Paranoid they called him. Crazy, schizophrenic, a lunatic. So they locked him away. I was 7 he was 19. My parents were glad to have a normal kid like me. I get As and Bs in school, I am on the track team, and I don’t yell and scream at invisible people. Then the doctors said he could come home. They don’t want him to come home but they were too weak against the guilt people tried to lay on them. Whispers of “they threw their kid away and won’t even take him back” and “how could a mother not love their son enough to take care of him”. So he came back. He smiled at me and rustled my hair like I was a child. I suppose the last time he had seen me I was a child. I supposed at the time I was still a child. A quick supper and we were both ushered up to bed. My parents locked him during the night and they would switch off working from home. I was 17 now he was 29. The days went on almost as if he wasn’t there except for the few times I would come home and hear him talking quietly to himself in his room. A month after his returned our parents started allowing us to be around each other on our own. We would go on walks down out of town and around the lake. Sometimes we’d talk and other times we’d walk. He hated the asylum. There was no trust no freedoms and far too many drugs. The nurses viewed you as your report made human distancing themselves so you’re just the job. Protecting themselves though compartmentalizing job from everything else. This isolation with some many people was excruciating. At least at home he had some autonomy. One day we weren’t talking until the end of the walk. “Someone’s been following us. Someone’s been following me” his eyes darted behind us and he grabbed my arm. We zig zagged through the streets eventually making it home. “I didn’t mean to scare you” he said softly “just be careful” and he went into his room. The next morning he was gone. All the doors in his room locked and unbroken. But nowhere in any of the books and crannies could we find him. Now I’m 29 and I’m going to find him.