I held the gun up to my temple and closed my eyes. My hand shook with fear. The gun slipped down in my hand landing on my cheek and I quickly fixed it back against my temple. Shooting myself in the cheek wouldn’t kill me.
        I don’t know how long I closed my eyes with the gun sitting at my temple but it might have been an hour, maybe less, I just didn’t know. I moved my finger on the trigger. My hand was shaking so much that I almost dropped the gun.
        No, I thought to myself, you can’t chicken out now. I cocked the gun and pushed a little harder on the trigger. I swallowed hard. I opened my eyes and dropped the gun to the floor.
        “What are you doing, Zac?” I asked myself aloud. Tears streamed down my face. “You are such a goddamn chicken. You are worthless. People tell you this every day, you can’t take this anymore.” I snatched the gun back up off the floor. I held it on my hand, feeling the weight of it, the handle was warm now do to my holding it for a little more than an hour.
        “Zachary, it’s over.” Tears continued to fall down my face, splashing on the ground. I had sat in the same spot in my bedroom, the corner where the biashe rug met the white wall at the foot of my bunk-bed where it stopped before touching the wall, crying for the past three hours. I had sat in the same spot every day for a year, crying. It was in this spot where I decided that it was time to do something about my life. It was also in this spot where I was about to end it all.
        I placed the barrel of the gun in my mouth, tasting the warm metal, positioning it where I had learned was the quickest way to die. After about three minutes I decided that if I missed all I’d end up with was a hole in the back of my throat, I wouldn’t miss though. I was determine not to miss no matter where my choice spot ended being.
        I took it out of my mouth and placed it back on my temple. I liked how it felt there, better than in my mouth.
        I recocked the gun, applied pressure on the trigger. My hand shook uncontrolably. I pushed farther back on the trigger. “I love you. Father please have mercy on my sins and the one I am about to commit. Our Father who art in Heaven,” I started the Lord’s Prayer, applying more pressure on the trigger.

