The cold air slapping me in the face gives me a rare glimpse of my anger. He’s like the homie from way-back-when who always has my back but chronically takes shit too far. But what am I supposed to do now? Back down from Josh? Nah. I grab his phone out of my pocket and hold it out of the window.

Everyone gasps. They’re all turned around, kneeling on their seats, staring at who they think they see. The asshole who acts like he’s too good to talk to anybody or hang with anybody. But it’s not even like that. Not even close.

“What the hell is going on back there?” Coach Bell finally gets up and yells.

Everyone sits down and faces forward in their seats.

It takes a lot for Coach to intervene on the bus. It’s the one place he completely removes himself. In the name of team bonding, the one place we get to make up our own rules, settle our own disputes.

“Rex is trying to throw my phone out of the window!” Josh answers, his five-year-old self back in full effect.

My five-year-old self wants to yell Snitch! But I don’t let him, not in front of Coach.

“Have you lost your mind?” Coach shouts down the aisle. “Give Josh his phone back.”

I pull my arm back in and toss the phone on the seat.

Josh grabs it and storms off.

“Rex, do I need to treat you like you’re my child and make you come sit up here with me?” Coach yells.

A simple rhetorical question, but it shoots deep, pricking the place I’m always pushing further down inside of me. It’s just that the words my child make me want to answer yes. I swear I’m so pathetic.

Where It Hurts

CARLI

When I get home, Cole’s in my room, sitting on my floor, still in his basketball warm-ups. He’s leaning against my bed, surrounded by a ton of old photos. Him and Daddy left the hospital right after the doctor left the room. Mom and I had to wait over an hour for my discharge papers. Looks like Cole’s been in here the whole time.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” he replies, but doesn’t look up from a photo he’s holding.

I head to my desk, where I remember tacking up the fact about ancient kisses, and look for it underneath a magazine clipping of a guitarfish. Not there. A charcoal sketch of Mom doing a backbend. Nope. A card of a young girl—eyes closed, hugging a book to her chest, with castles and dinosaurs and ships and cities and birds and trees in her curly afro. Not there, either.

“We have to choose,” Cole says.