The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden

about as I hold it in my palm, begging myself not to use it.
     
    My hand shakes as my mind drifts back to a time when I wasn’t like this; where I thought that maybe, just maybe, everything didn’t have to center around pain.
     
    My older brother, Tyler and I were messing around in the garage.  He was about sixteen and I was eight. He was working on a motorcycle he had bought with the money he’d saved up from his summer job.
     
    “I know it’s kind of a piece of shit,” he said to me as he grabbed a wrench from the toolbox in the corner. “But it’ll get me places—away from here, which is all I fucking want.”
     
    He’d been fighting with my dad all day and had a giant bruise on his arm and cuts on his knuckles. I’d heard them arguing and then they were hitting each other. It was normal though. Life.
     
    “Why do you want to leave?” I asked, wandering around the bike. It wasn’t shiny or anything, but it looked like it could be fun. And if it could take anyone away from here, then it had to be something special. “Is it because of dad?”
     
    He tossed the tool back into the box rather hard and raked his hands through his long brown hair, which made him look like a homeless person, or at least my dad said so. “One day, buddy, when you get a little bit older, you’re going to realize that everything in this house is one fucking big lie and you’re going to want to get the hell away from here, no matter what it costs.”
     
    I stepped up on a crate and climbed on top of the bike, grabbing onto the handles as I swung my short leg over it. “Will you take me with you? I want to leave too.”
     
    He rounded to the back of the bike, squatting down to check the tires. “Yeah, buddy, I will.”
     
    I pushed the throttle, pretending to drive away, and for a second I saw the possibility of a life without pain. “You promise?”
     
    He nodded as he messed with the air pressure gauge. “Yeah, I promise.”
     
    It turned out my brother was a liar just like everyone else in the house. He ended up moving out, and leaving me behind because he’d rather be drunk then deal with life. A few years later, my other brother, Dylan, graduated and moved out of the house. He changed his number, never told anyone where he was going, and no one has heard from him since, although I’m not sure how hard anyone looked.
     
    I was twelve at the time and the only kid left in the house, which meant I was the main focus of my dad’s rage, something he made clear to me the night Dylan packed his shit and left. The beatings before that weren’t too severe; slaps across the face, lashings with his belt, and sometimes he would punch us or kick us, but would hold back just enough that it hurt like hell but could be hidden.
     
    I watched Dylan pull away from the driveway and drive down the road into the dark, pressing my face to the window, wishing I were in the car with him, even though Dylan and I had never been close. My dad walked in from outside, bringing in the cold night air with him. He’d yelled at Dylan all the way to the car, telling him he was a fucking moron for giving up his football scholarship and refusing to be on the team.
     
    “What the fuck are you looking at?” He slammed the front door so hard the family portrait above the mantle fell to the floor.
     
    I turned around on the couch and sat down, staring at the portrait on the floor. “Nothing sir.”
     
    He stalked toward me, his pupils swallowing his eyes, and I could smell the alcohol on his breath from clear across the room. He was bigger than me, stronger than me, and he had a look on his face that let me know he was about to use it to his full advantage and there was nothing I could do about it.
     
    I knew the drill. Get up and hide, otherwise he wouldn’t have time to cool off. But I couldn’t move. I kept thinking about my brothers who were gone and had left me behind like an old t-shirt. We used to be in this together, now it was just me. I started to cry, like a stupid fucking baby, and I knew it was only going to piss him off more.
     
    “Are you crying? What the fuck is wrong with you?” He didn’t slow his momentum as he raised his fist and slammed it into my shoulder.
     
    The pain that spread up my neck and down my arm sucked my oxygen out in one swift snap of a finger and I crumpled to the floor, blinking the black spots away from my eyes.
     
    “Get up!” He kicked me in the side, but I couldn’t get up. My