With Equals Alone

My older brother Jared was eighteen and graduating from high school in a month. At the end of the summer he would be heading off to college far away. I was fourteen and would begin high school in the fall. These were the facts, though I refused to believe them.

Jared wasn’t — the rest of my family knew, but never admitted openly — a happy kid. He breathed, dreamed, perspired resentment. At fourteen, he’d been chubby, quiet, and studious. He’d smiled all the time, his cheeks red and always shiny. At school boys and girls picked on him relentlessly. Home wasn’t much better — though I was four years his junior, I jumped at every opportunity to tease him about his weight or the amount of time he spent with books.

But as soon as he started high school, all this changed. His smile disappeared. He went on a drastic diet and began working out with a weight set in the basement. Within a year his stomach was flat, his cheeks pale, and he joined a gym on Route 10, run by a former professional bodybuilder who’d once competed and lost badly in the Mr. Olympia contest. He’d soon be making his own entrance into the world of competitive bodybuilding: his application had been accepted for an amateur contest in West Orange, set for a week after.

The transformations had been gradual enough for me to ignore on a day to day basis. Only during sporadic, unguarded moments would I notice his widening chest, his forearms beginning to bulge, the tendons standing out like cords on his neck when he turned his head to the side. I’d see each new part as separate from the rest of Jared, as if a calf muscle were something he might have bought at a discount in the department store where he worked as a stockboy, no different than a new sweater or hat. Only reluctantly did I begin to piece together the whole. The recognition always troubled me and was sometimes so startling I had to turn away. Could this really be my brother? He didn’t seem at all like someone who could be related to my mother or father. I had the growing suspicion that a stranger had taken over Jared’s body and begun sleeping in his bed. If it weren’t for the face — undoubtedly Jared’s, though leaner than it had ever been — I would have been certain. I occasionally searched the pouchy lips we had in common, the wide nostrils, the deep-set eyes and long eyelashes he could only have inherited from my mother, searched closely for any sign of the chubby, cheerful fourteen-year-old, but that Jared was gone for good. Now his voice had deepened, and the mild New Jersey accent shared by my whole family — and which I would never even notice in my own speech until I moved to Delaware — broadened in his mouth almost to the point of parody. Cars for him became “cauws,” work was “wook.” He carefully combed his hair back from his forehead and let it fall in ragged curls at his neck, a strange combination of Saturday Night Fever and Rambo. He took to answering his name with “yo.”

Most of his time at home he spent locked in his room, staring at his muscles in the mirror. Sometimes, late in the evening, I heard him on the phone behind the closed door to my father’s office, speaking in a boisterous, excited tone I’d never heard from him before, and again I had the uncomfortable feeling of living with an impostor everyone knew about but no one acknowledged. He fought with my parents about everything imaginable, usually at the dinner table, and rarely spoke to me at all, though by this time I’d long since stopped trying to tease him and wanted, sometimes desperately, for us to get along. I’d never believed all those times I’d picked on him had ever meant anything. I’d never expected to be held accountable for my actions as a ten-year-old, and I certainly never thought they would cost me my brother’s love. Now I took his side in any argument he had with my parents, but he didn’t seem to notice. His gaze lumped me with my mother and father when he said, “You’re always attacking me. Can’t you all just leave me the hell alone?”

All this anger and aggression dismayed my parents. We’d always had such a nice family, they mourned. Where had things gone so wrong?

As young boys Jared and I had never been spanked. Not once had either of my parents struck us in a moment of anger or frustration. Our punishments were always carefully planned and calmly discussed: banned toys or privileges, extra chores on weekends, painfully monotonous lectures. My father especially managed to keep his anger under wraps no matter how badly Jared or I (rarely Jared) misbehaved. He prided himself on his cool temperament, which he claimed was a long-standing hereditary trait in his family. It was also somehow tied in his mind to his apparent immunity to the most common infectious diseases. During his childhood in the Ô40s and Ô50s — a treacherous, disease-ridden time in his descriptions — he’d avoided not only polio and smallpox, but also the mumps, the measles, and even chicken pox. This didn’t mean he was a particularly healthy man. At least once a month he came home with some new ailment: a strained back, a pulled groin, a broken pinkie toe. A doctor had first detected a slight murmur in his heart when he was only thirty-five. By the time I turned fourteen, he’d had two hernia operations, three bleeding ulcers, and a chronically spastic colon.

My mother, in contrast, never had so much as a nick on her finger, despite spending half her waking life chopping vegetables in the kitchen. But she was a magnet for every airborne germ imaginable. She’d had measles, mumps, chicken pox, all before her twelfth birthday. Without fail, she came down with a cold the first week of every December and caught strep throat in the spring of all odd-numbered years. Her assault on bacteria in our house was unyielding; she scrubbed toilets and sinks twice a day, soaked silverware in boiling water, sprayed enough Lysol in the kitchen to give everything we ate a slightly antiseptic, lemony flavor. She, of course, was not so even-tempered as my father. Though she never actually came close to violence, I often and easily provoked her into shouting or hissing warnings through clenched teeth. More than once I’d watched her grip the edge of a counter or chair so hard her knuckles blanched and thought, this is it, this is the moment I’ve taken things too far. Finally I would know what it felt like to be smacked by someone who loved me. I always felt terrible at these times — angry at myself and sorry for my mother, who’d tried so hard for so long. But when the smack didn’t come I was always disappointed, bitter at the predictable grounding or the dull speech about respect or honesty, which still left me stewing with guilt and remorse. Not like a blow, which, I imagined, would have freed me from all feelings of responsibility. I thought my mother must have known this, and was intentionally choosing the strictest possible punishment. Did she really love me after all? Already my mind would be working toward the next time I would stand before her apologetically, head lowered, hoping for the bite of her long fingers, followed by immediate tears and pleas for forgiveness.

Every time my mother was sick, my father bragged about his genes, which Jared and I seemed to have gotten the better part of — we, too, rarely caught colds or the flu, and neither of us had ever had chicken pox. He often said he was glad we seemed, for the most part, to have inherited his temperament. When either of us acted less than mild-mannered, he blamed our youth and warned us about viruses and bacteria. He sang out at every opportunity, “Keep a cool head, stay out of bed.” All of this confused me terribly. If my genes said I wouldn’t get sick, why did it matter how cool my head was? If they said I was even-tempered, did I have any choice in the matter? I couldn’t make sense of it, but my father was a scientist, and it didn’t occur to me to question him.

Only when he claimed his genes as the source of my cavity-free teeth did I begin to wonder. With this I wasn’t impressed at all — I may not have had any fillings, but my teeth were so crooked the orthodontist who’d recently attached my braces said I would most likely have to wear them for three and a half years. One tooth grew in a quarter-inch from where it belonged, right through my palate, and had to be removed in a painful surgery. The rest were covered in wire and metal hooks that tore at the insides of my cheeks and rubber bands that snapped against my gums. My best friend, Greg Farisi, had perfectly straight teeth; he was spanked more than anybody else I knew. Whenever my father talked about cavities, I cursed the whole idea of genes and wished there was a way I could still get my traits from Greg’s father, who couldn’t have cared less about keeping a cool head. At these times I decided to turn my back on my heritage, my nature, as my brother seemed to be doing. I would be hot-headed. If I ever had kids, I would smack them whenever they deserved it.

