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  Again and again.

  I spit out a tooth, like a shooting star in the galaxy of blood and saliva dripping from my mouth. He throws one more knee, and I crumple onto the concrete.

  “Had enough, you gutless pussy?” he yells out, then he spits on me as I roll away.

  “I am … not … gutless,” I say as best as I can through my recently rearranged mouth. From my kneeling position, I dive into his legs, but I can’t move him. I see that some of the bullyboys are blocking the door, while Bison holds his arms out, keeping away anyone who might wish to stop the slaughter. Feeling safe and of unsound mind, Hitchings kicks me hard in the ribs.

  Again and again.

  The next time I spit, the blood’s darker. I can barely move, and my body’s in shock. Still, my brain won’t shut down, nor will my broken mouth.

  “That all you got … Hitchings?” I sputter, each word jabbing my lungs like razor blades. I don’t have the energy to stand, so I hoist myself into a crawl. “Is that … all you got? You ain’t shit!”

  Hitchings answers with a hard punch to the top of my head. It’s easy to hear, since it explodes directly into my skull. All around me, there’s a wall of sound, and I realize this is like the WWE in one respect: we’re giving people their money’s worth. I hear a lone voice yelling for Hitchings to end his assault as his fist cracks my skull again and he finally cries out in pain. I know I’ve scored my first offensive move by breaking his right hand with my head.

  “Bob, that’s enough,” a lone voice says, becoming more familiar.

  I sense Hitchings standing over me. I crawl up on one elbow and swing my left fist into his knee. There’s no sound, but he snaps back with another punch directly to my left ear, which sends me back to the concrete. As I lie on the ground, about all I can see are Hitchings’s rented black shoes spattered with my blood, like paint.

  “Bob, I said that’s enough, okay?” the lone voice says, and I suddenly realize: it’s Sean. Hitchings lands two stiff kicks into my ribs in answer to Sean.

  “You’re the gutless one,” I say, but I don’t think Hitchings hears me. I can barely move my mouth. I do, however, hear clearly the sound of Hitchings yelling in pain and shock as Sean knocks him down. With my eyes swelling shut, I can barely see Sean land six shots a second as he plays Hitchings face like a drum.

  Finally, some teachers rush out, which is lucky for Hitchings; Sean’s all over him. Morgan pulls Sean off, his blue suit and white shirt now candy-striped with blood.

  “What a mess,” Morgan says. “Let’s get an ambulance in here.”

  “I already called 911,” Kylee says, her voice filled with anxiety.

  I roll over on my back. It’s the only part of my body not in total agony. I can barely breathe from the stiff kicks to the ribs. The fight between Hitchings and Sean has broken up, as rent-a-guards hold them down. Sean’s face is on the pavement, almost next to mine.

  “Thanks, Sean,” I gurgle out.

  “I figured I owed you,” Sean says, trying to catch his breath.

  Hitchings is standing now, arms restrained, but not his mouth. “Hendricks, you—”

  I gather what energy I have left, and cut him off: “You want more?”

  “Shut up, Bret!” Morgan demands in a rough voice. “Just be quiet.”

  Kylee, with tears staining her violet dress, comes to check on me; I see her beautiful brown eyes looking down at me with kindness and guilt as I utter, “I’m not gutless.”

  “I know, Bret,” she says, stroking my hair gently before she moves over toward Sean.

  “Bret, what were you thinking?” Alex says, kneeling next to me with both Becca and Elizabeth at his side. Becca cradles my busted open head in her soft arms, not caring that my face is turning her ivory prom dress dark blood-red.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” I say, trying to joke, but blood, not laughter, gurgles from my throat.

  “But why did you try to fight him?” Alex asks.

  “Don’t ask why, Alex. Only ask what’s next,” I say, as the EMTs lean over me. Hitchings is gone; I hope taken to a waiting police cruiser. “Mr. Morgan, where are you?”

  “What is it?” Morgan asks, kneeling down next to me.

  “Tell Hitchings … ,” I manage to say with my broken jaw and healed soul. “Tell him I’m not afraid of him anymore.”

  Thirty

  June 7, Before Senior Year

  “Bret, are you awake?”

