Declan

Declan and I were sitting in front of the computer in his basement. One of the fancy new ones that was like a flat screen TV.

“Do it,” he said.

We had Google open. The little line that meant you were typing blinked ominously in the search bar.

“I don’t want to do it.”

“What do you mean you don’t want to do it? Are you some kind of wuss?”

I fidgeted in the computer chair, picking at the sides. Something that felt like a booger came off on my finger and I shuddered.

“I’m not a wuss,” I said, “but we’re at your house, and-”

“And what?” Declan looked mad now. His nostrils started to flare out into the big circles they made when he was about to hit you. If I wasn’t usually the one about to get hit, it would have been easy to make fun of. “I thought we were in this together. Did you change your mind?”

I realized then that I had lost. I couldn’t argue with Declan. It’s not that I was truly scared of him. But he was my only friend. After pissing myself and strangling too many other kids in Kindergarten, I’d spent years doing solo laps around the schoolyard until Declan transferred from gifted school. It felt like I owed him something.

“Do it.”

“Fine!” I took a deep breath. Looking over my shoulder one more time, I typed “sex” into the Google bar and then hit enter. Closed my eyes.

“Woah,” Declan said.

This was as far as our ongoing investigation had got. We’d been trying to uncover the nature of sex for three months now, ever since Declan had showed up to school one morning and asked if I knew that you could pee in a lady’s mouth to make babies. The only problem was that we hadn’t made much progress since then. Other fourth-graders and Declan’s older brother were not the best sources. Google was a desperate measure. We had to get the straight story.

“Sexual Intercourse” the first link read, “Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.” Declan pointed at the screen.

“Click that one.” A new page loaded. It was all text, with an old painting of a bearded man grabbing a woman from behind in the corner. Declan started reading quickly under his breath. “Sexual intercourse is a sexual activity typically involving the insertion and thrusting of the penis into the vagina…” Before we could get any farther, though, something creaked upstairs and the basement door opened.

“Crap!” Declan shoved me out of the way and took control of the computer. I watched him close the window we had open, launch Internet Explorer again, and then clear the browser history, all in one smooth motion. It was like he’d been practising for this. He even had time to open RuneScape before Marco made it downstairs.

“Hey losers!”

Marco was Declan’s dad.

I loved Marco. Almost more than my own dad. Marco and I shared something. He was always willing to tell you a crude joke or let you watch a cartoon that was banned in your home, and he was the only dad I knew that played video games. He was some kind of computer genius, too. He always told me he worked in “Information Security” and he knew how to download basically anything for free. Declan had a giant collection of movies that he’d gotten off the internet, even ones that were still only in theatres.

“Sorry, you guys,” Marco said, “gotta use the Pee-Cee.” He made a big show of walking over and looking like he was going to sit on top of Declan in the chair until Declan started kicking at his sweatpants.

“Christ, dad!” Declan said.

“Hey!” Marco pointed a finger. “No religious swears. You say ‘crap.’ Come on now.” He clapped his hands over Declan’s shoulders. Declan rolled his eyes and stood over beside me.

“What are we supposed to do?” he said.

“Go play Xbox.” Marco nodded to the TV and then opened a new window and went to a website I didn’t recognize. “Or go outside if you’re feeling crazy.” He winked.

“Xbox!” I jumped. We weren’t allowed to have an Xbox at home. But Declan started to leave the room.

“No,” he said, “nevermind.” He walked up the stairs without me and shouted down. “I’m gonna do some homework, actually. Noah can go home.” I heard the door close.

Marco and I stared at each other for a second. He shrugged.

“Guess you can go home. Need a ride?”

“No,” I said. I looked at my feet. It didn’t seem fair that Declan could ditch me like that. “I can walk.”

“Right on.” Marco moused around aimlessly on a site that sold CDs. When I did eventually turn to leave, he clicked his tongue really loud. “Oh!” he said. “Shit, hold on. I almost forgot.” He started pushing stuff around on the computer desk. Empty water bottles, CD’s, a case of loose action figure parts that I’d never seen before. Finally, he pulled something out from a binder and handed it to me. “For you. Belated birthday present.”

It was a Gameboy Advance Cartridge. Grey and unlabelled, but with “Pokemon Emerald” written on it in Sharpie. I gasped and grabbed the cartridge from Marco, forgetting to say thank you. He laughed.

“Get home safe,” he said, “And don’t talk to strangers or get in any big white vans.” He paused for a second and stroked his beard. “Or do drugs, even the good ones.” He laughed again, mostly to himself.

