“You nagged Mom for months to get them for you!”

Maya is expecting her brother to give as good as he gets, but he just sits there staring down at the ground. His face is swollen, he’s got a black eye, he has been telling everyone he got hit in the face by a ball in PE, but no one saw it happen. And Maya heard whispering at school today about a black jacket hanging on his locker.

“Are you . . . okay?” she asks cautiously.

He nods. “Don’t tell Mom I’ve lost my keys,” he begs.

“I’m not going to tell on you,” she whispers.

They’ve done a lot of mean things to each other, but they’ve never told on each other. She was the one who taught him that, one night when she was twelve and had been to her first big party and came home later than she’d said she would but didn’t get found out by her parents because she knocked on Leo’s window and climbed into the house that way. “We don’t tell on each other,” she told her sleepy little brother back then, and he was smart enough to realize that one day he’d benefit from the agreement.

* * *

Late that evening, a policeman is standing at the door. Peter knows him, his son used to play hockey in the same group as Leo. Perhaps that’s why the policeman’s words are tinged with regret when he says, “Sorry to bother you this late, Peter, but we’ve had some trouble in the forest outside Hed, a fight. Several people seriously injured. The Pack was involved.”

Peter leaps to the wrong conclusion. “You know very well that the club has nothing to do with the Pack, if you’re—”

The policeman cuts him off by handing over a shoe. “We found this at the site of the fight.”

Peter takes his son’s shoe and holds it in his trembling hand. When did he last hold a shoe his son had lost? When Leo was two years old? Three? How did his feet get this big?

The policeman says regretfully, “I wouldn’t have known whose they were if my son hadn’t been nagging me for weeks about wanting a pair exactly like that. I told him they were too expensive for a twelve-year-old, and he yelled at me and told me I was stupid because apparently ‘everyone’s got them!’ I asked him to name one person, and he said Leo.”

Peter tries to keep his voice steady. They really were far too expensive for a twelve-year-old. Kira and Peter got them for Leo back in the summer only because they felt guilty about . . . everything.

“I . . . they’re just ordinary shoes . . . there must be loads of twelve-year-olds who—”

The policeman holds out something else. A small key ring. “We found these as well. If you were to close the door in my face, I have a feeling I’d be able to open it again.”

Peter doesn’t make any more objections. He takes the keys. Nods silently.

“Leo will have to come to the station for questioning,” the policeman says.

“He’s only twelve . . .” Peter manages to say.

The policeman feels for him but doesn’t back down. “Peter, this is serious. The guys from Hed had fought the Pack before, but this was different. Three of them are still in hospital with serious injuries. They’re going to get revenge, and then the Pack will get revenge. This isn’t a game. Sooner or later someone’s going to get killed.”

Peter clutches the shoe and keys unconsciously to his chest. “I . . . Leo’s only . . . can I at least drive him to the police station myself?”

The policeman nods. “Your wife’s a lawyer, isn’t she?”

Peter understands what he means. It frightens the life out of him. Once the patrol car has driven off, Peter doesn’t open the door to his son’s room. He kicks it open.

* * *

A moment later father and son are standing face-to-face shouting at each other, but they’ve never been farther apart.

* * *

Maya locks herself in the bathroom. She hears her dad shouting at Leo, then her mom shouts at her dad to stop shouting, then they shout at each other about who has more right to shout. They’re frightened, angry, powerless. Parents always are.

Maya’s seen photographs of them before they had children. They were young and happy then; they don’t laugh like that anymore, not even in photographs. They used to be so in love that they hungered for each other, her dad’s fingertips brushing her mom’s bangs, her mom who could raise the hairs on her dad’s arms with a single glance. Children have a purely biological reaction against their parents’ love for each other, but when it disappears, they hate themselves.

Maya is sitting on the bathroom floor, opening and closing the dryer door, click, click, click. The sound feels almost meditative, until she sees the T-shirt inside it. It’s Leo’s. Only he would be stupid enough to tumble dry a cotton T-shirt, because he never does the laundry, he doesn’t know how to do it. Maya pulls the shirt out; the bloodstains are still visible. She knows what he’s done; she burned her own clothes after that night at Kevin’s because no one at home would have understood. Leo has been fighting, and Maya knows who for.

She hears her dad shout louder, “You want to play gangsters in the forest with hooligans? Have you lost your mind?” Leo shouts back, “At least they’re doing something! What the hell are you doing? You’re just letting all the goddamn cocksuckers in Hed trample all over our town!” Then her mom yells, loudest of all, “YOU DON’T USE THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE IN MY HOUSE!”

Click, click, click. Maya opens and closes the tumble dryer. She knows her family aren’t arguing about words or about the fight or about anyone’s town. They’re arguing about her. Everyone is.

She used to count butterflies with Ana, talking about “the butterfly effect,” that the beat of a butterfly’s wings can have such a devastating effect on the universe that the tiny air current it creates can cause a hurricane on the other side of the earth. Maya sees a whole town failing in the wake of her decision now. She’s the cause, and all the fighting and violence are the effect. If she hadn’t been here, if she’d never met Kevin, never gone into his room at that party, not been drunk, not been infatuated, if she’d just said yes and not put up a fight. That’s what she’s thinking, that’s how guilt works. If only she hadn’t existed, none of this would have happened. Her dad is shouting “We haven’t raised you to be a fighter!” Leo yells back, “SOMEONE IN THIS FAMILY HAS TO FIGHT, AND YOU’RE TOO MUCH OF A COWARD!”

* * *

Maya hears a door slam. Realizes that it’s her dad who’s stormed out. Blinded by grief.

* * *

That night Maya writes a song she’ll never perform. It is called “Hear Me.”

Every man I know, every father and brother and son,

Always these clenched hands. Where did you get that idea from?

Always this violence, always round holes and a square block,

The absurd idea you were sold, that we want you to fight for us.

If you want to do something for us,

Put a weapon down for me,

Close the maw of hell for me,

Be a friend to me,

Try to be good men for me.

You boast about all you’re going to do for me.

So when are you going to stop ruining things for me?

Do you want to know what you can do for me?

Start by hearing me.

* * *

Her mom is standing outside the bathroom door, asking Maya in a whisper if she’s okay. Maya lies: “Yes.” Her mom says, “We have to go to Hed. To . . . sort something out.” As if Maya doesn’t understand. So Maya lies, “Don’t worry, I need to study, see you later.”

When Leo’s mom fetches him tersely from his room, he doesn’t protest. He’s already got his coat on and puts on his new shoes. They set off for the police station, the door closes behind them, and Maya sits on the bathroom floor, unable to breathe. She gets up, feeling a desperate, panicky need for air. She suddenly has to get out of the house, away from the town. She knows only one place for that, and only one friend. So she texts Ana a single word: “Island?”

She starts to pack a backpack and puts her phone into her back pocket. She doesn’t wait for an answer, she knows Ana will come. Ana would never let her down.

30

They Aren’t the Kind of People Who Get Happy Endings