  I don’t respond to my father’s query, not out of defiance, but because there’s no real way to do so. My jaw is wired shut, and both of my eyelids are swollen over. My guts are damaged, but I finally showed that I have them.

  “Bret, can you hear me?” Mom whispers.

  I just lie there listening to hospital life go on around me. From what I’ve overheard, my injuries are extensive. I’ve got a bad concussion, a broken nose, a bruised eardrum, bruised ribs, a bruised kidney, five fewer teeth, and a jaw held together more by steel wire than human tissue.

  “Mary, let him rest,” I hear my father say softly. So softly it can’t cover the sound of my mother’s crying or of my father’s uncharacteristic attempt to comfort rather than confront her.

  “My baby boy,” Mom says.

  “This is my fault, my fault,” I hear my father say, his voice growing fainter as his heavy footsteps lead away from the bed. “My fault, my goddamn stupid fault.”

  “Honey, please don’t do this to yourself.” Now it’s Mom’s turn to kick on her empathy machine, a device all hospitals should install. With only one good ear, I strain to hear them.

  “I’m as bad a father as my dad,” Dad says, pounding his foot or hand against the door.

  “Don’t say that,” my mom says, but everybody in the room knows the truth.

  “That Hitchings kid probably won’t even go to jail for this, thanks to his dad,” my father says. “His dad gets him out of jail, while Bret’s old man puts him in a hospital bed. Damn it!”

  Things go quiet for a long time, except for Mom’s crying and Dad’s trying not to.

  “Mrs. Hendricks, can I come in?” I hear someone say from a distance.

  “One second, Alex,” my mother says. I hear both of my parents take a deep breath, composing themselves, trying to put the best face on things for my best friend.

  “It’s okay,” my father mutters, even though he’s no fan of Alex.

  “How’s he doing?” Alex says, the stress in his voice obvious to all.

  “Bret has—” Mom starts, but tears stop her. “Excuse me, Alex.”

  “This is my fault,” Alex says over the sound of a chair pulled closer to the bed.

  “That doesn’t help anybody,” my dad says, sounding equally as nervous as Alex.

  “He stood up for me,” Alex says. “The thing with Kylee and Sean was also my fault.”

  “How so?” my father asks as he also pulls his chair closer to the bed.

  I listened with pain exploding in every nerve cell still functioning as Alex spills his guts to Dad about everything that went down between Kylee, Sean, and me. He even told him about the stupid fight that Sean and I had over Christmas when Sean told me the way to get back at Hitchings was to let him beat me up and then sue him. He told Dad about Sean wearing my shirt to school. Alex told Dad how I stood up for him, leading to the prom carnage. All the while, I heard Dad’s breathing get heavier and heavier, like a steam engine about to explode.

  “Alex, why are you telling me this?” Dad finally asks.

  “Because I thought you should know,” Alex said. “Because if I had a dad, I would want him to know these things.”

  “That must have been hard for you, growing up without a father.”

  “Not really, Mr. Hendricks, not really,” Alex says slow and sadly. “When your father dies, he rejects you once.” “I did my best for my boy,” Dad says.

  “He also did his best for you, and for me,” Alex says softly. “That’s the worst thing.”

  The door opens and I he
ar my mother’s shoes on the tile floor again. “Alex, thanks for coming. We’ll let you know when he can communicate.”

  “Sure thing,” Alex says, then leans over me. Despite the swelling in my brain, my forehead accepts the kiss Alex plants above my eyes as he whispers: “Radio-Free Flint forever.”

  Once the door closes, I hear my parents talking, but they must have moved to the corner of the room because their words are hard to understand from this distance and one-ear deafness.

  “I don’t know, Mary, I don’t know,” my father says loudly after a while.

  “We don’t have any health insurance, so how are we going to pay for this?” Mom says.

  “I said, I don’t know!” My father is raging mad, not at me I guess, but at the world.

  “Yes, you do,” Mom says, but Dad’s only reply is to slam the door behind him as he leaves the room. I imagine him sitting in his truck, smoking, and feeling as beat up as I do, except the only medicine he wants would kill him and his family in the long run. Down in the hospital parking lot, among the grieving families with lost loved ones and happy relatives of newborns, sits my father, trying to figure out the best decision to make when you don’t have any good choices.

