The Alternate Truth

I'd never lied.

I didn't lie to my brother.

Maybe it looked bad. When the gavel came down. And I could only gaze downward to the floor, completely ashamed, completely placid. Not reacting in any satisfying fashion.

"One year in Meadow Shade Youth Corrections."

An officer came by, gently taking me by the arm.

I'd pleaded guilty. To all of it.

Forever in a guilty sentence. Forever a puppet's unfeeling, playful master. Pulling him along to make him dance and make him twirl.

Jimmy. Poor Jimmy was crying.

"Can't you be a little mad at me? Just a bit?"

"Carry on, ma'am," the officer murmured heavily. "I am sorry."

_____________________

A disconcerting buzz welcomed me to the center.

Since then I was given only one dark blue jumper. A number replacing a name tag.

Alternative truths.

Each and every person saw differently, went through the world with different privileges and advantages.

In any given situation there are certain traits that are just indistinguishably favorable to have.

And seemed to be, the vote swung toward words and diction. The sly shift in a person's eye or the ability to negotiate. No matter what was used. Whatever was at my disposal. Including my twelve year old brother's cute face and tiny, pre-pubescent sprout lanky figure.

There was no lying. One, because it was such a distasteful thing to do, especially toward earnest little Crickets who just want the best for everyone and do their best. And two, since no two stories were the same. There was always subtext and distorted perspective.

Alternate truth. Not lying. Not corrupting.

Teaching.

'I'm sorry.'

What a joke.

I had to be more honest.

With myself.

With others.

I deserved to be here among aggressive bullies, weaselly thieves and vandals. The ones who were just sick up there.

Group therapy was either before morning courses or after class at 4:30.

The classroom wasn't any different than the one at an actual school.

Apparently, some Google Maps would say Meadow Shade is a school. It wasn't a lie was it?

Is it a lie or bratty presumption that school teaches much less useful material?

Come to think, it may just be sheer lucky chance, but the kids aren't that mean. The fear abated.

One muggy Thursday at the lunch line, when one of the other boys coiled their arm round my throat.

Sure I was going to be strangled... 'Nearing the End of Days.'

Good Lord I was going to die!!

"Come sit with us Emo."

Besides the length he had the whole look of a sandy blonde valley girl.

Surely there had to be some type of motive.

Yard time had been cancelled with the inkling it could rain and drench our sole clothes. Besides a singular dress shirt for pajamas.

Though more than likely the girls got something modest. I hoped so. Some were way hot. Starting to develop with curves and boobs.

"So whaddya do?"

"Break the windows? Try to get back in after your parents kicked you out?"

Wayhem Taylor was trans and had been kicked out.

Technically, he had committed a robbery.

"No, no nothing like that," I replied softly. Shyly.

"Yeah he looks way too nice. Bullied right?" Valley boy asked with sympathy. Henry.

And I flinched, eyes alert toward him.

"Woah hey, hey what did I say?"

"I--"

I felt nauseous.

I was dizzy.

I didn't want to eat anymore.

____________________

Five months, two weeks.

August twelfth.

"Scales."

I was 'depressed,' they were saying. Arranged for some intervening sessions. Just me and cheeky Mrs. Braum.

"What Peck?"

"oh sorry," I apologized. "I mean I think of scales, of the good and the bad I've done, that those around me do. The buyers on the street had a lot of bad. Jimmy had way less, still way too much. And me? I-- I've never been 'good.' Not good like Jimmy or the way an older brother should be."

And it was funny. In a bitterly dark, sad, pitiful way.

"I hadn't noticed he wasn't eating. That he hardly ate at all and I didn't think that was because of stress. I assumed the thrill I got and the pride of making so much money would wash over him with time. It's-- it's what I've heard on TV and on the streets. Once you start your brain dumps all this serotonin and adrenaline that make it worthwhile, so you get the taste and it tastes great."

Peck laughed. Wet and fractured. God. What a messed up perspective.

*I hate myself.*

"I'm-- I'm so screwed up. I'm twisted!"

"No, no you're not Peck," Mrs. Braum insisted. Lying. I was a liar.

I hated that. Why was she lying? How or who would it help to lie to me?

"...to lie to me."