My mother was equally skeptical. “There’s something called fluoride,” she said. “I’m the one who made them brush after every meal.”

“Don’t worry,” my father assured her. “They inherited your looks. For that I thank my lucky stars.”

If only my father saw his health as a source of pride, Jared took it as a sign — as he did everything else at this time — that he deserved better than he was given, that he was constantly treated unfairly. He had nothing but disdain for anyone who could get sick and still claim authority over him. He’d say about a teacher who’d been out of school four straight days with a cold, “I don’t care what she gives me on that test. I don’t even want it back. It’s probably covered in snot.” When my mother called after him to dry his hair before leaving the house, he’d shrug and answer, “What for? I don’t have a weak constitution, like some people.”

My father still insisted Jared was, at heart, sweet and mild-mannered. “All this anger goes against who he really is. That’s why it gets him so upset. He doesn’t want to be like this.”

My mother snorted. “So what happened to his genes? Do they go to sleep during the teenage years? Is there some sort of pill we can give him? I’ll start Daniel on it now, just to be ready.”

In the fall, Jared was leaving for a small private college in Tennessee. In three short months I would be living alone in the house with my parents. Though to Greg Farisi and my other friends at school I said, “I can’t wait. I’ll get two rooms,” I couldn’t help feeling betrayed. How was I supposed to make it through dinner every night by myself? All my parents’ attention would be focused on me. Without Jared to distract them, how could I be anything other than what they wanted me to be? Before it even truly dawned on me that Jared would soon be gone, I found myself hanging around him whenever he would let me, offering to run errands for him, complimenting him on his clothes and hairstyle. I was determined to make up for all the years I’d picked on him. If he began to like me before he left, I thought, maybe he’d call often from college. Maybe he’d come home on holidays and occasional weekends. Maybe — even as I thought it I knew the hope was ridiculous and futile — maybe he would change his mind and find a college in New Jersey. Maybe he’d let me visit as much as I liked.

My parents were also bothered by his choice, though for different reasons. They couldn’t understand why he would want to go to Tennessee for anything. And much less for college? “What’s wrong with Pennsylvania?” my mother said. “Or Massachusetts? There are so many wonderful schools in Massachusetts.”

“You know what they think of Jews down there?” my father said. “And with your accent? We’ll get a call about you hanging from a tree.”

They also worried constantly about the cost of tuition. Even at fourteen I knew they would, in the end, have no trouble paying for it. But still, my father couldn’t keep himself from musing out loud one evening in early spring, soon after Jared received his acceptance letter, “It’s crazy how much they’re asking.” He absently swirled a hunk of roast beef in the pool of butter leaking from his baked potato. “I don’t see how ordinary people can afford an education.”

My mother answered immediately, “Ordinary people go to public schools.”

Jared laughed without the least bit of humor and threw his fork against his plate. “Fine. You want me to go to Rutgers? I’ll go. No, forget that. I’ll go to County. Or maybe I’ll join the goddamn Navy. You won’t have to pay a dime.”

My father glanced from side to side, stunned. He never seemed to understand where trouble came from. Weren’t we all just talking calmly, like human beings? Now he made a feeble attempt at appeasement. “Did I say anything about not wanting to pay?” he said. “We’ll find a way. We can always sell the vacation house.” Every year he talked about selling the cottage in the Poconos, where we spent no more than a week each summer, sometimes only a weekend. The rest of the year, my father tried — unsuccessfully — to rent it. But every time his real estate agent came close to selling, he hesitated. “It might still be a good source of income,” he’d reason. “We just need to advertise better.” The more money the house lost, the more attached my father became to it. We all knew he’d never let it go. But now he went on, “I can call the agent tomorrow. Maybe that couple from Poughkeepsie is still interested. We’ll find a way. If the market would just stay steady for once, I wouldn’t worry. If there was such a thing as job security anymore”

Before he could begin the speech we’d heard so often before, about corporate loyalty and the inefficient use of employees as disposable resources, my mother cut him off. “Of course we can pay for you,” she said to Jared. “That’s not going to be a problem. It’s when Daniel’s time comes, that’s what concerns me. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Somehow I’d been brought into the middle of this against my will. What did college have to do with me? Jared was still fuming, and now his eyes were locked on me, his forehead creased, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “So it’s my problem where he goes?”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t want to go to Tennessee.”

“If you don’t start studying, you won’t be going anywhere,” my father said.

“We’re just trying to be fair,” my mother said.

Jared wouldn’t stop staring at me, though I hunched down in my chair and feigned interest in the broccoli I so far hadn’t touched. “I’ll join the Navy,” he said. “I’ll join the Navy and you can go to Harvard, you little shit.”

“Jared!” my mother cried. “Don’t you dare talk like that at my table.”

“I like Rutgers,” I said.

“Rutgers doesn’t take just anybody,” my father said. “The kid doesn’t read a thing. Not even the funny pages. I don’t see how he doesn’t fail all his subjects.”

“You can go to the fucking moon, for all I care,” Jared said.

My mother’s chair squawked against the linoleum floor. “That’s it,” she said between her teeth. She half-stood, leaning forward, hands flat on the table, knuckles white. My father held out an arm in front of her. She glanced at it and inhaled through quivering lips. “I don’t want to see your face until tomorrow,” she said. “Get marching.”

Jared was on his feet. He tugged at his sleeves, which clung to his upper arms. I couldn’t tell whether he was pushing out his chest or if it had simply grown big enough to stretch the boundaries of his T-shirt. “Gladly,” he said. “Good practice for the Navy. Since that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want to hear your voice,” my mother said, but already Jared was stomping his way across the kitchen, lifting his knees to his waist, swinging his arms stiffly, occasionally saluting the oven and dishwasher. She settled back into her chair and wrapped her hands carefully around her cup of tea, as if to warm the fury from them. “He’s not being funny at all.”

After Jared was gone from the kitchen and the back door slammed, I said, “I don’t need to go to college.” And though it pained me, I added, “Jared can go to Tennessee if he wants.”

My mother shook her head. “If you want to finish your dinner, I’d better not hear another word.”

“You know what kind of jobs you can get with a high school diploma?” my father said. “Indentured servitude. Cannon fodder for the corporate army.”

“Stop,” my mother said, rubbing a thumb and forefinger above her eyebrows. “All of you. Please just stop.”

In my parents’ imaginations, Jared’s graduation was to be a great milestone, a turning point for our family. For months they’d spoken of it in hushed tones, with uneasy anticipation. Afterward, they seemed to think, everything would suddenly change. Finishing high school would lift some invisible burden from Jared’s shoulders, and life would become easier, for him and for the rest of us. “Make sure you show him how proud you are,” my mother reminded me often. “This isn’t a small thing. He’s worked hard.”

