Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen
I squint my eyes as I wake up to sunlight shining into my room. I must have left my curtains open last night, although I'm sure I remember closing them. Before I can move, I hear a cough in the corner of my bedroom. I look over to my dressing table and my Mother is sitting there, folding my jeans up that I put in the wash last night.

"Mum?"

She looks up at smiles at me. "Hi, sweetheart. How did you sleep?"

"Good." I reply, sitting up in my bed and crossing my legs into a sitting position. "Why are you in my room?" After the words leave my mouth I realise how incredibly rude it sounded but surprisingly, she takes no offence to it. She sighs and places my now folded jeans on my dressing table. "I need to talk to you."

I raise my eyebrow, "About?"

She stands up from my chair and sits on the edge of my bed. "Alana, darling. There is something incredibly serious I must tell you. It's something I have wanted to tell you for many years." She begins in the most unusual and calm voice ever. My Mother has always been known to be a calm woman but this was beyond calm, this was subtle, gentle and so cautious. I begin to worry, my mind racing through all the worse case scenarios she is probably about to break to me. Has dad died? Wait...no, she just said it is something she has wanted to tell me for years. I get a horrible feeling in my throat that I am about to hear something horrifying or maybe even something utterly brilliant. Either way, I'm feeling like a complete nervous wreck, half of me not wanting to hear what she's got to tell me.

I swallow my nerves, "What is it?"

"It's about your brother." She exhales slowly.

"What about him?" I press. How could this possibly be about Mason. I know my brother like the back of my hand. Maybe not recently with all this sexual tension going on between us but...I know him like a best friend. I try to push the sexual thoughts of him to the back of my mind. I can't let this invade my brain, not now.

"Your brother..." My mum tries but her voice breaks before she can carry on her sentence. I feel so confused right now, beyond confused even. "Mum? Has Mason got a secret or something?" I smirk playfully. When I realise my Mum is not laughing with me, my smile falls.

"Mum...?" I press, placing my hand on hers. She pulls it away and drops her head in her hands as if devastation has just completely fell upon her shoulders. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart." He voice breaks. I lean back a little, observing her sudden state. "What are you sorry for?" After a few seconds which seems like forever, she lifts her head from her hand and looks directly at me. Her eyes are red after crying so much, her lips parted as she attempts to gain her speech back.


"Your brother, Alana..." She begins, swallowing before she continues. "Your brother is not your brother."

I feel my face fall and my hands freeze on my lap. I lose all my motion and feeling in my whole body as I hear them words. "W-what do you mean, he's not my brother?"

"He is not your brother. He..he never was."

I suddenly burst out into laughter, not believing what I am hearing. "What are you talking about!? Of course he's my brother! We have known each other since we were babies, I have so many memories of growing up with him. What are you even saying? He IS my brother!?"

She doesn't respond. Instead she just sits there and shakes her head slowly. She breathes out slowly and looks at me with watery eyes. "He was never you brother. He isn't...he isn't biologically related to you in any way."

"W-what." My hands are trembling and the room is spinning around me. All I can hear is my heart hammering like a bomb in my chest, waiting...just waiting to explode and kill me. Am I having a heart attack? I place my hand on chest and all I can do his breathe fast, I can't control it. I can't stop. I am gasping for ear and I feel so dizzy. Mason...Mason... he isn't my brother. How? Suddenly, I feel my Mum's hands wrapped around me, her voice cooing me, telling me to calm down but my mind isn't registering what she is saying. All I can hear is the pounding of my heart and the sound of my erratic breathing. Mason's face fills my mind and all I can see is him looking at me, his lips touching mine. What the fuck... what is this?

"Breathe, baby. Breathe." My Mum rubs my back.

"I don't understand...M-mason...Mason has always been my sibling." I stutter. My Mum grabs a glass of water from my bed side table and lifts it to my lips. "Drink." She tells me and I comply, taking a small sip form the glass. She places it back down and turns back round to face me. Her hands clasp around my face, forcing me to look at her. "I am so, so .. so sorry to have to tell you this now. He will always feel like a brother to you, I understand that. But...but i needed to tell you that, you are not actually related. You never were. You are actually an only child."

"Are you not my M-mother?"

