I was seated on the bench, biting at my nails while my left leg bounced up and down. I heard someone open the front door quietly and had slowly closed it behind them. I didn’t even bother to look up to acknowledge whoever it was, I just kept my glare forward and continued nibbling at my nails.

Whoever it was that decided to join me outside took a seat next to me on the bench. I finally turned to see who it was, Howie’s small grin greeting me.

“What’s he doing?” was all that came out of my mouth, to which I’m surprised I even said anything; I was still fuming.

My reply was a moment of silence. “He’s sitting in the house…”

At that moment, for some odd reason, I just broke. My hard exterior resolved right along with my anger, and I’m not sure why. “Do you think I was a little harsh back there?” I asked Howie.

He turned to look at me, and even though I didn’t turn to look at him in return, I could feel his eyes staring at me. “Harsh? What Kevin did to AJ was harsh… but, he knows that and he feels really bad for what he did.”

“Well he should.” I retaliated, feeling my anger creep up once more, but it left just as quick as rose. “And I… kinda feel bad for snapping at him the way I did.”

“You know, maybe we needed this…”

My eyes snapped up to Howie, automatically giving him an awkward look. He looked at me and chuckled, “What I meant was… maybe we needed this emotional breakdown to occur. So much is happening to all of us right now, and what we’re doing is keeping it all inside and trying to remain strong for everyone else but ourselves.”

I continued to stare at him, what he just said settling deep within the back of my mind. I opened my mouth to say something in reply, but nothing came out. I felt him pat me on the back and when I turned to look at him, I was greeted by his famous warm smile, “When it’s all said and done, in the end you two are still cousins… and we’re all still brothers. We’ve been through so much within the past year and look at far we’ve come, doesn’t that tell you something? It tells me that our brotherhood is too strong to be broken, and we didn’t come this far to let it all go now.”

I quickly looked away from him, trying to blink away the tears that were threatening to fall from my eyes. I felt him grasp my shoulder in reassurance before he finally stood up from where we sat. “He’ll be inside…”

I didn’t look back at Howie, I just waited for him to leave. Once I heard the door open and close, I waited for a while longer in silence just to make sure I was alone, and once I realized I was, I turned and looked back into the house through the window to find my older cousin sitting on the chair, holding his head in his hands. I broke my gaze away from him and looked outwards again, letting my eyes linger up to the sky. For the first time in my life, four words escaped from my mouth that should have never came out.

“Where are you God?”

~*~*~*~*~*~

I pushed my door open and walked into my empty house, greeted by nothing but silence and darkness. I wiped furiously at my face to rid myself of the tears that continued to pour down, but when I brought my hands down in front of me, I seen the salty liquid glistening within the darkness. I felt a fresh batch of tears welling up within my eyes, but this time I wasn’t going to stop them from falling nor was I going to wipe them away, I decided to let it cascade freely; I had no one to hide from anymore.

I closed my door and just fell back against it, letting the back of my head hit the hard wood. For the first time, I let it all out, everything that I was keeping in all this time, I let it all go. I began sobbing uncontrollably, my tears and crying wracking my body. I slid down the closed door, raking my hand through my hair and biting my lip in hopes to cease my sobs. I drew my knees up to my chest and had hugged my legs close to me, placing my head down upon my arms. I was feeling so much at that moment, I couldn’t tell if I was angry, sad, depressed, or even happy. I felt so raw and naked, so exposed and vulnerable, and it was the first time in a long time that I’ve ever felt that way; I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I slammed my fists into the ground before I hauled myself up and ventured out into the darkness of my home. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing, all I knew was that I couldn’t stop myself, even if I wanted to. I reached out blindly to whatever was in front of me, which happened to be my entertainment center that was holding all my pictures and awards, and I just pushed it down, watching as everything fell and crashed to the ground. I watched as most of my glass items clattered to the ground and shattered into a million pieces, feeling satisfied that at least something, even though it was inanimate objects, were feeling a shred of what I felt at that moment, just shattered and broken. Whatever didn’t break, I picked it up and hurled it across the room, hoping that it would meet the wall and shatter upon impact. The sound of glass breaking was deafening, but it was satisfying at the same time, and ironically it was enraging me and calming me down all at the same time.

