Bullet

Prologue

A/N - A huge thank you to Noelle (hepburnettes) for the BEAUTIFUL cover <3

Updated A/N - Bullet is currently in the running for possibly being noticed and possible publishing over at www.swoonreads/m/bullet. Please head over there and vote/comment/rate, anything to help it get noticed. Thank you all so much! <3

Prologue

If you looked up the term ‘brother’ in the dictionary, you would get something like:

“A male who has the same parents as another or one parent in common with another.”

This definition was the only one that seemed to make sense to me when it came to talking about my brother, Clay. He was born before me, thirteen months to be exact. We shared the same mother and father and had the same blood coursing through our veins. This was how we were rightly related to one another.

If you kept scrolling down the list of definitions, you would also come up with:

“One related to another by common ties or interests.”

Clay and I always had the same love for things like Chinese takeout on Sunday nights and trashy reality television shows. We were both book worms with common interests of pursuing English degrees at NYU and dreaming up futures with book signings and frazzled hair as we tried to reach a deadline. Clay was a morning person who was all smiles and wide eyes at seven in the morning. I was the same, only liking to sleep in a few extra hours.

And we both shared the same love and utter adoration for each other.

But the final definition of the term ‘brother’ that scared me the most was this:

“One of a type similar to another.”

Sure, Clay and I had so many physical features that were similar, what with the auburn locks and bright, baby blue eyes. We shared freckles dusting along the tops of our noses and through our cheekbones, almost dotted in the same exact spots. We dreamed the same futures for ourselves and liked some of the same foods.

He was my older brother, the one who inhabited this Earth before me and the one who was supposed to show me the ropes when I was too young to understand everything. Older brothers were supposed to stick up for you in the school yard against bullies and annoy you to no end when you were home with one another.

But somehow, the roles of our stand points in this family were reversed as we got older and high school became the turning point in both of our lives. My brother was no longer the protector, but the coward. I was no longer the little sister who could hide behind her big brother, but the one who was standing in front of him and protecting him. I wasn’t allowed to run to Clay when I had a problem or an ex boyfriend that needed a stern talking to. He wasn’t the strong one with a sturdy figure or the one who annoyed me to the fullest when we were home alone.

As high school became harder and the bullies became more full of themselves, the times at home were always eerily quiet and almost soul-shuddering, like you knew something was bound to happen that would crack the foundation we all took so long to build. He would sit in his bedroom in the blinding silence and surround himself with his thoughts and nothing more than a simple cough or two came from behind that wooden door for more than a year.

That’s why the final term in the dictionary scared me the most.

Because the moments I had with Clay weren’t always this scary and quiet. I could remember him pulling me on a bright red wagon during one summer when were six and seven. He took me to my first ballet and got me backstage passes for my favorite band the day I turned fifteen. We collapsed onto the living room couch with Chinese takeout on Sunday nights and stuffed our faces until we couldn’t fit anything more into our bodies. He’d tell me about how his latest play was coming along and I would tell him how my current English essay was going.

At one point, we were so close that we decided to take our dreams one step further, attending NYU the year after each one of us graduated. I remembered him talking about how he would test it out for me, making sure he was my tour guide when I finally managed to graduate a year after him. He was in the process of buying dorm room furniture and applying for scholarships to help my parents when it came to the heavy weight of their financial status. But he didn’t even need it, because I knew he was smart enough to get a full ride.

And all of that changed at the shuttering thunder in school that day.

If the term ‘brother’ meant that the person in question was similar to you, then I was fearful of the day I would end up just like Clay had; unnerving, broken and completely insane.

We shared so many common loves and wanted to be the same things when we grew up. Our physical features made it easy for those around us to tell that were related, the freckles and bright eyes always true telling features. Because of these similar traits and uncanny features, did that mean that I was going to end up like him one day? Would I turn against everyone around me and crack underneath the deep pressure that I couldn’t bear to tell anyone?

It’s all I can think about as I’m sitting here on the docks, my feet skimming just above the waterline and shivering lightly from the icy, small waves. I can’t help but think, will I have the same fate as Clay? Will I become a massive form of self-destruction and a raging monster to those I loved the most?

As my eyes drift across the expanse of water, fifty five and a half miles away from the civilization I was currently drowning in, I see the county prison. Bordered by high brick walls and dark, caramel rusted barbed wire, it was scary enough to make me quiver against the wet wood of the dock. The sun was setting behind it, still not making the dark clouds that were permanently set above it part ways for a moment. No matter how beautiful the surrounding area was, how much they cleaned up the outside or how the florescent lights from inside the jail shined through the windows and bounced off the waves…it would always be a place of utter fear.

I’d always hate to look at that place across the water because of who now inhabited it. He had gotten what he wanted, an escape from his old life and a way out of the misery the people he cherished the most surrounded him in. He was no longer being pushed into lockers and beaten up outside of school for the life choices he decided to make. He had no contact with the world outside of that rusted, worn down building that housed the worst of the population in Riverton.

Before they booked him and gave him the satisfaction that he wanted, I remembered him saying, “Now I get to escape this mental prison, Callie.”

The irony of his words was now hitting home. He had escaped the mental prison he had been buried under. He was no longer subjected to the things that depressed him, angered him and made him hate himself for who he was.

But now Clay was in a physical prison, one he had thrown himself into.

And the only thing I had left to ask him was, ‘Was the escape from the mental prison worth this?’