Tyson’s laugh filled the air while JP chased him. I rolled over and stood, and then I snatched up my sticks and ran after them. Tyson was leading JP back toward the spot with the rope swing.

JP only slowed down enough to wing a stick at Tyson, who looked like an orange peel running through the woods. When they broke through brush and came to a clearing, Tyson turned, and in one last effort to save himself from JP’s wrath, flung a stick hard at him.

JP dodged it.

I dropped to my knees and grabbed my eye.

“I submit!” Tyson screamed.

One final loud crack hit my ears and Tyson wailed.

“I guess I win,” JP said, laughing.

“I submitted!” Tyson said.

I opened my eye and I could see, but blood ran down my face and covered my hands. Tyson lay on the ground rubbing his back. JP hurried over to me.

“You all right?” he said.

“Where am I cut?”

JP bent down and looked. “Between your eye and your nose. Man, that’s a deep gash. Nice battle wound.”

“It need stitches?”

“No, let’s go to Tyson’s and clean it up and get lunch.”

“Fuck you, you can’t have lunch.” Tyson stood and rubbed his back.

“I can have whatever I want. I’m the winner.” JP raised his fist.

“Fucking hell,” Tyson said. “Look at my shoes.”

Thick mud covered his new sneakers.

. . .

Tyson stood in front of the bathroom mirror lifting his shirt as he examined his lower back. He held his muddy shoe in one hand.

“Would you move?” I said. “Your back’s fine.”

“It hurts. And I have to clean my shoe.”

“There’s no scar and you can clean your shoe after. Move so I can clean this blood.”

“Where’s your mayonnaise?” JP yelled from the kitchen.

Tyson set his shoe in the tub and went to the kitchen.

I looked at my face. Pale skin. Dark bags under my eyes. A thin, tear-like layer of blood streaked down my face. The blood from the gash between my eye and nose had hardened like dried red paint. I turned on the sink. Blood stained my hands and seemed to belong there. I scrubbed my hands hard with a bar of soap and then scrubbed the line of blood off my face. The area around the cut was beginning to bruise.

With a cloth, I dabbed the gash, gently scraping away small bits of crusted blood. It bled again and was watery. I pressed a Q-tip soaked in peroxide against the wound and winced. I dried the area and put Neosporin on it. Behind the mirror I found a box of assorted Band-Aids and stuck a medium-small one vertically between my eye and nose.

Tyson’s parents were working so I lit a cigarette and walked into the living room. I plopped down onto the couch.

“Nice Band-Aid,” JP said. “It matches your vagina.”