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A hoarse bark of a chuckle coh with him, even while the memory makes me want to cry

"Good," he whispers

And we resuil

I DO THE MATH IN one for ten years, eleven if you count the war I wrote Thomas about a letter a week, soe of four per month Four, times twelve ht letters, tens of thousands of words, countless moments between my baby brother and me

I don’t have any of his letters; they were burned in calobe When you live on the ht, and sentimentality is too heavy to carry But I don’t need them--I already know every word and every curve of every letter he wrote, by heart

It’d be a mistake to think eren’t close just because we didn’t live in the same place I know brothers who shared the saht of each other

But Thomas ith me all the time Every new place, new experience, new hts--I couldn’t wait to share them with him And I knoas the same for him Thomas confessed his deepest secrets to ht it wouldin the world that he could write about himself that would make me think less of him That would make me not love him fully and completely--the same way he loved in return

There wasn’t and I told him so

I kno to live in a place where my brother’s not But I don’t kno to live in a world where he doesn’t

And as I sit here at the side of his bed and watch his life slowly slip away, it’s like a part ofit hard and barren Like the parched, cracked earth without water Like the arctic without the sun

I watch hilasses and short, skinny limbs

"Show me, Edward! Show me how to kick the ball like you"

"Can I sleep in here with you? You’ll keep the shadoay"

"When you go away to school, Edward, can you take ets slower and slower, and I know Lenora and Michael see it too

And I look at his face and he’s not wearing his glasses They’re folded on the bedside table because he doesn’t need the wrong

And there’s absolutely nothing I can do

Except sit and watch hio, and feel the fury at the injustice of all of it

Thoer than any that ca for hier

But it doesn’t come

The only sound in the rooainst the still, perfect silence The doctor steps forward and checks for a pulse, a heartbeat, with his stethoscope He lifts each of Thoently and even before he utters the words, Michael’s face collapses into his hands and the silence is overwhelone," the doctor tells us

And it’s over, just like that But I don’t feel ee I’ve never known I want to destroy so I want to tear this damned castle down, stone by stone, for no other reason than because it’s still here andto channel the seething energy into comfort because I know that’s what Thomas would’ve wanted

The doctor lifts the sheet and covers him And still--stupidly--I wait for it to billoith his breath When it doesn’t come, when the white cotton lies quiet over his features, a wave of crushing disappointet to my feet and move over to the bedside table With reverence, I pick up those thick-fralasses, and my vision blurs as I hold them in the palms oflasses into my shirt pocket, above my heart--where I swear they will stay every day for the rest of my life