Fragile

to move back up the stairs.

Marshall didn’t have a lot of good memories of his father. Dr. Cooper had asked him to think of some moments when he’d felt happy and safe with his dad. He wasn’t sure what the point of that exercise had been, unless it was to make him feel more like shit than he already did. But he did come up with two occasions.

There was the time they went to the zoo together and his father had bought him an ice cream. He remembered that because it was his own cone; he didn’t have to share it. They’d seen some tigers. His father had said, “Man, they’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Marshall remembered looking at his father’s face and seeing something strange there-maybe it was awe. Travis had dropped an arm around Marshall’s shoulder and squeezed him tight. Marshall remembered that his happiness had felt like a swelling in his chest.

Once, Travis took him to the beach. Neither of them had been wearing bathing suits, so they swam with their pants on. They’d jumped huge waves and laughed when they wiped out. They’d driven home wet and shivering, ordered a pizza, and watched a game afterward.

Also, it was always safe to be around Travis when he was busy building something. His temper didn’t flare when he had his mind on a project, or when he was having a good time doing something. It was places like the dinner table or the couch that should be avoided, anytime Travis was idle and looking for someplace to direct his attention.

“Need some help?” Marshall asked.

His father shot him a look, a kind of up-and-down appraisal, ending in a sneer of disapproval. “An hour ago maybe. But not now.”

Marshall stood for a moment, watching his father’s thick arm lift and drop with the hammer. He wanted to say, Dad. You got it. You can stop hammering. But he didn’t. Then, when it was clear his father didn’t intend to look up again, Marshall turned and shuffled back up the stairs. He took the sack of egg rolls from the fridge, threw it in the microwave for a few seconds, and carried it upstairs.

Marshall closed the door to his room and waded through the junk on the floor-gaming magazines, clothes that needed washing. He accidentally kicked an empty Coke can, and it rattled under the bed. He sank into the tattered gray computer chair in front of his homemade desk-two planks of wood balanced between stacked red milk crates. The familiar sense of relief washed over him as the screen came to life and he entered his password.

Online it was all different. He was different. He could visit with people who wouldn’t give him a second glance in real life. Like Charlene Murray. He logged in to Facebook and checked his in-box. It was predictably empty, though sometimes he heard from a girl named Maya, whom he’d met in a science fiction chat group on AOL last year. She had an impressive knowledge of the genre, but she used a picture of Hello Kitty as her image on all the social networks, which meant she was probably ugly or fat. Still, he enjoyed talking to her and was disappointed that she hadn’t answered his last message.

He went straight to Charlene’s page, as he always did, checking first for any new photos of her. Then he checked his status updates; there was nothing new. He reread the only message she’d ever sent him personally, after he’d added her as a friend and she’d accepted. Hey, Marshall! Thanks for the friendship. See you at the Nook on Friday?

He’d thought it was a personal invitation until he realized that her band was playing at the club that catered to the underage set, serving sodas and junk food rather than booze. She’d sent that message to everyone. Still, wasn’t there something about the message she sent to him that was different? He thought so, though he couldn’t say what.

You just have to talk to her, man. Get to know her, let her get to know you. That’s all it is. Girls just want to talk. Sage advice from his cousin Tim. And it was good advice-if you were six feet tall, as blond and buff as a surfer, and every girl who met you fell instantly in love, if all you had to do was choose. But that was definitely not the case for Marshall. He was the kind of guy who disappeared in a crowd, the one you never thought about, who never said a word. Sometimes when he looked in the mirror, he almost felt like he couldn’t even see himself. He could focus on certain things-his mousy hair, the acne on his skin, his thin arms and undeveloped pecs. But he couldn’t get a sense of how all the separate parts of himself fit together.

When you work out, Ryan told him, you get a better sense of your body. You’ll get to know yourself better. And when he’d been at Leila’s, Marshall used to work out with them in the makeshift gym in the basement-they had free weights and an exercise bike, a weight bench and a sit- up plank. They told him what to do and he did it, though he had to admit he did not get off on the physical effort the way they seemed to. After working out, Ryan and Tim were pumped with adrenaline, ready and raring to go. Marshall just felt like lying down. Since he’d been back with his father, he hadn’t even gone for a run. Any gains he’d made during his time with his cousins had quickly faded.

He looked in Charlene’s notes for some new lyrics or poetry.

There’s a secret place where we can be free

Where the world will close its eyes to us

And we can be

Like the womb or the tomb

We are alone… together

It is a beginning and an end.

He quickly went to her wall and left a note: Love the new lyrics, Char. You’re so talented.

If he tried to say anything like that to her in person, he’d go red in the face, maybe even start to cough, make a total dork out of himself. But here he could comment on her updates, tell her what he thought about music and movies he knew she liked. She never answered him, but it was enough to know she was reading the things he wrote on her wall.

Last week he wrote to tell her about the car his dad had given him. “Lemme know if u ever need a lift!” He didn’t tell her that it was his father’s car and the only reason he’d given it to Marshall was that he wasn’t allowed to drive for six more months as part of his parole. So Marshall had basically become his chauffeur, driving him everywhere even when he should have been in school.

But when he’d seen Charlene in the parking lot the last time he’d been to school, she’d called out to him, Hey, Marshall, nice ride!

He’d given her a wave, and she’d waved back. He understood that communication to mean that even if she wasn’t writing back, she cared about the things he wrote. So he rushed to respond to every update, new photo, or note. Even though they barely exchanged a word-she’d wave as they passed in the hallway or smile when she saw him in the cafeteria-he knew her. He knew what she was thinking (Charlene is so sad today… for no good reason), reading (Charlene is loving the Twilight series!), when she was going to the mall (Charlene is meeting Brit @ the mall @ 2!!). He knew when the band was playing at a party, or when she was fighting with her mother. She posted all her new lyrics and poetry, and Marshall felt that this gave him a direct window into her soul. He knew Charlene Murray, maybe better than most because he could read between the lines. He thought maybe he knew her better than she knew herself.

“I went to high school with her mother.”

Marshall swiveled around in his chair to see his father filling the doorway. He felt the skin on his face go hot, his stomach bottom out. He hated it when his father came into his room. It was a colliding of selves. He was a different person with his father than he was in here; these two parts of himself did not mingle.

“She was a whore,” Travis said.

“Charlene’s not,” Marshall said quickly.

“No?” Travis walked over to stand beside Marshall, stared down at the screen. “I got news for you, Son. They’re all whores.”

Did he ever have anything new to say about women? It was pathetic. Travis had basically delivered the same wisdom downstairs. Still, Marshall felt the familiar internal storm-a sickening combination of anger and fear, a desire to connect, to agree and see his father smile in approval, and an equally strong desire to get away.

Now that Marshall was nearly the same height and almost as strong as his father, Travis didn’t hit him often; Marshall wasn’t physically afraid of his father. It was the things he said that lay like bruises on Marshall’s skin, damaged his organs, poisoned his blood. That voice was in his head all the time. He just couldn’t get it out. Even the competing voices-Aunt Leila, Mr. Ivy, Dr. Cooper-weren’t loud enough to drown him out lately.

“She’s a good person,” he said quietly, turning away to look at her picture. She looked nice, not so much black