"Jeremy don't touch!" I ordered my annoying 6-year-old brother.

"I wasn't touchin' nothing," he replied, giving me his sweetest smile.

I bent down to his eye level. Oh those crystal sea green eyes and tussled sandy hair. It's hard not to love the little squirt. He didn't mean to touch it but he was only six and couldn't control himself sometimes.

"You don't want Daddy to get mad at you do you?" I asked looking him directly in the eye.

"No," he said, a look of fear crossing his angelic features.

It's not that my dad didn't love Jeremy. He did, really. It seemed like he loved Jay more than he loved me. Our dad's a mechanic and a member of the Hell's Angels biker gang. So you can imagine how imposing he can be to a six-year-old. He's very protective of his bike. He's practically wed to the hunk of metal. He even named it. Eva after my mom, Evalyn.

"Kids what are you doing in here?" mom asked standing in the doorway.

"Mommy! We wasn't doin' nothing," Jay squealed bounding over to her, wrapping his small arms about her waist.

"Jennifer?" she asked expectantly.

'Oh God I hate it when she calls me Jennifer'. Well how do I explain to the woman in front of me that I was keeping my brother from 'tampering' with my father's pride and joy without ratting out the little munchkin and thus causing animosity between us?

"Jay just wanted to look at Eva is all," I said.

It wasn't totally a lie. He had wanted to look at the bike. He'd also wanted to climb aboard and test it out. It seemed that everyone in the family except for Jeremy knew how dangerous it was for him to be playing around with the bike.

"Ok well dinner's ready so come on," she replied, not fully believing me.

The three of us walked out of the garage, through the small kitchen and into the dining room. My father sat at the head of the table, a weary expression on his grease-powdered face. He always looked like he glowed with a silver-grey tint. It's odd how my father imprinted himself in my mind sometimes. I took my place next to him and we began yet another boring family dinner.

"How was school today Jenny?" came the gruff voice of my father.

"Fine," I muttered through a mouthful of lamb.

"How'd you do on your English test?" The persistent prodding of my mother.

"I don't know," I mumbled.

I never understood why they had to know every detail of my life. It's my life not theirs. If they want to know what it's like to be a teenager now, why don't they go to school? I'm not their damn messenger. And so it continued, the grilling with the occasional comment from the six-year-old sitting across from me. It wasn't until much later that night that any of us would realize what impact that dinner conversation would have on him.

"Have a good sleep baby," I could here my mom say as she turned off the light in his room down the hall.

"Mommy you know what I wanna be?" I could hear his little voice call.

"What?" such a short response, even a bit cold.

"I wanna be like Daddy," he whispered, as if it was supposed to be a secret just between the two of them.

"I'm sure he'd be proud," she answered with a smile in her voice.

I heard the door close and I laid down in my bed, thinking about the small cherub down the hall, flying high in his dreams. Eventually I fell asleep. I'm generally a light sleeper but I guess I was under deep enough to not hear the door down the hall open and close and small feet patter down the stairs. I was so deep in slumber that I didn't hear the door to the garage open and the motorcycle wheel noiselessly out onto the dark pavement and sleeping streets outside. No one heard the bike's ignition catch and rev. Perhaps if I hadn't been so distracted by dreams I might have been able to hear a loud screech and crash. But I was too asleep to notice any of this.

The only thing that brought me out of my subconscious reverie was the blare of the doorbell. I sat bolt upright. My mind was still foggy but when I heard my father bounding down the stairs I grabbed my robe and followed. It was a neighbor from a few houses down. He'd come home to find a motorcycle crashed in his front lawn. He led us in a small cluster to his yard. There in the pale moonlight was my father's precious bike, the paint scratched and smeared with blood. It was then that I saw him. Jeremy lay a few feet away from the bike in the road. He was covered in blood. He wore no helmet, no protective gear.

"Oh God!" was all I could say before the tears came.

They fell like torrents of rain. I rushed to my baby brother's side as did my father and mother. Up the street, the blare of ambulance sirens could be heard. But a rushing and pounding sound in my ears blocked it out. This couldn't be happening. Not to my little brother. He was just a baby, a little angel. But now he was an angel with broken wings, an angel about to fade.

"I---flew Daddy," he gasped as he coughed up blood.

Those were the last words I ever heard my little brother say. He died before the ambulance arrived. In those few short minutes I'd lost one of the most important people in my life. The next few days were a blur. The only thing I remember about the funeral is watching the coffin being buried and the headstone being placed at the head of his small grave. The simple stone read "Jeremy Taylor Clarke. Born: October 31, 1997 Died: May 8, 2004. Get up and earn your wings tonight".