My Death Drove Mom Insane

I lay on the cot in the school nurse's office, begging Mom to save me.

She ignored every word. Instead, she bent over my younger brother, Caleb Bennett, cleaning the shallow scrape on his wrist while tears ran down her face.

"Caleb, if that animal ever bullies you again, you come straight to me. I'll deal with him myself."

Her voice was vicious, as though I were the one she wanted dead. But that wasn't what had happened. I was the one who had been beaten.

Mom, just turn around. Look at me.

My stomach was swollen hard beneath my shirt, bruises covered my body, and every breath hurt. I was dying.

I reached toward her. "Mom..."

She never turned. My arm finally dropped.

And suddenly I was no longer looking at the room from the cot. I was standing beside her, my body lying behind me.

Mom didn't notice. She kept cleaning Caleb's wrist with incredible care, as though she were handling something priceless. Every so often he sucked in a breath and let his eyes fill with tears, and Mom cried harder.

Then she glanced toward my body and snapped, "Still pretending? Look what you did to your brother. You'd be better off dead."

I screamed.

I'm already dead! Turn around! I'm only a few feet away. You could have saved me. Why did you give birth to me if you were going to hate me this much?

I fell to my knees and sobbed, but she couldn't hear me.

Caleb looked up at exactly the right moment. "Mom, Noah didn't mean to bully me. He was only trying to teach me a lesson. Big brothers are supposed to keep their younger brothers in line."

"Teach you a lesson, my ass," Mom said. "He's jealous of you. That's all he's ever been."

She stroked Caleb's hair. "Tell me the truth. Does he hit you often?"

I shook my head desperately. No. That's not true. I was the victim.

Caleb had dragged me behind the old gym with several of his friends and they beat me for nearly two hours. He was the one who did this.

But Mom couldn't hear me, and even if she could, she would have called me a liar.

Sure enough, after listening to Caleb's version of the story, she spat toward my cot and walked over. Then she kicked my body several times.

"You little bastard. Weren't you just whining that you were going to die?"

Her shoe struck my side.

"Go on, then. Die. You're not worth the air you're breathing."

She still didn't realize I had stopped breathing. She stood there waiting for me to react, and when I didn't, she spat again.

"You like playing dead? Fine. Stay on that cot forever. Don't get up."

Then she slammed the door and took Caleb home.

I stood there stunned. A strange force tugged at me, and the next thing I knew, my spirit was being pulled after Mom, unable to move more than a short distance away from her.

All the way home, she complained about me. Not once did she wonder if I was all right. Not once did she look back.

I was her son too. So why had my life never counted? Was it really just because I was the older brother?

By the time we reached home, my throat felt raw from crying, even though I no longer had a body.

Mom hummed while making Caleb soup. And me? She had already forgotten I existed.