“Wake up”,the reverberating voice called. “Wake up Elias! Come on man, Delancey’s gonna kill us if we show up late today.” As I forcibly leaned myself up onto the edge of my bed, the bed I’d spent the last nine months of my ninth year of life in, and groaned mildly in protest. How dare the morning interrupt my usually scheduled programming. When I groggily peeled my eyes open, there stood before me my roommate, once more straining himself over my lack of uniform. Wallace Collins, my reluctant companion for the past nine months of snoring, schooling, slapping and all those days when I’d get my tie stuck in the door running to get to class. This infuriated Wallace, as he swore he had a record to uphold. The guy had insisted on the first day we were roommates he was going to keep up a family tradition of never being late to class the last year at Grant Academy for Boys, as his father had done and his father before him and on and on and on until the school opened and his 5-times great grandfather attended the school himself. No pressure, right? Wallace Collins was the human equivalent of an argyle sock; singularly devoted to a cause and yet bridled by some typically unknown force that kept him from success, one garish tagalong that held him from the same triumph that ran in his family. That force, that person, that saddling soul was me- Elias Colburn, 97 pounds of pure, hulking sardonic wit and genetic mediocrity. I’m aware what you’re thinking, big words for a scrawny twelve-year old, but believe me, when one attends a school known for a lack of leniency towards vulgar language, one learns that the best way to belittle your opponent is to refer to him as an intellectually repugnant porpoise.

     After considerable vexation from Wallace, I trudged from my sanctuary adjusted my appearances until Wallace stopped his perpetual whining. And as we ran through Wilmington hall, we witnessed the event that would push Wallace to attempt to bludgeon me to death with his shoe; right before our very eyes the bus that was taking us to our school promotion pulled off into the gathering fog, abandoning us and invoking the full fury of my studious friend. “Elias, do you know what my parents are going to do to me when Mr. Delancey has to tell them that their son isn’t going to be walking today?? They. will. kill. me.”He exclaimed in breaks between fits of huffing. He plopped himself beside me and held his head in his hands, grieving the loss of his status as the ideal son. To be honest, I was tired of Wallace constantly complaining about living up to his family's expectations. He had nothing to worry about as far as I was concerned. His parents, though strict, never raised a hand to their children, the worst punishment Wallace would receive was a firm scolding and having his library card revoked for a month. I was certain my own fate was to be far worse than Wallace's imaginings of his own demise at the hands of his beanpole father.  I knew my brother would be pissed enough to kill when he got the same news Wallace’s parents would receive. He’d gotten a special leave from the reformatory facility to see me ascend from his alma mater and onto Damien’s finishing school that day. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t get to see that boy move forward into manhood, as no one had informed my lethargic body that this was such a momentous occasion. So, having abandoned our delusions of grandeur, we sat there, unsure of just how much longer we had together before our only familial remnants would dismember us for our failure to meet their last fleeting hopes for us as children.
    We sat there for three hours, watching the time pass, ticking away our lives with it. Wallace was exaggerating, of course. However, I feared for my young life. For the last time Cecil showed up angry, he got sent up the river. We sat there, and sat there, and remained there until our folks showed up. Needless to say, Wallace’s father was not as livid as his melodramatic son had predicted. After saying his goodbyes, Wallace left me sitting on the steps, alone with my violent, shifty, sneaky brother. And after a half hour of near suffocating silence, I poured out my drama to Cecil. He peered down at me and I could picture a less-than-peaceful vision of death, I could picture my mother peering out the window and not seeing me walk up with Cecil… I could picture underclassmen returning to school with disdain only to unearth my still-uniformed corpse in stall number 5 of the lavatory east of Windsor hall on the north of campus, just mere feet from where my delirious visage and I sat. The look on his face did nothing to calm my nerves. All of my colleagues at St. Mary-Catherine's always said that Cecil was  a handsome enough boy, tall with eyes that “shined with a bright ambition”. However, Lilith Callaghan told me, one night after she and Cecil had gone out to the movies, he had a “ dark aura about him” and that if that I should ever understand this, I may have every right to run. Well, suffice it to say, peering at the waxy grin peeling  across his face, it took all the strength in me not to re-tie my laces and sprint as far as I could.  He turned his gaze towards the lilting banners haphazardly hung on the beech trees that proclaimed the school's ever-growing joy to be rid of yet another class of daring, ruinous youngsters. He stayed that way, staring complacently, until the May breeze blew his unkempt hair into the  amber eyes that manifested in me as well, displaying the extent of the Colburn family resemblance I inherited. Then be rose to his feet and gestured for me to follow him. I trailed  behind him, deciding in what was destined to be my last waking moments that all my belongings would be split amongst Wallace and a small group of our minors at Grant's; my books to those few whose spirits survived attempted subjugation, those who carry my reckless spirit. And by then Cecil had taken note of my  trudging, and called after me that unless I wanted to stay at Grant Academy for the whole summer, I had better haul it.
