Chapter 6: Birthday Blues

Dear Journal:

I'm so fucking stupid!

I should've known! Now I know why Miraj was doing the things he wanted to do yesterday!

He didn't want to go to the park on the weekend, he wanted a good night's sleep for once.

I should've known!

How is it I'm so stupid not to realize why he did what he was doing?

Chapter 5: Parked at the Festival

Dear Journal:

Today was a holiday from school, for both me and Miraj. He really wanted to take advantage of the day off, it seemed.

He came in this morning and asked if I could take him to the park.

I asked him to tell my why. He said that there was a festival going on, but he wouldn't say anything else.

The damn festival had been going on since the season started. I wanted to know why it had to be today, and he couldn't just enjoy the day off and go there during the weekend.

"It has to be today," was all he kept saying.

Eventually, I dropped everything I was doing, and I took him to the stupid festival.

Turns out he had ulterior motives.

Chapter 4: Money is no Object

Dear Journal:

Bookstore job may pay crap, but I managed to save up enough get one of those...

Ah, what the hell do you call them? Chicken...thing. The thing chickens live in. I got one of those. Miraj wanted to try to help out with the finances, so I scraped together enough to get one of those things.

He got the idea pretty quick. Sell the good eggs, get rid of the nasty ones.

I honestly didn't think he'd get lucky.

Chapter 3: Due To The Dead

Dear Journal:

I took Miraj's advice, and decided to go to school.

I also forgot how much I hate field trips. Especially field trips to the cemetery.

What's so great about the place? It's full of dead people, like it always is.

The only thing that really changes is exactly how many there are in the place. I mean, just a short time ago, they added one.

Chapter 2: The Book Job

Dear Journal:

...I got a job today.

I had to find some way to make ends meet. I mean yeah, I can't exactly get something full-time. I mean, who the hell hires a teenager for that sort of thing?

But I guess I got the next best thing.

Apparently, a few morons in town are under the impression I still go to school.

Morons or not, though, at least they were willing to give me a job at the bookstore. And I guess I gotta take what I can get.

They did give me the job on one condition, though.

Chapter 1: Burning Bridges (Mentions of attempted suicide)

Dear Journal:

Miraj is still pretty shook up over Iqbal's death. Probably because, unlike me, he actually liked the guy.

If the kid wanted to cry, I let him cry. There wasn't really anything I could do about it.

What I couldn't take was that it got so bad, he kept getting nightmares and waking up at the worst possible times of the night.

It's always the same nightmare, he says. He sees the fire, he hears Iqbal screaming. He wakes up right before he turns into ash, though.

And after that, he says he can't get back to sleep. Or rather, he doesn't want to.

...I don't blame him.

I told him earlier this morning, at least try to go to school. I could tell he didn't want to go, but I insisted. Dead Iqbal or not, he still needed to work on his education.

Or at least that's what I told him, anyway.

Prologue

Dear Journal:

I have no idea why the hell I decided to start writing one of these. Maybe it's because a few days ago, he was still around.

I'm gonna be brutally honest: I never always got along with Iqbal.

There were days I told him he sucked, to put it nicely. I even blamed him for Mom leaving.

A day didn't go by without me thinking of some awesome prank for him to deal with.

Hey, I figured he needed to lighten up once in a while. But no. He'd always say something like, "VJ, stop pulling that shit!"

The guy was lazy, never cared much for working. And even if I wasn't messing with him, I somehow got into trouble.

"Why are you such a bad kid?" He'd say. "Why can't you be more like your brother?" I guess sometimes he just needed a scapegoat.

At least we had Miraj there to keep things from getting too intense.

My little bro showed wisdom that most at that age have no chance of getting. He'd always try to get Iqbal to lay off me, and he'd try to get me to do the same.

Somehow, Miraj always knew when an argument was about to get out of control.

But he still needed some kind of parental guidance. He won't admit he did, but after Mom left, he was at a loss as to what to do.

I think we all were.

Then came that day. All I'm going to say is this: I may not have liked Iqbal...

But that doesn't mean I wanted him to die.

(End of Prologue.)