Grandpa use to tell me stories of how much he loved his boat. The crooked old thing was much stronger than it looked. It was a wooden masterpiece painted in the colors of the sea. In those days he said it was worth more than gold. Of course, I hardly doubted that. I remember the strange details engraved in its body. He never told me why and how they got there but I was always fascinated to know. One however he did tell me, that he had taken grandma for a nice dinner one night and decided to show her the beauty. Somehow they both got distracted and the boat collided head-on with a large rock nearby the shore. We always laughed at that story but we knew how much grandpa loved our grandmother.
I hardly remember any moments we spent as a family on that boat all except for one day when my brother and I got into a fight. I ended up in the hospital for days. It was on a family vacation and we all decided to spend the beautiful afternoon on grandpa's boat. My brother and I weren't always the best of friends. Most of my memories were of arguments and fights. Maybe it was jealousy or envy. I did always perform better than him in everything we did together. Wrestling champion of my high school, while he was runner's up, class president by grade 6, won the state level chess championship, again while he was runner's up. Of course, my favorite; dated the most popular girl in high school whom he had always had a crush on. To me, it was always fun winning at everything but even at losing I never took it seriously. Although we did have many fights, at the end of the day, he was my only brother. But after that day on the boat, I realized how the space between us was never going to change for the better.
On the last day of our family vacation, we took the boat out on the lake. The sun was setting in bold bright colors, the air was breezy and everyone was in a joyful mood. We decided to play my favorite game we always did as a tradition, find the killer. The theme was in 1940s, New York. It was simple, each player gets handed a card of a suspect of the crime and one gets handed the role of the detective. You had to be clever to win this game by giving certain clues to make the detective not suspect you. If the detective finds the true killer, he wins. This time I was the clever detective, Charles Maxwell. I loved imagining every single detail of the investigation, the face analysis, the questioning, and the setting of the crime. I remembered every word said by each suspect. The wealthy, conspicuous old lady who lives nearby the cemetery said she never saw anyone that night. That she was all alone with her loveable only cat listening to some old jazz. What about the doorman in the lobby of the hotel next door who said he had a young daughter to take care of? Oh, and of course, the nerdy high school kid whose teeth were always yellow and crooked saying that he was simply at home reading a book about molecular biology that night. The victim? A girl in her 30s, beautiful yet vulnerable. Murdered for an unknown reason. Was it her popularity? Or her beauty? Or her strange hatred for the old lady who was indeed her stepmother. I had always won every single game and I knew my brother was sick of it. His envy showed through his eyes every time I achieved victory. For the 23rd time, I figured out that he was the murderer. What happened next lingered in my mind as clear as crystal memory. His face turning red, fists balled up, eyes full of hatred, stood up and ran towards me. Grabbing me by my shirt, he started punching me with all the strength he had. All the anger and jealousy for years for being second to everything and not getting any of the praise. We both toppled into the lake still firmly ahold of each other. My mother's screams drowned out as I hit the water. I struggled for air as my ribs were being broken. Every punch thundered through my body as if I was being shocked. Every effort of mine to hit back weakened as water filled my lungs. The dark green water blackened and stung my eyes as my brother's silhouette slowly faded. Suddenly my head clashed with the body of the boat, and pain struck from my head to my entire body. Everything went black.
I remember replaying that moment in my head while laying on the hospital bed, thinking I never wanted to see him in my life ever again. Raging, I imagined all the ways to get rid of him for good. I tried plotting ways to get him back for what he did. But little did I know that would be the last day that I ever saw him.