*

        “What was that?” My older brother asked, looking around the room.
        “A car backfiring probably,” I told him, glancing over the top of the newspaper. I heard another loud “Boom”. I flinched. It sounded as though it was coming from all over.
        All of a sudden my little sisters came running down the stairs. “TAYLOR! ISAAC!” They screamed.
        “What’s wrong?” I asked throwing my newspaper down on the coffee table. “What happened?”
        “Did you hear that noise?” Jessica asked. She was panting, they both were spooked.
        “Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Isaac said.
        “Hah and you should talk!” I accused. “You just screamed like a sissy boy!”
        Ike growled at me. He turned his attention back to the frightened girls, “it was just a car backfiring, that’s all.”
        Avery shook her head violently. “It wasn’t.”
        “What was it then?” I asked. “It’s not thundering out, is it?”
        “It sounded like it came from your room,” Jessica told me.
        “My room?” I questioned. “Hmmm... well our room is closest to the street on that side, it was a car.”
        “I think you should go see, maybe Zac blew your stereo or something,” Jessica offered.
        “He better not have!” I exclaimed. I shook my head at the thought. My 14 year old brother and I had to share a room so we shared most of our stuff as well but he knows if anything happens to my stuff I’d kill him.
        Avery pulled at my arm. “Go look!” She demanded. “He blew it up!”
        I nodded for Isaac to come up with me. He put his book down and followed us up the stairs, me in the lead and the girls behind me, Ike as the caboose. I knocked hard on the bedroom door. “Zac!” I called. “If you blew out my stereo I’m gonna kill you!” I knocked again. He didn’t answer. I figured he’d throw the door open and tell me off but he didn’t. I knocked again. “Zac?” I tried the doorknob. Locked. “That’s strange...” I muttered.
        “What?” Ike asked.
        “The door’s locked.” I pounded on it this time. “ZAC!” I called. “OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!”
        Ike pushed past the door and helped me. “ZACHARY WALKER HANSON!” He called. “We’re gonna break it down if you don’t answer right now!”
        I pounded again. “That’s right!” I looked at Ike and made a face. Break the door down? MY door? Ike could practically read my thoughts he knew me so well, he nodded.
        He jiggled the doorknob again. “Zac, we’re coming in now.” He turned towards the girls, “move back, guys, we don’t want you to get hurt.”
        The girls moved against the wall on the opposite side from us.
        “When I count to three I want you to jam your shoulder into the door, all right Taylor?” Ike instructed. I nodded. “We’re gonna keep doing that until it opens. ready? One... Two... Three...” We slammed up against the door at the same time. In a way I was happy that my parents had taken our five year old brother and two year old sister out with them, cause if it was all of us kids here alone with one tempermental 14 year old, a 19 year old, and me, a 16 year old, watching out for all of us, one of us would wind up dead. Taking them with them had at least lightened the load a little bit. Plus those two kids be flipping out at us right now if they had heard the two backfires.
        “OW!” I screeched as I threw out my shoulder. I cringed in pain.
        “I can take it from here,” Ike told me. He banged up against the door again.
        “No you can’t,” I told him. I held my left shoulder in place and starting jamming at the door with my right shoulder. We finally got the door open, the lock broke from the force. Mom and Dad would kill us but we’d have to tell them that we couldn’t find Zac and we thought he snuck out the window or something cause he wouldn’t answer. They wouldn’t get mad at us if it was for Zac’s sake and not for the posibility that my stereo was broken.
        “Where is he?” I asked my brother. We stood in the doorway and glanced around the room. I walked over to my stereo on the dresser. “At least my stereo is OK,” I joked.
        “Yeah, but where’s Zac?” Isaac said solemnly. “I didn’t see him leave, did you?”
        I shook my head and frowned. The window was open. I walked over to it and looked at the tree outside our window. We were on the second floor and sometimes we used the tree to get outside. I stuck my head out. It was cold outside, a cold December evening. I shivered and pulled the window closed, leaving the bottom open a crack for when Zac wanted to sneak back in later that night. “He probably snuck out,” I told Ike. I turned and leaned against the window sill. Isaac nodded.
        “Where is he?” Jessica asked from the doorway where she and Avery were stationed.
        “He snuck out,” I told her. She nodded in acknowledgement. I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes and glanced towards the wall to my right. I felt all the color drain out of my face. There was a red streak down the wall that hadn’t been there when I woke up that morning.
        “Taylor what is it?” Ike asked. I could hardly hear him. My ears pounded with blood and my heart raced. I looked down past the blood smear and saw my brother lying in a heap on the rug with his eyes closed.
        “No,” I said. I shook my head. I didn’t know what I was saying. I think I mumbled something about blood on the wall but I couldn’t be sure.
        Avery let out a scream. Where was she? The door... she was pointing at the ground by my feet. I was standing in a stream of blood. It was running down from Zac’s body, litterally spreading towards me like food coloring on a wet paper towel, a lab we had done in science for as long as I could remember. I looked closer at the heap on the floor and saw blood covering his arm and falling down in a puddle next to his body.
        Ike stood behind me and gasped. “Girls stay where you are,” he instructed them. “Don’t come over here.” He leaped around me and knealt down next to Zac. He looked up at me not knowing what to do... and like I did?
        Ike sat for a second and then stuck his fingers on our brother’s neck. “Is he... dead?” I gulped.
        Isaac didn’t answer. He took his fingers away and starred at me. “Jessica, call 9-1-1 and ask for an ambulence right now. Avery go with her. Tell them that there was an accident, our brother is shot in the head. Taylor come here.” The girls dashed to a phone and I moved up to my brothers. “He has a weak pulse,” Isaac told me. “If they get here fast enough he might live.”
        I nodded but then shook my head. “What do we do?” I asked. “Zac shot himself... that’s what the noise was... he tried to kill himself.” I glanced at the gun in our little brother’s lap, it was still attached to his hand.
        “And he almost suceded,” Ike informed me. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “if he survives he will be a vegetable. If he’s lucky he may be able to talk and walk again.” Isaac was shaking, I could see it in his hands. His right fingers were covered with blood, Zac’s blood.
        “How could you?” I asked Zac’s body. “How could you do this to yourself? To us? How could you?”