***

June was hot. It didn’t help that I’d been wearing pants all month, too. Hair had started growing on my legs and I was ashamed because I hadn’t seen it on anyone else in my class yet. If anyone asked about the pants, I told them I had a disease that made me cold all the time.

Under the tree cover, I shifted back and forth to find the densest shade, trying to keep Marco’s camera on Declan while he danced above me on a branch. We were shooting a YouTube video. “How to be Animal,” it was called. We were trying to rip off another series of videos Declan was obsessed with.

This was all very covert. It was important to avoid letting my parents know I was putting videos of myself on the internet. Declan’s were okay with it, but my mom had gone on a whole speech when I’d showed her our first piece about how bad men would find it and cut my face out of a frame and paste it on a naked little boy. The image of that disturbed me. My own face, 240p and still basement-lighting dark, taken and pasted crudely on top of another child. High resolution, lit up bright like the babies in those memory books for some sweaty man’s enjoyment, covering himself in shame.

Declan had told me none of that was true and that my mom was retarded.

“Syrup!”

“What?” I lowered the camera.

“Syrup, Noah! Come on!”

Right. The next section of the video was supposed to be Declan drinking a bottle of chocolate syrup. Still on the branch. We knew that wasn’t a thing animals did, but it looked savage.

“Sorry!” I said, “hold on!” I fished the bottle out of our backpack and tossed it granny-style. Declan went to catch it, but I could tell right away the angle wasn’t right. The bottle missed and disappeared somewhere in the bush.

“God dammit,” he said. “Did you see where that went?”

“No.” I tried to pull myself up another tree to get a better view, but I didn’t have the strength. “Should I go look?”

“Not yet.” Declan blew his nose into a leaf. And then, without warning, jumped. He flew down faster than I could move, and landed so close to me I fell backwards into a bush. It hurt, and when I got up, I saw my hands were cut. Not enough to need stitches, but enough to bleed. I watched the blood and dirt mix on my knuckles. Ten was too old to cry at this kind of thing, but I hadn’t learned what else I was supposed to do yet.

“Jesus Christ, dude.” Declan was poking around at the other end of the clearing. “You okay? You gotta be careful.”

“Stop swearing.” I said.

“Shut up.” Declan came and stood over me, carrying the now-leaking syrup. He held out his free hand while he licked the other. “Where’s the camera?” I let myself get pulled up.

“Uhh…” I moaned. The burning feeling of having just broken something expensive started to ripple in my stomach. “Probably behind me? I don’t-” But then Declan pulled the camera from his back pocket.

“Just kidding. It’s a little scratched, but my dad is gonna get a new one soon.” He pressed a couple buttons on the back. The camera beeped and started playing our footage. Declan smirked. “This is great,” he said, “Let’s get the chocolate part now.”

“Man.” I sucked my teeth. “I’m kind of sore. Can we go back home and do the editing?”

“Can’t,” Declan said. He started to climb the tree again.

“But I’m sore, dude! I just cut myself. And I’m tired.” I was whining, but I didn’t care. “Why can’t we go back?” Declan paused halfway up the tree. He craned his neck around. It looked like his entire mood had changed.

“It’s writing time,” he said, and I knew that there was no way we were going back.

Declan’s mom Keisha was a writer. Or she was trying really hard to be a writer. She hadn’t done a book, but she went to University to write, and she was always talking about working on some kind of project. She mostly did romance stuff. Declan and I found one of her chapters on the family computer once. It was about a lady who met a handsome but injured soldier at a restaurant and took care of him. I didn’t think it was very good, but I was just a kid, so I told myself I couldn’t judge her. Keisha must have known we found it, because she got a laptop after and started writing on that.

We couldn’t go back to Declan’s because when Keisha was having her writing time, no kids were allowed in the house. She didn’t write a lot, but when she did, she made Declan and his brother leave the house so she could focus. The big whiteboard calendar in his kitchen would always have “MOM WRITING TIME” in red on the Saturday afternoons. I’d been there a couple times when it happened. She would march around the house clapping and singing “writing time, writing time!” I think it was supposed to be funny, but it always scared me.

“Can’t we go to the backyard and wait with Marco?” I asked. “If we’re supervised?”

“No,” Declan was back on the branch now. “Dad’s not allowed home anymore either. Nobody is.”

“Seriously? Where does he go?”

