“And that’s because you think if he gets angry enough, he might…?” But that’s a sentence he doesn’t know how to finish without breaking the fragile bubble they’re in, or giving too much fuel to the coil of anger in his stomach that makes him glad he doesn’t own a gun. He’s afraid of what he might be capable of if he did.

Lance nods again with a heavy sigh. He leans slightly into Robbie’s hand.

On the far side of the wooden bridge, when they’re no longer at any risk of running into Paul on his way home, Robbie pulls over onto the shoulder of the road and pushes down the brake. He doesn’t want to take his hand from Lance’s shoulder to reach for the gear shift.

“Has he ever hurt you, Lance?”

Lance’s eyes are wide as he turns and locks his gaze on Robbie’s. “No. Never.” He swallows and shakes his head. “He just yells a lot. Sometimes, I think—but…no. He never has.”

Robbie nods, trying to plan the next question, but Lance speaks again before he can.

“Do you remember Caleb Parker?”

Robbie blinks. “Lance, that’s not—that isn’t what usually happens to kids in foster care.” Caleb Parker was a local boy who’d gone into the system after his grandparents, who’d raised him, had suddenly died of a bad case of the flu. He’d been placed with a seemingly harmless couple in the next town to the east, and after he’d been checked into the hospital for a broken arm a year later, several healed fractures had been discovered in his legs, proving that he hadn’t just fallen down the stairs and hurt his arm on accident, but that he’d been pushed. And not for the first time.

“Well, I’ve been on the internet. I know he’s not the only one to end up like he did, or worse.” Lance drags his sleeve over his nose, which is running. His eyes are glassy with unshed tears. “My dad’s not that bad, okay, Robbie?” His shoulders quake. “And if I get sent away, I’ll never see you anymore, or Danny or Johnny. Please, don’t…please don’t do anything, okay?”

His wide, unnaturally blue eyes are beseeching. So, Robbie gives him what he’s asking for, knowing even as he says the words that he’s going to wonder, one day, if his promise was a horrible mistake.

“I won’t, if you swear you’ll tell me if he ever lays a hand on you. Okay?”

Lance nods eagerly and wipes his nose again. “Thanks, Robbie. And I will, I will. But he won’t. I just go in my room when he gets like that.” A ghost of something passes over Lance’s face and he swallows convulsively. “It’s not so bad.”

A minivan passes them on the road, honking. One of Danny’s few friends smiles at them through the passenger window, waving excitedly at Robbie and Lance, oblivious to what he and his mother are interrupting.

“Can we go to the party now?”