I recognized the speaker at the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a man wearing a motorcycle jacket and a bandana. The memory has mostly faded, but I can still see him standing in that jacket, his hands pressing his sides from inside those pockets.  My friend Michelle and I sat on folding chairs behind other people in that shadowy room. Motorcycle Jacket Man detailed his 12-step recovery, which I remembered hearing at a different meeting I had attended with my brother. At that meeting, Motorcycle Jacket Man stood at a podium. No podium this time. We sat in uneven rows, and he stood at the front. I listened, fidgety and aware of the hard seat and my need to remain still. I focused on dust motes overhead and Michelle next to me. I didn’t yet know my brother had died the night before. I was twenty.

After the AA meeting, Michelle and I strode alongside traffic to find a payphone. Sun glinted off the river of cars. We leaned into the payphone booth on the corner, squeezing ourselves in on either side of the phone. I put in a quarter and dialed my answering machine. A friend of my brother’s had called. I dialed again, this time, the friend. For a few heartbeats, I carried the stories and testimonials from the meeting. Gruff words, hard won by people who found so much pleasure, love, confidence, and pain…. My brother’s friend answered the phone. “Hey. You better get down here.” That’s all he said. His voice cracked and he could not continue. All the confidence from those survivors patiently, dedicatedly, crossing and uncrossing their legs in those folding chairs drained off the curb, spent.

Disassociation naturally follows trauma.

I am 13. A very young high school freshman. After school, I ride the subway home from Brooklyn Tech to Manhattan with my crush. He does not see me romantically, but he wins my heart every afternoon. We watch graffiti flying like a flip-book through the tunnels. The train crowns out of darkness to cross the Manhattan Bridge, and the sun lights his face. I absorb his high cheekbones and sharp eyes asking a question, recounting a story.

Oh, for 13. This is my first time in a different school than my brother. My crush is closer to 16, and bold. He has divorced parents, so two homes. One night, his father away on business, he throws a party. Twenty or so teenagers arrive to pose in uniform–cargo pants, fishnet stockings, ripped jeans. We exhale smoke of varying kinds all over the art deco furniture, filling it with the scent of patchouli, and the smells from Sheep’s Meadow but without the breeze. All of us stretch out, legs slung across sofas and beds. Pink Floyd’s The Wall shows on a TV set. Music churns low across the apartment. Is it the Pixies? The Cure?

As the night shifts to moonlight and whispers, I doze. But windmills of thoughts–new people, new experiences, new freedoms, keep me from deep sleep. I have not stayed over at a party before. Slept near so many unfamiliar people. My childhood exploring has always been limited to the shadow of my brother.

I rise from my sofa cushions, moving around sleeping bodies. Ambient light from nearby buildings reveals the details of sleeping faces. Eyelashes fanning cheekbones. Lip rings shining. Gently moving chests rising and falling. I feel alone without my brother, but also free.

I fumble with cool, trying to light a cigarette off the gas stove burner. My brother does not approve of cigarettes. The click-click-clicking and the smell of burnt hair makes me jump. But then, my crush is there. He takes the cigarette from my hand. He reaches toward the burner and holds the tip to the flame. He ignites it with a few quick puffs and a wink, eyebrow ring shining.

The serenity passed, down the avenue, gone. You better get down here.

I sobbed, left the handset swinging. My body crumpled into Michelle’s. The phone booth, a metallic freeze zone, separated the entire city from us. We pressed together, encased.

I can still see her, soft blue eyes and dark wavy hair. The crinkle on her forehead. We always laughed so easily. I can still see her, but not me. Those years I walked invisible, waiting for it all to pass.

From the passenger seat of Michelle’s mother’s car, I saw the city move past us, around us, but like the train, we flowed. Was there a green wave of traffic signals to usher me to him? My brother. My anchor.

We entered my brother’s apartment building on Rivington Street, just off Delancey. Our steps echoed down the narrow hall. His heavy brown door stood open. I moved past the stairs, the mailboxes, and I was inside. He was inside. My brother was only just across the apartment. He lay across his bed, legs hanging over the edge, reclining in his Pumas.

I will never be thirteen again. But I will be twenty forever, suspended in that moment I saw him last. His eyes are closed, and the curve of his dark brow and the smirk of full lips still lives. He hovers in that tiny snatch of a moment, still warm and sluggishly himself. I beg the police officers to let me go to him. But they say no. No.

He really is very dead.

I won’t see it, but he is.

They dial a number. It rings a few blocks north, on Avenue C just above Houston, where my parents wait for me at another friend’s home. The black cordless phone is in my hand, barely touching my ear. I look at it, hearing my mother’s voice coax me, and I am lost to age. Not 20 or 13. I’m off the graph because my brother no longer anchors me to the lines and numbers. I am floating out of awareness and my feet release their grip from just inside the doorway.

What makes some people like me, and others like him? The world isn’t welcoming to everyone.