*

        “Did anyone touch the body?” The officer asked.
        “I did,” I told him for the third time. “I took his pulse.” I looked at my fingers. Two hours ago they had been covered in my brother’s blood. It was warm and I could feel it running out onto my hand. The entry hole was just above his neck, the bullet had entered through his cheek, shattering the bones in his jaw and mouth, lodging finally in his medulla of his brain.
        “Can you describe what you heard downstairs?”
        I leaned my elbows on my knees and put my head in my hands. “I told you about six times already!” I looked up at him. “Look, I know you are just doing your job but my brother is up in surgery right now getting a bullet removed from his brain!” I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep breath. The cops had been questioning me, Taylor, Jessica, and Avery since we got to the hospital two hours ago. It was mostly me they were trying to talk to though. Taylor tried to help out since he was the one that found Zac but they wanted me.
        My parents were paged and when they got to the hospital the doctor told them that Zac was up in surgery having a bullet removed from his brain. They didn’t know what to think and Taylor or I didn’t even get to be the ones that told them. The cop handling the case told them about the gun and how it was covered with his fingerprints and my own.
        I didn’t mean to touch the gun, I know I shouldn’t have. I moved it only a little bit and yet my fingerprints got onto it. I knew I should have used gloves or something but my mind just wasn’t thinking straight. We told the cop our story and when they dusted the prints mine were found on there. I confessed that I moved it but I didn’t pull the trigger, Zac did.
        Unfortunately Zac would not be able to testify that it was him and not me.
        The cop was pretty much convinced that it was in fact an attempted suicide but according to the state of Oklahoma I had to be questioned to the fullest extent.
        “Excuse me officer?” A nurse interupted. We both looked up at her. “I have an update about the boy.”
        “Go on,” the cop pushed.
        “There was a note in his pocket.” She handed him a piece of paper. The cop opened it carefully and read it.
        “Thank you,” he said after a minute. The nurse left. The cop looked at me and shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”
        “Is he...” I gulped, “dead?”
        The cop shook his head. “Son, will you come with me please.” He stood and I followed him into the room where my parents were waiting to hear updates about Zac. They rose when we entered. “Sit, please,” the cop instructed. I sat down next to my mother. She put her arm around me, bringing my head to her mouth and kissing it gently. She held me close as the cop started his speech. “This letter was found in your son’s pocket. Since it is evidence I have read it already.” He handed it off to my father. “I think you better read it.”
        Dad started reading. A tear fell from his eyes. A few minutes later he said, “‘To my family- I love you with all my heart. I know you won’t understand why I can’t be with you at this moment and why you will get this letter the way you do but I am going to try to explain. Please listen with an open mind. Please, that is my last request, well one of them at least. Please, just listen. Everyday I am reminded of what a worthless waste of human life I am. Everyday I do something wrong, I breathe. That is what I do wrong. Everything I do is wrong and people don’t hesitate to tell me. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe I am the waste that everyone tells me I am. I am about to commit the biggest sin of my life and I have begged God for forgiveness every day of my life for the past year. I just can’t take this anymore. Life was good up until about a year ago, that’s when it all changed. I love you. You may not understand that but I truely know what love is. Love is what I am feeling right now. Love is what I am doing this over. I can’t burden the world with my usless existance anymore. I truely love you. Please, remember me for what I was not what I will be, cold in the ground. Remember that I was once a human with feelings that were looked down upon. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned from all of this, think before you speak. You don’t know who you might be hurting with your words. Think of that next time you make fun of someone for liking something you don’t. Think of that next time you fight with someone over something stupid. Remember me. I love you. Merry Christmas, happy new year. Happy birthday. Congratulations on your future marriages/children. I am sorry with all my heart for your pain of having to live with me and I appologize for costing you so much time and money. I love you although I am a burden. Always and forever, your son/brother, Zachary Walker Hanson’”
        I wipped the tears from my cheek. “There were t-two sh-shots,” I stuttered.
        “The first one slipped and hit his leg,” the cop said. “We have reason to believe that the second slip, the one that hit his cheek, was intentional.”
        “What does that mean?” Taylor asked.
        “He didn’t want to go through with it.”

