Bruiser

by Neal Shusterman

  Who I should stop,

  But can’t.

  This wiring inside me is all wrong.

  I’m built to receive.

  I can’t kill an ant,

  I can’t salt a snail,

  I can’t raise a hand to my uncle,

  My wiring won’t let me.

  So I lie in the mud,

  In my pain,

  In my weakness,

  And my fury at him

  Is nothing compared to my fury at myself.

  I am the crumbling aftermath of the earthquake.

  The dust settling over the ruins.

  Three minutes and it’s over.

  I rise, battered but not broken.

  Never broken.

  It will take more than my uncle to do that.

  I reach for the rusted knob,

  Opening to find Cody,

  His hair a wild mess,

  Eyes frightened and lost,

  But not a mark upon him.

  And Uncle Hoyt

  Has crumbled, too.

  Ruined and rocking,

  A baying, keening ball of misery,

  Kneeling in the center of the shed,

  Gripping himself as if he’s the one in pain.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he wails.

  “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean any of it.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  Always the same.

  He means it, too.

  He means it in the moment.

  But that doesn’t change what he’s done.

  To Cody.

  To me.

  I take my brother and close the door on Uncle Hoyt,

  Escaping from the epicenter

  Because I can feel my uncle’s pain,

  Like worms in my flesh.

  But if I can get far enough away,

  Fast enough away,

  His agony will be his, and his alone.

  Our bedroom is my sanctuary.

  I take off my shirt.

  I lie facedown on my bed.

  We begin the ritual.

  Cody and I.

  We both know it well.

  A warm, wet cloth begins it.

  He mops it across my back.

  Gently tracing reconnaissance of the wounds.

  “Is there bleeding?”

  “No,” Cody says. “A little.”

  He wipes my face,

  Around my swelling eyes,

  And in his eyes I see how bad it is.

  A second cloth,

  This one with alcohol.

  Cold and stinging.

  I swallow this pain, too.

  The next cloth is dry.

  Cody carefully blots,

  He assesses,

  He’s strategic with Band-Aids,

  Familiar with the shapes and sizes.

  “You want a shirt?”

  “Not yet.”

  He puts a towel across my back,

  Maybe to keep me warm,

  Maybe to hide the scars of battle.

  “They should be mine.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”

  He nods and begins to cry,

  But it only lasts an instant,

  Because before a single tear falls

  His sorrow becomes mine,

  A heaviness in my heart,

  A salty sting in my eyes.

  “I want to be sad,” he says. “Can’t you let me feel sad?”

  But I can’t do that.

  I’m not wired that way.

  I dream of the morning,

  And how it will unfold.

  Uncle Hoyt never remembers;

  It’s very convenient.

  He’ll grasp just enough to know he did something wrong,

  But not enough to take responsibility for it.

  Cody will avoid his eyes at breakfast,

  Studying his Alphabits like they’re a spelling test;

  But I’ll hold my uncle’s gaze,

  Making him look away,

  Because this time was worse than all the others, And he’ll know,

  And he’ll have to remember,

  “Let me see it,” he’ll say.

  He’ll reach for my shirt, but I’ll pull away,

  The wounds are my dignity; I will not share them.

  And that’s when he’ll get scared.

  “You won’t tell no one, right?

  If you do they’ll ask questions,

  You’ll have to give answers,

  They’ll take you away,

  Then you and your brother,

  They’ll split you both up,

  That’s what they do,

  Is that what you want?

  So you don’t gotta tell,

  ’Cause who would believe it,

  This thing you can do?

  And what happened last night

  Won’t happen again,

  See, I’ve learned my lesson,

  I’m making amends,

  We’re a family here,

  It’s nobody’s business,

  A family, Brew,

  Let’s keep it that way.”

  I’m ready to face him when morning comes,

  Ready for all those things he’ll say.

  I rise with bold and righteous indignation,

  The wounds on my body an accusation,

  I’m ready!

  But Uncle Hoyt cannot be roused,

  His stupor extends into the day,

  His snores shake the house,

  And confronting a sleeping man

  Is no confrontation at all,

  So I get Cody breakfast

  And gingerly slip my backpack

  Over aching shoulders,

  Then we head off to school,

  Both of us knowing

  That we won’t tell a soul.

  BRONTË

  37) PHOSPHORESCENCE

  The way I see it, the impossible happens all the time; but we’re so good at taking it for granted, we forget it was once impossible.

  I mean, look at airplanes—come on, how could they not be impossible? These gigantic metal things you’d need a massive hydraulic winch just to get off the ground? Please! They used to say, “If man were meant to fly, he’d have wings”; but it didn’t stop poets from dreaming, did it? Then a few hundred years ago a man named Bernoulli came up with an elegant mathematical principle about pressure, air density, and velocity—and bingo! Poetry became poetry in motion, and now objects bigger than blue whales are filling the friendly skies, thank you very much.

