“You’re the ones who jumped my brother?” Of the four boys in front of Nolan, there was not one who wasn’t glaring.

  “Nolan, forget it,” said a shaky voice from behind him. “I honestly don’t care anymore!”

  His younger brother had just turned fourteen a few days ago. For the past year he’d been saving up for a new gaming console and had finally reached his monetary goal with the most recent batch of birthday cash. An hour ago he’d run off to the nearest electronic store with his hard-earned savings only to return emptyhanded and in a sorry state. As soon as he’d seen Thomas’s torn shirt and swollen face, Nolan had taken off in search of the bastards who’d attacked his brother for no good reason. Luckily the group of older boys—young men, really—hadn’t gone far from the scene of the initial incident, so he was able to find them rather easily.

  After a tense staredown the largest of the group spoke up, a beefy guy several centimetres taller than Nolan. “So what?”

  “So what? So you’ll be giving him his money back plus a hundred dollars more than what you stole. If I don’t have five hundred dollars in my hand soon then we’re going to have ourselves a really unpleasant situation.”

  “Yeah?” The big guy spat on the ground. “How about we just beat the shit out of you like we did to your little bitch of a brother?”

  Nolan had been in his fair share of fights. If he’d learned anything by now it was that making the first move definitely wasn’t a bad thing. Take the big guy in front of him for instance; if he’d have struck first then Nolan’s fist wouldn’t have just smashed into his nose with a surreal crunching sound and a small spurt of blood.

  Nolan was on the second guy before the first hit the ground, viciously wailing on any part of the older boy’s body that caught his eye while trying to avoid the expected swings from the other two goons. By the time the second guy was unconscious, Nolan’s lower lip was bleeding and his right eye was already beginning to swell up. It had been four on one to start, so it was inevitable that he’d take some hits. He fought off the other two as best he could, eventually sending them to the ground after suffering through a beating that he knew would leave him sore for days.

  “Here,” Nolan said. “They must have jumped a lot of people today. They had around a hundred dollars each.”

  “Thanks,” mumbled Thomas as he received the money.

  “I kept a hundred for the hassle.”

  The two brothers painted a sorry image, their faces and knuckles bloodied and their shirts torn in several places. The short brown hair that they shared was tousled and slick with sweat.

  “You came in clutch at the end there, Thomas. That was a nice boot to the face you fed that lanky one. If he hadn’t tapped out when he did I’d have never been able to choke-out that last guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  It’s a good thing I got him to start working out with me. Nolan recalled how his brother hadn’t hesitated to help him fight the older boys despite the fact that they’d already kicked his ass not an hour before. He was a good kid, Thomas.

  They were only a couple streets away from their house in the suburbs, their skin beaded with sweat in the humid heat. It was the middle of the summer and it was a Saturday, so they got a good amount of stares from their more proactive neighbours as they shambled down the uneven sidewalk with shaky steps.

  “Don’t be so down,” Nolan sighed. “You got your revenge in the end, didn’t you?” He paused to wave at a startled friend of the family, whose mouth had dropped open as they passed by her weathered colonial home. “Hey Mrs. Gagnon, loving the garden!”

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  Thomas really had dog-shit luck getting jumped and robbed on the one day he happened to be running around with all of his savings on him.

  Seeing that his brother’s mood wasn’t changing, Nolan patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up, man—ah, wasn’t going for the pun, there. Seriously, though. Those guys were eighteen, I checked their ID’s. You’re not even in high school yet, there’s still a month left of summer break.” He messed with his brother as much as any other guy, but ever since their weasel of a father had bailed on the family when Nolan was just a freshman himself, he’d been forced to take on a more responsible attitude toward his siblings. “How about I get a hold of some beer? I was your age the first time I struggled through my first six-pack, and we’ve got cash to burn.”

  Thomas couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “How’re you going to get beer? You’re only sixteen, you need to be at least—”

  Ignoring the pain of his split lip, Nolan smiled wide and dug something out of his pocket. “Believe it or not, the smallest guy back there was actually nineteen! He looked a bit like me, so…”

  “Why’re you always so reckless?” Thomas said. “Mom’s been worrying a lot about you lately. She blames herself for always being busy with her jobs. She thinks it’s her fault that you’ve been acting out.”

  Nolan’s smile dissolved. “I’m not acting out. What, you’ll smoke a joint with me behind Uncle Ted’s camper but the second I say beer you turn into Mother Teresa?”

  “It’s not about that.”

  “Alright, well, do you not care that those guys robbed you?”

  “Of course I care! What just happened could have been a lot worse though, but that’s not something you’d ever take a second to think about. You’re always starting trouble with every person that rubs you the wrong way. What if those guys had a knife or something? I’d rather lose a few hundred dollars than… You’ve got to think before you do something over-the-top, Nolan. Every time I get home from school you look like you just got out of bed. You used to top out the honour roll every year, but ever since Dad…”

  Nolan came to an abrupt halt. “I don’t need you getting all real with me out of nowhere. I did you a favour, so either accept what happened or don’t. Go home and get cleaned up before Steph sees you, the last thing we need is her telling Mom what happened.” With that, he turned back and began to retrace his steps.

  “Where’re you going?” Thomas’s voice was weak.

  “To get some beer.”

  “Even if they believe it’s your ID, they won’t sell anything to you looking like that!”

  “Worry about yourself.”

  Why was Thomas always fidgeting over every little thing? This was coming from the kid who kept every part of his life to himself. If Nolan hadn’t caught him slinking into his room all quiet and sneaky-like then he would never have known that anything had happened to him. He spat on the ground. Why did he have to bring up their waste of a father? Thomas knew how much it pissed him off, how easily it could cause his mood to crumble.

  A while passed and Nolan found himself standing at the crest of a big hill with a fantastic view that overlooked the city’s congested core. The hill stood at the edge of a large park not too far from his neighbourhood, the majority of its perimeter walled in by a dense mass of encroaching forest. Staring out at the distant skyline, Nolan was lost amidst his thoughts.

  How long had it been since Thomas had foregone that care-free look that he’d always worn, or that smug little grin he’d put on whenever he proved Nolan wrong about some mundane fact or useless bit of knowledge? If you’d have told him a few years ago that he would soon come miss those expressions terribly, or the entitled and bratty attitude that his demon of a little sister had pestered him with all throughout their childhood, he’d have had himself a good laugh. But now with money tight and their mom working three part-time jobs, all Thomas ever did was worry and brood, and Steph hardly ever said anything at all.

  He’d tried to convince his mom to let him get a part-time job to make things easier on her, but she adamantly refused. She would only ever tell him that he needed to take care of his brother and sister, and so for the past two years he had basically been a live-in maid. The truth of the matter was that his mom’s brittle heart couldn’t handle the weight of her husband’s betrayal, that she couldn’t stand to see her own children because she saw him in each of their faces, three living reminders of everything that’d happened. She spent every waking hour at one job or another, perpetually distracted, the damn useless woman…

  The way that she was always… And now it was up to him to… Irresponsible bullshit…

  Suddenly nauseous, Nolan could tell that something was wrong. When did he wind up on the ground? Was he really lying on his side? No, he was standing, but on what? Why couldn’t he move?

  He was unconscious before he could make any sense of the sudden failure of his faculties. Even if he had remained conscious, he wouldn’t have stood a chance at perceiving the sensation that took dominion over his body and soul in that strange moment.