“No idea,” Declan said. He sounded tired, like he’d had to explain this to a lot of people. “They had some fight and now Dad leaves during writing time. Sometimes he brings back McDonald’s.” He bounced a bit on the branch and then turned to me and clapped. “Alright,” he said, “syrup.”

***

In August, I sat off to the side at Declan’s birthday party while everyone watched him open presents. A ton of parents and friends from his old gifted school were there. People from our school, too, because Declan had made a bunch of new friends, separate from our thing.

There were no clouds in the sky. It was hot. My Spiderman bathing suit was still wet from going on the slip-slide, and the water had warmed up until it was indistinguishable from sweat.

“Ya look Greasy,” Thomas said.

Thomas was Declan’s older brother. I was with him. On the porch. Just the two of us. I’d been there all afternoon and Thomas was the only person who’d talked to me. Declan had said hi, but that was it. After orbiting everyone’s circle of Gameboys for a while, I’d accepted my fate.

“Can I throw ya in the pot? To fry?” Thomas made a noise like FSHHHH. “Frizzle-fry,” he said.

There was nothing really wrong with Thomas, but he was one of the weirdest people I’d ever met. For a while, I’d thought all older kids were just like that, and that I’d start hiding in the woods by myself all day and saying things that made no sense once I got to Grade 6.

Thomas poked my head with a dried-out blade of grass.

“You’re not fun anymore,” he said. “I wish you were dumber. Like Declan.”

“Declan’s not dumb,” I said. “Declan is the smartest person I know.”

Thomas scoffed, and then went Hmmmm and looked up at the sky. “Mhm, hmm, hmm,” he said. “Anyways, you know what I found out? When you beat Pokemon Emerald, all your Pokemon die. Especially the ones you give names to. They die first. And they show it bad on the screen, with blood and everything.”

“Not true, you told me that in April and it didn’t happen.”

“Rats.” Thomas leaned back on the stairs with his hands behind his head. “Dangit. Damn. Shit.” He laughed like hur hur hur.

Neither of us said anything for a minute. The present-opening had ended. Keisha was walking around picking up garbage and Marco was standing vaguely with the other dads. He was wearing a shirt that said LATERALUS and staring into space with a blank expression on his face. I watched Declan shoot his other best friend, Ryan O., with a Nerf Bazooka.

“I’m gonna die,” Thomas said out of nowhere.

“What?” I thought I’d misheard him.

“Yep,” he said. He sat back up, looked sad all of a sudden. “I’m gonna die. Found a big box of cigarettes in the woods. Looked up how to smoke ’em and I’m gonna smoke ’em all next week until I’m dead.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth. You know what happens when you smoke cigarettes?”

“No.”

“They show it on the packages.” Thomas mimed smoking and then dragged a finger across his neck. “When you have three cigarettes, you pee blood, and when you finish a pack, you have a stroke. I’m going to finish a carton,” he said, “which is-” He counted on his fingers. “Seven packs. I’m gonna die.”

“What’s a stroke?”

Thomas ignored me. I started to panic.

“Because my parents don’t love me. You’re the first person I told this. You know how I know? Because they’re getting divorced, split up. Nada.” He pulled his hands apart dramatically. “Apart forever. So, I’m gonna die.”

“You’re lying,” I said, “I like your parents.”

“I ain’t.” Thomas was doing some kind of accent now. “I heard them say it, through the walls. Big fight. Dee-vorce. Declan knows it too. Watch this.” He stood up and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Decker!” He shouted. “Birthday boy! Get over here!”

Declan paused what he was doing, which was shooting the Nerf bazooka straight up into the air. He looked confused for a second, but then approached. I saw Keisha eyeing us cautiously from the coolers.

“What?” Declan said.

“Closer,” Thomas said, and then leaned over to grab his brother and pull him gently into earshot. “Declan,” he said, “I’m gonna die.”

Declan looked at me and then looked at Thomas.

“Very funny, Thomas,” he said. “You two are cute together.” He started to turn, but Thomas stopped him.

“No Decker. I mean it. It’s about-” Thomas looked around conspiratorially and then lowered his voice almost all the way to a whisper. “It’s about Mom and Dad. Dee-vorcing.”

Declan’s nostrils flared. He went “I-” like he was about to say something and then looked at me again. I shrugged.

“What are you talking about?”

“Whaaat?” Thomas made a mock surprised face, or maybe a real surprised face. “I thought you knew, Decker!”

“Why are you doing this? It’s my birthday.”

“My guy, my little brother.”

