I deliberately slow down my pace as I walk down the road with Stevie and Niall. The majority of people would want to go home after school but I don't.

"So Miss King said I'm barely making it through Geography." Niall says.

"I'm failing Maths." I add.

"I don't know about you guys but I'm passing my classes with flying colours." Stevie remarks.

Of course she is.

"That's because teachers are afraid to fail you."

"No Niall it's because I'm actually smart."

"Oi I'm smart."

"Yeah right." She scoffs and I laugh as their little bickering continues.

We walk until we're forced to split paths and then we say our goodbyes. I cross the road and turn right once we reach the park and Stevie and Niall continue to walk straight. Once they're out of view, swallowed up by the busy street, I cross the same road again and turn left instead.

I hold my breath before opening the front door, silently hoping that he isn't home, that he's gone out with his mates or something, but as I step through the door I'm immediately hit by the harsh stench of weed. The distinct smell never fails to make my throat burn and eyes sting.

He's sitting on the old brown sofa in the living room with one foot rocking my skateboard back and forth. A permanent blunt balancing in his fingertips.

"I hope you learned your lesson earlier." Derek swirls around the brown liquid in his glass and takes a swig of whatever mix of alcohol is in it. "Don't you ever steal my fucking weed again or you'll end up with more than a black eye." He points his blunt at me before settling it between his cracked lips. He lights the end and I stare at the orange flame before it disappears and a cloud of greyish smoke escapes into the room.

I didn't steal his fucking weed.

I hid it.

The living room is trashed. Cigarette buds and empty glass bottles lay scattered across the floor. No doubt his friends were here, making themselves at home. Wads of cash Derek seems to be separating into different piles cover the table as well as the bags of weed I had previously hidden under my bed.

Derek harshly kicks my graffitied skateboard over to me and I stomp on it with my foot to stop it rolling away. I pick it up and walk up the stairs to my bedroom. Too tired to fix my messy room, I lay on the mattress that's currently on the floor. Derek had thrown it off my bed when looking for the drugs this morning and broke my bed in the process.

I hid it because I don't want him to turn out like our deadbeat dad but the second Derek found out his drugs were missing he came to me asking where they were. When I refused to tell him, he beat it out of me.

And like always, I let him do it.

No matter how many times he punches me across the face or kicks me in the ribs, I can't hit him back. I can barely clench a fist.

Because he's my older brother.

My family.

The only family I have left.

He accused me of stealing the weed and wanting it for my own use and decided to 'teach me a lesson'.

There's no doubt everyone saw the bruises and their minds quickly made up stories and rumours about who I supposedly fought. I'm known for fights so I don't know what Nate expected when he called me a bitch on the field. It's not that I want to go around hitting people, sometimes I can't help it, can't control the anger that lives inside of me. I hate that my brother and I have that in common.

No one ever asks me questions. No one ever asks me who I got into a fight with or why it even started in the first place. So I was surprised when Nate asked me what happened. I was ridiculously close to telling him the truth. That my brother hits me. It happens a lot. It happens so much that when I do get roughed up, Niall and Stevie barely even notice. That's probably a bad thing.

Derek needs the drugs like how an average person needs oxygen. Without them he's jittery and can't focus on anything. He gets anxious about real life and so gets high to forget about it all. But who wouldn't want to escape reality for a while? Life sucks. I would know.

I promised myself when I was younger that I would never take drugs and I plan on keeping that promise.

I can't turn out like my brother.

I can't let my life be ruined like his.

I won't.

I've seen firsthand the damages that drugs can do, the lives it can ruin, the families it can break, the monsters it can make.

First it was the bottles of alcohol Derek would try to hide from me whenever I came home from school. I was younger then and he didn't want to worry me. He thought he could take care of me and didn't want me to go into care. Then he stopped hiding them. I think at first he didn't want me to know about his other life. The one that involved drugs and alcohol. He wanted to seem as though he had his life in check but the debt was getting harder to pay off and jobs were getting harder to find.

I was twelve then and he was just eighteen. I should have known something was up when he came home one day with bags of new clothes for the two of us. I should have asked where the money was from and how he was able to afford all of it. But I was twelve then and had just gotten the latest trainers. Five years later and Derek doesn't come home with bags of new clothes, he comes home with bags of weed.

My brother wasn't always so bad. I remember a time when my brother was my hero, the person I looked up to. When I was younger and afraid to fall asleep at night because I thought there were monsters in my room, he would come into my room, look underneath my bed and tell me there was nothing to be afraid of.

Oh how right he was. Because the monster wasn't under my bed, it was sleeping in the one next door.