Slashback

16

Niko

Twelve Years Ago

“It made a hole in the world.”

They were the first words Cal had said since he’d woken up two hours ago. I’d bandaged the cut on his chest, which wasn’t close to as bad as I thought it would be. It would scab over by tomorrow and be gone in a week. Junior had liked to play before he truly got started. Bastard. I gently scrubbed the duct tape residue from Cal’s face and lips and wrists with soap and warm water. He woke up halfway through the process and let me dress him in pajamas without helping or trying to stop me. He stared at me with blank eyes, then past me. Rain sluicing down the empty windows of an abandoned house. He would bounce back. Cal didn’t fail to bounce.

Unless his brother slapped down that ball and crushed it underfoot because he didn’t want to believe.

I smoothed hair I’d already combed out into his usual straight sheen. He let me fold him up on his mattress as I climbed in behind him, pulled his blanket over us and wrapped arms around him.

“I’m here, Cal.”

Silence, and it went on.

“You’re not alone. I’m staying.

“Junior’s dead.” I swallowed, but said it. Cal didn’t trust anything I hadn’t done myself and I had done it. “I killed him. He’s not coming back.

“We’ll leave tomorrow, away from that house and the police, but we need the rest tonight, okay?

“I won’t, I can’t make it up to you. From the first time you told me, I should’ve said screw Junior’s good name and the police. With some things your instincts are better than mine and I fucked up.”

None of my uncustomary cursing got through to him either.

“Cal . . .” I tightened my grip on him, wrapped around him as I hadn’t since he was six and had nightmares every night—clowns, evil reindeer, and Grendels. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know if he would say anything, if he could say anything, but I heard the faintest of whispers, the barest of exhalations against the skin of my hand tucked under his small chin when he said those first words.

“It made a hole in the world.”

Once he started, he didn’t stop, his voice much younger than eleven. “It made a hole in the world. It made a hole in the world. It made a hole in the world. It made a hole in the world. It made a hole. . . .” He turned his head to bury it in the pillow.

I didn’t know what he meant. He could’ve been awake for a few minutes and seen the Grendel start what I finished on Junior, but a hole in the world? I didn’t know. I ran fingers through the long strands of his hair. “I’ll stop it. Whatever it is, I promise I’ll make it go away.”

Pressing a light kiss to the top of his head, wishing he’d punch me for that as he normally did, I murmured, “Love you, little brother.”

There was a shudder and a promise more determined than I could’ve asked for. “Love you, big brother. Forever.” Ferocious in its way, protective almost when that was my job. It was enough to worry me more.

What had he seen?

God, what hadn’t he?

We moved the next day. Packed what little we had and took the bus several states away. We didn’t leave a note for Sophia, but she would find us. She always did. She was like a Grendel that way.

The apartment was cheap and dirty and not fit to live in, which is why it was more or less abandoned until maintenance got around to it. We could squat for a while. It had been three weeks and Cal was back to normal—as normal as my little brother ever was. We’d slept in the same sleeping bag for two weeks before he decided he was eleven and only babies slept with their brothers. I was surprised it took him that long to move to the sleeping bag right next to mine. For all that had happened, Cal was never one to admit he was afraid . . . of Grendels, of anything. Two weeks for him was the same as two months for someone else.

It worried me, but he didn’t mention that night in the house, in the attic, and neither did I. I tried. It wasn’t healthy, all the books said, to bottle up that kind of trauma. But when I did make an attempt, it was as if Junior was back with the bleach spray scorching my throat, banishing my voice.

I’d almost gotten Cal killed by not believing him. I couldn’t live with that—so I put it away. What Cal did with it I didn’t ask. I couldn’t without tasting bleach, feeling his blood on my hands, and reliving the terribly satisfying crunch of knife through bone.

I couldn’t talk about it. If I did, I couldn’t be who I needed to be for him. I wouldn’t be strong. I think it would’ve broken me . . . for good.

So that’s what I did. Put it away. I wouldn’t take it out again, not as long as I lived.

I hoped.

As for Cal, he seemed fine, not quite cheerful, but . . . functional. His ball was bouncing, if not as high and wild as normal. I didn’t know how that could be, that he was walking and talking at all, but that was Cal. I should be grateful and I was. I was more than grateful; I was proud. The deck had been stacked against my little brother since before he was born. He never let that stop him and he never let it beat him. One little boy and he had the strength of a hundred men. I loved him, but I was also . . . humbled by him. He was an amazing boy now and he’d be a man to be reckoned with when he grew up. I was fortunate I was the one who would see that. Of all the people in the world, somehow I’d been chosen, and hard as it could be, this life, I’d never give it up. Make it better, yes, but never give up the miracles I got to see on a daily basis. Even on the days I stumbled and didn’t know what to do, I was the luckiest person alive.

I came in the apartment door, ignored the smell of mold from the ceiling that no amount of scrubbing had done away with. It didn’t much matter anyway. The black-green of it matched the carpet. “We start the new school tomorrow. Have you been catching up on what you missed?”

Cal looked up at me from the same math book from a table with the same wobble and, terrifyingly, wearing the same casual expression. The déjà vu was a punch in the stomach. “Mrs. Kessler is a cannibal.”

Mrs. Kessler? Who had painted her door cotton candy pink, who was seventy at least and baked cookies for everyone on the floor? That Mrs. Kessler? Yet, she did eat a lot of what looked like pork sandwiches in that rocker on her tiny balcony. I headed immediately for the scarred baseball bat propped in the corner.

Cal laughed. “Sucker.” It was his first real laugh since Junior’s attic. His first true laugh, first true grin, and it was worth being fooled for that. Of course he still had to pay. That was how brothers did it. I chased him out the door and down the hall. I echoed his laughter, my first too, and continued racing after him out of the building and down the sidewalk. Of course I let him think he could outrun me, giving him the glee and the hope.

Hope is the second most important thing in the world.

Trust is the first.

When Sophia finally caught up with us, the bruise from her thrown whiskey bottle had almost faded from Cal’s chest. I was checking it for the last time, the pale tinge of yellow, and smiling, relieved. That’s when I heard the first door open. I recognized the particular click of our mother’s picklock at work. “It looks good,” I told him as he pulled his shirt down. “I’ve got a new Wolverine comic book I’ve been saving for you. It’s under my sleeping bag. Have fun.” While he dived for it, I went to meet Sophia.

I met her in the living room with her last full bottle of whiskey I’d brought with us when we packed. It was poetic justice. I liked poetry and I liked justice. I hefted the bottle. I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? I’d made a promise to myself. It was time to keep it.

Cal was my line, I’d told Junior. This was what happened when you crossed it.

I swung the bottle and broke her arm.

As she screamed, I did regret one thing . . .

That I hadn’t done it sooner.