It was the summer of 1996. The local kids spent the hot days playing in the street of the northwestern town. Many kids played Cowboys vs. Indians, others played Cops & Robbers on their bikes, and every once in a while, you would see a group of boys playing sandlot baseball. These were the best years of my life. I was so innocent and happy living there in a small neighborhood right along the edge of Coeur d'Alene—a small resort town built alongside a lake by the same name.

My little brother Eric and I would explore the neighborhood together while our parents were off at work. We'd often hang around with the other kids our age and trek the hiking trails deep into the woods, pretending that we were archaeologists going on an adventure into the jungle.

I was six years of age, a spry young boy filled with joy and optimism toward everything and everyone. My little brother was the same age as me; we were twins, but I was a few seconds older, so I always acted as his senior and more mature brother.

We did everything together, went everywhere together, and we were nearly inseparable. I loved Eric like a cherished brother and a best friend; that's why it hurt so much.

One day that summer Eric and I awoke and ate cereal for breakfast as per usual. Heading outside, we decided we would ride our bikes up to town. There we stopped at an ice cream shop to take a quick ice cream break. Afterward, we rode our bikes up along the beach. It was loaded with people swimming in the cool refreshing lake waters.

Coeur d'Alene was always so lively during the summers back then. Everybody knew all of their neighbors and the store employees of the local businesses they frequented. It was a time where parents thought it safe enough to let their kids roam the streets freely without having to worry about them being kidnapped by some psychotic lunatic.

This was the beginning of the end for me, the prologue for when my rose-tinted glasses began to irreparably shatter to dust.

Later that morning, my brother Eric and I headed our bikes up a hiking path that led to a winding cliff perch over the edge of the Coeur d'Alene lake. The local population called it Tubbs Hill: a place well known for its cliff jumping.

Eric and I had heard about this and thought it sounded like a fun way to spend the day. There were many spots to jump from, however as we soon found, most of them had groups of teenagers hanging around them. Their presence intimidated my brother and me, so we opted to look for spots with fewer people.

One spot—way higher up than the others—had no people, so Eric and I stopped our bikes and approached the edge, peering off it. It looked scary and unsafe, but I managed to convince my brother that we would be fine.

On the inside, I was just as terrified as him, but as his senior brother, I put up a front of phony confidence. Ironically, I did the while simultaneously pressuring him into going first. I was an egotistical and cowardly hypocrite who wanted to be superior to his brother when, in reality, I wasn't any different from him.

Eric was reasonably frightened, but he eventually gave in to my peer-pressuring and approached the edge. Stepping back and taking a running start, he leaped off the edge, falling down to the watery depths below. Except—as I would soon learn—the depths were actually quite shallow.

Eric's lifeless body floated up to the surface, broken against the hard igneous rock just a few feet below the surface.

I sat around waiting, dearly hoping that he would just move; he never did. Then—as an irrational six-year-old boy—I made the stupid, selfish decision to bike back home so that when my parents got home, I could pretend I had been there the whole day.

When my parents asked me where my brother had gone, I lied and told them that he went off on his own to hang out with the local boys. Somehow, despite all the blatantly apparent shame in my voice, they were convinced with my words and awaited his return; he never did.

Later on, someone found his body and reported it to the police, who then linked Eric's body back to us. My parents were devastated, as was I, but I just couldn't bring myself to cry for his loss. I didn't deserve to be the one crying.

I doubled down on my lies, pinning the blame on the neighborhood kids, saying that I saw them playing together that day. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't any evidence to suggest they were together that day, and the charges were dropped, and the case closed, leaving my family forever damaged.

My mother committed suicide, and my father started regularly beating me to relieve his frustration. The whole time this happened, the only thing I could ever think was that I was getting my just desserts; it was all my fault, after all.

By the time I entered the second grade, I had raised an abandoned puppy that I'd found wandering around at a nearby park. My father hated the animal. He would kick it out of the way if it ever stood in his path and he often hit it for barking too much.

By the third grade, the kids I had wrongfully blamed for my brother's death started bullying and beating me nearly every day. My only solace was the love I received from my pet. However, all the abuse it had received from my father left it skittish and prone to nipping strangers.