*

        “Hey kiddo,” I said to my little brother. His eyes were closed and his chest was moving up and down slowly. There were tubes coming out of his mouth keeping his lungs working. His face was stitched up and you would never believe that there had been any sort of accident except that there were stitches in his cheek, they were so neat though. His leg was bandaged up and in a splint from the first bullet. He wasn’t going to go through with it.
        The cops investigated with the angle of the bullet and modern technology that he had panicked after he shot himself in the leg, placed the gun back up to his temple and at the last minute decided not to do it. He wasn’t quick enough for himself, he pulled the trigger and it pointed at an angle in his jaw, which appeared to be when he was pulling it down and away from his face.
        “We would have gotten you help, Zachary,” I told his vegetable body. “We would have gotten you help.” He had been in surgery for eight hours, eight gruelling hours. They removed the bullets from his leg and head with almost no complications. They traced his brain patterns and they were surprisingly high, higher than expected that is.
        We were allowed to see him one at a time and it was my turn.
        I sat in a chair next to his bed and tried not to cry. The thought of never seeing my brother laugh, sing, talk again killed me inside. The knowledge that I might never be able to see him with his eyes open again hurt even more.
        “We could have gotten you help,” I repeated for the third time. I let my sentence trail off. He never told any of us he was hurting inside, he never let on... “Stop it,” I said aloud. “You are just going to start blaming yourself again.” I always blamed myself for everything: the song was off-key, it was my fault; my brother killed himself, I never listened to him, it was my fault.
        I swallowed hard and stood up. I leaned over and kissed my brother’s forehead. I felt the power that he must have felt as he was holding the gun, the power between life and death. I closed my eyes and imagined the scene. I hoped it was a dream but when I reopened them my brother was still laying in a bed, still attached to a respirator, still not concious. “You must have been terrified... Zac, I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you more. You are my only 14 year old brother and I love you.”
        Ike’s turn. A knock at the door. I passed Ike in the doorway, closing the door behind me. I sat down with the rest of the family.
        “Anything change?” Mom asked me hopefully, a false sense of hope. She knew nothing had changed but she didn’t want to believe it.
        I shook my head. “Not a thing.”
        A few minutes later Isaac re-emerged from the room. The doctor went in after him and closed the door. Ike sat down next to us. He put his head in his hands. I saw his body shake with sobs every once in awhile but no one said anything. We had all done our share of crying that night.
        That night I took the kids home to nap and change their clothes. Ike, Mom, and Dad stayed at the hospital in case anything changed. I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. I laid down on the living room couch and watched early morning TV. I was a zombie by seven, and we had to get back to the hospital by nine. I decided to let the kids sleep a little longer though I doubt they were resting easily. I refused to sleep in my bed room, the spot where Zac had fired the gun had been cleaned after the investigation but I could still picture my brother lying in a bloody heap in the floor, the gun in his hand, the blood puddling down, running towards me like a stream.
        My ears perked up when I heard Katie Couric of the Today Show say, “Sad news from Oklahoma today. Brothers Hanson and family mourn the shooting of youngest Hanson band member, Zachary. The 14 year old was shot in the head at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The police have not comfirmed whether it was an accident, murder, or an attempted suicide. The child was rushed to Tulsa County General and underwent extensive surgery to remove the bullet from his brain. There were no complications but the child has not woken up yet. We are told that his brain waves show signs of activity. He is still in a coma and we will continue to keep you posted on this horrific trage-”
        I clicked off the TV. I couldn’t stand to listen to someone I had met only one time in my life speak of my brother being in a coma. If the Today Show was running the story every other station must have been too. “Newspapers,” I mumbled outloud. “It must be all over the newspapers as well.” I threw my blanket off my legs and ran up the stairs. I ran past my bedroom, refusing to even look at the broken door lying against the wall, off its hinges from the force Ike and I applied to get it open when we still thought Zac had blown up the stereo.
        I pounded on Avery and Jessica’s bedroom door. “Rise and shine,” I called out. I opened the door and found them to already be awake, all four of them, even Zoe, the baby. They were all dressed already.
        “Taylor, aren’t you going to change?” Jess asked.
        I looked down at my clothes, the same clothes I had been wearing the day before, the same clothes I had slept in. “I’m not going in that room,” I tried to say strongly. It came out shaky.
        “We’re ready,” Avery said.
        “Let’s go then,” I said. We ran down the stairs and I grabbed the car keys off the dresser. I glanced at myself in the mirror, I was pale and my hair was mussed. I ran my hand through my hair and looked away fast. I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before; Zac, Ike, the girls and I were going to go out for dinner the night Zac shot himself.
        “I hungry Taayor, what about breakfast?” Macky asked me.
        I smiled weakly and held the door open for the kids. “How about this? We’ll stop at dunkin’ donuts and get some donuts and real coffee for our family, OK?”
        “Can I get a vanilla frosted?”
        “Sure, kiddo.” I kissed the top of his head lightly. “You can have whatever you want.”

