Fragile

Because Travis was a liar, always making up the craziest shit just to get a reaction.

“No way.” Sarah was a small girl, skinny, with fine, mousy brown hair, forever clad in corduroy pants and some girlie sweater her mom had obviously picked out. She had this distracted air about her; even in class he’d sometimes notice her staring out the window, daydreaming.

“I’m not kidding. She sucked Chad Donner off under the bleachers after school last week.” Travis let out that hoot of laughter he was famous for, was getting himself all excited.

“Whatever.”

“He said she liked it. Loved it. No, no. He said she was crazy for it.”

“Shut up, Travis.” Jones regretted giving him a ride. This happened all the time. He’d find himself hanging out with Travis and wondering why he didn’t remember from the last time that he didn’t like the guy at all.

“What? You don’t believe me? Let’s ask her.”

By the time they reached her, Sarah was just about to turn off the main road and head up the unpaved drive that led to her house. It was nearly a mile long, running first through a field and then into a thick wooded area. Wasn’t she scared, Jones wondered, in the gathering dark? She didn’t seem to be, her shoulders square, her pace steady.

“Slow down, slow down,” said Travis, as he rolled down the window.

Then, “Hey, Sarah,” he called. “Want a ride?”

• • •

But Jones didn’t allow himself to blame Travis for what had happened on that very normal evening. There had been decades to marvel at the minutiae, the little things that had led them all there: if Jones hadn’t dawdled in the locker room, reluctant to go home to his waiting mother and endure her smothering attentions-or if he’d lingered longer; if Travis’s car hadn’t been in the shop; if Sarah hadn’t missed her bus; if Melody hadn’t come strolling up from her place to meet Sarah on the road, having seen her from her bedroom window.

But there was another part of him, too, that suspected none of it could have been altered, that no matter what any of them had done that day, they all would have arrived together at the same point in time. That there was no way to have avoided the moment when their unique combination of energies, desires, and fears unified to create something awful.

Thinking that kept him from remembering that he was the one with all the power, literally the one in the driver’s seat. All he would have had to do was keep going, endure whatever ribbing Travis had to offer up. Aw, you always were a pussy, Cooper. He could have ignored Travis’s directive and taken them both home. Except he didn’t.

13

Henry Ivy got suspended for a week because of the beating he gave Travis Crosby. But he didn’t care. It had been a long time in coming. Travis had been terrorizing him since middle school. Looking back now, as a school counselor with a master’s degree in childhood development, Henry saw what a troubled kid Travis had been, could even muster some compassion for him. But at the time, after years of humiliation-tray dumping, towel snapping, locker graffiti (Henry Ivy is a faggot, gay boy, cocksucker), once a bloody nose in gym class after Travis threw a football in his face-Henry only saw him as a tormentor. He didn’t know why; he’d never done anything to Travis. Travis had merely pegged Henry as an easy target, one unlikely to retaliate, and with a kind of lackluster determination took whatever opportunity presented itself to make a fool out of him.

For years, Henry endured. He didn’t tattle. He didn’t fight back. He just made himself as small as possible inside and waited for whatever it was Travis was inflicting to pass. More humiliating, if less painful than the actual event, was the wake of attention from his classmates. Henry, are you all right? You should kick his ass, man. One of his equally geeky friends-because Henry had been a major geek, with big, thick glasses, plaid shirts, and corduroy pants-would walk with him to the nurse’s office, offering solace and advice. But most humiliating of all was when Maggie was the one to walk with him.

“He’s a jerk,” she’d tell him. “And a loser. One day you’ll be making millions and he’ll be pumping gas.”

“I know,” he’d say. He didn’t know any such thing. He was just wishing one day she’d look at him without pity in her eyes. One day he wanted her to look at him with awe and pride, maybe even with love. But that had never happened, though she’d always looked at him with the affection and acceptance of enduring friendship. That was something. That was a lot.

These days, he’d like to think that the type of systematic torture he’d suffered at the hands of Travis Crosby would not be tolerated. It would be noticed and addressed, because educators should know by now how toxic was the relationship between bully and victim, how it might turn deadly.

But then, a kind of “boys will be boys” attitude allowed Henry’s torture to continue without much interference. Once he even saw the PE teacher smirk at one of Travis’s favorite activities, stealing Henry’s underwear and towel while he was in the shower and hiding them so that Henry was forced to walk wet and naked to his locker while everyone laughed.

That was more than twenty years ago, but as he pulled in front of the Crosby home, it might as well have been last month. He felt the surge of adrenaline in his hands as he parked the car and shut the ignition. Whatever Henry’s history with Travis, Henry cared about Marshall. Maybe because he saw more of himself than he did of Travis in the boy. Maybe because he recognized Marshall as another of Travis’s victims. Or maybe there was something deeper, something less noble than caring for the welfare of a troubled boy. A kind of desire to salt the wound of their past.

In high school, Henry had loved Maggie Monroe. He loved her like an ache, a terrible pain in an organ he couldn’t place or name. An illness for which there was no cure. She hadn’t loved him, of course. But she was the reason, in his junior year, that he bulked up, got contacts, convinced his mother to take him shopping for some less dorky clothes. She was the reason he’d beaten Travis in front of the entire school, in response to the most minor of assaults. As they’d passed each other on the bleachers, Travis had growled low and mean, “Fucking faggot.” It was just loud enough for the other guys in Travis’s group to hear and start to laugh.

There was no flash of rage; he was not overcome by emotion. He just turned quickly and put a hand on Travis’s shoulder, spun him around.

“Say it again,” said Henry.

Surprise widened Travis’s eyes for a second, but then he smiled. “What? Are you deaf, too? Fucking faggot.”

While Travis’s crew was still laughing, Henry brought his fist out so fast and so hard that Travis fell back to the ground with the impact as it connected with his jaw. Henry thought it would be loud, like in the movies, his fist falling with a satisfying smack. But no, flesh on flesh was a soft sound. His own hand hurt so badly that he pulled it back to his chest, surprised at the heat rocketing up his arm.

He almost apologized, so chastened was he by the pain. But then there was something about Travis down, his hands up, his friends standing slack-jawed with shock, there was something about that momentary hush when everyone around them stopped what they were doing to look on, that caused Henry to drop to his knees, straddle Travis, and just start punching-face again, abdomen, ribs-until someone pulled him away, still swinging. He hadn’t lost himself to anger; he was aware. He didn’t feel good or triumphant. In fact, the physical effort, the pumping adrenaline, made him nauseated. Then he heard a girl weeping. “Stop it. Stop it. Please. Stop.”

But it wasn’t a girl. It was Travis. He didn’t feel good, then, either. He looked down to see the other boy crying, lying on his side, curled into a fetal position. He felt relief only, mingled with something dark, a knowledge that he’d let the likes of Travis Crosby bring him low. He, a straight-A student with a perfect attendance record, was suspended.

“I’m surprised at you, Henry,” said Mrs. Monroe, Maggie’s mother and the school principal. “You’re bigger than that. The smarter among us must use our intellects to resolve conflict. We can’t let the Travis Crosbys of the world drive us to violence.”

A month before, he’d have been crushed to earn her disapproval, anyone’s disapproval. On that day in her overwarm office, Henry found he just didn’t care. He remembered all the details-a pretty picture of Maggie as a