The Rascal by Eric Arvin

crowd around her and up from the floorboards, both heartbreaking and heart-stopping. She covered her ears to drown out the sound and wish away the fiddler before he even began. She wanted to cry out for Jeff.
    The computer screen turned black, and all the lights around her first flickered, then expired completely. The moan continued to grow until she could not take it anymore. She flung the blanket from her shoulders and raced to the bedroom. The moan followed her, echoing off the walls and mingling with her own cries like a wild nightmare.
    She fell into the bed with a piercing scream. At once, Jeff woke up, sitting and staring at her in frightened anticipation. “What? What is it?”
    She was shaken by the utter silence around her now. The lights were on again as if nothing had happened. But she knew something had happened. The thunder of her heart was proof of that.
    “What’s wrong, Chloe?” Jeff repeated. He did not reach out for her to comfort her.
    Nothing. There was nothing she could say to him. She was too aware of this place. He was too accepting of it.
    He dropped back to the pillow, shaking his heavy head in irritation.
    ***
    Ethan saw Chloe’s name and icon pop onto the computer screen. It took him aback. Her cartoon icon resembled her to such a degree that it was like coming face to face with her. Ethan’s sense of unease was growing. His skin had been crawling for the last hour, and he couldn’t help but think it had something to do with his brother, Jeff, though he hadn’t the vaguest idea why.
    Kelton was asleep. He had been up most of the night before taking care of their son, Malcolm, so he had gone to bed early tonight. They called Malcolm “Bug” because, as Kelton had once said, “He’s as cute as a bug.” Bug had been ill for the past few days and only now was sleeping soundly. Kelton was the one who usually took care of things. He had always been the more maternal one. Ethan was so busy with work.
    “You need to spend more time with Bug,” Kelton had said on numerous occasions. “He’s growing up fast and you’re going to regret not being around.”
    “I have to work, Kel,” Ethan would say. “I don’t have the luxury of working from home like you. Things will settle down soon. I promise. Then the three of us will have plenty of time together.”
    “You promise?”
    “I promise, baby.”
    Ethan had volunteered to look after Bug tonight so Kelton could rest. He had just spent an hour getting Bug back to sleep after an illness-induced nightmare. Those were the worst, and Ethan knew it from experience. When he and Jeff were younger, Jeff got sick quite often. His nightmares would set him to screaming. Ethan often wouldn’t sleep at all, waiting for Jeff to scream and their parents to go rushing into Jeff’s room to care for him. Ethan envied the attention given to Jeff. He envied the sound of his parents’ running feet as they made their way past his own room and to Jeff’s. Everything was always about Jeff. He was the Golden Boy.
    Now where was Jeff? Hours away, and Ethan suspected he was quite happy there with Chloe. Ethan’s anger had subsided over what had happened between them. The adoption had gone fine, after all. But the fact that Jeff didn’t show up and all Ethan got was a phone call telling him that Chloe didn’t “feel right” put him at a loss for words. That was, until he got back home and raged his indignation to Kelton’s sympathetic ear.
    Still, despite what had happened and the two years that had passed, something in Ethan’s gut told him to get in contact with Jeff. The darkness of the study around him pressed him to do so. Chloe was, after all, right there for the asking. It was that simple. He only had to say “How’s Jeff?”
    His mind drifted, though, to his parents. To his father and his mother arguing from one end of the house to the other. They had argued all the time. The house was on edge constantly, though it hadn’t always been that way.