She laughs softly, "Of course I am. I am your Mother and your Father is definitely your Father. Mason just isn't your brother." She frowns when she says Mason's name. My eyes dart across her face, my mind still trying to make sense of all these words she is throwing at me. I am questioning my whole life now. Everything. "So...I don't get it. Who is Mason...? If he isn't my b-brother. Who is he? Why has he always been in my life? I don't understand." I can feel the tears streaming down my face as I ask her this. She wipes them from my cheeks and strokes my hair, sighing.

"We adopted him, my love. We took him in when he was 4 months old. Your Father and I...we had just moved in together recently and there was a knock on the door. We opened it and a baby had been left on our doorstep. We tried out who had left him there and if we could find his parents. We eventually found out from the police that his Mum had committed suicide. She had hung herself because she couldn't deal with her depression. We had been looking after Mason for about a month and we grew incredibly attached to him...so w-when the social workers came in to take him from us and put him in a foster home, we couldn't let him go. I remember crying hysterically because I had become so attached to him. They...they allowed us to bring him up as long as we were proven to be decent people to bring him up. When he was 1, I accidentally fell pregnant with you. So then, you came along. That's why you have always know Mason to be in your life. You have never known him not to be."

I blink in disbelief. I cannot believe I am actually hearing this. This is unbelievable. This is insane. How...how could she not tell me this sooner? Why now? I wake up and I get this news? Is this even normal? What the hell is even going on...I don't understand any of it. Even though my Mother has explained it all, my mind is just continuing to swarm deep in a puddle of confusion and trying to look at this completed puzzle of what I thought seemed like a perfect and normal family. I feel betrayed, let down and kept in the dark. I can't believe my parents have kept this from me for so many years. I then think about Mason's awareness of it. Does...OH MY GOD...

"Does Mason know!?" I exclaim.

My Mother just looks at me, unresponsive. I can tell immediately that she doesn't want to answer me. The look of shame in her eyes gives me my answer.

"He doesn't know, does he?" I say, my voice suddenly fallen to nothing but a whisper. A tear falls down her cheek as she slowly shakes her head and looks down at her hands. I flinch away from her, standing up from my bed. "How...How could you not tell him!?" I raise my voice. Anger fills me, all i can see is red. I am so angry with my Mother. I never thought I would feel anguish with either of my parents but this secret has been hanging over mine and Mason's head of no knowledge of our own.

"I-I couldn't." She whispers.

"You...You what!? How could you not tell him something like THAT!? He isn't your child!!" I shout. My Mother's eyes widen and she presses her index finger to her lips. "Darling, please don't shout. Keep it down."

"Why!? Why should I? You have just come into my room to tell me that my brother is not my brother!! What the hell did you think was going to happen, what, we could all carry on playing happy families!?" Instead of responding, she just looks down at the floor with shame written all over her face.

"I'm going to tell him." As I walk towards my bedroom door, I feel her hand grip my wrist, pulling me back. "No! You can't!?" I snatch my wrist from her clasp, "Why not!? You have kept us both in the dark about this for years!! He deserves to know!" I turn back towards the door and place my hand on the handle, "You can't tell him sweetheart! Not yet! Please!" My mother's plea makes me freeze. I remove my hand from the door handle and slowly turn back towards her.
"Why not now, Mum? Why?"

"Because it will destroy him. He isn't ready."

"Mum," I close my eyes, the pain of knowing Mason's fills my stomach. "He needs to know this. Why do you tell me but you won't tell him?"

"I will tell him. I just can't tell him yet, my love." She cups my face in her hands. "There are things I need to go through with him. There's details about his real family I need to tell him and all that kind of complicated stuff. I want to be able to sit him down and tell him properly. You can't just go shouting this out to him, landing it on him like some bomb shell, my sweetie. This will destroy him if it isn't done in the right way."

I gape, "What about me, Mum? What about how destroyed I feel? You've torn me apart. Everything i thought was real, everything I have built my life on has been a complete lie!"

"Not everything! You have done so well at school my love. The only thing that was never true was Mason being your brother." She smiles softly.

"That's a pretty big thing to keep in the dark, Mum. You can't speak of it as if this is suppose to not mean anything to me. I thought he was my brother. This is the lie you have created, you and Dad. I turn away from her one final time, gripping the door handle and running out of my room. All I can hear is my Mum's panicked voice. "Please just don't tell him!"