"What you described is a real phenomenon," she cut in, not sharply, not with force. Rather she remained gentle and steady. "It's true that misbehavior is rewarded with adrenaline, the body is stressed, your mind is running quickly to make sure you don't get caught. It tries to justify what it is-- what you-- are doing. Those are all normal, human reactions. And, when it happens repeatedly it is like an addiction. As humans, we can ward off pain, we fear it and so we flinch away from it. From whatever is unpleasant or bad, in the physical and emotional sense, since it provokes physical responses, however, we were not made to resist pleasure. So, when we experience the "high" of a risky behavior and "survive," we want more of it. It doesn't make sense and often people are aware of the consequences. Yet even then," she thoughtfully refrained, prompting my attention, silently saying I was allowed to speak, "you weren't primarily motivated by a thrill. Not a normal emotional and physiological thrill or of other desires such as attention, purpose, acceptance, or anger."

"Wasn't I? I tricked adults. Rich adults with their stupid baby strollers and dumb little sundresses that their precious princesses were going to soil full of mud and grass stains anyway. And their plastic sunglasses with some shiny finish and rhinestones that cost over a hundred dollars. That made me angry! It made me angry that when we had to do everything in our power, go without so many simple treats or Mom's time... when they choose to stay away from their kids. Or find the most colorful distraction to sit them at."

"Okay, this is good. This is good Peck."

"So, it made it okay. Obviously, because those Moms were so stupid and obscenely rich. If they or their husbands ever got sick some stupid pair of sunglasses wasn't going to matter or the coin bags in their big purses!"

"And that is quite typical as well, finding acceptable targets. However, what I truly want to get at, you were in a situation where primary concerns were about money. Yes, you had your needs met, your Mother could pay the bills most of the time, but that said, there was no small amount of uncertainty and responsibility placed on both of you."

Mrs. Braum put down the notepad, turned her gaze so they were eye-level. "Among a child's most necessary needs is for stability and security. Unfortunately and by no one's fault I must stress, you had neither."

"AND! And so what?"

"Scientific, psychological, and political or child development studies: when it comes to theft, all these fields agree that economic need and poverty is a primary motivator for many to turn to not only theft but... escalate all on their own to other criminal activity the way your brother sought to do. Which, if I remember, you insist doesn't make him a bad person."

"Of course not," I refuted hotly. "He wouldn't have had such an idea if I, I hadn't been whispering in his ear like a-- like a messed up snake or demon thing!"

Having his brother involved, who had wanted nothing but the best for his Mom, his Aunt, his Dad(especially their Dad), and for some reason his horrible, unsympathetic older brother, was my own dream. Me, the undertaker's and mastermind's dream.

Calming down in one hateful and dourly critical breath I admitted it. Dared say it. "It's called corruption of a minor for a reason."

And it was the first honest thing to come out of my disgraceful mouth for a very good reason.

__Including that when in police custody-- his brother had grown lanky, wary, and a tinge wild. So he danced around with an interrogation room's metal chair. Ready to hurl it at a social worker's head for being too tall and too darkly handsome like that Rat.__

Mrs. Braum sighed. "I'm sorry, it just, I've mentioned I have kids of my own."

"A niece, two nephews, and one has a puppy," I corrected. No kids of her own, no concept of what it was to actually be the distraught parent. Rather, just trade rumors and sharp intakes of the kid who may have been spoiled by too many gifts.

Some Aunts and Uncles did bring their siblings' children amenities and pleasures. Ones that turned into a black market trade for such simple luxuries.

Candy, playing cards, comics, manga, figurines, music. The whole lot.

A decent cache my friends had been kind enough to let me scrounge from for sweets.

If the day would ever come that I did face Jimmy again...

But, then again, this candy was just as illicit.

"I know you won't believe me," she began slowly, cautiously. As if they'd not been in this backward curiosity for two months now. "It's terrible and... sad. To hear you talk about yourself like that. This "disgraceful mouth" of yours, being "a bad, unsympathetic older brother," "twisted beyond belief," these "unnatural motives." No, I'm quite sorry-- or that is a lie-- I don't believe any of that. And Peck, though I can't tell him or your Mother, what will Jimmy think if you ever said something like that about yourself?"