I was also graduating — from middle school — but no one, including me, made much of it. In fact, I didn’t want to think at all about switching schools in the fall, and whenever anybody mentioned it, I immediately tried to change the subject. The last few years had been a good time for me. I knew it even while it was happening and didn’t take a moment for granted. I’d never been an especially popular kid, but my best friend was, and from that I benefited. Greg Farisi lived at the bottom of my street, and we’d run around the neighborhood together since we were four. For ten years we’d seen each other nearly every day, and though I didn’t necessarily fit into his crowd of friends, almost no one questioned my being part of it.

Greg was a small kid with olive skin and a tight, impish smile that formed a dimple on his left cheek, one he was able to deepen on command. He always seemed on the verge of winking. His black hair ended in loose curls above his forehead, and at any given moment he was either fluffing them up or patting them down. He was a natural athlete; until he was twelve he played every sport the township offered and excelled in all of them — as a halfback, a shortstop, a point guard, a hockey forward. But these were all just games to him, pure entertainment. Wrestling was his true calling. After placing second in the state at 106 lbs. his first year in middle school, he quit every other sport and devoted himself full-time to the mats. From then on he was always bulking up or dieting to make his weight; he’d once spent an entire day spitting into 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup to shed the few extra ounces that would disqualify him from the next day’s meet.

When he wasn’t wrestling or training, Greg grew easily bored — especially during school — and looked for ways to amuse himself. This usually meant causing some sort of trouble, and I was always more than happy to help him. This, above all, was why we’d stayed friends for so long. I couldn’t wrestle at all and was lousy at most other sports; I’d pitched in Little League, but my control was so erratic and my speed so fleeting I didn’t bother trying out for the middle school team. The only game I could compete in with Greg was ping-pong — he never beat me more than three out of five times. But when it came to getting into trouble, I was a star. I spent enough lunch periods in detention hall for the vice-principal to ask, “Mr. Brickman, are you practicing for prison? Or do you just enjoy silent meditation? Maybe you should consider taking up yoga and stop getting thrown out of class.”

Nothing we did was ever criminal — climbing onto the school’s roof, swiping chalk erasers from all the classrooms, writing our names in bug spray on the basketball courts and lighting them on fire. Despite what the vice-principal said, I didn’t believe these things would have any bearing on my future; to the contrary, I did them because in my mind nothing I did then could possibly matter one way or the other. But still, my parents were horrified every time they got a call from school. “So he doesn’t catch colds,” my mother cried at my father, who could only scratch his beard with both hands at once. “Big deal. What good are his genes if they make him act like an idiot?” For every lunchtime detention, I was banned three days from watching TV or sentenced to a weekend of raking leaves.

Greg somehow managed to escape the consequences of our pranks, though they were usually his idea to begin with. In two years, he’d only been sent to the office twice and had never sat through detention. He had a way of endearing himself to teachers, parents, other kids — to everyone except his own father, who’d known him long enough to see through his smile and who kept a black leather belt, far too creased and battered ever to wear, always ready in his top dresser drawer. Greg had once shown it to me and described its sting, especially when his father didn’t pay attention to his grip and the buckle accidentally caught the back of Greg’s thigh. I never believed Mr. Farisi was a cruel man. Most of the time he was affectionate, even with me, ruffling my hair and telling jokes. But I knew his sense of justice was strict and absolute. Instead of hating him for it, Greg respected him far more than those teachers who let him get away with anything. Though he made me nervous, I liked him because he had no qualms about saying “fuck” in my presence.

But after seeing the black belt, I thought it only fair that I bear the brunt of responsibility for our trouble at school. Not that I had much choice. Once, in science class, we’d purposely sat across the room from each other and had planned to set off a pair of firecrackers at the exact same moment. My fuse must have been longer, or else I’d lit it a fraction of a second too late. Greg’s firecracker blew first. The teacher whirled, a hand on her chest. She observed Greg’s theatrical shrug and let out an equally exaggerated, exasperated sigh. Already she was beginning to smile in forgiveness. But then my firecracker went off, and her smile stopped short. “That’s enough, now,” she shouted. “Once might have been funny, Mr. Brickman. Go see Mr. Swaney. Tell him you’re guilty of overkill.”

I never resented Greg for this sort of special treatment. It seemed worth the trouble at the time. Known to everyone as Greg’s friend, I was always surrounded by a group of kids who otherwise wouldn’t have spoken a word to me. I never sat alone during those lunch periods I wasn’t in detention. Because Greg was afraid of injuring his knees or fingers and missing a wrestling match, he kept out of the regular lunchtime football game, instead sitting with other wrestlers and a group of girls on the grassy slope overlooking the baseball diamond and soccer field. And of course, I sat there, too. Happily. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy playing sports, but with girls watching from all corners of the playground, these games had nothing to do with fun. Something strange happened when I was conscious of eyes set on me. In Little League, I’d once pitched three scoreless innings with nearly perfect control, but as soon as my father showed up in the bleachers, my fingers became slippery, my arm rubber; my cleats caught in the ground and the catcher’s mitt eluded my fastball, my curve, even my lob. Afterward my father said, “Don’t worry. You weren’t born for this. There’s only one Sandy Koufax in a lifetime.”

So I was perfectly content to sit on the hill where Greg lounged on his elbows, chewing a piece of grass, squinting at the football game below, and picking out people in the crowd as objects of amusement. “Look at Wilson,” he’d say. “Runs like his pants are falling down.” Then he’d stand and do and imitation, and all the girls would giggle.

Almost always one of the other wrestlers tried to top him. Marty Jameson wrestled at 112 lbs. and made the team only because there was no one else to compete at his weight. Even six pounds lighter, Greg could pin him nine times out of ten. Marty had fine, nearly white, blond hair that fell in layers over his ears. His top teeth were slightly bucked, pushing his upper lip half an inch in front of the lower. This combination made him look to me like an albino duck — often, when he threw a glance in my direction I was certain his eyes had a reddish tint. For reasons I could never put my finger on, my presence had always been an offense to him. He put up with me only because of Greg, whom he hated and envied for his sense of humor, his wrestling ability, and most of all for the attention given to him by the girls. As soon as Greg imitated one of the football players, Marty followed with, “This is how Coach Scholl walks.” Then he strutted like the evil duck I knew him to be. But Greg would have no part of it. The coach was hard on him and never fell for his charms; Greg respected him almost as much as he did his own father. So Marty wouldn’t strut two steps before Greg snapped, “That’s not Coach. That’s your mother after I fucked her in the ass till she bled.”

Whenever Marty made me his target, saying, “I don’t see why this kid sits with us. He couldn’t wrestle a chicken,” Greg jumped to my defense almost as faithfully as he did for the coach. “Watch out for Brickman,” he’d say. “He might look like a pussy, but he knows how to build a bomb.”