I continued to throw and break whatever I could get my hands onto, not caring that I was tearing my house apart, not caring that I was breaking things that had sentimental meaning, not caring that blood was spewing from my hands, not caring about anything at all. When it came to my coffee table, I swept all the contents off and pushed the wooden table out of my way, wincing when I heard it crash into the wall. Exhausted, I finally stopped my rampage and collapsed to the ground, bringing my bloody hands in front of me. I slammed my fists into the ground again, feeling my two fists hit something else instead of the ground. I looked down and seen that my balled up right hand landed on a book while my balled up left hand landed on a what seemed to be a picture.

I picked up the picture first from the frame I tossed to the ground and broke and turned it around to look at it; it was a picture of me and the four fellas, the very first picture we took, the five of us as the Backstreet Boys. Through my mixed feelings of anger, rage, confusion, and sadness, I felt a little shred of happiness creep up as I continued to stare at the picture. Me and Nick were the babies of the group; Nick being 12-years-old and I being 14-years-old when the group started. I looked at Brian and actually chuckled, I remember when we first met him, Nick, Howie and I actually had to suppress the laughter that wanted to break out upon hearing his strong Kentucky accent, but of course when we fell comfortable with the two cousins, we eventually ended up teasing him about it. I gazed over at Howie next in the picture, the first true best friend I actually had in my young life. Finally my eyes lingered over to Kevin, the person I was scared of and felt intimidated by upon meeting him, but all that soon resolved because he immediately began playing an important role in my life personally. Not only was he the older brother I never had, but he was also the father figure in my life, something I grew up without.

For that moment, upon staring at that picture, my anger and bitterness dissolved into almost nothing, memories of what they’ve done for me and how they’ve always been there for me as the brothers I never had made me want to go back and make everything right, but I couldn’t bring myself around to actually doing it. My heart was telling me that I should go back, my mind was telling me that I should do the right thing when the time is right, and my body was telling me to give myself time to let out everything that I’ve been holding in.

I placed the picture down and wiped the trickling tears away with the back of my hand. I looked down at the book my right hand landed on and picked it up, noticing that it seemed a little burnt and in bent up shape. I opened the book at immediately recognized the handwriting to be that of Nick. As I continued to scan through the book, I realized that it was his journal, but the question was what was Nick’s journal doing in my house? I flipped to what seemed to be his last entry and seen the date November 13th, 2005 written as the heading. Now Nick is a very personal person, and due to the respect that we have for each other we’ve learned to respect each other’s privacy, but his last journal entry caught my interest because it was around the time our accident occurred, so I was curious as to what his entry could possibly be about.

Upon reading that I begin to smirk, I could actually hear Nick’s voice reading this to me and I could actually imagine how he would look and sound when it came to talking about Kevin and his damn old western movies.

Now I literally laughed out loud reading that; a clear, mental image entering my mind of Kevin lounged out on a couch, watching his old western movies while slowly falling asleep, his head falling forward but jerking back up and his eyes opening wide in hopes to keep himself awake to continue watching his movie, but failing as his eyes flutter back shut and his head begins to loll downwards again and this becomes a routine for him.

My eyes widened upon reading this part, it was then that I realized that Nick wrote this entry the night of our accident, and he must’ve wrote this last entry minutes before we crashed.

Oh god, the memories of that night was flooding back into my mind, hitting me full force. I tried to fight the memories, but no matter how hard I tried, the memories of that night forced it’s way back into my mind. I remember feeling something hit me, waking me a little and causing me to swear out at whoever through something at me. I remember waking up when I felt the bus jerk, looking down to see Nick on the ground in a daze, blood pouring from a small gash in his head. I remember Kevin walking in and I had asked him what happened, he explained to both Nick and I that someone was trying to run us off the road. I remember going towards the back of the bus to the bathroom to get a washcloth for Nick to clean up the blood on his head. I gasped, I remember the crash happening and the immense pain that coursed through my body. Nothing but blackness and silence surrounded me for the longest time, but my next memory startled me the most, actually caused my heart to stop beating for a moment…