---

---

 

your cousin Breno begins collecting garbage. 

He rips the wrapper off your Sprite bottle, drains the brine from your Pickle-in-a-Pouch and keeps them, temporarily, in a plastic bag he carries wherever he goes. He transfers everything to the binder when he gets home.

Up until now, the binder belonged to both of you. It held your collection of Pokémon cards plus the baseball cards you still got every year from Tio Pedro, who meant well but lived in Tallahassee and had no idea you quit baseball three years earlier. But then Breno transfers all the cards, including the holographic ones and the special-edition extra thick ones, to a box under your bed, signifying the end of the binder’s joint ownership. Now the binder is only Breno’s. In twelve years, it will become only yours.

Breno keeps the plastic sheets inside the binder. He curates the garbage using the three-by-three grid of transparent sleeves, following a set of rules either nonexistent or too complicated for you to understand. On any given page, the grid of nine may have a single empty slot or could be missing an entire column or row. Sometimes he cuts the garbage into shapes, two-dimensional at first, until he brings home a book of origami and starts making cranes out of bags of Cheetos.

You interfere only once: swapping the boat-shaped Juicy Fruit wrapper with the shredded receipt from the pizza place up the street. You find them in their proper slots the next time you check. This does not surprise you. You never ask him about the binder. You don’t know why.

---

When you’re fifteen, you find Jason Kowalyck sitting on your bed. He has the binder open, one meaty hand on each of its shiny red sides. The protests are bubbling in your throat when you notice Breno doesn’t seem to mind. Jason says it smells like shit. Your cousin laughs and puts the binder back under his bed.

---

When you’re seventeen, Breno tells you he’s applying to art school. He says he doesn’t care which one, as long as it’s in California. By this point, the garbage is on the walls, the floors, encroaching the invisible line that divides the room into yours and his.

Afterwards, he goes to soccer practice with Jason Kowalyck like nothing happened.

You stare at the collage above his bed: your English papers, the prayer cards from Mrs. Robinson’s memorial, what looks like every carton of Clinton’s Iced Tea the two of you have drunk since he moved in. You tear it all down. You leave it in a garbage bag on his side of the room. Your mother grounds you.

---

When you’re eighteen, you move to California for school.

---

When you’re eighteen, Breno calls to tell you about the dogs. He’s still working as a delivery driver for the Brazilian pizza place in Emerson. You thought it was a bad idea, him being in a car for so many hours a day. Now it’s as bad as it’s ever been. He sees them in the rearview mirror, inside the house too, in his peripheral vision. They are mostly shadows, but sometimes great beasts with scarlet fangs.

You ask if he’s still on Latuda.

Yes, he says, but 40 milligrams now.

And it’s not helping? you ask.

It’s stopped, the auditory stuff. He can tell what is real and what is not, almost always.

Talk to my mom, you tell him. You suggest that he stops driving until things get better.

He asks when you’re coming home.

---

When you’re twenty-one, your mother asks if you could send your cousin 640 dollars to help cover the rent.

You don’t have it.

You borrow the money from your college girlfriend who says she admires the way you look out for Breno, but something about the way she says it bothers you. You were about to break up with her when you got the call. Instead, you take the money, keep your mouth shut. It takes you six months to pay her back. By then, you can’t remember what the problem was.

---

When you’re twenty-two, Breno calls because the dogs are back and sometimes they speak in your voice.

---

When you’re twenty-three, your mother calls because the cops almost shot your cousin. It was a routine wellness check, and he wouldn’t drop the knife. She reminds you of the promise you made.

When was the last time you called?

---

When you’re twenty-eight, you consider naming your first child after him. 

Your wife thinks it’s a nice gesture. In the end, you can’t bring yourself to do it. There’s a reason people give their kids names like Hope and Grace; never Misery.

---

When you’re twenty-six, your mother asks you to come by because she’s been holding onto these things for two years. Okay, you tell her. You say it maybe six times until she finally says enough. This weekend. Please.

So you go.

In the bedroom you used to share with your cousin, you sort through the garbage. Take what you want, she says. The rest will be thrown away. In the end you take only the binder and the box of cards.

---

When you’re twenty-four, your cousin drives out to Blue Ridge Parkway, leaves his car on the shoulder, and lies down.

---

When you’re twelve, your mother says cousin Breno will stay in your room. She makes you promise to look after him, even though you’re the younger cousin. 

Her hands are on your shoulders, eyes wet and darting all over your face. You can hardly listen. You are vibrating under her palms, imagining your new life. You and Breno playing Pokémon cards, improvising jujitsu, spontaneously combusting then resurrecting with orange Tic Tacs. All the games you played before Breno got sick. Years later, she’ll apologize for asking you to make that promise in the first place. But you tried. You think you really tried.

 

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S. C. PIRES is a Brazilian-American fiction writer and designer from Newark, NJ. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Apex Magazine, 4LPH4NUM3R1C by NonBinary Review, and elsewhere. Her short story, “Jesus of Karrington,” was shortlisted for The Bedford Competition 2025 Short Story Main Prize. You can find her lurking on Substack @scpires.

Featured image by Olivier Amyot, courtesy of Unsplash.