyone nearby and suggest getting a new company policy for supplying ice-cold beer on site. I’ve seen him do it a dozen times.

It was the first thing he said to me after the funeral. You look like you need a drink, kid. Too bad the union doesn’t supply IDs, eh?

Ingrid pulled me aside later. Said it was in bad taste, that Mateo should’ve been more respectful, and the clap she gave my shoulder was lighter than I’d thought those massive hands could manage. As though I needed to be “handled with care”.

I avoided her after that.

Being treated differently is just a reminder that everything is different.