Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25891880-20150412232626

I live on the coast of California, in Los Angeles. I am fourteen years old, and I don’t have any friends. Despite that, I am not an only child either. I have a big brother, about two years my senior. His name is Tyler. As kids, we played outside a lot. We would go out adventuring in the woods, and draw pictures with sticks in our backyard. We were basically best friends, and he meant everything to me.

One day on Tyler’s tenth birthday, he got a gift from his mother. I saw him run to her to grab the package. He opened it up, ignoring the card, to find a Gameboy Advance. It was red, and brand new. At the time, video games weren’t very modern. At the time, the Gameboy Advance was a big thing because it was one of the first portable consoles to be in color. That being said, he loved it. He received other Gameboy games like Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario, Pokemon, etc. But over time, he slowly began ignoring me and became hooked on video games. He bought all of those great video games, and played them non-stop. You would probably see him on an Xbox, a Wii, a Nintendo DS, Lord knows what else. I sort of missed the fun times we had as kids. I felt very lonely, especially since I was anti-social and didn’t have friends. I just wished he could just get off those stupid video games…

When I was twelve and Tyler was fourteen, he got an IPhone for his birthday. That was the “game” he played the most. And some of you know about IPhone games and that they can be very frustrating. One night, I could hear lots of noises from his room. He was probably getting frustrated at Flappy Bird or Geometry Dash again. He played them almost every night, and all that kept me up was his screaming and sounds of frustration. I was getting worried about him, and sometimes just angry. I asked him about why he always makes noises every night. I also mentioned that he had lots of cuts and bruises on his arms and legs. He got mad for some reason and told me that it was none of my beeswax. That wasn’t the only abnormal thing that happened, until a year later when I was thirteen. Being a teenager shifted me into being very annoying. Sometimes I poked him and bothered him, and of course he would get mad. It made me laugh to see him annoyed until one night.

On a cold, cold evening, I decided to pick on Tyler. He was snuggled in his blanket, resting on the couch. I couldn’t resist poking him, then hiding, then poking him, then hiding. He eventually woke up and caught me trying to poke him once more. He submitted to rage and anger. Getting up fast from the couch, he made his way to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and lunged at me. He made a few marks and cuts as I ran to my room, locking my door. I had never been so scared in my entire life.

A few weeks after what had happened, I had stayed away from my brother. Frightened that he would harm me, I rarely talked to him and never touched him again. I hated him for what he had done to me still, but I was also worried about him. I planned to take away all his video games so he would never be aggravated or mad again. On an unusual time at night, Tyler told our mother that he was going to the store. This was the perfect chance for me to get rid of his video games. After he closed the door behind him and disappeared into the streets, I strolled to his bedroom door without a worry to put my plan to work.

The door was locked. Why? I thought. Luckily enough, you only needed a pin or a pin-shaped key to open the door. I was always prepared. As I quietly opened the door, I was surprised to see almost nothing in the room. The light was dim, and his bed was messed up. There were tables and nightstands with nothing on them but a plate with half of a meal on it, a lot of spoons, bags with what looks like salt, and a few greasy dollar bills. But an even more shocking realization came to my head: Where were the video games? 