Only Greg was allowed to make people laugh at my expense. My usual goal at lunch was to keep him entertained enough that he wouldn’t resort to making me his entertainment. I’d scan the football game for kids I knew he already disliked and say casually, “I heard Plummer talking the other day. He said wrestling’s for guys too pussy to play football and too stupid to do anything else.”

Greg would nod and crack his knuckles. “I hate that sonofabitch. I’ll show him how pussy wrestling is. You ever hear a guy cry out for his mommy? Wait till I get him in a cradle.” But sometimes, when the football game and the wrestlers began to bore him, when he’d tired of begging one of the girls to show him her breasts, he resorted to making me demonstrate the wrestling moves he’d taught me. Though I was five pounds heavier and two inches taller, I didn’t stand a chance. He’d let me take him down once, maybe twice, and then he’d grind my skull or spine with his chin, skid my face along the grass, and finally apply a special hold that split my legs painfully and opened my crotch in the direction of the hysterical girls.

This was a sacrifice I was usually willing to make. I would do whatever I could to keep a firm hold on this life, even if it meant throwing away every third Saturday to rot in detention hall. As the end of middle school approached, I was more desperate than ever to fortify my friendship with Greg. There was no reason for him to drop me when we started high school. But then again, nothing seemed certain, and I often felt myself on shaky ground.

Most afternoons when Greg didn’t have wrestling practice, we took off somewhere on our bikes, though from our neighborhood there were few places to go: into other residential neighborhoods guarded by Crime Watch signs, along the strip of dirt beside the freeway sound-barriers, across the train tracks to the private lake where we’d twice been arrested for trespassing and lectured in the back of a police cruiser, to the gas station mini-mart on Route 10. More often than not, we rode beneath the column of electrical towers that cut a swath through our neighborhood and strung power lines from Newark to the Pennsylvania border. We’d once decided to follow the towers all the way to the Delaware Water Gap, but after less than five miles, already exhausted, I’d stopped at the sight of an electrical cable dangling from a tilted metal cone fifty feet overhead. It was wrapped in rubber, the whole thing thicker than my upper arm; it snaked fifteen yards along the ground and ended in what had once been the face of a deer. But this no longer looked like the face of anything. The eyeballs were gone and most of the hide up to the neck was burned away. At regular intervals, a surge of electricity singed the remains of the deer’s jaw, sending up a plume of white smoke to quickly scatter in the breeze. Greg, who’d been riding ahead, noticed that I’d stopped and came back. He dropped his bike in the weeds and followed the line of the cable. To keep from vomiting, I laughed loudly. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Greg said. “You’re one heartless sonofabitch, Brickman.” When I looked up his eyes were watery, their rims red. For the next week at school, he called me “the iceman,” and said to the group of girls on the hill during lunch, “You want to meet the coldest man on earth? He laughs at electrocuted deer. The kid’s got no soul.”

The same week, two different girls promised to let me kiss them in the parking lot, in order, I knew, to make Greg jealous. Though both times the girl backed out a the last minute, Greg encouraged me selflessly, saying, “Go ahead. I don’t mind taking your sloppy seconds.” For this alone, I’d gladly have taken a few extra trips to the office or submitted to a headlock. But was this enough? So far Greg had asked for nothing more. But what about next year? What other sacrifices would be required of me then? The coming fall remained a mysterious, hazy time, when, I feared, anything might change without reason at all.

The regional high school where my brother now went and where I was soon destined to follow was set far back from the main road on which my bus passed every morning and afternoon; twice a day I glimpsed a bit of brick and glass and mostly the rows of cars parked in front. Student cars — kids actually drove themselves to this school. The idea was almost impossible for me to grasp. I’d only seen the school up close twice, while riding with my mother to pick up Jared from an afternoon computer club, and had never once been inside. Because it was regional and gathered kids from three separate townships, the building was massive compared to my school, three stories high and laid out in a square-cornered C. A rigid, imposing wall faced the parking lot. From either end, a stout wing jutted onto a concrete slab scattered with maintenance sheds and pick-up trucks, and fifty yards beyond, the entire world dropped away abruptly into the bowl of the football stadium. The sides were solid brick, broken only by steel doors painted the colors of diseased flesh (which our health teacher had described while flashing nauseating slides) — the top two gangrene, the ground floor a smoker’s lung just beginning to blacken. Each door led to a rickety fire escape with retractable ladders that seemed to stop short ten feet from the pavement. The building’s front was all glass and aluminum frames, but the promise of open light was deceptive: both times I rode past, all the blinds were lowered. Beside the flagpole, on the tiny patch of lawn leading to the front doors, a splintered wooden sign, punctured with numerous bbs and at least one real bullet, announced, “Union Knoll High School: Home of the Mallards.”

I would not spend the next four years of my life in this place — it was unthinkable. There was no grassy hill, no lunchtime football game. Where would Greg spend his days? How would I convince him to let me follow? When I imagined getting into trouble and taking my punishments, I could only picture the bullet hole in the Mallard sign; starting next year every step I took would tremble with a significance beyond my comprehension. Even thinking about the building from afar brought on an agitation I couldn’t control. The only way I could keep my breath from growing short and my fingers from shaking was to believe truly and absolutely that I would never set foot in the hallways Jared described as narrow, claustrophobic, and perilously overcrowded. I managed to convince myself it was all a mistake, which someone would soon discover and correct. I wouldn’t graduate from middle school, I wouldn’t advance beyond the eighth grade until I decided I was good and ready. At night as I prepared for bed and again during my morning shower, I was comforted by glancing down at my knobby wrists and knees, my bony chest and hairless arms and legs, all of which could belong to no one but a boy, and not — as my mother often referred to me — to someone about to become a man.

Only my father seemed at all concerned about my entering high school, though not in the same way I was. “You think you can just slide by without studying,” he said one evening, when I mentioned watching the Mets game after dinner. “That’s fine for now. But just wait until next year. They won’t let you get away with that on the Knoll.”

Anxiety quickly crept into my fingertips, which I drummed against my knees. “It’s an important game,” I said. “Doc’s pitching. Tonight’s his big comeback.”

“Who wants more rice?” my mother asked.

“Doc’s washed up,” my father said, and I slowly began to relax the muscles in my stomach and let the air out of my lungs. “No one snorts cocaine up his nose and goes back to being a star. Inside he’s messed up for good. All that potential, such a waste.”

And then, for no reason I could fathom, Jared piped in: “He doesn’t need to study. They’ll give any moron a high school diploma.”

What was he doing? We were off the subject. I’d been off the hook. My father said, “He’ll be one of those metal shop kids, the ones who can fix my car but can’t read a dinner menu.”

“I can read fine!” I snapped. The force of my voice surprised and pleased me. I could be hot-headed, after all. My father’s genes didn’t control me completely. Already my anger was fading, but still feeling its thrill, I went on. “Any moron can graduate high school. Jared’s doing it, isn’t he?”