“Stop it.” It was hard to tell if Declan was scared or angry. It could have been both.

“I meant to ask you, but I guess I have to tell.” Thomas was smiling. “I heard Mom and Dad the other day. They’re splitting up.”

“Stop it, Thomas! What’s your problem?”

“And they’re doing it because they hate us. And cause Dad’s a loser. I heard it through the walls. Mom said she wanted to be famous and she wishes she’d never gotten married, and I heard Dad say-”

And then Declan punched Thomas. In the throat. He was much smaller than his brother, but the hit was so well placed, it knocked him back onto the stairs, and Thomas made a choking sound for a second like he really was dying. Then Thomas kicked Declan. Without even standing up or looking like he was about to do anything, he straightened his leg right into his brother’s face and Declan shrieked. Everyone else stopped what they were doing. I swear the music even cut out.

“Hey!” Keisha dropped the Solo Cup she was holding and ran over. “Hey!” When she brushed by me, I heard her mumble Of-fucking-course.

At this point, Thomas was holding Declan by the forearms, and Declan was trying to kick him in the shins. There was clear wet snot mixed with tears running all over Declan’s face.

“I hate you!” he gurgled. “You suck and I hate you, Thomas! Why’d you have to be crazy on my birthday?”

Thomas spat at Declan but missed.

“Enough!” Keisha grabbed both boys by the arm and pulled Declan behind her. Thomas went limp, even though he probably could have overpowered her. “What is wrong you?” Keisha lowered her voice to a hiss, and looked briefly back at Declan. “Have you forgotten you are in freaking public here? What is going on?”

I searched for Marco. He was still far off, gawking with everyone else.

Declan started before his Mom was done talking.

“Thomas called me over just to ruin my birthday! He told me was going to die, and-”

I saw Thomas jerk slightly.

“And then he said it was because you and Dad were-!”

Thomas scrambled around his Mom and kicked Declan again, in the shin.

Keisha reeled, pulling Declan farther from his brother.

“You psycho!” Keisha was yelling now. “Get inside right now and do not you dare come back out here! I’m calling Dr. Klinghoffer tomorrow.” She scanned for Marco. He was still frozen. “And you! Can you get over here please? Please, Marco?”

Marco started an awkward, obedient hustle across the grass.

“Can you just pretend for one second like you’re a grown man with two children you’re supposed to be caring for? Please? What are you doing?”

Movies and TV had taught me that someone was supposed to gasp here, but nobody made a sound.

“What?” Marco finally made it. He was out of breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just- ugh!” Keisha fanned her hands out in both directions like she was pleading with someone invisible. “Just-”

“Just what?”

“I don’t know!”

Marco started to laugh a bit.

I looked at Declan. His sleeves were covered in snot and he was staring at the ground.

***

The last time I ever hung out at Declan’s house, we watched a video of someone getting their head cut off. It was a sleepover, super late, and we were getting bored of RuneScape. I’d been watching Declan play silently for an hour when he brought it up.

“This sucks,” he said, “want to see someone die?”

“Like-”

“Like for real.” Declan typed something I couldn’t see into the browser. “Real life. Ryan O. told me about it. He has a computer in his room.”

I pulled my chair closer. Everything on the desk had been packed up so there was a ton of space. We were on a grey web page. It looked like YouTube, but cheaper. Scarier. There were links all over with names like Bangladesh Factory Accident or Two Guys, One Hammer.

“Hmm,” Declan moused around. “Let’s do this one.”

He clicked something called CARTEL MEXICO EXECUTION [GORE] and a video popped up. It was grainy, shaky, like our animal video. There was a guy in the middle of the frame with a bag over his head, kneeling on the ground. I couldn’t see anyone else, but there were people talking off-camera in another language.

“I don’t like this,” I said, but Declan shushed me.

“Nothing’s even happened yet. Hold on.”

A tall guy in all-black came out the left frame of the video. He was wearing a balaclava and carrying a big thick knife with ridges on the blade. The cameraman shouted something and the knife-guy nodded. Standing behind the guy on the ground, he started giving a speech.

“This is boring. It sucks.”

“Shut up. Watch.”

Knife-guy finished talking. With his free hand, he pulled the bag off the guy and threw it to the side. The kneeling guy was old, like my dad’s age. He had a moustache and long hair, and he was staring at the ground like he wasn’t even scared. The camera-guy made a sound like HUP and the knife guy went HUP too. Then he brought the knife down and sliced the kneeling guy’s throat.