  I think small children are far more in tune with the wonder of it all, far better than the rest of us more “sensible” and “mature” folk. They look at every little thing, from fireflies to lightning, and stand in awe that such things exist. Sometimes we need to be reminded that that’s how we should feel…but, on the other hand, if we felt that way all the time, we’d just marvel at the fireworks and never get anything done.

  I will reluctantly admit that I am also a victim of species numbness. I, too, have taken the wondrous and have magically made it boring. Fireflies contain reactive phosphor; lightning is just static. Yawn.

  I will also admit that Tennyson and I came to accept Brewster’s mystical talent far too quickly. Even though I tried to hold on to the wonder, I couldn’t. The fact that he could heal—and steal—the hurts of others became a commonplace fact. That was my first mistake. Because once you stop marveling at that firefly you caught in a jar, it sits on a shelf with no one to let it out.

  38) COTILLION

  Before Uncle Hoyt had his steamroller accident and Brew took on the worst beating of his life, I was busy enticing Brewster out of his shell. Tennyson had become his personal trainer; but my role was far more intimate, as well it should be. I was Brew’s muse extraordinaire, determined to caress him into a meaningful social life. Having read various books on psychology, I thought I had Brew figured out. All he needed was a little encouragement. Of course I
couldn’t have been more wrong, but I’ve never been very good at abandoning theories.

  “You need to reinvent yourself,” I announced to him at lunch one day, holding his hand across the table for everyone in the cafeteria to see.

  “My current invention works just fine,” he said. “People stay away from me; I stay away from them.”

  I shook my head. “Not anymore. You, my sad, poetic stud, are not a loser; and it’s time you stopped acting like one. The days of you skulking around the school are over.” He tried to eat, but I was holding his eating hand, so all he could do was clumsily stab at the food with a fork in his left fist.

  “Maybe I like skulking.”

  “You’ll like having friends more.” But he didn’t seem convinced, only concerned. “Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t want friends?” I gave him back his hand, but he didn’t switch the fork, leaving his hand available for me to take again. I smiled, marveling at all the little things that mean so much, and wondered when I had become so cloyingly Hallmark.

  “It’s not that I don’t want friends,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  But good idea or not, I was going to make it happen. The next in a long line of Brewster-related missions. As I’ve said, I’m not the most popular girl in school, but I’m not unpopular either. That makes me socially balanced, which means my friends are balanced, too; and those are the types of people most likely to warm up to Brew. I called over my friend Hannah Garcia, because she can slide a turtle out of its shell without it even knowing.

  “Hannah,” I said as she sat down with us, “Brewster is under the delusion that he’s socially inept.”

  Brew threw up his hands. “Brontë!”

  “Oh, don’t get out the heart paddles!” I told him, then turned back to Hannah. “As I was saying, he’s been conditioned by circumstance to believe he is not worthy. We need an independent assessment.”

  “Brontë! You’re embarrassing me!” he said.

  Hannah waved a hand. “Get over it.” Then she studied him honestly and objectively. “Well,” she said. “First of all, he’s tall. Secondly, he’s cute. Third, he’s your boyfriend, and you have excellent taste in friends.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So,” concluded Hannah, “he receives a nine on the acceptability scale.”

  “Just a nine?” I asked.

  “If he was a ten, he’d be going out with me.” Then she winked at him and strode away.

  Brew was completely red in the face, but he also had the biggest smile I’d ever seen. I took both of his hands across the table, because all eating had stopped anyway. “You know what I think?” I told him. “I think we need to go out one night with a bunch of my friends, introduce you to life as I know it, and have a fantastic time.”

  “Okay, sure,” he said, still pink and as giddy as could be.

  I planned the event like it was a major gala. A one-man cotillion, sans tuxedo. It was just a bunch of us going down to the mall for burgers after school on Thursday, but I made sure I invited just the right people—the ones who, like Hannah, would make Brew feel comfortable, even while making him feel uncomfortable. There were six of us all together—not too few, not too many.

  “I can’t stay long,” he said when he arrived, which is what he always said whenever he went anywhere. I leaned forward and kissed him, then moved to whisper in his ear, pausing to steal a whiff of his coconut hair conditioner, which, for some reason I couldn’t quite fathom, drove me wild.

  “Trust me,” I told him, “you won’t want to leave.”

  But that just got him worried.

  We all had a great time that night; and although Brew was mostly quiet, he was accepted in a way he’d never been before. Brew was embraced by my friends and was finally able to feel a part of a circle larger than just his immediate family.

  As I predicted, he stayed longer than he’d intended to.

  “I like your friends,” Brew told me as he left. “I didn’t think I would, but I like them. A lot.”

  I went home thinking that I had accomplished something remarkable.

  He went home to find his uncle taking out a life’s worth of frustrations on his brother.

  39) SUBTERFUGE

  Grandparents everywhere talk about how they walked five miles to school each day in the snow, barefoot, and chased by wolves; but it’s not like that anymore. Most everyone we know drives or gets driven. But Tennyson and I had recently taken to walking to school, even though it’s almost a mile. The thing is, if we walked we got out of the house earlier. If we walked we didn’t have to sit in a car with Mom and wonder whose awful cologne we were smelling. If we walked we didn’t have to sit in a car with Dad, who used to be talkative but now had adopted a code of silence while driving. At least Tennyson and I talked to each other as we walked—even if it was only to argue.

