Epic comeback, Leo thought. “What did he say?”

“‘Ouch.’ And some other stuff.”

“Wow. Did it bleed?”

“His nose? Yeah. A little,” Gareth admitted.

“Did it hurt your hand?”

Gareth flexed his fingers. “A little,” he repeated with a bit of a smile. “Dad’s going to be pissed when he finds out, though. He doesn’t like fighting. You know that.”

Leo nodded. This wasn’t the first fight Gareth had been in after all, though he seemed to be getting into them more easily. This certainly wouldn’t be the first call from Mr. Harshman this year.

“He deserved it,” Leo concluded. “I would have punched him too.”

“Na. You would have just made him disappear,” Gareth said, twirling an imaginary wand and zapping an imaginary jerk out of existence like some velvet-robed wizard. Leo grinned. He liked the idea of waving a wand and wishing all the mean and terrible things away. That was one trick his mother never got around to teaching him. Like so many others.

“We’ll have to go back eventually, though,” Leo said.

“Eventually,” Gareth agreed. “But not yet.”

They hit the playground and Leo followed his brother through the obstacle course, trying to perform every trick the same way he did. They took turns in the tire swing and chased each other across the artificial turf. They lobbed pine cones at each other and made fun of the kids who kept falling off their hoverboards.

The whole time, though, Leo could tell his brother was thinking about what he’d done and what their dad would say. Leo wondered what the punishment would be. Last time, Gareth had been forced to write a two-thousand-word essay on the history of nonviolent resistance titled “Fighting Without Your Fists.” Dr. Fender had also made Leo read it even though Leo had done nothing wrong. Learn from your brother’s example, he’d said.

After a while Gareth led Leo to the top of the sledding hill where the two of them perched, leaning back in the grass and soaking in the sun, looking out over the fields and to the snow-swept sprawl of the mountains beyond. They sat in silence, thankful that, for once, they couldn’t hear the high-pitched grind of Aykari drills cutting into rock. Only the sounds of other kids shouting and laughing down below.

“Mom loved this hill,” Gareth said at last, leaning back on his elbows. “Remember when we came for picnics, she’d always put our blanket right here at the top? That red-and-black checkered one?”

Leo remembered. She would leave them on the playground below and hike up the hill all by herself with the old-fashioned wicker basket over her arm. It was always just the three of them. Get out of the house and let your father work time. That’s what she called it. She would sit and watch them from up high, waiting until they were sweaty and out of breath—or at least until Leo was out of breath—and then call them up for lunch.