Step One: We admit that we are  powerless over our addiction. 

            “Remember when Dad brought home all those comic books?” Adam asked. “They were in that huge cardboard box and he was so fucking smug because he scored them for like, ten bucks. That old guy, uh, whatever his name was, had some huge yard sale. Anyway, Dad came back with that box of comic books and dropped them off in front of us and turned off the TV,” he said.

            Phoebe nodded. She remembered. She’d almost thrown a tantrum because he’d just stormed in and clicked the television off without even a word. She remembered that she was surprised when Adam didn’t even protest; instead, he just stretched out to grab the box. His eyes were all lit up.

            “You were just sitting and staring at the blank screen, all pissed because he didn’t explain himself. But then I picked up the Superman comic, and you looked at me. Still all pissed off and shit, but you were looking at me waiting for me to do something, so I started reading it out loud,” he said.

            Phoebe narrowed her eyes. “I get it. You’re truly an idol. Top notch brother,” she said.

            Adam shook his head. “That’s not the point.” Adam extended his arm and shoved her towards the wall. “The point is, I told you I was going to be Superman. Do you remember that?”

            Phoebe shrugged, pulling her hair over one shoulder. “Um, yeah. I remember,” she said. Phoebe’s eyes crossed over her brother cautiously. He’d gone mad. It was that simple. He’d come home from college with wild animal eyes, hungry and crazy and never staying still. He was always focused on something, and at the moment, it was on his crumpled poster on the wall behind her.

            He smiled. “Superman. I’m fucking Superman, Phoebs,” he said. He scratched his head, eyes adjusting to focus on the wrinkles of his comforter. “I remember what you wanted to be, too,” he said.

            Phoebe shifted her weight. She crossed her legs over one another, pretzel style. She didn’t remember this day as avidly as Adam. She remembered she’d taken the box into her lap, barely able to see over the top, and listened to him read the dialogue of the comic in an extensive variation of accents. She even remembered picking up a wrinkled comic book that was about Batman. But Phoebe didn’t remember ever mentioning what she wanted to be.

            “You do?” She asked, arching an eyebrow.

            Adam nodded. “You said you wanted to be Catwoman. You sounded pretty smart, too. Because you said Superman was too boring and Catwoman was cooler than Batman ever could be,” he said.

            Phoebe laughed. “Oh, yeah. Definitely me,” she said. She looked over him warily, though. She sighed, taking in the silence. Adam stared at his hands, fumbling his fingers together. She looked down at his hands, following the movements.

            “Hey, Phoebs,” he said.

            “What?” She asked, looking up at his face.

            “You want to try it, don’t you?” He asked.

            Phoebe shrugged. “Try what?”

            Adam rolled up his shirt, revealing the marks along his arm. His veins were twisted and dark and purple, Phoebe looked at them and all she could think was that, well, they were very wrong. She was seventeen, and she wasn’t stupid, she’d known he was on something ever since he got back. Some shitty drug he’d picked up while he was away from home. Phoebe liked weed, but that was nothing in comparison, especially not when she looked in Adam’s eyes and found that she could barely find her brother in there.

            He was there with memories, his fuzzy buzz-cut and his pale skin, but the track marks on his arm and his huge pupils were all wrong.

            “I can be Superman and you can be Catwoman, I guess,” he said. “And you can’t bullshit me, Phoebs, you want it. Anything to get you away from here,” he added.

            She tensed.

            “Mom’s as out of it as ever. From what I can tell, Dad’s even more of an ass from when I left,” he said. “How pissed do you think he’d be if he found out I was even offering you this shit? Damn, he’d murder me, you know that, right? You’re the favorite.”

            Phoebe looked at him and sighed. “Do you really feel like a hero, uh, when you’re using?”

            Adam smirked. “Invincible,” he said.

            Phoebe bit into her bottom lip. Hard enough that she could taste blood. She looked up at her older brother, eyes wide, and held out her arm. She looked at him as he pulled out a baggie, a needle, elastic and a lighter from his bag.

            “It doesn’t even hurt,” he said. “Just relax, alright? Everything’s uphill from here.”

__

            Adam was walking and talking and living one day and the next he wasn’t.

            It was that simple. He’d gone back to school at the end of the week. Phoebe got a bear hug, their father got a wave and their mother got a kiss on the forehead. Then, Adam never came back home. Phoebe read in the papers that his roommate found him on the ground, after having an irreversible stroke, Adam became a vegetable.

            His roommate found him as a vegetable, drool down his chin and blood on his arm, and that was that. Adam was finished. Her father didn’t bother to keep him living on machines, laughed and shook his head.

            “That’s not fucking living, is it, Phoebs?” He’d asked. It was a sour laugh, bitter and tight in his chest. She saw his eyes grow cold as he stared at his son in the hospital room. Adam didn’t look like her brother, not the one she remembered most recently. He looked like a little boy, lost and out for a nap in an unfamiliar home.

            She stood stiffly next to her father, illuminated by florescent lighting, thinking of her mother sitting stiffly at home. Hidden by curtains and the ever present darkness of the master bedroom, weeping. A good, releasing, exhausting sob. Staring at nothing and sobbing. Just the thing Phoebe wanted to do now.

            But as a Caldwell, she was taught something since she could talk. Emotions were for the weak—and Phoebe wasn’t about to break down.