Quickly, my mother jumped in. “You can stop right there,” she said. “We all know how hard your brother’s worked, and we’re all proud”

But Jared was shaking his head. Instead of matching my anger, his expression was one of mild hurt and resignation. “No,” he said. “Daniel’s right. It’s stupid. It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t see why everyone’s making such a big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” my mother demanded.

“I’m going to watch the game,” I said.

Jared stood. “I’ll go with you.”

I nodded, bewildered, careful not to let my excitement show. Jared didn’t even like baseball. He hadn’t offered to do something with me in years. I didn’t want to question it but still couldn’t help glancing quickly into his face for some hint of motive, and to find out what might be asked of me in return. My father called after us, “You can both be mechanics. They make good money, you know. As long as you get to be your own boss.”

“It is a big deal,” my mother repeated as we made our way to the family room. “It is,” she said once more and dropped plates into the sink with a despondent clang.

She continued to think so, no matter what Jared said. She planned an enormous party for the afternoon following the graduation ceremony, with relatives coming from Connecticut, Long Island, even Florida. She’d started cooking for it in January and had already filled the extra freezer in the basement with hors d’oevres and desserts. She’d hired neighborhood kids to serve food and snap pictures. But of course, Jared didn’t want a party. He tried to make her cancel it, and when she wouldn’t, refused to give her the names of any friends she might invite.

Graduation for Jared was nothing more than a distraction. His sights were set a week later, when he would compete in the bodybuilding contest in West Orange. This was the thing he’d really been working toward these last four years. How could graduating high school compare? It marked the end of something he hated. The contest was the start of something he loved. My parents pretended he was just being modest, that as soon as he donned the green cap and gown, the gold tassels — the official colors of the Mallards — he would feel the flush of accomplishment and the dawning of a bright future. “He’s under a lot of pressure,” my mother told me when Jared wasn’t around. “Everything’s changing for him. Try to be nice to him. Try not to bother him too much.”

As soon as his registration was accepted for the competition, Jared doubled his training time at the gym. He came home halfway through dinner, his entire shirt stained with sweat and only beginning to dry. He held his arms away from his sides and didn’t seem able to lower them. Each step made him wince. My mother had already served a salad and was beginning to dish out hunks of glazed chicken. “I won’t hold up everything for one person,” she said.

Jared eased into a chair, visibly swallowing a groan. “I never asked you to.”

My father said, “It’s not healthy to think about your body all day every day.”

“Don’t sit down with your stink,” my mother said. “Go take a shower.”

It didn’t really matter whether or not Jared was on time for dinner. He only picked at his meal enough to keep my mother from harassing him. He was on a special diet that was supposed to give him bulk and at the same time trim away excess fat to chisel the outlines of his muscles. He lived on protein and carbohydrate shakes made from a powder I silently swore was nothing more than chalk dust — once, when no one was home, I’d opened one of the plastic tubs, stuck my nose far inside and taken a deep breath. In this powder I’d hoped to find the secret of Jared’s drive, of his determination to abandon the person he’d once been, but here instead was the source of his misery. My nostrils burned, and I coughed for half an hour. Who could possibly be happy with nothing but chalk in his stomach day in and day out?

After dinner, he locked himself in his room and hurried through his school work. I knew when he’d finished — through my bedroom wall I’d hear the opening bars from the 2001 film score, the music Jared had chosen as the soundtrack for his posing. Hours on end he worked at choreographing his moves: arms in a circle in front of his chest; a right-hand profile, arm twisted to show a tricep, leg slightly bent with the calf flexed; a look at his back, biceps lifted on either side of his head; left-hand profile, the mirror image of the right; and finally a return to the chest, only this time with one arm stretched straight, fingers extended, and the other curled beside his ear. The whole thing went on for two and a half minutes. A month before the contest, he shaved all the hair from his arms, legs, and chest and began covering himself with Liquid Tan, which refused to spread evenly, instead tinting his skin in rust-colored blotches and streaks.

To my parents, all this was either pure madness or some youthful fantasy they could ignore with a shrug or a wave of a hand. In their bafflement they kept mostly silent, though they often made questioning gestures to the ceiling. “When I was his age, I wanted to race hot rods,” my father said. “I guess this isn’t so different.”

This worked to my advantage. When it came to bodybuilding, Jared was willing to take any ally he could get. Since I was the only one in the house who even pretended to support him, he allowed me into his room while he practiced his routine. This was my last chance, I knew — my last chance to make up for the years I’d called him fat, to make him remember me fondly after he was gone. I made a big show of interest, pointing out awkward moments or changes of speed. “You’re rushing through the calf shot,” I said. “Hold it another second. One more. That’s it. Good.”

Two weeks before graduation, I even went so far as to say I wanted to start lifting weights myself. To my surprise, Jared quickly offered to teach me with the set in the basement. His enthusiasm worried me, and I knew right away I’d made a mistake. He scribbled out a long list of exercises with numbers of sets and reps. Around my waist he tightened a bulky leather belt that made it nearly impossible to sit. I curled and squatted and worked my triceps, all while Jared watched, barking what in his mind must have been words of encouragement. “Come on, you wimp. One more. Do you want arms like a girl? I said one more. Do you want to look like Dad?”

Our cat had followed us into the basement and was rubbing against my legs as I struggled with the weights. Already my limbs tingled with approaching numbness and seemed to be taking leave from the rest of my body. I’d had enough, but Jared led me to the bench press and slid me beneath a steel bar with black plates at either end. The bar dropped straight to my chest and wouldn’t budge. The whole thing couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, but I was sure it would collapse my lungs. The cat’s tail flicked mockingly under one elbow and then the other. I grunted, heaved, shouted, “Get it off me!” Jared only shook his head and said in disappointment, “Come on, you pussy. You can do it. Use those girlie arms.”

Why was I doing this? I didn’t care about muscles, and I certainly never wanted to shave my legs or paint myself orange. Was it really so important to change how Jared felt about me? Was it worth going through all this? His face hovered above me, the firm cheeks and sharp jaw that still seemed so alien, with patches of stubble showing through the fake tan. Something occurred to me then for the first time: what if Jared’s face had never changed? What if he was still the same chubby, happy, humiliated kid my parents had always wanted him to be? Would I care whether or not he was leaving? My ribs were beginning to ache, and I gasped, though in truth I wasn’t yet having any trouble breathing. I tilted my body to one side until a steel plate slid from the end of the bar. The cat screeched and tore up the stairs. Then the entire bar see-sawed, wrenching from my hands and crashing to the floor. The second plate landed edge-first on Jared’s foot. He stomped around the basement, cursing and shouting, and I waited for him to grab me, shake me by the shoulders, sock me in the eye. Was this what I’d been waiting for all along? I pictured his fist hurling toward my face, the blinding crash, the sudden release of all my guilt and past wrongdoing — now there would be nothing standing between us. Jared would either love me or he wouldn’t, and I would know one way or the other. But suddenly he was calm. He bent and rubbed his foot slowly, then straightened and turned to me for the first time. “You’re hopeless,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”

I groaned without meaning to. Nothing else he might have said could have wounded me more. It couldn’t be true. I would try the bench press again, really try this time, and I was sure I’d lift the bar at least once. Even with a hundred pounds on either end I’d lift it, so long as Jared took back what he said. But he was already on his way upstairs. I chased after him and set my foot against his bedroom door just as he was shutting it. “I can still help with your routine,” I begged. “I’m better at watching than doing.”