__When the family attorney and station's regular warden stormed in to restrain his brother, Peck had never wanted more to just escape to some other place in his mind. Far, far away from a dead Father and his brother reduced to his knees, crying, begging for Dad. To forgive him, to hold him.__

I couldn't have been completely certain if Jimmy could have managed a wooden chair pre-waif days much less a metal one.

I stood from my wooden chair.

And, to Jimmy's credit, it really is the first thing you think of.

I wanted to throw it.

In an abusive, violent fit of rage.

__"Nothing in this world is free,"__

__"H-- h--he was going to. He would have skinned me I think."___ And that was it for Saturday.

Some of his friends pointed the finger to his other hidey holes.

"Don't, he went too far simple as that."

The hate's last breath wound out of me through my lips. And with it, any semblance of energy or desire.

I just sat there.

"I don't wanna be sick."

All I was going to give my Mom in a year was trouble and more bills.

____________________

Alternate truths.

No lies.

So when his Mother insists her eldest son must hate her, despises her for not seeing, not doing, obsessed with her husband to forget his-- their-- beautiful sons it must be the truth.

He loves Jimmy.

Loves him so much, which is why he looked up the words to say. So the police and Miss Livianna of that small kingdom would punish him instead.

Alternate truth.

Analogous with different perspectives.

The truth was a matter of what one did with those other perspectives.

Jimmy clenched his Mother's hand as another Friday afternoon slipped away into evening.

It'd be exactly the kind of thing Peck would come up with.

To excuse the hurt.

Although that wasn't completely fair he supposed.

He hoped so. He hoped Peck-- he was afraid-- Peck would come back and wound him round and round again in circles.

"I hope I have better news next I see ya, madam," he said, tipping his hat just a slight bit.

And Jimmy could pick out the corner of an expensive looking leather wallet, fat with probably cash. And for a thirty-ish man nearing forty looked too young and too free of fatigue from crying kids or moody older ones like Peck. So no pictures or the like.

then that could mean the stylish, compact Safari was his.

___________________

"You are a crazy son of a bitch you know that?" my roommate crowed.

Making me snatch my pillow firm onto my face.

Having come back from visiting day.

He was one of the many shifty-eyed, too casual types in this place. Still, not a bully.

"Come. On. If I said the little one came by again, another sweet little card for you too."

At least, I'd never been on the receiving end despite easy access, opportunity, and well, the jabs or pantsing, wedgies, would practically do themselves. I frankly wasn't too keen on the idea of 'kicking a fit.'

Though Shade was of the few which strictly enforced a no contact policy between its alumn. Not cons, not delinquents, brats, but students. Just students.

"I never get any cards."

That's because he'd pulled his half-sister's ponytails and used her dollies as golf balls and therapy fodder.

"Yeah no shit," I mumbled, turning to face their door.

Then again, at this angle I had to look him in the face.

And he was sneering. "I swear you are a drama queen. A practical fruit, what do you imagine will happen at your doorstep in what now, four months' time?"

"Six."

"Six! Damn what have you been doing without me."

"Be a killjoy I guess."

"Huh! I mean you're annoying as all hell but that deep de-espresso YouTube shit isn't a crime!"

"I guess it sorta is when you've been labelled clinically. Who knew right?"

"Seriously. What are you? Cuz no offense but you could not make it as an artist and they don't give us sharpies in here so not sure if that street stuff you were so on back then will fly either."

*I hate myself*

I hate the damage I'd done, all the ways I acted as the worst influence in the life of a little person who was already losing his Dad. And to Dad, who would surely be ashamed.

Would ask me what had been running through my mind then...

When I peeled the weasel pest off his bunk and rolled him round like a spicy sushi roll to twist his arm.

Okay the arm bit, was to not get waterboarded in the showers.

In those showers, in that moment, the rules just didn't seem to apply anymore.

If, by chance, there are those little dents in all the 'don't steal,' 'don't kill' sermon, then is it just a bad kid when those rules get broken? Even when the adults did it first? When they do it worse and there are actual, acknowledgeable consequences? Scorn the other adults who try to be good, be what they'd been taught and teach too?

I'm sorry.

the honest truth. Dad.

Your son's a bad person.