One day when walking home from school, I was followed by the kid bullying me. They intended to beat my dog to death while forcing me to watch. They quickly found that the abused dog I had raised was more than willing to fight back, biting one of the boys in the leg. They ran like cowards.

Later that day, I heard a knock on the door. It was one of the boys' mothers—who hated me for pinning my brother's murder on her son—came screaming at my father for the dog having bit her precious darling boy. Of course, my father became enraged at hearing this and drove my dog and me up into the woods. There my father tied my dog to a tree and put a pistol in my hand, ordering me to shoot and take its life. I hesitated but did as he asked because everything happening was all traced back to my shitty decisions; this was my punishment.

The days went on, and the beatings became worse and worse. I'd had enough of it, so I ran away. After a few days on the run, I was found by the police, who then opened an investigation on my father.

My father was condemned and resigned to prison, leaving me in the hands of my last living relative: my grandmother back in Spokane, Washington. She was a kind and loving old lady, and for once, I felt that my life could finally recover a shred of normalcy; but like all the good things in my life, my grandmother ended up dying from a heart attack while I was off at school blissfully unaware. Had I only known, I could've been there to save her, but I wasn't there; I had left her to die alone as I had to Eric.

It was my fault.

With no other known family members left, who would accept me? I was sent to a catholic orphanage northeast of Spokane. There I found many more individuals with similar circumstances to me. Some of them had it even worse than I. It was humbling.

It was there I met my best and only real friend: a brown-haired girl who was maybe seven or eight. I was thirteen, making me nearly twice as old as her, yet she ignored the kids her age opting to stick to me like a moth to a flame. I had no understanding of why she did this; I wasn't an interesting person, and I always sat alone, distancing myself from others. Yet there she was, still sitting down beside me.

At first, I found her incredibly annoying and resented how she followed me around like a baby chick, but as time passed, we began bonding together like hydrogen and oxygen. We spent all of our time together talking and spilling our inner-most feelings. She always mentioned her aspirations to study hard and become a doctor so that she could save her mother. I respected and admired her very much for this. She lived for the well-being of others, unlike me.

I shared all of the deepest secrets in my past with her, even how I murdered my brother. She didn't judge me harshly; to my surprise, she even comforted me, trying to convince me that it wasn't my fault. I disregarded her evaluation, but I was no less happy to hear her say it. I was grateful that I finally had a person in my life I felt so safe around.

Four peaceful years passed at the orphanage, and I was now in the seventeenth year of my life. One particular snowy winter morning, I received a handwritten letter slipped under my door from the girl saying that her mother had passed away in the hospital and that I shouldn't come looking for her because she was going somewhere far away.

I immediately took it up with the orphanage staff, and they notified the police. They searched for the girl for weeks, but because of the torrential snow, her tracks were covered, and the case went cold. The law gave up the search assuming the worst. In all likelihood, she had died from hypothermia somewhere out in the snowy wilderness.

I cried for weeks, wishing that I'd had just been there for her; then I could've gone with her, and if she died, I could've died alongside her.

The years went on, and I dropped out of high school with F-grades in every class. As soon as I turned eighteen and became independent in the eyes of the law, the orphanage was more than happy to throw my worthless ass out onto the streets.

Immediately filing for welfare, I spent the next ten years binging anime and reading manga in the dark confines of a motel owner's basement. The man took pity on me and let me stay there as a permanent resident as long as I paid for rent.

More years passed, and I had gradually started to forget people's names and faces. The self-isolation nearly made me forget about the outside world altogether. I couldn't remember my dad, mom, grandmother, dog, or best friend's name or face. There was only one name and face I could remember: Eric Miller's.

How could I forget them? His name, his face not unlike mine, Tubbs Hill, and all the events that took place that day were forever etched into my soul. I saw it clear as day whenever I closed my eyes. It was part of who I was, who I'd become; without those experiences, I, as I was, would not exist.

I was a pitiful coward who'd let people die just so that I could save my own hide. That was me, I'd proved it so over and over.