Evening, Ocean Cliff

I want to drive my car over the cliff. It would be so easy; there's no barrier holding me back. Timing would be all that matters, falling in with the waves high so they catch the car and pull me out to sea. That would be a nice way to go, rocked to sleep by the water while safe inside my metal case.

Tryan watches me; I can feel his eyes on mine. He's the only one that gets me, but even he's far from guessing my thoughts. What would he make of them?

He's a lot like me, Tryan, minus ten years. If I was his age I bet we would be friends. That's what I tell him anyway. I'm lying though, at his age I hadn't yet hit puberty, I was still little and nerdy, carrying too many books in my hands because they weighed down my pack and hurt my back. Tryan is almost as strong as me now. We mess around and I punch him and he punches back and it actually hurts.

"Is my poem still there?" He asks. His voice low, a tone that has become too familiar in him. Already I know I'm going to have to make him cry before we go home.

"Yes, surrounded by university students' poems. People always stop at yours." They don't, but Tryan smiles. We watch the sunset in the distance. The waves below the cliff roll in in-sync with our breathing. The stereo is on, a CD by Imagine Dragons. I let Tryan choose the music when I see something really bad bugging him. So the indie music of bearded men trying to sound soulful marks our soundtrack. It would be nice, this scene, a university student talking to and guiding his younger cousin, the symbolism of the old car and new music written on our faces: but the moment is far from scenic.

The tears come suddenly and without warning. It's always like that; the silence builds and builds until he can't take it anymore and he talks. Tears fall down his cheeks and he removes his glasses to wipe a sleeve across his face. Without his glasses we could be twins. His skin, like mine, is an earthy shade of brown that shines red like mud in the dying sunlight.

"I got in a fight with dad again," he says simply. He doesn't look at me when he talks. His glasses go back on and glare a bright red. I know what he's going to say, it varies a bit each time, but the structure stays the same. It starts with his mother; it ends with his father. Tryan doesn't cry around them; they don't have a clue. I don't think it's fair that they get to break him and then he comes to me to get fixed. But how would I begin to explain? Hey aunty, hey uncle, I don't know what goes on in your house, but every time I hang out with Tryan I have to make him cry before he starts acting like himself. I could show them pictures for contrast, it's obvious juxtaposed. I have a picture of when Tryan turned 7 and I took him to the two story Lego store in the mall. His cheeks in the picture are still full of baby fat and his eyes shine in wonderful concentration. I should print the image out and glue it to their refrigerator; I should yell at them that I want him back.

"What happened?" I ask. I've done this enough times to know that if I want Tryan to snap out of his funk he has to do most of the talking. Silence resumes. The sun in the distance touches the horizon as if testing the water before descending.

"My mom wanted to go to the gym, the one on the corner with her friends. I said I didn't want to go, that I wanted to stay home. She asked me why not and when I told her I just didn't, she got mad and yelled at me."

He stops talking but I know there's more. There's always more. It begins with the mother but ends with the father.

"I told her I didn't want to sit in a smelly gym all day and then Lily came in to say she didn't want to go either because she had homework. Mom said it's my fault Lily is talking back to her like that and then Sephina came in to say she didn't want to go either because Ellen was on. She got angry and when dad came home she told him I was talking back to her."

The tears come faster now. Tryan doesn't sob, his tears are silent, and because of his glasses, even those go unnoticed. Only the red shadows beneath his eyes and a wet chin give him away. The truth he cannot see, I think. The last line of the poem he wrote the day I brought him on campus. He liked my university, liked the history. Almost everything he knows comes from YouTube, and YouTube claims my mental institution turned state university is the second most haunted place in America. He liked that, kept asking me to take him to the abandoned parts of school. I had already made him cry that day so he was being himself, running around and gawking at things. When I opened the gate to the abandoned sections of campus, the hallways still laden with old mental institution equipment and aged with asbestos fibers and cobwebs, we were both shaking in terror and shining our smartphone flashlights at every noise. I took him to the English Corner before we left, a sliver of a hallway that acts as the bulletin board for English majors. There's a poetry wall where anyone can post a poem, an impressively large lending library, and worn in leather couches where English majors crash after all night writing sessions. Tryan pulled out the moleskin journal I had given him and ripped out a poem. He found a tack and nailed it to the poetry board, next to one I'd written freshman year. I glanced at it but pretended not to so he wouldn't feel embarrassed and take it down. I went back the next day and read it. It was about his parents.