He hesitated a moment and then reluctantly opened the door. “All right,” he said. “Just sit on the bed and don’t say a word until I’m through.”

He yanked off his shirt and pressed the play button on his tape deck. The routine was no different than it had been for the last month, still awkward and rushed in the same spots. But now I was barely watching. My eyes wandered to Jared’s walls, plastered with cut-out pages from muscle magazines, men and women in brightly colored bikinis barely covering their shimmering, oiled skin. My heart was racing. I couldn’t stop picturing the door closing on my foot. If I’d been a second later, it would have shut all the way. I’d narrowly escaped tragedy, but this was worse — my hope returned, my suffering prolonged. Along with anxiety came a sullen jealousy of all the faces on the walls. These were the people who would go with Jared to Tennessee, the ones he would think about all the way through college. He didn’t, I thought, even own a picture of me. And if I gave him one, what were the chances he’d hang it on his wall or prop it on his desk?

The music stopped. Jared let out a long breath and shook his arms. “So?” he said. “What do you think?”

“Great,” I said, surprised at the gurgling sound deep in my throat. I had to sniffle hard to go on. “A hundred times better than before. It’s almost perfect.”

“Really?” He frowned conspicuously to keep from smiling. “You think so? What about the profile, the right side?”

“You still need another half-second on the calf. But otherwise it’s there. The music’s excellent.”

“I wish I had another month to practice,” he said.

“You don’t need it,” I said. “You know you’ll win, hands down.”

“I think I’ll run through it once more. You don’t have to stay if you’re bored.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Not at all.”

The next day in school I told my friends about Jared’s routine. But in front of them I told the truth. “His muscles are pretty big,” I said. “But his moves suck ass. He looks like he’s dancing with a bear.”

It was an especially hot day for early June, and the football game was sluggish. Greg had been picking aimlessly at the grass and had only shrugged when I’d pointed to a kid on the football field who’d dropped three passes in a row. Something struck my ear, and beside my hand dropped a balled-up gum wrapper. From behind, Marty Jameson said, “Why don’t you go sit with your own kind, Brickshit. They’re letting the retards go down to the pond.”

Along the service road beside the baseball diamond, the school’s five special-ed kids bounded in a ragged line toward the winding green pond that marked the edge of school property. None of us had ever seen these kids up close; their teachers wisely kept them separate. I didn’t know what might be wrong with their minds, but even from far away, I could see that they had received the worst fate imaginable: bodies completely out of proportion, balloon heads on stick necks, stumped legs, bloated bellies and buttocks.

“Those kids have more brains in their teeth than in your whole family combined,” Greg said, without even glancing at Marty. Then he motioned lazily to the girls. “And anyway, if you get rid of Brickman, you’ll lose all these pretty ladies. Why do you think they hang around with us at all?” The girls snickered, but in a tense, expectant way. Several of them were leaning forward. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen. Greg went on, “Besides, he can wrestle now. Didn’t I teach you that half-nelson the other day?” he asked me.

I could already imagine my shoulder slamming against the ground, Greg’s chin digging into my back. In a panic, I said, “I tried it out on my brother. Did I tell you he entered a bodybuilding contest?” I spoke rapidly, feeling my cheek burning against the grass, my braces serrating the insides of my lips. Briefly I wished I was with those kids walking toward the pond, wished my head were twice the size of my body so I’d never even have had the chance to sit on this hill or lead an ordinary life. Wouldn’t that somehow have been easier? “He’s been dieting on chalk dust for the last two months. He has to shave his legs every week.”

Of all the kids on the hill, only Greg had ever met Jared and remembered him best from his fat years. Only he found all this funny, but that was enough for me. I was able to relax, and soon got carried away. Why should I have to be thrown in the dirt for the sake of our friendship? Today, I decided, I would earn it through my own merits. I stood in front of everybody and ran through a parody of Jared’s poses, singing out the 2001 theme. Greg rolled to his side, laughing uncontrollably. I mimicked Jared’s accent. I told how he almost took off a nipple while shaving his chest. I described his awful tan, even lying about a bright white patch on his back where he couldn’t reach with a brush — in truth, he’d had me cover that spot for him. Greg hooted, howled, wiped away tears. “I bet he even shaves his balls,” he cried. All the girls laughed. The wrestlers chuckled. Even Marty Jameson cracked a smile, his duck bill parting slightly, his pink eyes squinting. This was my moment of glory — all sights were on me, and I didn’t stumble once. Even as I spoke, I was admiring my composure. I would have given anything to let this go on forever, but already I was imagining the moment lost, swallowed by the swiftly approaching summer and the dark mystery of next fall: in less than three months, no hill, no playground, only a concrete slab littered with cigarette butts and flattened pieces of gum. I tore off my shirt and started running through the routine a second time, my movements now even more exaggerated and ridiculous, but the laughter was dying down. Greg caught his breath and spit. “Jesus Christ, put your shirt back on,” he said. “You’re blinding everybody.”

Marty Jameson, leaping at the chance, said, “He’s a walking rack of ribs. I’ve never seen anybody so skinny in my life.”

“That’s funny,” Greg said. “I thought you saw your mother naked every day. That’s what she told me, anyway.”

Did I fail to recognize my mistake at the time? Was I still young enough to be blind to consequences? Or was I simply impatient, wanting only to hasten the inevitable?

A week before Jared’s graduation and two weeks before the contest, Greg came up the hill to my house. This was a rare occasion. Though we lived less than a quarter-mile apart, I almost always went down to his place. Not because he wasn’t welcome at mine — my parents were as charmed by him as everybody else. Whenever I got into trouble at school, the first thing my mother said was, “Tell me you at least didn’t drag Greg into this. It’s one thing for you to do something stupid. What’s her mother think of us? Turning her nice boy into a hoodlum.”

My excuse for never having Greg over was that it was easier to go downhill than up. No one questioned the logic of this. But the truth was, I felt more comfortable in Greg’s surroundings than I did with him in mine. There was an unmistakable difference between our two houses. His wasn’t dirty by any standard, but it had an atmosphere of relaxation completely foreign and agreeable to me. Three-day-old sports pages often lay spread open on the living room floor though no one was reading them. In the kitchen, Mrs. Farisi, a round woman with massive bosoms and graying hair tied in a long, fraying braid, was always walking the tightrope between control and pure chaos — used pots, bowls, baking trays teetered in stacks, lettuce leaves, raw ground beef, wobbling eggs covered every inch of counter space, flour dusted her cheek. When Mr. Farisi wasn’t at work, he sprawled on the couch in a sleeveless undershirt and held lively conversations with characters on TV. My house, on the other hand, was spotless and hushed on any given day. My mother, too, spent all weekend cooking, but still there was never so much as a dirty fork in the sink or a drop of splattered sauce on the stovetop; nothing but the exact ingredients she would need in the next five minutes sat out on the counter. My father grumbled if anyone talked loudly while he was trying to read the newspaper. He wouldn’t lay the paper down for a minute before my mother snatched it from the floor and tossed it onto the recycling stack. No shoes were allowed past the laundry-room — a single sneaker smudge would stand out on the shining hallway tiles like a fresh bruise on pale skin. I was embarrassed to have my friends think I lived in a museum; I didn’t want to watch everything they said or did.

