Title: The Other Son
Author: Melissa Jooty (e-mail me at The characters of 'Numb3rs' are the property of Nicolas Falacci, Cheryl Heuton and CBS. No profit has been made by my utilizing them in my story. All other characters are my creation and therefore belong to me!
Rating: PG
Summery: How would Charlie have coped if he had been the one to grow up in his brother's shadows?
Archiving: As long as you ask first, it should be okay.

"The Lost Boys are the children who fall out of their peramulators when their nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days, they are sent to the Neverland to defray expenses." Peter Pan in the novel 'Peter Pan' by J.M. Barrie

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My name is Charlie Eppes and I'm thirty years old. My elder brother Don is eleven...

For almost as long as I can remember, Don has been the centre of our family. The favoured son; the little angel who could do no wrong. Even my prodigious accomplishments in mathematics could never out-shine the wonder that is my brother. The sad fact is, Don isn't around to revel in the attention and I'm left feeling these irrationally jealous over an invisible boy.

I was six years old when my brother disappeared. I was spending the evening receiving maths tuition and Mom was meant to pick Don up from a late baseball game at the pitch afterwards. But when my tutor began discussing the possibility of allowing me to enter a university summer programme devised for gifted children, Mom was so caught in the excitement of the moment that Don briefly slipped her mind. These things happen all the time, across the world, when parents momentarily forget a child. There are even stories of parents accidentally leaving a child at a truck stop or heading off to the airport having forgotten to put the baby in the car. Usually, all that would have been required was a heartfelt apology and a small treat.

However, Mom was never to have that chance. While Mom and I were enthused over the idea of me at university, albeit unofficially, Don had gave up hope of a lift and decided to make his own way home on foot. No-one is entirely certain what happened other than my brother never arrived home. One minute he was there, the next he was gone; it was as if he vanished from the face of the Earth. I quickly learned that there is nothing more devestating or wounding to a family than a loss of a child, especially when that pain comes without any sense of closure or resolution. It was the not knowing that was the worse. What happened to eleven-year-old boys who go missing? Had someone abducted Don? Was he scared and crying for home? Was he dead or alive? It was questions like that that continually plagued my parents, and myself as I grew older.

It's strange how I still see him as forever eleven years old. I know he's my elder brother and, if he is alive out there, he'd be a grown man of thirty-five. But I've never spared much thought for him being an adult. In my dreams from adolescence, where I somehow used my maths skills to find him and return home with him as a conquering hero, it was always the little boy I would bring back with me. Even now, as an adult myself, I imagine any sort of reunion to be with a tiny Don wearing scuffed trainers, jeans with holes at the knees and a scruffy 'Superman' T-shirt. Maybe I think by reuniting with the eleven-year-old Don, the damage to my family can be repaired.

For one thing my six-year-old mind knew for sure, in the over-whelming desolation and horror of the time, was that the day we lost Don was the day our family changed forever.

Mom certainly never forgave herself for not being there for him and echoes of his cries haunted her until the day she died. Sometimes I think she even welcomed the death the cancer brought her because she held hopes that, if Don was dead, they would be reunited in Heaven. My happy, jovial dad turned into an angry, grief-stricken shell of his former self. He vascillates, even to this day, between obsessing over Don's case and over memories of the young son he never saw grow up.

And then there was me, the second son suddenly unsure of his place in the family. Until that day, I knew that I was the one who was the pride of the Eppes family. Yes, our parents loved us both equally but I was the Child Genius, learning to count when I was barely walking and performing complex mathematics at an age other children were still mastering potty training. Mom and Dad loved to fawn over me and, being a small child, I lapped their praise up. It was only after that I can empathise how difficult it must have been for Don, at times, to be shoved in the corner.

You see, I became acquainted with that corner in the aftermath of Don's disappearance. It wasn't that I was ignored or unloved but rather Don was elevated to the position of the perfect child and I could never truly match up to his 'flawlessness'. Now I understand it was just how parents who have lost a child cope but, back then, I was just confused to have been relegated to second place. Mom and Dad would forever talk the great holidays they would take when Don returned or the wonderful toys they would buy him. They kept his room untouched and intact like a shrine to the boy they could no longer hold.

On one hand, my parents fixated with tracking my every movement to ensure my safety and, on the other, they left me to fend for myself emotionally as they struggled with their anguish . I couldn't even escape Don when I won admission into Princeton University aged only thirteen; I wasn't just the child prodigy but I was 'the child prodigy, you know, the one whose brother went missing'. Mom and Dad used to jump at the chance whenever media interest in me drifted to Don as it was yet another opportunity to highlight his case and, perhaps, bring in new leads.

Oh, how I bitterly resented him at times. I still do, on occasion. In my parents' memories, Don was forever this wonderful, angelic boy who was always immaculate, obediant and good-natured. They don't remember the real Don. The brat who pinched me if I was caught in his room or ran quickly out of the house so he wouldn't have to take me out to play. They have forgotten about the malicious brother who tried to frighten me with stories about monsters under my bed or the Boga-Boga Man who ate the brains of boys who were too smart. But I remember it all. I remember the boy who allowed me to tag along on his boyish quests or tripped up the Fourth Grade bully who had made me his new victim. I remember the cherubically handsome boy who smiled bashfully as he admitted I wasn't too bad for a kid brother or would tenderly read me comic books at night even if I could read for myself.

There are days when I resent my brother so much, feeling as if I could collapse under my weight of envy as Dad launches into another wistful spiel over what Don would be doing today and how he was the most beautiful child ever. It's such an odd kinship I have with Don, the brother I dearly love and cuttingly envy.

But I do know I'd sell my soul to have him back...

THE END

This is my first outing into the 'Numb3rs' verse so I hope everyone likes it. Sorry to anyone who's already read it on the mailing list. Anyway, I don't know what possessed me to write this; maybe I've been reading too much about the Natascha Kampusch case. I've just started watching 'Numb3rs' but one thing that's always struck me is how Charlie is very much the favoured son. I firmly believe Alan and his wife do love their sons equally but I think they could have done a better job supporting Don and ensuring he was never left in the shadows of his brother. And I always wondered how Charlie would cope being the 'other' son.