It all happened so fast, I didn’t even know what I was watching. Kneeling guy made a gurgling sound, but he didn’t scream or struggle. His body went limp right away and the knife guy grabbed him by the hair. A jet of blood shot toward the camera faster than I thought was possible. Camera guy laughed.

When the dead guy’s head rolled back, Declan screamed. He grabbed my arm with both hands and buried his face in my shoulder. This had never happened before. He was warm.

I wanted to say something, but I didn’t. I was glued to the video. It looked like a piece of bone was sticking out of the guy.

“Fuck,” Declan said, “Fuck.” He pushed me away so hard that my chair swung backwards. I heard the audio stop, and when I turned back around, he had closed the website.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Declan sniffled. He looked like he was trying really hard not to cry.

“You don’t tell anyone about this,” he said, “Okay?

“About what?”

“Everything.”

Declan shut off the computer.

“Let’s go to bed.”

“Okay,” I said, “Are you alright, though? You looked-”

“I’m fine,” Declan said, “That was just stupid. Fucking stupid. Don’t tell anyone.”

We went to bed and fell asleep without talking. The next week, Declan told everyone I’d forced him to look at weird websites and that he was never going to talk to me again.

***

“Thank you.” Marco sipped the Stella Artois the waitress had brought him. “Thank you, this is great. Appreciate it, uh-” He squinted at her and raised one eyebrow like he was thinking hard. “Kelsey. It’s Kelsey?”

“Nicole,” the waitress said.

“Ah, Nicole!” Marco raised his glass. “Thank you, Nicole. Amazing.”

Nicole gave Marco a smile that could have been real or fake and then left. I fingered an Oreo piece off the top of my milkshake and ate it. Marco winked at me.

“You know that one?”

“What?” I said.

“You get their name wrong on purpose.”

“Why?”

“So they-” Marco laughed. “Nevermind.”

We were at Broadway’s, a casual sports-bar-meets-restaurant at the edge of our neighbourhood. They were open morning to Midnight and served an alright version of everything. There was liquor there but you could also have a first communion brunch and it wouldn’t be weird.

We were getting lunch before the hangout Marco was trying to arrange for me and Declan at the zoo. He’d given my dad some speech about how young boys need each other now more than ever. It was unclear if he knew Declan had other friends or that I was officially banned from coming within six feet of him.

Marco looked around. He made eye contact with some people and then blew a raspberry.

“Decker takes forever in the bathroom hey? Probably pounding it in there. HA!” He banged on the table but stopped laughing when I didn’t react, took a really long sip of his drink. “You beat that game yet?”

“Sort of!” I perked up. My Dad never asked about what I was playing. “I mean, once you beat the Elite Four, there’s this whole other area called Battle Frontier that’s like an entire second half to the game, but there’s not really any more story. So, it’s, like… yeah. But it’s mostly done.”

“Cool,” Marco said, “cool, cool. You let me know if you need anything else, my friend. Just bought this pretty new gadget I can burn disks with.”

I nodded. Neither of us said anything after this. Marco had a different energy about him. It was the first time I’d seen it. He seemed to slouch more, and everything he was doing felt forced and deliberate.

Declan really was taking forever.

“Video games,” Marco said, “crazy stuff, eh?”

I nodded, the straw in my mouth.

“You know, when I was your age, we didn’t have anything like what you got now. Pong, Galaga, maybe, games where there were no pictures, just text. And then before that-” Marco gestured with the beer. “Nothing. Nada. They barely even had TV. You had to run around outside to entertain yourself. And you could die. It made you tougher.”

Marco was talking with the tone my Dad would use when I’d gotten in trouble. Another thing I’d never seen.

“But then things are changing all the time. Everyone talks like it’s all the past twenty years that are crazy. ‘Ooohh computers,’ you know? But the truth is we’ve been making things weird for a long time. Humans used to live in little villages with, like, thirty people. And you didn’t wear clothes, or have air conditioning, and people died all the time. But it was a perfect system. Not equality, but balance. Balance! Everyone had their place.”

He raised his eyebrows at me like I was supposed to know what he was talking about. I nodded.

“But it’s the language, you know? When people start talking to each other, that’s when it all goes wrong. That’s when you start inventing things. Cities, farming, all that crap, and you start ripping man out of his natural habitat. You disrupt the system, and you have too many people all of a sudden. Too many people that would have died in the tribe walking around now with nothing to do. And then you gotta invent new things for them. Marriage, so they don’t get lonely. So everyone gets their fair share. Church, money, video games. And now there’s six billion of us. All walking around, born and adapted to a system that never should have been there in the first place.”