  Thirty-one

  July 10, Before Senior Year

  “Kylee’s here to see you.”

  I sit up in my bed, which I’m now able to do without much pain. I sip water through a straw from the bottle next to me. Mom sticks her head in the door to repeat her announcement.

  I hold up five fingers, signaling to her that I want five minutes to get myself together. Since getting out of the hospital I communicate with my parents mostly through Post-it notes and hand signals. But today is the first time I can actually talk again. Next time I see Mr. Douglas, I’ll have to thank him for encouraging me to take that summer mime workshop before my sophomore year. You never know what lessons you need to learn sometimes until you need them. Maybe Austin is wrong: you can trust some people, like Mr. Douglas. He stopped by to invite me to work on the summer theater production. Becca visits all she can, but her schedule is pretty packed, working her first job and taking summer art classes. It’s not the same as with Kylee, but that’s okay. It’s not worse or better, it’s just different. I like different, but I think I’ve learned you can be a little different, like Becca, without feeling odd.

  I’m hoping Becca won’t be at odds with me after Kylee’s visit today. She knows about it, and she’s not happy, but like me, Becca’s able to forgive. No wonder we’re so compatible. Sean doesn’t know or care, as he and Kylee have broken up, for reasons no doubt as explainable yet complex as the splitting of the atom or the breaking of the human heart.

  Kylee’s parents have dropped in often, usually with gifts, most recently a Bob Dylan CD set and a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. I still don’t know how many roads a man must walk down, but standing up, being beat down, and then standing up again has to eat up some serious miles.

  I wonder if Kylee will lose her lunch when she sees my new look. To do some of the medical work on me, the nurses had to modify my mane. I try to picture the glee in Dad’s eyes as the techs shaved my head. Still, I don’t think I’ll let it grow back. I’ll really look like a senior (citizen, that is) with my bald head. I’ll look like Austin, and I’m feeling pretty stone-cold myself, but I think my days thinking any violence is entertaining are behind me.

  Where my senior year is going to take place is still up in the air. Despite everything that’s occurred, and all the hard lessons I’ve learned inside and outside of Southwestern, I don’t want to leave my pals, Mr. Douglas, or Becca. There’s a meeting on Monday, but I get the sense from Mom that in spite of Mrs. Edmonds’s best efforts, my expulsion for fighting is serious and final. Also, I understand that getting beat up isn’t considered a First Amendment issue.

  I overheard my mom and dad talking at dinner, saying that Bob Hitchings’s father is taking time out of his golf game to attend this meeting as well. I breathed a sigh of relief when Mr. Douglas told me that Hitchings is transferring to another school.Supposedly, it’s for more athletic challenges, but I think even Morgan and Mold King Cold know they’ve created a monster they need to cut loose. Hitchings knows his fate, and I’ll know mine after this weekend.

  Radio-Free Flint plans to cut a CD as soon as I can open my mouth to sing, not that we have any money to release it. Alex comes by nearly every day, playing demos. The first song on the CD will be one that he wrote just for me called “Faith in the Face of Adversity,” although most of his songs still seem to be about Elizabeth.

  I sit up in bed, then lean over to push away all the books collecting by the side of the bed. While I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, fight injuries are a fine way to expand your intellectual horizons. My list of books read has almost doubled. When my eyes get too tired to read, I watch a DVD. Robin actually moved the DVD player from her room into mine, and on occasion, we watch a movie together. Sometimes we both like the movie; sometimes not. We saw a DVD of this great Tim Burton movie called Big Fish; she hated the story about a son trying to understand his father’s life, while I was bawling by the end.

  When Kylee enters my room, a deep, gasping breath leaves my body. I wish the world would suddenly change to black-and-white, but Kylee remains a gray area, no matter what color her hair. She’s at her most beautiful, like the first time I saw her over a year ago. The only difference is that her violet hair has been replaced by her natural chestnut color.

  “Hello, Bret,” she says, having the smarts to retire “cutie.”

  “K,” I whisper, motioning for her to sit down, then I sip water so I can try to speak.

