He’s gone because of me. I still hear his hoarse little voice, like he could never clear his throat, squeaking as he spoke. It’s like I can see him there in my doorway, holding his iPad, just taller than the doorknob thanks to his messy hair.

“Andy?” he said.

Music blasted in my headphones. When he walked in I didn’t see him. I drew in my sketchbook, black charcoal coated the edge of my palm and my fingertips. I had it smudged across my forehead and above one eyelid. He stepped on his tip toes, “tippy-toes” he would say. His little eyes peered above my sketchbook. I pulled out my headphones.

“What’s up?”

“Andy I don’t feel right,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, shortly. I didn’t speak to him right. Always so terse.

“I don’t know yet but it isn’t right.”

“You’re gonna have to give me more than that.”

My 7 year old brother thought for a moment, finding his words.

“I think someone followed me home today.”

I blinked several times. My knee bounced.

“I didn’t mean give me that much kid, Jesus.”

“I’m scared.”

“Yeah no shit. Why, um…why do you think that someone followed you?”

“I saw a man in the road and now he’s on my iPad.”

A chill tingled through my body. I felt weak, off balance. He turned it around, showing me. I stared at it for a moment, and then looked back at my brother.

“There’s no one there,” I said.

“He’s on the porch camera Andy.”

“Jeremy,” I said and sighed. “You locked the screen. I can’t see shit, give me that.”

“I can do it, stop!” he said.

He snatched it away but I grabbed his arm. We fought over it. We were brothers; we did this. I got behind him and wrapped him up in my arms. He slammed his head into my chin and slipped away from me, into the hall. Jeremy looked back one time. He pouted. Tears seeped out of the boy. He went to his room. I went back to my drawing, a copper taste in my mouth.

——

I woke up to mom screaming. She stood in my brother’s doorway shaking, near seizing. Books and toys all over. Bits of glass on the floor glinted blue from his nightlight. His empty mattress was soaked in piss. Jeremy never wet the bed. Not once. The bed sheets were ripped off, crumpled in the direction of the shattered window. A curtain dangled outside, into the gaping black.

His tiny eyes gaze at me, right now in my doorway, just a ghost that’s been there now 138 days. I found his iPad. His fingerprints were still on the glass. This morning I opened it and double tapped home to see what background apps were open. One of them was the security camera. I swiped over and just before I touched the image, I saw it. A man looked at me on that screen.