But today, Greg insisted on coming up. He’d had an argument with his father over TV channels and had to get out of the house. “I just wanted to watch football,” he told me on the phone. “But he was watching some stupid black and white movie on Lifetime. He’s already pissed off about some client. I called him Mussolini. Fucking Mussolini, actually. He’s on his way to get the belt.”

Reluctantly, I told him to ride up, but in my mind determined we wouldn’t stay here long. The minute he came in the door, I’d suggest heading off somewhere on our bikes — even after seeing the burnt deer, we were both still fascinated by the electrical towers, and I knew Greg wouldn’t object to riding there. I waited nervously for him to come up the hill. Today was Sunday, and everybody was home. My father was reading on the back porch. My mother had been in the kitchen since dawn, browning onions for a soup-another dish for Jared’s graduation party. I’d woken to the smell, and by now it filled the house and seemed to coat my tongue. I waited for Greg in the family room, where Jared lay on the couch with the cat in his lap. He was watching a video tape of last year’s Mr. Olympia contest and kept rewinding the same segment over and over: a series of poses by a smiling black man with a sensitive gap between his front teeth and otherwise inhuman proportions. His chest, I was sure, must have been inflated with air. When he moved his arms a certain way, black wings seemed to sprout from his back. The man could have swallowed three of me whole without affecting his size. But at the same time, his muscles appeared too delicate to have anything to do with strength. Each ripple, every protruding vein, all of it seemed to me incredibly fragile, ready to crumble at the slightest touch. I found myself growing anxious for him, afraid the next pose would be his last.

Jared didn’t look at all like a bodybuilder today. His hair was matted against the couch cushion, sticking up in back. The collar of his white sweatshirt was stained rust-colored where Liquid Tan had rubbed off his neck, but despite the tan, the skin under his eyes was gray. “Look at that motherfucker,” he said, with a mixture of awe and frustration. “It’s not just that he’s huge. He moves like he’s wearing a goddamn leotard. I can’t do that.”

“He’s been doing it a long time,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re watching this. You can’t compare yourself to Mr. Olympia.”

Greg came in the back door without knocking. He called out something to my father on the porch and said to my mother, “That smells great, Mrs. B. Nice to see you. My mom would love the recipe.”

My mother’s answer was lost beneath the sizzling of onions. I hopped up from my chair and tried to divert Greg directly to the garage and our bikes. But he was already walking past me into the family room. “What’s up, Jared?” he said. He pointed to the black man on the TV screen, who was now flexing his biceps, each the size of Greg’s entire head. “Man, you’re looking huge. Daniel told me you bulked up, but I had no idea. You’re not taking steroids, are you?”

Jared didn’t say a word. He stroked the cat gently and kept watching the video. I was suddenly ashamed of the orange stains on his collar, the orange streaks on his face and hands, nearly the same color as the cat’s fur. Even his bulging neck muscles seemed artificial with Greg in the room. Greg, I now saw clearly for the first time, was Jared’s opposite in every way. No matter how big his muscles were, Greg would always carry himself easily, with confidence. Whatever Jared struggled with came naturally to Greg. He could never have been fat or lonely; he would never be anything other than what he wanted to be. “I don’t see how you could lose any contest,” Greg said. “But I think you spent too much time in the tanning booth. Maybe it’s just the video, but from here you look kinda like a Negroid. You’ll have to go for a Jamaican accent.”

Jared’s hand paused in the middle of the cat’s back, and then continued on its way to the tail. “Aren’t you the kid who likes to roll on mats with other guys?” he said.

Greg smiled, but he shuffled his feet, widening his stance. His hands balled into fists. He was digging in. “I’ve been working out, too,” he said. “Take a look.”

He circled his arms in front of his chest. Why was he doing this? He knew what kind of trouble it would make for me. I stared at him hard, and he must have sensed my agitation, for he shot me a quick glance before turning back to Jared. I’m sorry, his look suggested, but I can’t help it. It said something else, as well: Don’t tell me you didn’t know this was coming. Immediately I felt an onrush of guilt and troubling satisfaction. Greg flexed his arms and began singing the 2001 theme; when he no longer knew the tune, he switched to the theme from The Flintstones. He ran through an excruciating parody of my parody of Jared’s routine. But Jared watched him for no more than a few seconds. The orange tint of his cheeks reddened; for a moment he seemed to have a real tan. He wouldn’t look at me, but the set of his jaw charged me with the most inexcusable treachery. I was torn with shame and regret, but at the same time tried to feel indignant. Why should I care if he hated me? He was leaving. No matter what I did or said, he was leaving. Still, I shrugged apologetically and said to myself, I didn’t want this. This was never what I’d wanted.

Greg wouldn’t quit. He pointed one arm straight toward the ceiling, curled the other beside his ear, and let out a sickly groan. He finished with a ferocious sneer. Then, as if nothing had happened, he turned back to the TV and said, “Do you have to shave your balls, or just your chest and legs?”

By now I was trembling with anger, perhaps the first real anger I’d ever felt in my life. “Don’t be an idiot,” I muttered through my teeth. I was glad to feel the sharp metal of my braces catching on my lips. Jared was staring straight ahead, no longer at the TV, but at a bookshelf filled with my mother’s cooking magazines. He took deep, rumbling breaths, his nostrils flaring. Slowly, his fingers sifted through the fur on the cat’s haunches.

“Don’t call me an idiot,” Greg said. His arms were crossed, and all trace of joking was gone from his voice. He eyed me closely, his jaw jutting slightly forward, the same look he used to intimidate an opponent before the start of a wrestling match.

But I was in no mood to be intimidated now. I had to do whatever I could to repair the damage he’d done. “Then don’t act like one,” I said.

“Are we going somewhere or what?” Greg said. “It stinks like onion farts in here.”

He left the room and turned the corner to the bathroom. As soon as the door shut behind him, I went to the couch and whispered to Jared, “He’s an asshole. Don’t listen to him.” He lifted the remote control, pressed a button, but said nothing. On the TV, the giant black man zipped backward through his poses. “I think your routine’s great,” I said. “Really. I never made fun of it. I was just demonstrating” I took a step forward, and Jared jerked his knee. The cat, startled from sleep, pushed off from Jared’s thigh, claws extended. Jared cried out and grabbed his leg with one hand. The other arm — accidentally? on purpose? I would never know — swung behind him, its elbow catching me just below the ribs. I hit the floor in an instant. Snot and spittle exploded onto my lips and chin. Whatever noise escaped me brought everybody running, my mother from the kitchen, Greg from the bathroom, my father all the way from the back porch. Through stinging tears I could see them all standing above me as I gasped and sputtered. Jared, too, was on his feet. “I barely touched him,” he said. “He chased the cat off my lap.”

