It was the middle of January..

Silent treatment.

There’s this realness of i-dont-careism attached to this form of social sanction especially when it’s coming from your end. But when it’s the other way around, when you’re at the receiving end, it becomes quite as much of a burden to your heart.

Things had been that way since that 1st of January issue between my brother and I. Borrowing the legal parlance of my good lawyer friend, I could say things were pretty royally screwed.

What was it to feel eluded me. I was torn between shame and indifference. Shame because of what I thought I could had stopped at the onset from progressing but didn’t. Indifference, as I thought I had done nothing exactly wrong to be shameful for.

My brother had been my protector for as long as I could remember. I have thrived so well under his tutelage as he had schooled me so well with the ways of the world and especially about the cunningness that resides in the gut of some of the opposite sex. He had always told me to never let my guard down. I guessed he must had felt quite enough disappointment to refuse to look me in the eye until the day that I was to move back to school.

As I packed my bags, partly oblivious to what was going on in my surroundings, I decided I was going to have to speak first. He was to drop me off at school. I braced up myself and anticipated the encounter.

It was not until we were half-way enroute that I made my move.

“Hey “, I had said.

“Heyy”, He had replied. His focus directed fully on the road.

“ I know this is sorta weird. Things have been quite uneasy between us for the past couple of days and I know it must be as a result of whatever you think was happening between me and that stranger guy on New year’s day and I..”

That was when he skidded the car to a halt and looked me full in the face. I had anticipated the worst. This was it.

” What do you mean by whatever I thought was happening between you two?! Of all the stranger guys in the world, you chose Henderson to be bait for?! Seriously, tell me, what idiot child did our mother raise? ”

That time, I thought he was actually going to blow up with the way he shook with every he said. Accentuating each sentence with a smack of the steering wheel.

“ Who the hell was Henderson? ” , I thought to myself.

That was when I doubled back and the reality finally hit me where I had gone all wrong.