IF I DISAPPEAR

JULIAN’S POV

Flashback - One year after the car accident

The fairground lights buzzed overhead, flickering in that sickly carnival-yellow that made everything look jaundiced and dying. The kind of light that didn’t illuminate so much as reveal every flaw. After our set, people had already drifted toward rides and funnel cakes, leaving the so-called “backstage” mostly empty, a patch of dirt behind a sagging plywood platform, littered with bottle caps, trampled hay, and an amp someone had kicked in frustration.

The generator hummed low behind us, and in the middle of all that ugliness stood Levi here glowing, magnetic, impossible.

His blond hair clung to his forehead in sweat-darkened strands, catching the light like a halo tilted just a little wrong. His blue eyes were blown wide with adrenaline and a little too much eyeliner. He had that rare thing, so rare you just couldn’t look away. At 17 he already had some of his tattoos; the crescent moon on his forearm, the cross on his chest, the fading hell was home on his bicep peeked from under ripped sleeves, the ink standing out against skin flushed from the heat of the stage.

He was a vision; magnetic like a fallen angel who was only asking to be worship.

“Did you see her?” Levi blurted, practically vibrating. “The girl in the pink scrunchie? She was shaking, Jules. Like actually shaking.” He gave me his infectious smile.

I snapped a cable out of my amp. “She looked like a kid to me.”

“She was a fan.” He savored the word like something sweet and forbidden. “Don’t ruin this for me.”

“She couldn’t have been older than thirteen Levi… ”

“So?” He shrugged innocently, but his grin had teeth. “Why do you even care?”

“Because you know why.”

Levi rolled his eyes so hard his whole body followed the motion. “You’re jealous, you’ll always be.”

My jaw tightened. “Stop it.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, closing the distance between us with deliberate steps. “It gets under your skin. I can see it admit it. I might be younger, but I’m the one everyone whispers about. I’m the one the girls are ready to tear their clothes off.”

“It bothers me because it’s wrong and you know it.” I pushed him away. “You’re obsessed with the attention especially the one that gets you in trouble.”

“Wrong?” He laughed softly. “Wrong is fun.”

He leaned in, invading my space again smelling like sweat and cheap cologne and the faint metallic scent of stage lights.

“You don’t get it,” he murmured. “When people look at me like that? I feel alive.”

“You shouldn’t get that from those girls. Or from anyone.”

He tilted his head, smirk slicing across his face.

“Oh relax. I wasn’t gonna take her home… yet.” He laughed and shoved my arm, playfully, like a kid but his eyes were anything but childish.

“Jesus, Levi!” I said it not knowing the truth and the lie because with him they both became one. He always did that; blurred the line between affection and manipulation until you weren’t sure whether to hug him or shake him.

He dropped into a folding chair and sprawled out like a prince posing for a portrait.

“You know what this reminds me of?” he asked, voice dropping into something quieter, softer, almost unbearably fragile.

“Mom’s song.”

The floor dropped out from beneath my ribs. The song we’d written together months after the crash. The only thing Levi never joked about. The one that carried every piece of grief we couldn’t speak out loud. His voice lowered, became something almost holy:

“If I disappear, don’t open your eyes,

Sing me back slow from the other side.

Hold my name on your tongue till it hurts,

Promise me, promise me , don’t let me go first.”

His voice cracked on the last line. Then like sunlight being covered by storm clouds he smiled.

“That line is so good, Jules. Don’t thank me.” He smirked.

“He shot to his feet and began pacing. His boots kicked dust into soft clouds, beneath each restless step.

“You’re leaving soon,” he muttered. “School of whatever you’re planning to do. Real life. People your age. People who don’t think eyeliner is a cry for help. You’ll have a nice middle class life with a nice wife and kids but - Oh…. Nobody will never remember your name. You’ll be just a ghost.” He snapped aggressively looking at me.

“That’s not true.” It was a lie. Not because he was right, but because he needed me to say it, and I needed him not to look at me like that like I was betraying him by growing up.

“You’re halfway gone, halfway ghost already,” he barked. “You think I don’t see it? You’re itching to escape. And I get it. I do. But where does that leave me!”

“You could come with me, start over!” I said automatically.

