Having a need to keep his guitar-picking hands from being ripped to shreds, he ran to his house with the cat still clinging to his shirt and meowing loudly. With no thought to the fact that the house belonged to his family, he rang the doorbell and waited impatiently.
After an all-too-long moment, the door opened and Zachary, Isaac's second youngest brother, slowly appeared--munching on a single white chocolate fudge-covered Oreo cookie. Issac pointed helplessly at the cat on his shirt. Zachary shrugged and chewed slowly. With a pained expression, Zachary swallowed his snack and slowly reached up, grasped the cat under it's forearms with one hand and grasped it by the scruff of the neck with the other. He pulled it off slowly and said, "Ike, dude, undo it's claws."
Quickly, Isaac sprang into action and began trying to untangle the cotton fibers of his shirt from the cat's protruding claws. He did more damage than good in his hurry and, once Zachary had set the cat down to scamper off soundlessly to an unknown destination, Isaac found that he had several unrepairable holes in his shirt. "Aww, man. I was going to wear this at the next gig."
Zachary patted his shoulder gently. "Don't beat yourself up over it, Ike. We are this thing called famous and because of that word and the priveleges we got with it, we can go get you another one."
Isaac turned to Zachary with a bit of a glare in his eyes. "It's the principle of the thing, Zac. Just because we've got the money to destroy anything we want, it doesn't mean we should. So, yeah, I may be able to get a shirt even better than this and I won't have to worry about the cost, but little things could add up if our next album doesn't take off and maybe I don't want another shirt. How about that, Zac?"
Zac took a step back and shook his head slowly. "You're so defensive, Ike. Everything bothers you and nothing can be perfect, especially not you. Is that it? Because if that's what's running through your brain, I need to call the hospital right now to schedule a lobotomy for you."
Up to this point, Zachary had remained dazingly calm. Now, however, he clenched his hands and fists and let his eyes open wide. "I'm sick of you taking it out on me. I don't need to be yelled at because you did something wrong and want to beat yourself up about it and everyone knows that when you're in pain, the whole world suffers. Now then, get inside, change shirts and prepare for Christmas dinner or else you will be getting a very immature and inanimate spoonful of mashed potatos in your face the second you sit down. Got it?"
It took a few moments for the words to sink into Isaac's head. However, once he realized that Zac was speaking nothing but truth, he engulfed his brother in a hug and started to shake in silent but discernable sobs into the soft bit of shoulder. When a solitary tear ran freezing down his pale cheek, he pulled away, discreetly wiping his eyes, and smiled lightly. “Thanks, Zac. I think I needed to hear that. Sometimes I want to think I make believe my whole life in my head for all that I do wrong, but maybe it’s all just some little part of life that we all have to deal with. I can’t be the only one who makes mistakes, right?”
Zac pushed the screen door open, which had fallen shut, unnoticed, behind him, and took a step inside. “Right. You make believe. Now: in, shirt, dinner. Oklahomies?”
Isaac burst into a giant grin of shiny white teeth and happily followed his brother inside; he was now in a better mood that would last a long while.
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