“He’s your brother,” my mother said, astonished. Her voice was uncertain, confused in a way I’d never heard before. “Your own brother.” This was the worst thing she could ever have imagined, her greatest fear, I suddenly felt sure, since giving birth to a second son — in her own house was playing out a biblical story of jealousy and vengeance. And worst of all, she had done nothing to prevent it. “How could you?” she choked.

My father, for the first time in my life, raised his fist. It came down slowly, opening on the way. By the time it connected with Jared’s shoulder, it hit with no more than a light, backhanded tap. Still, all of us sucked in a unanimous breath of shock and horror — all except Greg, who couldn’t have understood what this meant. Jared’s face altered instantly. He blinked and swallowed twice. His chin trembled. His mouth opened and closed without speaking a word. Finally, he managed to say, “You hit me?” My father, dazed, glanced over his shoulder to see if Jared was talking to someone else. “I can’t believe you hit me,” Jared said. “I barely touched him.” His face twisted and purpled with all the rage he’d ever held back in his life, all the hurt he’d never avenged. “I wish I’d really punched him,” he said quietly.

By now I was able to sit up, though I still held my stomach with both hands. Greg stood a few feet off to the side, smirking. He was, I knew, thinking about the story he would feel compelled to tell tomorrow in school. Why’s everyone so upset? he must have been thinking. Where’s the black belt? My mother stooped with a tissue to wipe up the spit that had been dribbling from my chin onto the hardwood floor. She was shaking and, I could tell, making an effort not to face my father; I hoped she would make a crack about his genes and warn him about the coming onslaught of germs, but she kept silent. My father slumped on the couch, staring at his hand as if it were no longer part of him. He might have been considering whether or not to lop it off. I was waiting for Jared to storm out, up to his room or out of the house, but instead, he sat in an armchair across from my father. His shoulders were hunched forward, burdened, it seemed; he made no effort to puff out his chest. He and my father gazed at each other, both shaking their heads. Without a word something passed between them, a substantial gesture, like a handshake or a signature, ending an unspoken but long-standing dispute. Neither looked down at me.

By the time Greg and I headed off on our bikes, my stomach no longer hurt at all; the pain that had seemed so intense was now as distant and hazy as a memory not of something I’d experienced, but something I’d watched or been told about. Instead I felt mostly mortified by what Greg had seen and full of self-pity — Jared had hit me, but it hadn’t changed anything. He hated me more than ever. I tried to imagine what might have happened if he’d hit me harder, done some life-threatening internal damage, so he’d have no choice but to feel sorry and let me forgive him. At the same time, I couldn’t help envying him: for the rest of his life he could tell people, “My old man hit me once. I never let him do it again.”

Of course, I didn’t say any of this to Greg. As we whizzed through our neighborhood, I shouted curses and threats of revenge. “The sonofabitch,” I said. “Couldn’t even stand up and fight me. Throws a sucker punch when I didn’t even do anything.”

Greg rode a yard or so ahead of me. He didn’t respond, but seemed to be nodding. We sliced through a neighbor’s lawn, kicking up clumps of sod, and dropped into a shallow gully that led to the powerlines. Soon, the first tower loomed above us, wide as a garage at its base, narrowing as it rose, until arms heavy with wires branched off near its peak. Greg skidded to a halt in a sweeping half-circle. Dust clouded behind him and drifted forward over his shoulders and head. I stopped my bike, still ranting about Jared: “I can’t wait till he’s out of the house. I hope he never comes home for holidays.”

Greg laid his bike carefully on the ground. “I’m an idiot?” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

He didn’t answer. He glanced up the length of the electrical tower and then suddenly charged at me, toppling me from my bike and slamming my cheek in the dirt. My braces knifed into my lower lip, and my tongue was flooded with a salty, metallic taste. Instantly Greg had my arm locked behind my back. “You called me an idiot,” he said.

“I didn’t mean it.”

He wrenched my arm higher and added a knee to my tailbone. A current buzzed through the wires overhead — for a moment I thought the sound was of my joints grinding, my muscles stretching and tearing. My nose was only an inch or two from a tangle of thorny stems, and with each pull on my arm it slid closer. But the pain was only minor compared to the sheer panic that struck me. Did this mean the end of our friendship? I saw the life I’d so recklessly tried to preserve suddenly slipping away. Would Marty Jameson have free reign to banish me from the hill? I imagined myself on the bank of the slimy pond beyond the baseball diamond, staring up toward the slope where the wrestlers sprawled on the grass, where the girls who would never talk to me again held their hands in their laps to keep Greg from looking up their skirts. What would I say to those kids I’d have to sit beside now, with their giant heads on withered bodies?

“You think I’m an idiot,” Greg said.

“I don’t,” I said. “You’re not.”

“Who’s an idiot?”

“I am,” I said.

“Who? I can’t hear you.”

“Me,” I shouted. “I’m an idiot.”

“Say it again.”

“I’m an idiot!”

“You are,” he said. “You really are.”

He let me up and brushed a clump of dead grass from my shoulder. I massaged my throbbing arm, shook out my wrist, and spit blood at my feet. Greg kicked clods of dirt into the weeds, sheepish now. Nothing was over yet. Tomorrow he might tell everyone how I’d called myself an idiot, but I wouldn’t be kicked off the hill. He would still protect me from Marty Jameson. He would still wrestle me to the ground to make the girls laugh. But for how long? In two weeks there would be no hill. At the end of the summer there would be nothing but an ugly C-shaped building and a slab of concrete where I could stand only if I learned to smoke. At the end of the summer there would be no more Jared, just me alone in the house where my father would lie awake at night wondering how his hand had closed into a fist, where my mother would double her efforts to sterilize everything, where I would fight to keep my mild manners at bay.

“Come on,” Greg said. “Let’s go.”

He picked up his bike and pedaled slowly toward Pennsylvania. I hesitated a moment, glancing in the direction of home, fearing the time had come to face what I couldn’t change. Maybe it would be better this way: to give up trying, to let go of everything at once, to take whatever might come. The thought brought with it a momentary exhilaration, a wash of freedom, and was quickly followed by cold terror. Not yet, I pleaded. Not today. I flexed my sore wrist, bony and thin enough to circle with a thumb and forefinger. High above, sagging from the electrical tower’s outstretched arms, the powerlines buzzed dully. Not far off, Greg was weaving figure-eights in the tall grass, waiting. I hopped on my bike and hurried after him, assuring myself, and at the same time refusing to believe, that this ride or the next — any, any at all — might be the last.