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    As we were stuck in what Cecil titled the ‘Ohmygodlearntouseaturnsignal’ traffic, I was still imagining the ways my brother could make me suffer for disappointing him. I sat stiff as a board, staring straight at the road ahead and doing my best not to picture what might happen as we neared the same stretch of road that meant home was getting closer and closer: the liquor store that Wallace and I rode our bikes to when he stayed for a summer, the library of books we’d grown out of, the gas station and the adjacent diner. This was the final push. We were almost home, I could’ve hopped out of car and sprinted to the place I knew he wasn’t welcome. I was forty-five feet away from salvation, from sanctuary, from the old millhouse that belonged to the parents of Davey Fankhauser. As we drove past their orchards I remembered the last time I’d seen my brother before this day, during my second year at the academy.
    I woke up groggily that night to my father and mother’s voices drowning out the sirens that were fast approaching. “Son, what the hell is all this? I told you, Angelica, I told you he couldn’t go one night without wrecking something. We told him, one night he could borrow the truck and what does he do? He gets himself into trouble! What in god’s name are you doing with yourself Cecil?! There is nothing left of the young man I raised. First, you fail your exams, I didn’t say anything. Then, you dyed your hair that ridiculous color, and I kept my mouth shut. But goddamn it, I can’t keep on sighing as you ruin your own life. You are not my son!” As his voice echoed down the hall and up the staircase, I poked my head into the room, and all I could see was Cecil, his face still chubby with baby fat, his stature small and straight, and his eyes set apart from the rest of his face. They looked as if you’d placed the eyes of a murdered man into a blind child. I could see the rage in those eyes, and how none of them seemed to notice anything but the room around them. My mother turned away from her husband to face her eldest son for the first time since he’d walked in the room, hands wet and face bleeding. “What did you do? Just tell us. We might be able to understand, we might be able to help. Alright, honey, just tell us. Where were you, what happened?” He looked her in the eyes and told her the story that would become his legacy in the eyes of Damien's and Grant academy students alike. He told her how he had gone out with Lilith to the football game, had gone to the bathroom and returned to find her douchey ex-boyfriend (the studious Davey Fankhauser) bugging her and refusing to leave well enough alone, getting in the truck, driving off and meeting Davey when he got home that evening. The rest was clear to us when I rushed to the door and three police officers asked to speak to my parents.
      Seeing Cecil sitting before me now after considering all this made me less nervous. He looked suddenly pacified when we reached the small upper class town we called home. I could picture my mother behaving just the way she had when Cecil graduated from Grant academy when I had only just started my fourth year of life. She rushed around with help from a small group of caterers to prepare a magnificent feast, dashing from place to place. I hadn't thought to scrounge up the nerve to let her know why I would be walking in with a cord and certificate. This must have been apparent to my brother, because as he set the parking brake, he turned to me and shook me. He hopped out of the truck and remarked slyly, “Don't worry about it, Elias. I did the same thing when I graduated from Damien's. You'll get off easy.” And, with his sentiment taken care of, he shut the door and began walking up the lawn. He got halfway to the door before he realized I was still in the same spot, stagnant and in shock even when he unlocked the door and waved me over to follow him.