  “Dad seemed okay last weekend,” Tennyson said as we made our way through a drizzly morning. It was Friday, the day after Brew’s big night out with my friends and me, so I was still riding a good mood.

  “When?” I asked.

  “We were playing basketball. Brew was there.”

  I thought about it, and wished I could have been there to see Dad being his old self—and to see Brew play ball. His workouts with Tennyson have definitely been defining his body, and, okay, I’ll admit I had a primal kind of desire to see those muscles in motion.

  “Dad was like his old self,” said Tennyson, “but there was something about it…”

  I didn’t know where Tennyson was going with this, and I don’t think he knew either, because he never finished the thought.

  Up ahead, when we were just a couple of blocks from school, we saw a tall, lumbering form in a leather bomber jacket. He had on a sweatshirt underneath and the hood was over his head, but I didn’t have to see his face to know who it was.

  “Brew!” I called out.

  He turned to look, but just for a second. Then, instead of waiting for us, he picked up his pace.

  “Look, he’s running away from you!” said Tennyson. “I really like this guy.”

  I ran to catch up with Brew, both annoyed and confused. For all those big strides, he wasn’t moving very fast; and I caught up with him in about a block. I grabbed his arm, and he turned his shoulder away, so I tugged on him harder, until I got a glimpse of his face beneath the hood. What I saw almost made me stumble into traffic.

  His lips were swollen, and he had smudges of makeup on his face, clearly trying to conceal a black eye.

  “Wh…what happened to you?”

  He shrugged. “I was having a catch with Cody and missed the ball.”

  “You’re lying!”

  He didn’t deny it. “So?”

  Now I could see that it wasn’t just his eye; it was also in the way he held himself, the way he walked—like there wasn’t a single part of his body that didn’t hurt. I wanted to hold him but was afraid holding him would hurt him, too. “Did your uncle do this to you?”

  He stayed quiet for a second and looked toward the school. “No,” he said. And then he said, “Yes.”

  He seemed even more surprised than me that the word yes had come out of his mouth. I could tell he had every intention of keeping it secret forever. Suddenly he became pale with very real terror. Fear of me. Fear of me knowing.

  I wasn’t really prepared for the truth either—I was more stunned by it than anything else. Across the street a few kids laughed. They weren’t laughing at us, but still it bothered me. How dare they laugh within a hundred yards of this truth?

  “What about Cody?” I asked.

  “Cody’s fine. He’s better than fine.”

  “You have to tell someone.”

  “I just told you.”

  “I mean someone important.”

  “Who? The principal? The police?”

  “Yes!”

  By now Tennyson had caught up with us and was just staring, stupefied. The bell ra
ng at school, but I didn’t care. Lateness was not a concern.

  “If I tell anyone, then they’ll take us away from my uncle,” Brew said. “And things will get a whole lot worse.”

  “What could possibly be worse than being beaten within an inch of your life?”

  He didn’t answer me—not verbally—but there was an answer in his eyes that had such a high windchill factor, I actually shivered.

  “I can handle it,” he said. “I’ve got it all worked out. In a few months I’ll turn sixteen, and I can become an emancipated minor. I’ll move out, take Cody with me, and Uncle Hoyt won’t be able to stop me.”

  “That’s assuming you’re still alive!”

  “I’ll be fine. But if we get taken away from my uncle now, Cody and I will get put in a home…we’ll probably get split up. And in a place like that there’s no way I can hide what I can do. People will know. And once they know…”

  Again a blast of those windchill eyes. I wanted to argue him to the ground on this one, but that icy gaze shut me down.

  “Who knows,” Brew said. “Maybe my uncle will change.”

  Then Tennyson, who I totally forgot about, chimed in. “Bullies don’t change unless they want to,” Tennyson said. “Trust me, I know.”

  We had to go to the authorities. We had to. This was a textbook case of abuse, and turning the man in was the right thing to do—no question. Except that this was Brewster Rawlins. If this were anyone else but Brew, I’d have gone straight to the Powers That Be and ratted out his uncle in an instant; but all the rules of normalcy and right and wrong broke down around Brew. What do you do with a textbook case when no one’s written the textbook?

  Suddenly I flashed to something I learned in biology. There are some animals that die without explanation if you take them out of their familiar environment. Even if they came from a horrible, hostile environment, they still die.

  “You have to trust me,” Brew said. “Please…”

  What could be worse than his uncle? Only Brewster knew the real answer to that. And even though it went against everything I knew to be right, I reluctantly entered into his conspiracy of silence.

  And I guess I wasn’t the only one.

  “You have to come up with a believable story or the teachers will be all over you,” Tennyson told him. “If anyone asks about your eye, tell them that I beat you up for dating Brontë—and if I have to back it up, I will.”