*

        It was almost nine by the time Taylor and the rest of the little kids got to the hospital. They brought us coffee which I drank greedily.
        “Where were you?” I asked Taylor when I got him away from the other kids.
        “When?”
        “An hour ago...”
        “It took us awhile in the car,” Taylor explained. “I had to deal with a 2 year old, a 5 year old, a nine year old and an 11 year old... let’s just leave it at that.”
        I smiled. My first smile in hours. “I getcha.”
        Father Hurlburt chose that time to walk into the waiting room and come up to my family and me. “You may see him now.”
        “Wh-who is this?” Taylor stuttered. He glared at me.
        “Taylor, this is Father Hurlburt,” I introduced him. “Father, this is my brother Taylor.”
        “Hello, Taylor,” the priest said. He shook Taylor’s hand and held it in his own. “I’m sorry we have to meet under such awful conditions. I’m so sorry about your brother.”
        Taylor nodded. He looked at my parents and then back at me.
        “We tried to call you an hour ago.” I swallowed hard. “He just read Zac his last rites.”

*

        It was around six that day, exactly a day from when we heard the shots, that the doctors came and told us that his brain functions were decreasing. His breathing was slowing and so was his heart. They gave him drugs to even out the beats but their attempts were proved useless, my brother was in a coma that he would never awake from.
        My parents signed a Do Not Resisitate order just to ease Zac’s suffering. That meant that if his heart stopped the doctors couldn’t shock it to get it beating again.
        At eight o’clock doctors started rushing in and out of my brother’s room. We were told that his heart was slowing down. There was nothing we could do about it but we could take away the DNR. We asked if it would help, they told us that it wouldn’t. Mom, Dad, Ike, Jess, Avery, Mack, Zoe and me followed the doctor’s into Zac’s room. He hadn’t moved all day, his brain wasn’t working anymore. Zac’s doctor told us that it was up to us if we wanted to turn off the respirator, the only thing keeping his lungs filled with air and his heart beating.
        Mom placed her hand on Zac’s shoulder, leaned over and kissed him gently. She smoothed back his hair. “Zachary, I love you. You are my son and I know that God will take care of you. He doesn’t blame you for doing this to yourself. I do not blame you either.”
        Dad kissed Zac as well and said, “I love you, son.” He backed away. “Kids?”
        “We’re doing it?” I questioned. “We’re turning off the machine...?”
        My sisters and youngest brother kissed Zac and rejoined me behind my parents. Ike went up next. “Zac, dude, there is nothing to say. I can’t find the words. Please remember that I love you and I care about you no matter what you thought. I love you very much and I know that you will be looking down on us from Heaven.”
        My turn. I wiggled out of my sister’s hold and approached Zac. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t cry. “Zac, I will always remember you. You’ll always hold a place in my heart. I love you.”
        “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” My mom started. We all joined in. “God please take care of my son. It was not his fault that he is no longer with us today. I know deep inside he was a good soul and deserves your salvation although he did take his own life. Please do not hold it against him in death. Amen.”
        The doctor reached up and flicked some things on the wall next to Zac’s bed. Almost instantly my brother’s chest stopped falling. The heart moniter beeped, a steady sound that echoed throughout the room. The doctor turned it off. Father Hurlburt lead us in prayer once more.
        “Time of Death, 13:05, December 24, 1999,” the doctor said.
        “Merry Christmas, Zac,” I muttered under my breath. “Merry Christmas Hanson family.”