Nate

**Before**



“I’m really sorry!” my father laments, pacing back and forth in the police chief’s office after casually resting a stack of hundred-dollar bills on the chipped and worn wooden desk in front of the officer. “My son has a mental problem; he doesn’t do these things on purpose.”
I clench my fists tightly to hold back the impulse to punch the walls when I see him talk about my disorder like that. I bite my lip as hard as I can, feeling the trickle of blood run down my tongue. The pain eases the heavy, unbalanced feelings swirling inside me.
It takes almost an hour for Vinicius to manage to get me released without any further issues. As I collapse into the passenger seat beside him, I can’t help but remember how much my father loves to throw my diagnosis in my face. He uses it whenever it suits him, making it clear how much he believes I’m a messed-up piece of shit and a byproduct of his marriage. He also pulls that card whenever I get in trouble at school or land in police custody again for getting caught tagging things.
“Oh, he has a mental illness, he takes medication…” it’s the same old song. In police stations, he often adds a bribe to keep me from being charged as a juvenile delinquent. At schools, he tries to cover up my screw-ups by offering trips to the principals, stacks of cash—anything to prevent my mom from whining in his ear for hours about her “problem” son. I know Vinicius’s efforts aren’t for my sake; he’d be happy to stick me back in a boarding school in some far-off country or let me rot in jail until I’m of age. But he can’t stand the thought of Suzana in his head, complaining about what her rich, superficial friends would say if a Dumont got locked up. She loves the weight of our last name and would hate it if I tarnished it by being apprehended as a criminal. And my mom wouldn’t have any excuses to send me back to a boarding school, where I spent almost my entire life.
I took a bunch of slaps hours ago when they caught me trying to use my spray paint on a statue on the street near the school. I was taken to the police station when one of the officers noticed I was wearing a watch that cost double his salary. Well, at least it was only slaps, right? I’ve been beaten with batons, handcuffed, and tossed into the “cage” of a police van a few times.
I don’t usually tag statues; I hate the irregularity of their contours; a flat surface is a thousand times better. But there was a “roll”—a shared signature for an entire gang—by the Turma. It’s a group of assholes who love to “overlap” my crew. Overlapping is an insult; it’s when a jerk decides to tag over someone else’s work. We from the Toca don’t usually do that; our crew likes to respect other people’s tags. But the Turma only has cowards, and whenever they can, they spray over our artwork. So I was ready to leave a message by overlapping their “roll” when a cop grabbed me by the neck and knocked me in the head. I knew from then on it would be nothing but trouble.
My father took away my credit card, my internet, and when he dropped me off at school not long ago, he said that next time he’d let me go to jail. Then he left, but not before whispering, “I don’t know who you take after.” I know he hates the fact that I’ve always been this way, problematic and enraged.
My mom says I was a nervous baby, that I’d bite her when my teeth came in if I wanted something. I wonder if that’s just another one of her delusions since she loves to live outside of reality. When she’s not high on opioids, she drinks champagne for breakfast.

The only good part of my family is the spoiled princess who just stepped out of the Mercedes in front of the school. She scolds the chauffeur, tapping her finger on the glass, then struts away in her pink sneakers and ridiculously tight jeans clinging to her thick thighs, which irritates me. I’ve already told her I hate seeing the guys drooling over her body, and that she should stop wearing clothes that are practically splitting open, like she loves to do. She called me a misogynist, and from that response, I should’ve known she’d disregard my opinion.
She skips over to me, taking the lollipop out of her mouth just to plant a smooch on my cheek, filling my nose with the cloying scent of her floral perfume.
Bianca is the only good thing I have—the light part of the nightmare that is my existence. And a reminder of the perfect person I will never be. She doesn’t have Borderline Personality Disorder; she doesn’t live on the edge of the world like I do. On the contrary, my sister is stable, and her only problem is having inherited too much of Suzana's love for status, money, and the elite. Bia loves being rich and having expensive things. And even though I hate those traits in my mother, I don’t mind seeing them in Bianca.
We’ve always been very close, and she got sick when my father decided to send me to a boarding school in Switzerland when I was eight, separating us for the first time. I went a long time without being able to talk to Bia, to my mom, and I didn’t even hear from my father. When I returned years later just for the holidays, Bianca had become a skinny little girl with sunken eyes and a bony face because she hardly ate. Like me, she suffered from the distance and the longing. But during my days at home, my little Witch blossomed, started eating again, smiling, and everything began to crumble whenever they separated us. That’s why she shares my resentment toward Vinicius; she blames him for those things. But Bia has no idea what happened to me at the boarding school… Anyway, I shake off the train of thought that would lead me to a breakdown, the need to smash the whole school to relieve my anger.
“You screwed up again, didn’t you?” she asks, rubbing the lollipop on my mouth to tease me.
I turn my face away, wiping the sugary residue from my lips with the back of my hand.
“Not at all, Witch… This time, I just took a few slaps. And I even took a ride in a police car, in the back seat. They didn’t even throw me in the van,” I say, smiling as I drape my forearm over her shoulder while we walk in arm in arm toward the school. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
I brace myself because I know my sister. She’s not going to like what she hears. I thought about this all night, tossing and turning on the mattress anxiously and restlessly. A night I couldn’t sleep because there was one thing—or rather, one person—who dominated all my thoughts. A ruined girl with beautiful golden hair who wouldn’t let me close my eyes.
“Here it comes…” she huffs, crossing her arms but not leaving my side.