I was thinking about ignoring him, because I did not have a brother. But it only took me a second to see what he was pointing at, and then I started running.

“I’ll get a teacher!” Keira yelled somewhere behind me.

From the corner of my eye I could see Aidan and Jed at the rocks. They stood up, watching me run across the playground. I knew they’d follow me to the back fence, where a gang of kids had Sam cornered.

“We thought you weren’t coming back,” one boy said with a sneer.

One of them poked him in the shoulder. “Come on, say it again!”

Another attempted to hook their foot around his ankle, trying to make him trip over.

“What’d you call us?”

A tall boy—I think his name was Lachie—was grinding his fist on the top of Sam’s head. I could see Sam’s eyes were watering behind his glasses, and he was biting down on his bottom lip to keep from crying out.

“Oy! OY!”

I’d never had to break up a fight before, so I just called out what I’d heard the teachers say when kids were acting up. I even put a deep voice on, to sound like our PE teacher, Mr. Harvey.

“STOP IT!” I roared. I stepped into the circle of kids and started pulling on their arms, trying to get them to move away.

“Are you serious?” Lachie looked from me to Sam and back again. “You need her to look out for you? Are you pathetic or what?” He flattened his palm and pushed hard on Sam’s head, shoving him away. Sam tripped and fell to the ground, losing his glasses on the way down.

Jed and Aidan ran up then. Jed bent to pick up Sam’s glasses—luckily unbroken—while Aidan reached out a hand to help him up.

“What is your problem?” I said, and then I threw my hands out and pushed Lachie.

He stumbled back. “He started it!”

I turned around in the circle of fifth graders. There were ten of them, mostly boys but a couple of girls, a mix from our class and Mrs. Watts’s.

When one approached Sam and started yelling in his face again, Jed got between them. He put his hands up and didn’t touch them, but kept stepping up until they moved back.

“Tell them what you said, Samuel!” Lachie was practically screaming. “Tell them what you said!”

I pushed him back again.

And the whole time Sam just stood behind Aidan, holding his glasses loosely in one hand while he raised his other arm and wiped his face on his sleeve.

“What is going on here?”

We all turned around when we heard Mr. Harvey’s voice—for real—and saw him striding toward us, with Keira at his heels.

“What did Lachie mean?”