Marco sucked his teeth. He sighed. I had a feeling I was the first one he’d given this speech to. He pointed at my milkshake, swirled his finger around at the whole restaurant.

“All this, sign of the end-times. Too much stupid indulgence. There’s a thread of violence in every man’s soul we’ve been ignoring for too long. I’m learning it the hard way, and the whole world is gonna wake up to it soon, too.”

Marco paused to stare at the waitress.

“So, what do you do? Because I’m done for, and I think it’s up to you, Pokemon. What do you do?”

I wasn’t sure what was being asked of me, and I was about to fake being sick when Declan finally came back. He was scowling.

“Where’s my coke?” he said. “This guy gets his whole milkshake, and they can’t even bring me a soda?”

“Maybe there’s a soda bear,” Marco said, “In the back, drinking all the soda.”

“What?” Declan said. “Are you drunk?” He shoved himself beside me in the booth and took a sip of my milkshake. Marco coughed.

“Declan,” Marco said, “I was thinking after the reptiles today, we could stop by my place for a bit and-” Declan groaned.

“Can we just go home, Dad? I’m tired as hell.”

“Sure!” Marco laughed. “I was hoping you’d say that. We’re all too old for the zoo now. I’ve just got to sweep up some stuff, but-”

“No,” Declan said, “back to Mom’s. All my stuff is at Mom’s.”

“Right.” Marco took another long sip of his beer. “Yep, we can do that.”

I was ready to go home, too. I sucked the last bit of my milkshake down, and pushed the cup away just in time for the waitress to come by. She grabbed my cup, and slammed a soda down in front of Declan.

“Sorry,” she said, “machine was broken.”

Marco shouted, “Thank you Kelsey!” but she was already gone.

***

I climbed over a snowbank and grabbed Declan by the hood of his coat.

This was the first big raid of the year.

I was with the SnowScream Blasters. That was the name for the fort in the Northwest part of the schoolyard, close to the road. Declan was with Emperor Palace, the fort opposite us. These were the two Grade Five forts for the winter, and everyone was aligned with one of them. This was tradition. It didn’t matter if you were popular, or clever, or good at breaking chunks of ice off snowbanks and turning them into small huts, you would be drafted to a fort from November to early March, and your only goal was to eliminate the enemy.

Declan yelled and pushed a chunk of snow into my face. I chewed it.

The point of a raid was to steal as many pieces of ice as you could from your enemies and add them to your own fort. There was never a winner. One raid could ruin a fort, and then they could retaliate the next day and completely reverse the damage. I’d been doing this for four years. Nobody knew when we were supposed to grow out of it.

“How’s that taste, freak?” I could feel gravel melting out of the snow and rolling around in my mouth. I tried to spit it at Declan, but I drooled on myself instead.

I hated Declan now. He’d spent the last two months either ignoring or attacking me. Laughing at the way I dressed or pronounced words, telling everyone I didn’t know how to flush the toilet.

“Fuck you, Declan,” I grunted.

“Big word! Where’d you learn that?”

Flat on the ground, I kicked Declan in the jaw. He fell backwards. The sky above us was gray and empty. My ears were filled with snow, and my face was wet, scary red. It stung. We had about a minute until a teacher came to break us up.

Declan wiped his nose. His hat had come off and was lying soaked in the slush beside him. Thick blood creeped out of his nose, and when I dropped down and straddled him on the ground, I could see tears in his eyes. That was three times now I’d seen him crying. It felt good.

“Fuck you, Declan!”

I spat again.

My old best friend was weak, I realized. I’d seen him cower and cry, and I’d seen the failure of a home he came from. He could flare his stupid nostrils act as tough as he wanted, but he was a fake, and I felt gross for ever needing him.

Declan tried to push me off with his legs, but I was too heavy.

I smiled. I felt amazing. I felt like God. Dirty and half-bundled, surrounded by chaos, I had power over someone for the first time in my life.

So I hit Declan. I hit him again and again. Anywhere I could. I felt his teeth scrape my knuckles and his chest heave up and down beneath me. And when the raid paused, and everyone came to circle us, I hit him harder.

And when the adult hand grabbed me and pulled me into the air, I didn’t resist. I threw one last kick that I knew wouldn’t connect and watched Declan flinch and yelp like he had at the beheading video. That was enough.