March 15, 1991
Mom just sits in her bedroom and cries. She won’t come out and talk to me so I go back to my empty apartment. It’s a lot quieter without Brad.
Brad’s been gone for a whole week now. They’ve been putting up pictures of his face all over town. He’ll probably be on the news soon.
I’m trying to make myself write about what happened but it’s hard.
We’d been drinking, like I said. Wandering back from downtown because we were celebrating my birthday and we were both too smashed to drive. Got to this sketchy part of town and I knew it was Brad, he’d lead us there on purpose.
I told him it was shitty, he was a guy and he might think it was funny—one of his “games”—but us girls know the bad part of town at night and drunk is just a recipe for disaster.
He didn’t care. He said, “C’mon, let’s check out this building, I hear it’s haunted!”
That’s Brad for you. I’m drunk and hungry on my birthday, thinking we might just have a good time as brother and sister for once, and he leads me to an abandoned building at midnight.
I begged him not to go in but he went ahead anyway and I didn’t have a choice — if I didn’t follow him, I’d be alone, so I went in with him.
He shouldn’t have gone there. He shouldn’t have made me go.
I don’t feel like writing anymore.