When did you realize your childhood ended too early?

The Lie and the Loss

My dad was a hardcore substance addict. You see, my dad let his dealer use our house as a substance stash while my six-year-old brother lived there. He popped opioids like it was a Fruity Pebbles cereal. I was 14 when I learned how to lie.

The first time my baby brother Jake almost found dad’s stash, I thought my heart would explode. Dad’s med bottles were right there behind the sock divider.

I grabbed Jake and swung him around like we were playing airplane until he forgot what he was doing. That’s when I learned how to lie to protect my brother from our dad.

By the time I was 17, I’d gotten really good at it. Good enough that my boyfriend Tyler believed me when I said the bruises on dad’s arms were from work.

Tyler had his own problems with bruises, so he didn’t push. His parents were mean drunks and he practically lived at our house. This was convenient for both me and Jake, now six, who absolutely loved him.

We were sitting on my roof looking at the stars when he grabbed my hand.

“Promise me we won’t end up like them,” he asked, voice shaking.

I squeezed his hand back.

“Never.”

The thing about promises is they’re easy to make when you don’t know what’s coming. Tyler helped with everything. When dad passed out on the couch, Tyler carried him to bed.

When Uncle Mike came over with pizza and pills hidden in vitamin bottles, Tyler distracted Jake with soccer in the backyard. You see, Uncle Mike was Dad’s dealer, but Jake thought he was the coolest.

He taught Jake trick shots and always brought presents. I guess Dad’s addiction got pretty bad because it was around this time that things started to disappear.

Jake’s piggy bank got lighter, so I replaced the money. Since I had a 4.2 GPA to maintain, I couldn’t get a job. So instead, Tyler drove me to this sleazy plasma center near us twice a week.

They didn’t even care that I wasn’t 18, and they gave me $600 a month. When my appendix burst, Tyler was the one to drive me to the hospital.

After the surgery, they offered me pain meds. I was going to say yes, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the promise me and Tyler had made, no substances, so I refused.

As soon as Tyler drove me home, my dad cornered me. I thought he was going to ask if I was okay or even offer me a glass of water. But no, “Where are your pain meds?” was the first thing he asked.

“They didn’t offer any,” I lied. My dad sighed and walked away. Tyler was the only one to comfort me.

Over the next few weeks, he came over almost every day with flowers and Hershey’s kisses. I wanted to appreciate them, but I couldn’t because I noticed his bruises were getting worse, and the light in his eyes was dying more and more.

I was seeing him so much that Jake started calling him his big brother. So, my dad started to let him sleep over every night, lol. The one night he went home, his parents had just come back from a 3-day bender.

Tyler showed up at our door the next day. What I saw disgusted me to my core. His lip was split and there was blood all over his shirt.

Jake was asleep upstairs and dad was somewhere. Tyler went straight for dad’s stash. I watched him grab a handful of pills.

“What the f are you doing?” I asked while walking towards him, but he just looked at me with these dead eyes.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said.

“Just this once, just to make it stop hurting.”

I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. Instead, I walked over to the drawer and took one, too.

“Just one?”

We promised each other. In just minutes, a gray cloud was lifted from my eyes. For the first time since I was Jake’s age, everything felt okay.

I was laughing at nothing when I turned to Tyler, expecting him to laugh with me. But that’s when I saw it. His lips were turning blue and his eyes were rolling backward.

20 minutes later, he was on my kitchen floor and I was doing CPR while trying to explain to the 911 operator what happened. It was 11:47 p.m. when the paramedics pronounced him dead. He had taken a handful.

Uncle Mike somehow got there before the cops and looked at Tyler’s body like it was nothing.

“Shame about your boyfriend,” he said. “Some kids just can’t handle the pressure.”

Rage boiled my blood. Not only did he destroy my family, but now he was a color, and I hate colors. The cops showed up 20 minutes later asking questions I couldn’t answer without exposing everything.

Uncle Mike stood there the whole time, his hand on my shoulder like he was comforting me, but his fingers dug in whenever I started to say too much.

Dad finally stumbled downstairs, took one look at the scene, and his face went white. Not because Tyler was dead, because he saw his stash scattered on the counter where Tyler had grabbed it.

Jake’s footsteps creaked on the stairs. I bolted up, blocking his view of the kitchen.

“Hey, buddy, let’s go back to bed,” I said, scooping him up.

He rubbed his eyes, confused.

“Where’s Tyler?”

I heard sirens.

“Tyler had to go home,” I whispered, carrying him back upstairs. My hands shook as I tucked him in.

“He’ll visit another time.”

When I came back down, they were loading Tyler’s body into the ambulance. No sirens this time. No rush.

Uncle Mike was talking to the lead officer, slipping something into his hand. The cop nodded and suddenly wasn’t interested in the pills anymore.

“Looks like an accidental OD,” the officer announced. “Tragic when kids get mixed up with substances.”

I wanted to scream that Uncle Mike was the supplier, that he’d been poisoning our neighborhood for years, but dad’s warning look stopped me.

After everyone left, he grabbed my arms hard enough to bruise.

“You keep your mouth shut about where those pills came from.” He hissed. “You understand me? We don’t need that kind of trouble.”

I nodded, but inside something had snapped. Tyler was gone because of Uncle Mike’s substances because I didn’t stop him. Because I took one, too.