  “How are you doing?” she says, gently stroking the side of my face, since there’s no hair for her to put her fingers in, no ponytail to pull playfully.

  “Ok,” I say, my volume still low. The pain of Hitchings’s punches was mild in comparison to the blows now hammering my heart and soul.

  “Is it hard for you to talk?” she asks. “That’s a first. I’ll have my mom alert the media.”

  I laugh, which hurts but not as much as these visions of Kylee filling my eyes.

  She sighs as she looks around my room. “Bret, when are you going to get a computer?”

  I manage the patented Hendricks shrug.

  “How will I keep in touch with you? How will you send me news of your plays and your band?” She scratches her head, and smirks. “Promise me you’ll work on that, okay, kid?”

  I smile as best as I can, but the thought of staying in Kylee’s life overwhelms me because I never wanted to leave it. But I’m not sure if I’m ready to enter it again in a supporting role. Even with her sitting here now, I don’t know where I stand with her and with my own heart.

  “Early happy birthday!” she opens up a small bag, taking out a box of Godiva chocolates and a pack of clove cigarettes. She puts them next to the table, then turns away. Broken eardrum or not, I know that sound. It’s Kylee crying, not for attention, but out of affection. “I remember when you got those for me on my birthday, and I didn’t appreciate them,” she says, not even trying to hold back tears now. “Just like I didn’t appreciate you.”

  I hold her hand, so much smaller than mine, yet it still seems a perfect fit. “It’s okay.”

  “Bret, I’m so sorry about Sean,” she says softly, although I finally hear her clearly.

  “It’s okay, I forgive you,” I whisper. Everyone is sorry. Sean couldn’t help falling in love with her, any more than I could. Life isn’t fair. Accept it. Move on. I still think about why, but I try to focus on what’s next. Forgiving all three of us catapults me forward.

  “Something else,” she says, handing me the letter I wrote on her eighteenth birthday. “I want you to have this. I hope somebody else makes you this happy again. I’m sorry that I—”

  I clutch her tiny hands, trying to return the letter, but she pulls away, reaching into her bag and pulling out her purple journal. “I want you to have this
.”

  My eyes open wide, and my jaw would drop if it hadn’t recently been wired shut. “Kylee, I …” I can’t go on. The few words I’ve spoken to her have injured and exhausted me.

  She gets up from her seat and walks away from me, then comes back with my metal trash can and empties its contents on the floor. “And I want you to have this.”

  She hands me her old Dr. Evil lighter, then she speaks through tears. “Burn it! Bret, burn it! I don’t want either of us to remember me as being as evil as I was to you. I’m so sorry.”

  I take the journal, but I don’t drop it into the trash can. Instead I open it to my morning of mourning. She’s left the evidence there, and I wonder why. I take out the Polaroid documenting how I erased her name from the concrete and place it into her hands.

  She kneels by the bed, then lowers herself slowly and gently onto my chest. It hurts, but I don’t mind. After a long silence, she says, “Bret, I’m so sorry that I hurt you. I loved you, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to always have that feeling of falling in love, not just being in love. It’s like when you’re dancing, and the best part is waiting for the music to start, the anticipation before you go flying through the air. I guess I wanted love to be like that: just the fun part. I wish I could change how I behaved, but I can’t. I just never want to be that way again.”

  “It’s okay,” I whisper, running my hands over her hair, and then handing her back her letter. “But keep this because—”

  “It’s the real thing.” She slips easily back into finishing my sentences. She looks down at the letter, strokes the side of my face again, and then puts it into her small violet purse. Kylee’s reckoning isn’t about revenge, but learning never to forget, for all the right reasons.

  I hug her, then drop the journal into the metal trash can she set by the side of the bed. Kylee holds the Polaroid in front of me and I know what I must do. I flick the Dr. Evil lighter, but it doesn’t ignite the first time; it takes a couple tries to get it right. Finally, it connects, and the picture goes up in flames. My unkind deed becomes kindling as I drop it in the trash on top of the purple journal, which begins to turn into black-and-white ashes as we torch those memories good-bye. I take my water bottle from the table next to the bed and get ready to extinguish the flames.