He laughed, full-bodied and sharp. “Come with you? What, sneak into your dorm room? Show up at your lectures? I’d last ten minutes before they kicked me out or I got bored. And anyway… you don’t want me there. Stop lying to me” He turned on his heel.

“That’s not fair.”

“Nothing’s fair,” he whispered, voice breaking around the edges. “Mom’s gone. Dad’s gone. Everyone looks at us like we’re cursed. And to be honest I’m pretty sure we are.” He paused, breath shuddering.

“Don’t leave me, Jules.” He’s eyes started glistening.

“Levi… you’re my brother…”

“PROMISE!” His eyes were the exact shade of a storm rolling over blue sky, beautiful and terrifying and ready to swallow everything in its path.

“I’m not leaving you and you know it!”

“That’s not enough!” He yelled

A breath.

A collapse.

A surrender.

“Okay,” I whispered. “I promise.”

And Levi shattered. He fell into me, arms locking around me with desperate strength, sobbing violently into my shirt. The sound ripped out of him; raw, aching, animal.

“I don’t wanna disappear,” he choked.

“I don’t wanna be nothing. Don’t let me be nothing!”

“You’re not nothing.”

“Yes I am.” His fingers fisted my shirt. I held him because I always had. Because he needed someone to keep him from dissolving. His tears burned through fabric. His breath trembled. His body shook like something was tearing itself apart inside him.

And suddenly a memory slammed into me like a fist.

When Levi was eight. And I was eleven. Our living room, dim and cluttered.

Dad snoring on the couch, beer bottles surrounding him like fallen soldiers. Mom yelling in the hallway about bills or God or something else she wished she could run from. Levi, tiny and barefoot, dragged a dining chair to the kitchen counter.

“Don’t,” I’d hissed. “You’re gonna fall.”

He had turned toward me with that same mischievous grin, the one that promised trouble.

“I just wanna see,” he’d said, reaching for Dad’s hidden pack of cigarettes.

He got them.

Jumped down.

The chair toppled, crashed against the floor. Dad didn’t so much as twitch but Mom stormed in, eyes on fire she didn’t want him to wake him up; it would save her from more bruising. Before she could even do anything, I grabbed the fallen chair, shoved the cigarettes into my own pocket, and stepped in front of Levi.

“Sorry,” I said. “It was me mom”

I’m the one who took the beating that night, I always did.

“You’ll always protect me right?” Levi whispered later that night, hiding behind me.

“Of course. Always.” I said it like it was our secret pact that nobody would be able to break.

“Even if I screwed up?”

“Yes”

“Even if it was really bad?”

“Levi, yes”

He’d thrown his thin little arms around my waist, face pressed into my shirt.

“You’re my person,” he’d whispered.

“Even when I’m bad… you’re always gonna stay.” I had nodded because I was eleven and stupid. And I loved him.

Now, in the present, Levi’s sobs hit my chest exactly the same way. Same tremble, same need. Same manipulation hiding inside fear.

“Don’t let me disappear,” he cried, fingers gripping tighter.

“I need you, Jules. I only have you.”

And I felt it the hook sinking deeper. He knew exactly where my soft spots were. He’d found them young. And he pressed them every chance he got. When he finally pulled away, his face blotched and tear-streaked… he smiled.

Triumphant.

Relieved.

Certain.

Like the entire breakdown had been part of the performance.

“I knew you’d stay,” he whispered locking eyes with mine.“You always stay.” Chills ran down my back somehow I knew I was his prisoner. My fate was sealed.

Then he wiped his face, swung his jacket over his shoulder, and strutted out of the tent like he’d risen from the dead. I stayed frozen, heart pounding in my throat.

The lyrics echoed like prophecy:

“If I disappear, don’t open your eyes…

Promise me, promise me , don’t let me go first.”

But he did go first.

And I’ve been paying for that promise ever since. As we crossed the parking lot, dust rising with every step, Levi looked over his shoulder and smirked:

“Don’t betray me, Jules. People who betray me don’t get to come back.”

I laughed then.

But now with Ava watching me like she can hear every ghost howling inside me; Every truth feels like a betrayal. Every confession feels like choosing her over him. Every word feels like cutting the thread he wrapped around my ribs when we were children.

And the worst part?

Some part of me still believes him.

Still belongs to him.